Air Field for Vineyard

Announcement has been made of the acquisition of 683 acres of land on the state reservation near West Tisbury by the federal government for an air field. The transfer has been made from the state to the federal government for one dollar.
 
Some of the mainland reports have referred to the site as a naval field, but it is believed here that it may be the emergency field surveyed by the army last summer. No one on the Island could supply definite information yesterday.
 

Wild Flower Sanctuary at Christiantown Planned

A Vineyard wild flower sanctuary, where native plants, flowers and shrubs will be planted and protected, under conditions which will allow the general public to see and enjoy them, is in the process of becoming a reality at Christiantown. Mrs. Wilfrid O. White of Vineyard Haven, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club, has been given permission, and some financial aid, by the county board, with which to pit her plan into operation on the county-owned land adjacent to the Indian burying ground on this historic spot, and the initial survey has been made by Will C.

Mr. Denniston Dies: Church Is Monument to Oak Bluffs Pastor

Rev. Oscar E. Denniston, founder of the Bradley Memorial Church, Oak Bluffs, and pastor for the past forty years died at Martha's Vineyard Hospital early Tuesday morning, following a brief confinement which came at the end of some nine years of gradually failing health. He would have been 67 years of age on April 5. He had devoted his life to religious teaching.

New Tashmoo Canal Impresses Visitors

The first hint of spring weather drew visitors in considerable numbers to the newly constructed Tashmoo Creek at Vineyard Haven, where the firm Turner and Breivogel is making the waterway which will turn the lower half of Lake Tashmoo into an arm of the sea. Although plans of the creek were drawn before the opening was votes, and these plans have been available to anyone, the appearance of the creek, as it begins to take shape, exceeds by far the popular conception of what it was to be.
 

Trial Blackout Proves Successful at Bluffs

The Civilian Defense organization of Oak Bluffs, headed by Dr. Francis C. Buckley reports that the partial blackout held in that town Sunday night, during the bitter cold and with traveling conditions for air raid wardens anything but ideal, was markedly successful. The degree of cooperation shown was gratifying to the officials and the committee feels that the town should be congratulated upon its first effort. Only in five households was it found that the residents had failed to understand the requirements, or were unaware that a test was to be made.

Blockade Runners Once Used This Historic Creek

The work of dredging now going on at Tashmoo Creek focuses attention upon one of the historical landmarks of the Island and one of which very little is remembered or preserved. Indians called this locality Chappaquansett, and old records refer to the creek as Chappaquansett Creek, rather than Tashmoo. It is evident that the Indians frequented this place in the olden days, as sizable middens have been located nearby and others are presumably buried beneath the shifting sands or have been washed out to sea.

Tire-Rationing Boards Appointed on Vineyard

The setting up of tire-rationing boards in Island towns this week brings the war yet nearer to the Vineyard. These rationing committees one in each town of the Island, were appointed and set up under instructions which came direct to the chairmen of all board of selectmen on Monday night from a former governor, Joseph B. Ely, who is the state administrator of tire rationing.

Killed in Philippines

One of the victims of the Japanese surprise attack upon the Philippines on Dec. 7 was John H. Campbell, son of Mr. and Mrs. Fred P. Campbell of New Britain and Oak Bluffs. He had spent all of his summers at Oak Bluffs, except that of 1941, and he had many friends in the town and among the summer colony. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1940, and would soon have qualified as a pilot after training in the fundamentals of aviation.
 

Killed in Action

The death in action of John Gillespie Magee Jr. has been announced by the British Air Ministry. A pilot officer, he is reported unofficially to have been shot down while flying a Spitfire. His vivid personality and brilliant mind made an unforgettable impression on those who knew him during his two summers spent on Martha’s Vineyard. After leaving here in the fall of 1940, he suddenly decided not to enter Yale, to which he had been admitted, but to go to Canada to train for the British Air service. He was sent overseas a few months ago.
 

Vessel Lost at Pearl Harbor Once Stranded on the North Shore

The mine layer Oglala which was lost in the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor was formerly the 4,200 ton passenger steamer Massachusetts of the Metropolitan Line of the New England Steamship Co. On March 12, 1909, she went ashore on Cedar Tree Neck in Vineyard Sound.
 

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