Nearly a century ago, Harthaven, a colony on Martha’s Vineyard, existed only as a patriarchal conception of an old Connecticut Yankee about family ties and devotion, as it was created by William Howard Hart, of New Britain, Conn., for a summer residence and meeting place “for all my heirs, forever”, as he described it. Much has been said and written, sometimes in ridicule, about the devotion of New England to family genealogy.
