What has long been known as the Rolfe property at Eastville has been sold through the Rabbitt Real Estate Agency and Al Brickman to Louis Cimeno, Vineyard Haven building contractor, who will use it for rental purposes. The sale has been made for Alvan K. Knowles of Syracuse.
With the recent sales of Eastville real estate and the resulting plans for building in that neighborhood, this once important Island locality seems destined to return to its own once more. The reference “once important” is no reflection on Eastville’s present status. Everyone is familiar with the fine residences that line Temahigan avenue, but everyone is also familiar with the open tract given over to grass and brush for long known as the MacArthur tract.
All Oak Bluffs roads lead to the lobster hatchery; according to the signs, the first state lobster hatchery ever to be instituted, and this is the truth. Much as been written about this novel hatchery in consequence of which there are many visitors, all of them welcome.
Eastville was the first populated area within the present town of Oak Bluffs. A map of 1781 showed thirty-two houses in the general region, most of them at Eastville. An 1850 map showed twenty-six houses at and near Eastville. The first census listing a population for the area was that of 1880, and it showed a population of 672, and by this time the settlement of Cottage City had passed Eastville.
For more than a century, only one dwelling house stood in what is now the settlement of Eastville, on the eastern shore of Vineyard Haven harbor. The laying out of streets there did not begin until after 1834 - and the growth from then on was partly due to the influence of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting at what is now Oak Bluffs, in 1835. The camp meeting landing was at Eastville.
Hidden under scrub oak, among beer bottles, rusty lobster pots and piles of clam shells is a cemetery of forgotten souls. Only a few stones still remain, one which marks the death of young man who died at sea and was buried here along the Lagoon Pond marsh.
A railroad deal which bids to play an important part in the high life of Cottage City has just been consummated. The Cottage City street railway has been sold to gentlemen interested in the Boston & Quincy Railroad company, and Josiah Quincy is president of the syndicate. Land near Norton’s store at Eastville has been purchased for the location of a power house, 40 by 70 feet, and work will be immediately begun for a first class electrical equipment. E. G.
On Sunday morning, a huge nine-by-17-foot United States flag will be hung at an Eastville home as part of one family’s Fourth of July tradition. The flag, which has 46 stars and is thought to be 100 years old, is known inside the Rowan family as the 1910 Battleship Flag.
A descendant of Abigail Luce Smith, Christine Smith Rowan lives year-round at 178 New York avenue with her husband Chris Rowan. They are originally from Connecticut.
Photographer J. A. French (died ca. 1899) took many historic pictures of the Island during the years 1861-1898. Mr. French called his cottage Westmoreland, named for his New Hampshire birthplace. It was located on Wendell avenue in front of Twin Cottage in the Oak Bluffs Highlands, and just behind our family’s cottage. When his house burned down some years ago, my uncle rescued some of his old photos from the ruins and others I have found at the Cheshire County Historical Society in Keene, N.H., where Mr. French’s photographic studio was located.
