Golf, which has become a popular American pastime, has this week made a start on the Vineyard, and Mr. B. S.
Golf
August 31, 1899
Vineyard Gazette
A golf club has been formed in town and named the Nashouohkamuk Golf Club, Nashouohkamuk being the old Indian name for Chilmark.
August 1, 1901
Vineyard Gazette
Mr. Elmes, the proprietor of the links, announces that on Aug. 20, 21, and 22, he is arranging for a ladies’ and gentlemen’s golf tournament, open to all members of the club.
June 22, 1905
Vineyard Gazette
The Edgartown Golf and Tennis Club was organized this week, and starts off with a good list of members, which it is hoped will be much increased with the next month.
1949
June 24, 1949
They say that the beginnings of the game of golf are lost in history - but it’s not quite that bad on Martha’s Vineyard. Golf, as known to modern man, began here in the early nineties. How the Island had struggled along, no one can say, but it has not been without golf for any appreciable time since, and probably never will again.
Combining history with tradition - and there is fully as much of the former as of the latter in this review - the priority of golf on Martha’s Vineyard seems to line up as follows:
1939
June 9, 1939
Golf was first played on Martha’s Vineyard in 1893, when six holes were laid out near the West Chop lighthouse. The first golf course in Edgartown was laid out in a cow pasture in 1897, cows being numbered among the hazards. Oak Bluffs was not far behind, early courses being put in play at East Chop and also where the present Martha’s Vineyard Country Club has its eighteen hole course. In general the rise of golf was coincident with the decline of agriculture, and as cows lost their pastures, golfer gained a course.
1931
August 25, 1931
Editor, Vineyard Gazette:
Permit me to express my interest in your account of early golfing on Martha’s Vineyard, as described in your issue of August 7th. May I also venture to add an item or two relative to the Edgartown situation.
August 7, 1931
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.
1928
August 3, 1928
The newest of the Vineyard’s three golf courses is just two years old. Its nine greens checker some of the most beautiful of the rolling lands of Edgartown, well beyond the settled blocks of the town on the northwest, and overlooking Vineyard Sound, Trapp’s Pond and numerous bits of memorable landscape. In scenic quality the course was, from the start, unusual. In its technical development, from the standpoint of the golfer, it now has many claims to distinction.
1907
June 20, 1907
The Edgartown Golf Club has opened its “Pineside Links” for the season of 1907. The nine hole course measures 2,500 yards. Every effort will be made to render conditions the best possible. Membership fees entitling to full privileges for year, beginning June 1, are: Men, $4.00; Ladies, $2.00; Families, $10.00; Families and Transient Guests $12.00; Visitors 25c per day. “No game shall be played on Sunday.” The officers are: President, Mr. John R. Hanmer; Deputy Treasurer, Mr. C. F. Shurtleff; Secretary, Rev. F. M. Cutler.
