From the June 24, 1949 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

One hundred years ago the character of the Island population was distinctly amphibious. Fishermen-farmers were everywhere and bona-fide seafarers were to be found in every town. Men did not look for automobiles, or the parts thereof, nor were they concerned with gasoline engines of any variety. But they required boat timber and planking, the copper nails and spikes, harness for horses, and parts for farm wagons, ox-yokes, tar and pitch, and the heavy cowhide boots which preceded the rubber varieties now commonly used.

Little stores, many of them established in one room of a dwelling, were scattered throughout the Island — little stores that carried food staples, salt beef, and pork, meal, flour, molasses and spices; and dry goods, too, “brogans” or work-shoes, boots and perhaps knitted socks.

Larger stores and establishments carried chains, horse trappings, gun-powder and lead for shot and bullets, percussion caps, and revolvers. An odd circumstance, but many revolvers were sold on the Vineyard, although just why no one seems to know.

But the stores of whatever variety, were few compared with today. The business places aside from actual general stores, were even more scarce. There was not, for example, a place on the Vineyard where a man could buy a piece of iron pipe or a pair of trousers. If he required pipe, it had to come from the mainland, and trousers, as well as most other clothing, had to be made by a tailor or seamstress, with the greater part of the work done by hand.

The farmer or fisherman, the coastal sailor, could find hand-knitted socks in almost any business place, or he could buy them direct from the knitter, but he could not obtain a pair of cotton ones at any price. A blacksmith, and their were several, could make him a plow-clevis or a pair of hinges, the irons for a whiffle-tree or the tongue fittings for an ox-cart, but he couldn’t go to any place and buy them unless he was fortunate enough to find second-hand ones.

Hats could be purchased, both from dealers and from hatters themselves, but gloves were not known except when they were brought from large mainland cities. Everyone wore mittens, knitted by hand. Clothing of almost every variety, was of heavy material, much of it hand-woven, and the fancy varieties were fine indeed. But male or female underwear was virtually an unknown article a century a go!

A man could buy a handsome watch, weighing half a pound, and guaranteed to run for generations, or a meerschaum pipe, in the stores of Edgartown. He could purchase a padlock or an axe, but he could not obtain a pair of hose-supporters for himself or a corset for his wife. He could not buy a can of mixed paint, nor a window-screen of any variety.

In the stores of that day, there was an utter lack of the thousand and one little articles of hardware used in the household, in building, and in shops of all kinds. They simply were not known. Brushes, latches, drawer-pulls, picture-hooks, clothes-pins, thumb-tacks, these and many, many others, had not been introduced.

Display, as it is known today, was not popular with the retailers of a century ago. To begin with no one had show windows, and sunshine would have damaged some of the merchandise. Moreover there was something of a ritual in the production of a bolt of cloth or side of leather from its place of concealment and spreading it before the prospective customer; a ritual that was dear to the heart of the merchant and probably impressed the customer with the idea that he was really getting something that was denied the common herd.

Of packaged goods there were none save salt. All other commodities came in bulk. Shoppers at the stores of a century ago brought bags and buckets, perhaps cuts of broadcloth or other containers, in which to take home their purchases.

In all the folk-tales bearing upon that period there is no mention of the common paper bag. But wooden boxes, beautifully made and of all sizes, barrels and kegs also, were common, for even the paint base, white lead and other ingredients, came in wooden containers of all sizes, and a ty n the contents,

The summer traffic in souvenirs, trinkets and toys, introduced at Cottage City, probably started the trend which eventually resulted in the expansion of year-round stores to carry similar articles. Pinchbeck and tinsel, red paint and tin, they bridged the period between the drab simplicity of the ancient emporium, and the modern retail establishment.

Chapters could be added, but they would still fail utterly to explain the breath-taking change in Island stores that a comparatively few years have wrought. What, one wonders, would a person of today think or say, if he had to return to great-grandfather’s day, with the ancient one’s purchasing power, and his shop-keeper’s stock in trade as they were. It is to wonder, and deeply!

Compiled by Hilary Wallcox

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