Vineyard Gazette
The student of Vineyard history, at least such history as has been published, will recognize the fact that it was largely through the clergy that things were accomplished during the first hundred

1974

Peter Benchley, Author of Jaws, was in town this week. He came not to oversee the movie production of his book but to play a minor role in it. Richard D. Zantuck, one of the producers, called the tall, handsome former newscaster last Monday and asked him if he would like to make his debut as the newscaster on the beach in amity. Mr. Benchley — who fancies himself more like Hooper, the shark expert — was on the set two days later, collecting wages.

1954

Samuel Cronig, best known as Sam, a grocer of Vineyard Haven, bought a box of “gold-coin” chocolates this week, chocolates which are so moulded and wrapped as to resemble twenty-dollar gold pieces. “I’ve got an anniversary coming up, or rather it has passed but the observance is due, and I want to give these away to commemorate the event,” he explained. “It’s a fifty-year anniversary, you see.”

But it wasn’t a wedding anniversary. Rather it is the anniversary of Sam’s arrival in America, fifty years ago, shortly before Halloween, a day which he will never forget.

1931

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.
 
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.
 

1927

The student of Vineyard history, at least such history as has been published, will recognize the fact that it was largely through the clergy that things were accomplished during the first hundred and fifty years of the Island’s existence as a colony and province. Not only did they preach the word of God to whites and Indians, but they worked energetically to promote various industries and acted as advisors in settling all manner of disputes which arose, besides writing wills and other legal documents and keeping records, in many cases, being the only ones now existing.
 

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