Some of Oak Bluffs’ whaling captains who financed the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company moved their business to San Francisco. The price of whale oil went into a tailspin when it was found more...

Writing a column about Oak Bluffs has its surprises, like a week ago when a guy walked into the office with his wife to see if I knew a friend of his and I found out he’s a famous football...

In his memoir, Knocking Down Barriers, Truman R. Gibson Jr. drops several interesting names associated with his visits to Oak Bluffs in the 1940s and 1950s.Attorney Gibson, an aide to the Secretary...

As Oak Bluffs characters go, William Melvin Davey (1844 to 1949) may have escaped attention save a foolish highly visible marriage.After making a fortune in California real estate, he was able to buy...

Oak Bluffs almost had another golf course near Farm Neck. In 1948 a group of enterprising friends saw an opportunity for what they hoped would become a new neighborhood around what they had named the...

Henry Beetle Hough’s book Martha’s Vineyard Summer Resort 1835–1935 tells us that a farm in Oak Bluffs was first promoted by Edward Mulligan as the site for a golf course. His view...

Another of Farm Neck’s notable Norton’s was Ichabod Norton Luce (1814 – 1894), born to Silas Luce and Hannah Norton Luce, both of whose families traced their lineage to the England...

It’s probably been 10 years or so since the (then) new 911 system was established, the present efficiency of which still sometimes confuses our place based memories. As an example, was it 14 or...

In 1874 Oak Bluffs’ first presidential guest Ulysses S. Grant was responsible for putting Martha’s Vineyard on the map, so to speak, when newspaper headlines heralded the visit of the...

Emma Chambers Maitland isn’t a household name even in our town of Oak Bluffs where she lived near Tony’s Market. Born Jane Chambers in Virginia in 1893 Emma was ambitious and left for...