One of the newest old things on Island is the Vineyard Gazette’s Time Machine, the online feature I’m having a ball using to identify old cool stuff. One of those is a Friday, Feb. 25,...

It occurs to me, at the end of black history month that the first black President’s frequent visits overshadow the many firsts accomplished by a relatively disproportionate number of black...

Thanks to the Methodist founding fathers of the Campground who established Oak Bluffs as a tourist resort in 1835, religion has played a large part in our history. Slavery was prohibited in...

Another Oak Bluffs man of moment was C.B. Powell who, born in 1894 to former slaves following his education at Howard University became the first African American X-ray specialist. He owned his own...

 For many years James L. Hicks, who we knew as another of the uncles of our small village, owned a home here in Oak Bluffs and like most joined his family on weekends, riding on the Daddy boat...

In December 1857 Oak Bluffs was technically still a part of Edgartown when Frederick Douglass, the acclaimed abolitionist and former slave, spoke at the Federated Church, memorialized in a story in...

Somewhat frustratingly, there are several plausible stories about how Town Beach came to be called the Inkwell. Perhaps tops among them all is Dorothy West’s version that light skinned black...

The fifties-style ranch house next to the Titticut Follies Cottage on Narragansett avenue remained unnoticed as it was quietly demolished to the alarm of no one. Listed as having been built in 1880...

Following our secession of January 1907, 110 years ago, we changed our name from Cottage City to Oak Bluffs. The new town government took special care to provide for the year-round community’s...

The 1862 Vineyard Gazette’s issue of Dec. 5 included the homily; “You had better ask for manners than money, said a finely dressed gentleman to a beggar boy who had asked for alms. I...