From the Vineyard Gazette editions of September 1931:

The old building which has stood for many years at the foot of Daggett street is being moved to a new site. Its destination lies up Pierce avenue, along which the ancient structure is now moving with Edward T. Vincent and his crew in charge of operations. Incidentally, the moving operations are requiring careful navigating. The building started up Daggett street with a telephone pole tilted back to let it pass, and even then the passage was a close shave.

The building was built fifty-two years ago by John Forman of Edgartown, by whom it has always been used ever since. The moving has been made necessary by the sale of the so called Wheeler property upon which it partly stood. Mr. Forman sold the structure, and the waterfront is now without another landmark familiar for more than a generation.

Mr. Vincent’s men, upon starting the building, found under the floor an old voucher covering the shipment of a barrel of clams in 1870 by Art Fisher and John Mendence to William A. Bassett, New Bedford fish dealer. Mr. Mendence was the father of William Mendence, Main street storekeeper. The barrel of clams brought $1.25.

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Everywhere there has been the Depression and talk of the Depression, but in any long range view of our life here on the Vineyard the great slump cannot seem more than a minor dip in the long, smooth line of progression. Life is fruitful in such a place, less changed than most communities from the substantial principles so familiar to our forefathers. Production and over-production have no such poignant meaning as in industrial cities; there is a permanency about the occupations of our daily lives and about the things we sell. We have much in common with the Vineyarders of three hundred years ago, although then the Island was not a popular resort. It became a resort, however, many years back and has continued to be one through several generations, through prosperity and panic, through war and peace. Independent of fashion and fancy, our sea and air remain the foundation of a patronage which may expect to continue as far as we can look ahead. Only the destruction of our natural attractions is likely to interfere, and in that case we shall have destroyed ourselves.

Perhaps it will not be a bad winter. With the mainland newspapers full of crises and discussions of unemployment relief, the colder weather inspired shivers even before it is here. The thought of winter is ominous. It should not be so. Hard winters never frightened Vineyarders in old times, and hard winters of a different kind which happen along today may be faced with hardihood. We have natural resources to fall back on in winter, as well as in summer.

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The new policy of the steamboat company in placing in force the winter rates for automobiles at the very end of the September rush is helpful and encouraging. No doubt the early change will stimulate travel by automobile and serve in general as a blow to the depression. This winter rate for cars is one of the progressive steps taken by the steamboat management which have greatly pleased the Island public. Depression or no depression, the Island was served through the summer with as full a schedule of arriving and departing steamers as in the boom times. And with winter coming on the company is ready for out-of-season traffic.

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We speak of the natural resources of the Vineyard as if they were permanent and indestructible, and so they are. But who will again recruit the ranks of our retired sea captains, rapidly depleted in recent years? The presence of these seafaring men of the past has supplied one of the Vineyard’s greatest claims to fame and to the friendship of the summer visitor. No doubt we shall have to look to the fishermen to salt themselves thoroughly in their active years so that in latter days they may be prepared to perpetuate the Island’s supply of dry-salted thoughts, words and deeds. Yachtsmen may help some, but apparently a man has to follow the sea as a profession before he can join the select company in full-blooded acceptance. Dilettantes cannot qualify. If any capitalist wants to invest money in the future of Martha’s Vineyard, one fruitful method will be to send Vineyard sons to sea in fishing boats so that they can regale the summer visitors of three or four decades from now.

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A postcard enclosed in a bottle was set sailing by Paul Averill of South Portland, Me., Aug. 3, 1930, while the young man was visiting his aunt, Miss Maude B. Averill, at her lodge, Windansea, at Cape Pogue, Chappaquiddick.

Almost a year later the bottle was picked up, June 24, 1931, by a man named Marcelino Jose da Sousa, at Urzelina, Sao Jorge, the Azores.

Paul received a letter written by Mr. Sousa in which it was stated that the bottle was picked up by him while he was cruising with his two sons about a mile offshore from the Azores. He said that he would keep the bottle as a souvenir.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com