Camp Meeting History

February 25, 1859

Martha’s Vineyard Wesleyan Grove Camp Ground

Vineyard Gazette
This religious encampment has become an Institution, there is nothing like it in this country, and it is greatly increasing from year to year.
Camp Meeting History
Camp Ground
June 16, 1865

Purchase of the Camp Ground

Vineyard Gazette
The camp ground upon Martha’s Vineyard, heretofore leased by the Vineyard Camp Meeting Association, has been purchased by that body for the sum of $1200.
Camp Meeting History
August 20, 1869

The Illumination

The Vineyard Gazette
The readers of the Gazette will please bear with us this week for the lack of extended news of local affairs.
Camp Meeting History
Illumination Night
Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association
August 23, 1935

Hundred Years of the Camp Meeting History Filled with Countless Episodes

Vineyard Gazette
The hundred years of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting are filled with countless episodes which link the Island with the great figures or great events of other periods; or reflect in some colorf
Camp Meeting History
Oak Bluffs history

2005

April 15, 2005

Camp Ground Wins Designation As National Historic Landmark

James Kinsella
Camp Meeting History
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton has recognized the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs as a National Historic Landmark.
 
The Camp Ground, created as a gathering place for Methodist religious revivals starting in 1835, is one of 24 new national landmarks named earlier this month of Secretary Norton.
 
The National Park Service Advisory Board nominated the Camp Ground under the name Wesleyan Grove.
 

2004

July 12, 2004

Tabernacle's Birthday Celebrated with History, Song and Applause

Helen Phillips
Tabernacle
Camp Meeting History

More than 2,000 people gathered in the Tabernacle Saturday night to celebrate the structure's 125th birthday.

Grandparents, grandchildren, and everyone in between filled the rows, sitting on some of the same benches used in the 1800s, when the religious campers gathered under the oak trees and the canvas tent that predated the Tabernacle's construction in 1879.

"It had begun to look its age - and so have I," said the evening's host, newsman and Vineyard Haven summer resident Mike Wallace, complimenting achievements of the Tabernacle's current restoration project.

July 2, 2004

Camp Ground’s Tabernacle Is 125

Helen Phillips
Camp Meeting History
Tabernacle
The Tabernacle, which celebrates its 125th birthday this season, still feels young. A structure suited to a vast range of human activity, the Tabernacle - which towers above Trinity Park in the heart of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association in Oak Bluffs - remains a living landmark.
 
The word tabernacle refers to a temporary shelter, such as the tent sanctuaries used by the Israelites during the Exodus. But the Camp Ground’s Tabernacle has proved anything but temporary.
 

1996

July 5, 1996

When Oak Bluffs Seceded: The Gazette’s Fulminations Were Bitter But Unavailing

Tom Dunlop
Camp Meeting History
Oak Bluffs history
The whininess, contempt and partisanship with which the Vineyard Gazette reported this story over six years is journalism in its brightest rain-slicker yellow - all the more embarrassing and entertaining today because the paper lost the fight.
 

1982

December 3, 1982

Hezekiah the Bell Is Ringing Again

Vineyard Gazette
Camp Meeting History
At last Sunday’s service in the Oak Bluffs Trinity Church on the Camp Ground, Hezekiah began ringing again. The bell atop the belfry began ringing as it had rung back in 1966 before it suffered a fall, its yoke broken from old age.
 
For 16 years the 1,500-pound bell, made in 1888, lay dormant at the foot of its base. As a poor substitute, the bell’s sound was replaced by an electronic recording.
 
March 19, 1982

Parishioners Seek Donations So Hezekiah May Toll Again

Mark Lovewell
Camp Meeting History
There was a time at the Oak Bluffs Camp Ground when a bell atop Trinity Church rang the beginning of summer’s festive events, just as it would each Sunday’s call to worship. Its sound was crisp and sweet and its music sounded out over the Oak Bluffs rooftops and beyond.
 
Each summer, “Hezekiah,” as the bell is called, rang before Illumination Night’s first lantern was lit and prior to each religious event across the street at the Tabernacle. There are those who can remember. And there are those who would like to hear it again.
 

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