From the January 23, 1953 edition:
It is not too early to discover signs of spring. The soaking rains of January have apparently carried some word to the daffodils and here and there the tip of a green spire that will later be leaf is appearing. Snowdrops are in bloom. The buds of winter honeysuckle are swelling and will soon burst.
Two robins appear in a dooryard. Now it is customary for robins to winter in swampy retreats but it is not like them to show themselves about town in January. Something is plainly stirring, and it must be spring.
Lest there be any misapprehension, this does not mean that spring is here, or any closer than usual in January. It simply means that spring is certain, which we knew already, and that we are being allowed a few faint samplings of it to put cheer in the bleak days of winter.
Let the winds scour the sky and raise the surges of the Sound and ocean — all this bluster comes at a mild interval and what nature really has her mind on is quite obviously something quite different.
Joseph Burgess of Vineyard Haven reported five bluebirds feeding in his yard on Sunday. This is the second group of bluebirds to be reported in town in a week’s time. Known to remain in the deep thickets and holly growths through the winter, bluebirds do not always show themselves in the open as early in the season as this.
The framing was begun this week by the DeSorcy Contracting Company on the house for Mrs. Luther James in Vineyard Haven. This is a large structure, 24 by 44 feet, one of the Gunnar Peterson designs, to be equipped for year-round occupancy. Professor Thaddeus Tate of Brown University, a nephew of Mrs. James, will occupy the house.
This is the season in which we all discover that there is not time enough to do in the winter the things people want us to tell them about in the summer.
Renovation is now in progress of the building on Main street Edgartown which houses the Wells package store. The one-story edifice, which had preciously contained five small rooms, will, under the new plan, have only three large ones, the largest in the front to be a sales room for the business Lemont Wells purchased from F. A. Briggs last fall.
In addition to the altering of the number of rooms in the building, one of the main jobs of reconstruction will be the re-flooring throughout. The ancient floor boards had worn nearly through in some places. Workmen of the K. T. Galley company found one board which had been two inches thick when new but which now, through the passage of time, had been scuffed in areas to less than an inch in thickness. The two back rooms of the building will have concrete floors when the job is completed. The old boards in the front room have already been rebraced underneath and will be maintained.
During the long history of the building, well over a hundred years old, it has served many tenants. Philip Jeffrey Norton, the present owner of the building, remembers that when he was a boy the place was a dry goods store owned by Miss Josephine Huxford. She had the store in her own right for many years, but before that the firm had been called Jernegan and Huxford. At that time the building was all one room in which she displayed the commodities, all the sundry things that came under the heading of dry goods.
Then in 1915 Miss Huxford sold the building to Dr. Edward P. Worth, who set up medical offices there. It was at this time that the building was chopped up into the five small cubicles, such as is fitting for a doctor’s practice. For some years during his ownership of the building, Dr. Worth turned over the front room of his offices to Edwin B. Gentle for use as a small tonsorial parlor. After Dr. Worth died in 1929 the building was used for a while as the offices of Dr. Roswell H. Smith and then by Dr. Donald R. Mills until he entered the service in World War II.
Mr. Norton came into full ownership of the small building in 1941. The war years found it vacant except for one summer when it was rented to an artist from Florida as a studio. He was a quick artist, the owner recalled. A passer-by on the street could stop in the building, as if for a package of cigarettes, and have his portrait done.
After the war, Mr. Briggs let the building and set up his package store after leaving the employment of Mrs. Leroy M. Tilton, who had a package store where the market of Herbert R. Mercier is now located. Mr. Briggs maintained the store until this fall when Mr. Wells bought the business.
Well beyond Mr. Norton’s memory is that of Edward T. Vincent, who recalls that during his boyhood the building was the Edgartown post-office. Jared W. Coffin was the post master for eighteen years between 1849 and 1853. Postmaster Coffin also maintained a dry goods store in the establishment. After the occupancy of Mr. Coffin and his dry goods store and before the time of the Jernegan and Huxford dry goods firm, the building was held by Richard Norton, groceryman.
Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
library@vineyardgazette.com
This article appears in January 23, 2026.