As America marks its 250th anniversary, Martha’s Vineyard is taking a fresh look at its own revolutionary story through exhibitions, walking tours, programs and public conversations that connect Island history to the nation’s founding.
At the center of much of that work are historians Bow and Norah Van Riper.
Bow has spent the past 12 years as research librarian at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, helping Islanders and visitors uncover the people, places and documents that illuminate the Vineyard’s past. Norah, a historian, educator and living-history interpreter has brought history to life at institutions including Plimoth Patuxet Museums and Old Sturbridge Village. Today, she is the curator of Independence on Martha’s Vineyard: Then, Now & Forever, the Vineyard Preservation Trust’s exhibition commemorating the nation’s semiquincentennial at the Vincent House Museum.
Married and united by a shared passion for history, the Van Ripers spend much of their professional and personal lives interpreting the past. On a recent afternoon, we met at the Vincent House, where Norah has transformed one of the Island’s oldest homes into a journey through 250 years of independence. From there, we wandered through historic Edgartown, past the Vineyard Gazette building to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum’s Cooke House.
Q: You’re both historians and storytellers, and you’re deeply engaged in helping people understand Martha’s Vineyard’s past. But you also happen to be husband and wife. What does history sound like around your dinner table?
NORAH: History is a frequent topic at our dinner table. My poor mother tries to follow as best she can. She’s an educator, but not a historian. She laughs at the things that go back and forth. The number of long-dead people who are frequent subjects of our conversations is astounding. It’s a lot of “What about this?” and “What about that?” And a lot of shorthand for (names of) people.
BOW: Other folks might say, “Who are they talking about?”
NORAH: It’s not just the dinner table. It’s doing the dishes, sitting in the living room or making the bed in the morning and suddenly wondering how many pounds a team of oxen could pull on a wheeled cart. Or what was the name of the person who owned that tavern on West Chop? Do we ever hit a point where we say “enough?” It’s never really “enough” so much as…
BOW: “Let’s go to sleep and go back to this in the morning.”
Q: Who in Vineyard history would you invite to your dinner table?
BOW: Either Nathan or Benjamin Smith, the commanders of Martha’s Vineyard’s two Sea Coast defense companies during The Revolutionary War. It would be a hard call, because I’d want to ask Nathan Smith about going out in armed whaleboats and seizing the schooner Volante from the British. But I think I’d probably settle on Benjamin Smith, because I want to know what actually happened to [Scottish] Captain Wemyss Orrok’s clothes (taken during a Revolutionary War encounter on Martha’s Vineyard) after he wrote to General Washington trying to get the colonials to give them back.
NORAH: I would invite Sarah Chase Daggett Allen, who has become a real project of mine. She and her second husband owned and operated a tavern right on Hatch Road in Vineyard Haven where we live. She was the mother, aunt and great aunt of the three girls who blew up the Liberty Pole. And I would love to invite Epenow (the Vineyard Wampanoag who was kidnapped, taken to England and later escaped his captors). His story is so lightly documented, and entirely by English authors; I wish I could hear from him personally about his trials and triumphs.
Q: Bow, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum archives are a destination for people tracing Island roots. Your inbox must be very full!
BOW: Helping people who are looking for their Vineyard ancestors is a big part of what I do at the museum. One of the secrets to keeping up is to save the research results that those inquiries produce, and file them for future use so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Q: For someone beginning a family history search, what information should they gather before they start — and what makes a genealogy inquiry most productive?
BOW: There are two things people can do in advance. First, write out the line of ancestors that connects you to Martha’s Vineyard. And second, think about what you’d most like to learn about your ancestors — birth, marriage, and death dates; occupations; where they lived; where they’re buried; documents they signed or stories about their lives.
Q: Bow, after 12 years of being what many would consider Martha’s Vineyard’s leading historian, are there still new primary sources turning up that surprise you?
BOW: Absolutely. I was reorganizing the museum’s Revolutionary War documents collection recently and turned up a receipt from 1777 from a guy in Chappaquiddick who signed over whatever prize money he might acquire on a forthcoming privateering voyage. In exchange, he got fifteen pounds in cash up front. Privateers were basically government-licensed pirates with a privateering license. They went out and seized enemy merchant ships, the government got a cut of the proceeds and the crew divided the rest. As a privateer, you were lured with promises of great wealth — and assurances that it wouldn’t be dangerous, that there wouldn’t be storms and that the enemy wouldn’t fight back.
This guy, though, signed over whatever prize money he might earn in exchange for 15 pounds up front. And the interesting thing is, when I looked more deeply into the name, it turned out he was actually a Wampanoag from Chappaquiddick, which makes this the first concrete evidence we have of a Wampanoag person fighting on the patriot side of the Revolution.
Q: If you were a Vineyarder during the Revolution, what was the difference between signing on as a privateer and serving in the local militia?
BOW: Privateering was a way to support the patriot cause — or whatever cause you were fighting for — and put money in your pocket. The militia was an organization that you were legally obligated to join if you were a male resident between 16 and 60. The militia service brought a modest monthly wage. But it was nothing like the money you could take home from a successful privateering voyage — if you survived.
Q: Norah, we’re standing in the Vincent House Museum, where your exhibition Independence on Martha’s Vineyard: Then, Now & Forever guides visitors through 250 years of Independence Day commemoration. As you traced those milestone anniversaries, what struck you most about the way Americans — and Islanders — have continually reinterpreted the Revolution and the meaning of independence?
NORAH: The story is different, and it’s the same. What fascinated me was not just how we’ve celebrated independence over 250 years, but how we’ve argued about what the Revolution meant and whose story it is.
As I worked through each 50-year anniversary, I found myself trying to find new ways to tell the same story. By 1826, just 50 years after the Declaration of Independence, people were already arguing over whether the Declaration mattered more or whether the Constitution mattered more. You start to see party politics and sectionalism emerging. And as you move into the 1870s, the 1920s, the 1970s, and even today, we still can’t decide.
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We left the Vincent House and headed into historic Edgartown, pausing outside the Vineyard Gazette building. Built by Revolutionary patriot Captain Benjamin Smith, the house links the Island's Revolutionary past with the newspaper that has chronicled Vineyard life for nearly two centuries.
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Q: For historians, the Vineyard Gazette is more than a newspaper. How important is it as a research tool?
NORAH: When I’m researching an exhibition or program and looking for on-Island primary sources, one of my first calls is often to Hilary Wallcox at the Vineyard Gazette. Newspapers provide such a critical contemporary perspective, which I find essential to interpreting the past for modern museumgoers.
BOW: Hilary works miracles and the Gazette’s Time Machine is a fantastic resource for getting an overview of broad topics like storms, ferries, African American history and the like.
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We took a turn off South Summer Street onto Cooke street, where we finished at the Martha's Vineyard Museum's Cooke House — the museum's original home before it moved to its striking new campus overlooking Lagoon pond.
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NORAH: The Cooke House is one of the oldest houses on the Island in its original location and a spectacular example of mid-18th century vernacular architecture. We could get into all the details about the gunstock posts and the 12-over-12 windows, but the most interesting thing about it, in my mind, is how unmodernized it remained throughout its entire period of occupancy.
Q: What happened here in 1776?
BOW: In 1776, this would still have been the home of the Cooke family, and it remained in the family well into the 1800s. If you lived in a house of this size, you were among the more prosperous families in Edgartown. The two front rooms on the ground floor would have been public spaces where you entertained extended family or welcomed guests, like the minister. The bedrooms upstairs and the kitchen in the back would have been private spaces. The kitchen, in those days, wasn’t a gathering place. It was more like the garage, storage closet or laundry room of today — a place where work got done.
Q: How will the Cooke House be activated this summer?
BOW: Over the course of this summer and fall, Norah and I are doing a series of programs for the museum, sometimes independently and sometimes together — mostly at the museum itself, but a few at the Cooke House. We take deep dives, an hour at a time, into particular aspects of Martha’s Vineyard and the Revolution.
Q: Is there a particular story, event or program this summer that you think delivers one of those surprising “aha moments” for Islanders?
BOW: Two of the programs I’m particularly excited about are the two-handers Norah and I will be doing in July and August about the destruction of the Holmes Hole — now Vineyard Haven — Liberty Pole, and British Major General Sir Charles Grey’s raid on the Island in 1778, during which he made off with 10,000 sheep, more than 300 cattle and a good deal of other property.
Q: The Cooke House was the Martha’s Vineyard Museum’s first home. As charming as it is, how well did it work as a museum?
BOW: Not very well. It was never modernized, so the temperature, humidity and other conditions inside were hard to control. And the (Duke’s County) Historical Society — now the Martha’s Vineyard Museum — knew that. That’s why, between 1945 and 1995, we added additional buildings for storage to the Edgartown campus that, while still not ideal, were better for storage and display than the Cooke House. Moving to Vineyard Haven in 2019 gave us the opportunity to create the storage and exhibition spaces we’d needed for a very long time.
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Standing on the Granite 1850 map of Edgartown outside the Cooke House, I thanked Bow and Norah for their time and stories. Then, hand in hand, they headed down Cooke street, with exhibits to curate, tours to lead, lectures to give and history to bring to life.
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Sissy Biggers is the Q&A columnist for The Vine and a frequent contributor to Martha’s Vineyard Magazine.
This article appears in July 2026.