Time Machine Terms
August 7, 1931
Golf Was Played in Nineties at Nine Hole Highland Course
Golf is such an indispensable part of Island recreation that it seems impossible to imagine the Vineyard without it. However, in the nineties the game was played only by a few ambitious souls who now with excusable pride call themselves the founders of golf here. The various courses on the Island have no very definite dates to make their beginnings, as long before the clubs were officially founded, the game was being played on semi-pastures and fields.
August 7, 1931
Cottage City Held Joys For Youth In The Old Days
Summer visitors play a large part in Vineyard activity and many who have spent summer after summer on the Island feel as deep an affection and admiration for Martha’s Vineyard as any all year-round resident. For forty-five summers Frank C. Lawton has spent at least part of every year in Oak Bluffs and, although his first arrival on the Island was at the age of six months, he recalls many interesting facts about the Vineyard’s earlier history, that occurred during his boyhood.
July 17, 1931
Vineyard Claims 20 Year Advantage in Bathtub Race
When was the first bath tub brought to Martha’s Vineyard? Nantucket had a bath tub, weighing more than 800 pounds, in 1881. A Nantucketer reports having seen another as early as 1861 on that island. Commenting editorially on the question of bath tub priority, the Boston Herald on Wednesday morning challenged Vineyarders to adduce proof of the earlier existence on this Island of a receptacle designed solely for bathing the human form.
July 17, 1931
Union Chapel Plays Big Part in Summer Life on the Vineyard
To many of the summer residents of Martha’s Vineyard, Union Chapel services have become as much a part of their lives as the Vineyard itself. Each year new visitors attend the chapel and become dependent upon it for their Sunday devotions.
February 6, 1931
Interesting Vineyarders: Saphronia E. Hillman
Just a few issues back, this column carried the biographical sketch of Joseph West of Chilmark, who is a deaf mute. This present article contains a similar sketch of his sister, Mrs. Sophronia E. Hillman, whose faculties are normal. Reared in the same family, it is interesting to correspond the two stories relating to Chilmark of nearly three-quarters of a century ago, as seen by two different pairs of eyes, directed by natural inclinations that had little in common.
January 9, 1931
Interesting Vineyarders: Joseph E. T. West
This is the story of one who has lived always in the eternal silence, nearly three-quarters of a century without ever hearing the sound of human voice or the song of a bird, and who has never been able to voice a greeting to a friend, for Joseph E. T. West of Chilmark is a deaf mute, the last man of that town to be so afflicted.
October 31, 1930
Customs Records Saved by Society
A quantity of customs house records, all that can be found of the invaluable files of the former Edgartown customs house, have been acquired by the Dukes County Historical Society, Marshall Shepard, the society’s president, announced at the quarterly meeting held at the West Tisbury library Wednesday afternoon. The documents, which Mr. Shepard described as a pile three or four feet high, are a remnant of eighteen large packing cases in which the papers of the customs house were packed and shipped to Boston when the office was discontinued in 1912.
October 3, 1930
Last Heath Hen Nearly Run Down by Car on September 14th
That the world’s lone heath hen, Martha’s Vineyard’s most famous resident, was still alive September 13, is vouched for by Dr. John A. Phillips, president of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Association, who, in a letter sent out to members of the organization last week, told of almost running over a heath hen as he drove Mrs. Phillips along the Dr. Fisher road in West Tisbury, near the fire tower.
September 5, 1930
Gave Time and Funds To Island Improvements
A few years ago a newspaper cartoonist, who was portraying the childhood beginnings of many noted figures in American life, depicted William M. Butler, then United States senator, as he may have looked as a boy selling newspapers in Edgartown. The cartoonist’s choice might have fallen upon the old Hathaway, Soule & Harrington shoe factory in New Bedford where Mr. Butler was employed as an office boy in the fall of 1878; or it might have inked in that scene when Mr.
August 1, 1930
Interesting Vineyarders: Capt. Isaac C. Norton
At various times in recent years the name of Captain Isaac C. Norton has figured in print. The captain is one of those remarkable characters who seldom do anything that is not worthy of passing mention.
Having arrived at the age of eighty-two-years, of which thirty or more are never guessed at, his trim six-foot figure with military shoulders and snow-white vandyke beard is a familiar sight in Vineyard Haven and causes no little comment whenever he is seen, even by those who have known him for a lifetime.
