From the December 21, 1934 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

Once again Christmas is at hand. Those who have been holding out against it, because of disillusionment and hardship, are already beginning to give in. By the time the day has arrived, there will not be a single discordant note. Christmas is lighting up the world, just as it always does: not alone literally, with the colored bulbs which gleam at night, but in the larger, figurative sense.

One of the best things about Christmas is that it checks mankind’s realities, shows for a little while how unimportant they are, and then lets the go on again with a better heart.

We extend to all Vineyarders and lovers of the Vineyard at Christmas season the old fashioned greeting which may never be improved. Merry Christmas! May good will and cheer light up every hearth and home, and may every life be open to the radiance of the great day of December.

According to the Boston Herald, Edward Gilliland of Danvers, 83 years old, is believed by the police to be the oldest licensed driver of motor vehicles in the state.

This would indicate that the police were poorly informed. The Vineyard has Ulysses E. Mayhew of West Tisbury, who is 86 years old, and Harry A. Castello of Vineyard Haven, 91, both licensed drivers of motor vehicles, and both at the wheels of their cars almost daily. There is no traffic problem, either in summer or winter, that fazes these Islanders as they drive from one town to another; and their cars are of the larger, heavier types which frequently give younger people difficulty in handling.

Mr. Mayhew is an ex-whaler, whose ship was sunk by the privateer Alabama. He went on the road with a circus which was the first to have reserved seats; and he later represented Dukes County in the General Court.

Mr. Castello served with the Union forces during the Civil War and installed the first plumbing in one or two western states, later helping to establish the Tisbury waterworks and becoming a hotel proprietor before his retirement. A few months ago he married for the second time.

A heavy southerly gale, raging from sixty to sixty-five miles an hour according to the log at the Gay Head Coast Guard station, accompanied by a heavy rainfall and an unusually high tide, struck the Vineyard on Wednesday night. There was no great amount of damage done, but the force of the wind was apparent in the fences blown down, and in some cases, carried out into the streets, the tops of trees and limbs torn off, and a few small boats disturbed at their moorings.

The tide on the Sound shore rose to the greatest height in the last six years, at least, since lumber and other objects known to have laid along the edge of the beach for that length of time, were washed away.

It is the usual custom to delve back into the records of the past century for records of storms worthy of the name, but Christmas night on the Vineyard twenty-five years ago was memorable for an honest to goodness storm.

As early as Christmas morning, attention was divided between the usual happy pursuits of that day and watching the barometer, which descended to 28.7, and exclaiming over the tide, the highest for very many years, perhaps for half a century. The whole Edgartown waterfront was submerged at 8 a.m. Chappaquiddick Point was under water three-quarters of the way to the hills, a spectacle never seen before by many living people. The coal office was completely surrounded by water. Many planks were floated from the wharves. Steamer Uncatena was at her dock and a boat had to be requisitioned to get aboard the steamer, the water covering the wharf and approaching territory.

The schooner Maud Seward was driven ashore on Seven Gates beach and bleached her bones there through the succeeding years. She had been at anchor in Chatham bay, when she parted her anchor chains and was carried out over the shoals and up into the Sound. Her crew was sheltered for the night at the Cedar Tree Neck home of Capt. Obed S. Daggett. Two three-masters went ashore in Vineyard Haven harbor, and the bridge to the Hine estates on Cedar Neck was washed away.

A hundred bath houses and many landing stages were carried away at Oak Bluffs and the bulkheads were seriously damaged. “Jordan,” the crossway from the campgrounds to the Highlands, was completely submerged. In a stable on Lake avenue horses stood in three feet of water. Almost the entire width of the railway was undermined, and the heavy timbers of the old railway trestle were washed across Sea View avenue and deposited in Waban Park. The beach was levelled so that Farm Pond became almost a part of the ocean.

The storm raged from Saturday evening until 3 o’clock Monday morning, shifting from east to southeast and blowing a heavy gale, then shifting to the north. Rain and snow added to the discomfort. The roads were transformed into a glare of ice and traveling was difficult. Altogether a Christmas to long remember.

Compiled by Hilary Wall

library@mvgazette.com