Six ships sailed from the Vineyard to San Francisco between February and October 1849, carrying away more than 400 Island men to the gold mines of central California. Not long ago Ann Allen calculated that in Edgartown and Chilmark roughly one man in five between the ages of 18 and 50 set off for “the El Dorado of America”; in Tisbury it was closer to one in four. Many gathered - and died - in a settlement that came to be known as the Vineyard Camp on a southern bank of the Stanislaus River, two miles east of the town of Melones. The town and the camp now lie under a reservoir.
So now another President of the United States has visited Martha’s Vineyard, bringing the total number to seven. John Adams came in 1760 to visit his friend Jonathan Allen at Chilmark.
Forty years after its release, Jaws remains a treasured part of Island history. A look back on the summer Hollywood filmmakers descended on the Island and struggled against all odds to make a realistic-looking movie about a giant shark with a taste for human flesh.
The sky was clear, and the waxing moon was in competition with the stars of the sky, the stars of the screen, and the stars of the Island, and into this perfect setting (or set) went Islanders in best bib and tucker to see the premiere of their very own movie, Jaws.
From the Vineyard Gazette edition of July 9, 1940: The first steamboat companies organized to serve Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket were financed by Island capital and were managed by Islanders.
Through history, presidents, former presidents, and not -yet-presidents have visited the Vineyard.
But it was a First Lady who caused the biggest stir.
In August of 1961 on a Sunday afternoon President Kennedy, his wife, Jackie, and daughter, Caroline, came over to the Vineyard on board the Marlin. They picked up some friends on Chappaquiddick and anchored off the Chappaquiddick Beach Club.
To compare the Vineyard vacations of former President Clinton and current President Obama all you have to do is stop in an Island ice cream parlor. Once there, you will probably find a picture hanging on the wall of the former President eagerly peering over the counter to view the lineup of flavors, chatting with patrons or munching on an ice cream cone.
Capt. Samuel Jackson, of Cuttyhunk, a brother of Capts. Levi and Robert Jackson of this place, did gallant rescue work with his boat and crew, participating with another boat in the saving of 20 lives — a life saving crew whose boat had capsized and the crew of the Barkentine Stephen G. Hart, ashore on the ledge of Sow and Pigs.
