From the Vineyard Gazette editions of 1963:

The Blue Barque, the beautiful old homestead that has been an adornment of the South Road in Chilmark for generations and for some forty years has been identified with the Cavert sisters and their tea room and antique shop, is to be purchased by Victor Leventritt of New York. An agreement for the sale has been signed through the real estate office of Catherine Allen. Misses Helen and Mae Cavert are the sellers.

Mr. Leventritt has been a visitor to the Island at various times, and has vacationed both in Chilmark and in Vineyard Haven. It is understood that the Blue Barque will become his summer home. His family is identified with the Leventritt Foundation for Musicians.

The Blue Barque was the homestead of one of the Island’s best known and most successful whaling captains, Stephen Flanders, who began a seafaring career in 1850 at the age of 15. His first command was the brig Kate Cory, which he lost to the Confederate raider Alabama on his second voyage. Subsequently he commanded the bark Cleone, and the Janet of Westport which, in twenty-seven months, he filled with oil worth $75,000.

His whaling career was completed with the voyages as master of the Sea Ranger and Alice Knowles. He never lowered for whales on Sunday, never lost a man through death, and never met with a serious accident.

It was Captain Flanders who, having defeated Beriah T. Hillman for representative in the state legislature in 1880, gave victory to the divisionists in the long struggle to divide the town of Edgartown.

The property was acquired about forty years ago by the late Miss Cora Cavert whose death occurred in 1953. About nine and a half acres of land are included.

Mr. and Mrs. Leventritt have three children.

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It is only apparent to those who have lived through the season of change that the change appears at all.

It is so in various places on the Vineyard. Centers of population have shifted and the places that were once populated have become wilderness. The open fields are overgrown, the houses have crumbled to dust, and even the cellar holes have become filled with earth and mould in which more bushes, trees and briars grow, concealing them.

Such a neighborhood, actually a civic center in its day, so nearly vanished as to be unrecognizable for what it once was, could be indicated in any one of various places on the Island, but more clearly, perhaps on the Middle Road than anywhere, between such boundaries as might be indicated by the home of Eugene H. Damon, and Tea Lane Farm, more than a mile of highway, the greater portion bordered with trees, brush and other wild growth. One house only stands there, a recently constructed summer dwelling, close to one of the oldest foundations in Chilmark; the rest is wilderness for long distances on either side.

To understand the importance of this place as it once was, it must be remembered that the march of civilization on the Island was the same as it has always been everywhere since the world began; from east to west. From the original colony at Edgartown, civilization spread to West Tisbury, and thence by trail, into what is now Chilmark. And however the growth of the manor developed, there was a time when this portion of Middle Road was regarded as a central point in the populated area and an effort was made to establish certain things here as being equally convenient for all who traveled to patronize them.

The town hall, the church, the post-office, the parsonage and around these were grouped in a scattering array, the farm-homes of some of the solid citizenry.

A long gap in the fine stone wall of Tea Lane Farm, closed by wire fence, shows exactly where the Methodist Church once stood, together with its row of sheds for horses and carriages. Here, the church was built, more than a century ago, and here it stood until it was moved to Menemsha village, a thing that resulted because the population center was shifting even then.

On the other side of the road, and westerly from the church location, were two other houses, sixty years ago, the Dunham house and the West house. The Dunham house was once the town post office, and the homemade letter-boxes were still there. Presided over by John Dunham, postmaster, it was his proudest boast that he had received his commission from Abraham Lincoln.

How many men might have thus visited the place no one knows, but the number must have been considerable. And it is somewhat astonishing, not to say a trifle tragic to realize that probably not a soul lives who ever went to that post office for mail and very few who ever entered the house when it was occupied. None of these things may be regarded as actually tragic. No violent action compelled such abandonment. No, it all came to pass in an easy, insidious manner, and was a fact before surrounding places realized it. And having come to pass, nature stepped into the picture to make it complete.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com