From the Dec. 15, 1933 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:
Who could have foreseen, in 1869, that the Vineyard Grove Company, which had its origin in that year, was to run through such a strange cycle in its affairs? For the company was founded to protect the interests of the camp meeting town and to assure a harmony of development; and this year, sixty-four years later, the company is being eliminated by the purchase of its holdings for much the same reason — to clear away entanglements and put the future of the Vineyard Highlands into the hands of the property owners and summer residents of that region.
Just before the camp meeting of 1867, the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company had come into being. Hebron Vincent wrote of it in his camp meeting history. “The members of the Land and Wharf Company were all of them respectable...Still it was felt by the Association that there was not a harmony of interests.” The summer development of the town was going ahead by leaps and bounds. There was the extensive tract of land reaching from Lake Anthony in the direction of Vineyard Haven harbor. Would that, too, fall into the hands of enterprising men of perfectly honorable but plainly unharmonious intentions?
To prevent such an occurrence a group of men friendly to the camp meeting association — including “several gentlemen of wealth and some clergymen” — purchased fifty-five acres of lands to be known thereafter as “The Vineyard High Lands.” Hebron Vincent wrote, “Members of the company design the enterprise for the benefit of the camp meeting; and it is not impossible that, when the entire arrangements are mature, it will be formally annexed to the encampment grounds.”
No such turn of events was to happen. On the contrary the day came when the Vineyard Grove Company, under an ownership far removed in tradition and purpose from the regime of the founders, was even using the rules and restriction of the seventies, as a matter of ordinary business procedure, in a manner which seemed to Highland summer residents inimical to the best development. The Grove company was antagonistic to the town on important questions of property rights and there came to be something like a stalemate.
This conflict of interest has been removed by the negotiations of a group of men associated with the East Chop Beach Association. Now, once more, there is a milestone in the history of the town and of the Highlands. The future holds promise of harmonious progress, with a single interest to be satisfied — that of the residents and visitors of this part of Oak Bluffs, and an unwritten but thoroughly understood principle of development as a guide. The stalemate has been broken and a new spirit of optimism is in control.
Winter arrived this week ahead of the schedule generally accepted in recent years, and vastly more frigid than many Vineyard residents have ever seen here. With the temperature gently rising and falling between 10 and 20 degrees above zero and a wind varying from forty to sixty miles an hour breezing from all northern quarters for five days, the Vineyard scene took on a wintry touch quite foreign to its appearance for a long time.
When the wind had done its worst, snow flurries, which had been scanty up to Wednesday night, settled into a regular storm and the ground was well heaped with white yesterday. A series of flurries added to the snow on the ground, and the thermometer remained below freezing save for a little while in sunny places — for the sun did emerge briefly, only to disappear again. The first snow flurries on Saturday night seemed to lodge their burden chiefly in the up-Island towns where it drifted into banks that prevented the free passage of cars on the highways on Sunday. Radiators froze and plumbings in many stores and houses, some occupied and some not, suffered from the unexpected and unusual cold.
Ice made rapidly after the gale decreased, Anthiers Pond and other large bodies of water being completely frozen over. Sheriff’s Meadow Pond at Edgartown, the ice pond of the Louis H. Pease firm, froze to a thickness of four and a half inches by noon on Wednesday.
Although weather predictions foretold snow each day of the week, it was not until late Wednesday afternoon that the long expected shift of the wind to the northeast occurred and snow began to fall as if a regular blizzard were due. Several inches fell during the night.
Work on the roads and other enterprises of the CWA was checked to a considerable extent, although some jobs were not affected. The presence of frost in the ground and the bitter cold were discouraging factors.
Skating has been good at Vineyard Haven on Mink Meadows, and last night Main street was closed for the enjoyment of coasting. Luther West was out with his sleigh, the only one in town and one of the few on the Island to be put in service.
Two scallop boats are frozen in Quitsa Pond.
Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
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