Time Machine Terms
July 30, 1999
Spirit of Aquinnah Is Based on Tribal Tradition of Consensus
As Gay Head entered the 1900s, it was one of the newest towns in the commonwealth. The English settlers at first considered it part of Chilmark, then decreed it an Indian district from 1855 to 1870, and finally granted it legal independence as the town of Gay Head in 1870. In creating the town, the legislature permitted tribal members of the place they called Aquinnah to divide their land severally and establish a town meeting form of government. To start its life as an incorporated town in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, the state gave Gay Head a treasury of $2.68.
July 30, 1999
People of the First Light Believe In Common Lands and Sharing of Ancient Aquinnah Traditions
We are members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). Wampanoag means “People of the First Light.” Aquinnah means “Land under the Hill.” We have survived on Noepe, “land amid the waters,” members of the Algonquin Nation and Eastern Woodland Indians.
July 30, 1999
Steamers of 20th Century Bound Island Ever Closer to Mainland
She was, quite simply, enormous.
On those mornings or afternoons when she sailed past her older sister ship, it was possible to stand on the uppermost deck of the new steamship Islander and look down on the roof of the pilothouse of the sidewheeler Uncatena.
July 30, 1999
Riches of Whaling Industry Came to Frigid End As Vineyard Captains Lost Ships Off Alaska
You can name the place, date, and even the hour that whaling died as an industry on Martha’s Vineyard -- 1:30 in the afternoon of Sept. 14, 1871, in a strip of icy water only 18 feet deep and barely wide enough for a whaling ship to swing in a full circle around her anchor.
July 30, 1999
Distant Blazes of War Engulfed Island
For the sheep grazing in pastures above Vineyard Sound, the patches of weathered canvas beating toward Holmes Hole were barely worth a glance away from meals of September grass. Farmers, townspeople and public officials, however, greeted the approach of some four dozen English-flagged vessels with a bit more alarm.
July 30, 1999
Rural Past Helps Fast Growing West Tisbury Envision Management of Island’s Future
West Tisbury, the youngest town on the Island, was created on April 28, 1892. But it was almost 300 years earlier, when Takemmy, the Algonquian word meaning “where one goes to grind corn,” was founded. Here along the up-Island streams the early settlers built mills to harness water power.
July 27, 1999
Historical Society Makes Headway in Plan to Restore Oscar Pease’s Catboat, Vanity
The Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society doesn’t have a whaling ship for its museum, nor a schooner. Although there is plenty of maritime history connected to the Vineyard, such great vessels would be too much of a burden to maintain. But the historical society does have an attractive old catboat and soon it will sail again.
July 20, 1999
Island Joins in Crash Search
In a chilling midsummer tragedy that made overnight headlines around the world and quickly put the Vineyard beneath the harsh spotlight of the national media, a small airplane flown by John F. Kennedy Jr. plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the western end of the Island on Friday night.
July 16, 1999
Property in West Tisbury Is Sold For $12 Million, Island Record
The most expensive sale of residential Vineyard real estate was completed on Tuesday in a law office in Boston. An old summer family sold 80 acres of north shore property that fronts Vineyard Sound in West Tisbury for $12 million.
The property, in proximity to Paul's Point, had been in the Albridge C. Smith family since 1943. The sellers were his two daughters: Margaret (Trika) Smith-Burke of Connecticut and Cary Hart of California. The property was put on the market early last winter.
July 2, 1999
An Old Library Gains New Life In West Tisbury
The small, handsomely detailed 129-year-old building that housed the West Tisbury Free Public Library for a full century was purchased from the town this week by the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust.
With its mahogany trim and mansard roof, the two-story, 600-square-foot former town library will now be restored and returned to active community use. The building is tucked along Music street near the West Tisbury town center.
