Whether the tavern was highbrow or lowbrow, we’ll never know. 

It was likely somewhere in the middle. We do know that a house and tavern — or at least a dram shop, as was reported — stood on the hill some of us know as Brandy Brow, a tucked-away West Tisbury town park on the rise above the intersection of State and Edgartown-West Tisbury roads.

Two tales explain the spirited name. The first suggests that during the Revolutionary era Grey’s Raid, villagers “had a barrel of brandy in the walks of the saltbox on the brow.” Some doubt has been thrown on this theory since most Islanders purportedly preferred rum and were not known to be regular brandy drinkers.  

Another account explains that Brandy Brow, also part of the mount called Mill Hill, was named for the liquor that flowed at this 19th-century establishment and for the geologic feature on which it stood.   

A brow — not the eye variety, through the shape is the same — is a geological land feature defined by one source as “the margin of a steep slope just below the crest or the edge of the top of a hill or mountain, or the place at which a gentle slope becomes abrupt.” 

This well describes our local Brandy Brow, whose curves can be experienced as you walk along the trail from the Mill Pond to the library that keeps you safe from the road and zippy cars below. 

We have Francis Newhall Woods to thank for obtaining and donating the property for a village green in memory of her mother and sister — Virginia Whiting Newhall and Virginia Whiting Newhall Jr. — in the 1980s. The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank also had a role in acquiring an easement to take walkers from Brandy Brow and over private lands to emerge at Howes House and the West Tisbury library. 

Though I wish these were my words, the so-called “bluff of the bibulous name” passed through many hands before being donated to the townspeople by Francis Newhall Woods. In the 1600s, these lands were recorded as owned by James Skiff, to Nathaniel Wing, to William Parslow, James Allen, John Eddy and Robert Cathcarts. 

The Brandy Brow tavern owned by Robert Cathcarts was listed as one of the eight licensed inns between 1701 and 1776. Mr. Cathcarts is also represented in the neighborhood with a road honoring him. Having emigrated from the Scottish Lowlands, he is memorialized with Scotsman’s Bridge Road. 

The line of Brandy Brow owners continued through the Manter, Daggett and Norton families. The house that served as a tavern fell into ruins over time and no remnants of the structure can be seen. 

Today the Brow’s secrets and history have faded, though the meadow still serves as a special park, its history known to few even if the land is appreciated by many. A memorial plaque can be seen as one walks up the hill with a bit of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetry and words of wisdom:

“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Suzan Bellincampi is Islands director for Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown and the Nantucket Wildlife Sanctuaries. She is also the author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.