Oscar Edward Denniston was born April 5, 1875 in Kingston, Jamaica. Appointed superintendent of the seamen’s mission there, he met and cared for Madison Edwards who had taken sick on a vacation...

Oak Bluffs has many contributors to history from today and yesterday who are black. One, Dr. Beny J. Primm, just published his first book, The Healer: A Doctor’s Crusade Against Addiction and...

On Feb. 17, 1880, Cottage City became the only town in the state of Massachusetts to secede — ironically due to taxation without representation, the same reason the new United States ended its...

Oak Bluffs is one of the rarest of places, a place where many, past and present, have been contributors to American black history. Rarer still, but not unexpected, our richly diverse town has...

There are so many memorial benches lining the Inkwell and Pay beaches all the way down to the Steamship Authority that one loses count over such a distance. It could be the changing waterscape that...

Sunday, Jan. 25, marks the 108th anniversary of changing the town’s name from Cottage City to Oak Bluffs. The town website says, “Originally incorporated in 1880 as Cottage City, in 1907...

Diversions. The hyperbole journalists delighted in at the advent of Oak Bluffs placed it on a level with Paris or Rome, comparing the new town with paintings by Monet in the 1870s. Visitors were...

In summer, the slam of the screen door announced visitors before they called out the name of who they came to see. It was always special company when it was Uncle Ed, or Eddie as the adults called...

In financial trouble caused by a national downturn in 1881, the Oak Bluffs Land & Wharf Company was unable to sell as many plots as it needed to survive. It concocted a scheme to sell Ocean,...

Alas, with the halls decked out for the holidays all around town, I’m chagrined that Circuit avenue’s historic next door neighbor, the Camp Ground isn’t too — imagine that...