USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 10
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In order to satisfy the public, it was necessary to offer convincing reassurance as to the frightening of horses, and this was accomplished in an unusual way. Railroad men reported that a type of engine known as a dummy was in use on the elevated railroads in New York City; the merit of the dummy was that it was built in an ordinary car and presented none of the terrifying aspects of the usual loco- motive. A dummy speeding along the track, the Edgartown tax- payers were told, would be no more alarming to horses than an ordinary horse car, or van-not much more, at any rate. Satisfied with the promise of a non-frightening dummy, the citizens met and rescinded their previous resolution in favor of the inland route.
Curiously, the one argument which time was to uphold in inexor- able fashion did not figure largely in the discussions. The shore route would have to run between the Beach Road and the water, a
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strip of little width, and the tracks would not only be laid upon sand, but they would be within reach of the waves, particularly during the long northeast storms of winter. Sea captains who knew both the sea and their Bibles should have been stout in their resistance. Who seeks in the sands of the seashore for the footprints of last summer, or even of yesterday? Who expects twice to set his foot upon the same grains of shining sand where the waves ripple at the edge of an open sound? Captain Grafton Collins pleaded and argued for the inland route, but he was overruled.
"To build the road on the west side of the pond would ever be a source of regret," wrote a correspondent to the Vineyard Gazette, "more especially now that it has come to light that the terrible loco- motive so much dreaded by the lovers of horseflesh can be dispensed with, and a trip in the cars in hot weather over the beach route can- not be surpassed for beauty of scenery, both seascape and landscape, and such a sea breeze !"
This matter settled, the promoters began, with May already at hand, to undertake the incredible task of constructing the railroad so that it could operate during the summer season of 1874. The spirit of accomplishment was at the helm, and nothing was impossible. Yet one difficulty after another presented itself.
It was found that, although a railroad could issue bonds equal to the amount of stock, the state railroad law required that there be paid up capital stock of $8,000 a mile for a narrow gauge road, or $15,000 for a standard gauge. Representations were made to the railway committee of the state senate that the outlay per mile on the Island would be less than that contemplated by the law-makers, and authority was asked to organize with a capital stock of $5,000 a mile, and bonds of an equal amount.
The Hon. Erastus P. Carpenter was then a member of the senate -he was chairman of the railway committee during some of the years when the Hoosac Tunnel was under construction-and his influence was efficacious. The senate granted the desired authority in fifteen minutes. But in the house of representatives there was opposition. Such an exception in the case of the Vineyard, it was argued, would open. the door for every railroad to be considered exceptional in some respect.
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"The crotchety member from Boston-Charles Hale-and the irresponsible and obstinate Jack Adams of Quincy denounced the act as an invasion upon the sacred rights of the general railroad law" and it was killed. There followed a period of intense lobbying, Sena- tor Carpenter did his utmost, and when the house again convened seventeen speeches were delivered, the necessary four-fifths vote was mustered for a suspension of the rules, and the bill was sent on its way to safe passage.
The contract for the building of the road was awarded to Dacey Brothers of Neponset, and this firm was placed under bonds to have the track completed and ready for the rolling stock by July 20. Yet May was already gone! A complete railroad out of nothing in not much more than a month and a half-could it be done? In the final days of May forty men reported for work, and fifty more were expected. The rate of pay was $1.75 a day, but the laborers were dissatisfied and struck for $2.00.
Formal organization of the railroad company was completed by the stockholders in mid-June. The Hon. E. P. Carpenter was the inevitable choice for president. He had been the first president of the Mansfield & Framingham Railroad and the Framingham and Lowell Railroad. Joseph Thaxter Pease became treasurer, and Joel H. Hills clerk. Henry Ripley, contractor of the Island and of New Bedford, was made superintendent of the road. The directors were Mr. Car- penter, Mr. Hills, Captain Collins, Captain Jernegan, Captain Shu- bael Lyman Norton, Laban Pratt, Henry Stumcke, William P. Chadwick, and Joseph K. Baker.
Of the three leading enterprises on the Island, Captain Collins was conspicuous in Oak Bluffs, Katama and the railroad; Captain Jernegan in Katama and the railroad; and Captain Norton in Oak Bluffs and the railroad.
While construction went ahead, a committee was sent to the mainland to select rolling stock; and for the sum of $9,000 the purchase was completed of a dummy engine, a passenger car, an excursion car and a box car. The passenger car was to have seats upholstered in red plush, capable of carrying forty-seven passengers, seated four abreast; there was to be a saloon stove (and an extra seat for its place when not in use), ice water urn, lamps at each end,
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and large coach windows. The excursion car was the same size- thirty-five feet long by eight wide-but it was to have seats running lengthwise of the car, made in curvature form of black walnut and ash slats alternated, accommodating fifty-six persons. The box car, designed for freight, was to be capable of doing service as a smoker, with portable seats for twenty-two. In the car with the dummy engine there was to be room for twenty-four persons.
The dummy, the committee thought, would present "a jaunty and symmetrical appearance." In common with the other cars, it was to have a monitor top. The builder, Jerome Wheelock of Worcester, was prepared to guarantee a speed of twenty-five miles an hour with a train of 150 persons, and the coal consumption was esti- mated at five hundred pounds every eighty miles.
As the building of the railroad progressed, it was not without curious mischances. Two contractors worked on the bridge across the Sengekontacket opening, Edward R. Dunham of Edgartown starting from one side, and a mainland bridge builder from the other. When the two forces met in the middle there was a difference of two inches in their respective elevations.
"You're wrong!" declared Mr. Dunham, and the mainland con- tractor went over his figures and admitted the error.
The two inches had to be compromised by judicious jockeying on both sides.
July came, and the road was far from completion. Mr. Stumcke chartered the small steamer Starry Banner to ply between Katama and other landings, and the festivities of the season began at Matta- keeset Lodge. There were clambakes and dances, and every day saw from one to two hundred visitors, with Sunday crowds of a thousand or more.
At last, on August 3, the railroad was ready for the rolling stock. If the impossible had not been done, it had failed of accomplish- ment by a small margin : less than two weeks after the date first set for completion the road was ready.
"In the history of railroad building in the New England states," wrote Edgar Marchant, "nothing has ever equalled the building of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad. Sixty-six days ago the trees from
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which the ties were made were growing in Maine, and the iron for the rails was in the mines in Pennsylvania."
The trial trip of the new dummy was set for August 5, and the magnates of the road gathered for the run which was to make his- tory. The inhabitants of the Island gathered, too, and great was the excitement as Edgartown waited to behold at last the iron horse and hear the long promised snort. As it turned out, the old town was not to see the iron horse that day : the dummy progressed fairly well along the track until it reached the first curve, and the discovery was then made that the engine would not take the corner. The pecu- liar feature of the dummy was that it consisted of an upright engine in one end of an ordinary car, the motive power being translated to the wheels by a direct sprocket drive. The nature of this drive pre- vented the truck under the engine from having any swing to it, and the dummy could not, by any application of human ingenuity, be made to turn more than a slight curve.
In one respect, however, the dummy exceeded all' expectations : it frightened horses in an extravagant fashion. During the course of that abortive trial trip, more than one horse attempted to climb a beach plum bush or a tree, or bolted for dear life.
The dummy was discarded forthwith, legal action was instituted against the builder, and another engine was ordered. On the after- noon of August 17, 1874, the new locomotive arrived at Woods Hole on a flat car, having been rushed from Pittsburgh. She was the Active, every inch an engine, imposing funnel, cab, cowcatcher and all; but a few minutes before the arrival of the Martha's Vineyard, in which she was to be shipped, a couple of loaded freight cars belonging to a train which was making up, were switched to the side track at the end of which stood the Active. On came the cars, the brakes refusing duty; they struck the flat car, forcing it ahead until it struck the caplog of the wharf. There the flat car stopped, but the Active pitched forward and plunged to the bottom of the harbor. The engineer, who had come with the engine from Pitts- burgh, had stepped out of his cab just in time.
Work of raising the Active was begun as soon as possible, and on August 19 was completed. A diver who assisted was Capt. Joseph Raphael DeLamar, who will appear again. The engine did not
p
Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Laura J. Spear
The old Active at Mattakceset Lodge. She was a narrow gauge engine, but she had plenty of smokestack, headlight and cowcatcher.
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seem to be much damaged, save for a shattered cowcatcher, but when she was over-hauled in the shops of the Old Colony Railroad at Boston it was found that there was seaweed in her cylinders. The baptism of salt might have been considered fitting for an Island locomotive.
It was August 22 when the steamer Island Home bore down upon the Katama wharf with the Active on board. To the music of a brass band the engine was run off upon the land; there were some breathless minutes, and then the cheers of a large throng arose, and Mr. Stumcke set off cannon crackers. With steam up and flags making her gay, the Active puffed and started into action. People stared, small boys ran in vain pursuit, cows galloped around their pastures, horses bolted. There was a stop at the Edgartown station, and then the proud train sped along the beautiful shore route and drew up in front of the Sea View at Oak Bluffs. Mr. Stumcke was on the tender box most of the way, letting off firecrackers. The broad verandas of the Sea View were swarming with spectators.
Alas that the end of August had arrived ! The season was virtually at an end; such had been the conspiracy of circumstances.
For the first seven days after operation began, the receipts were $374 a day. Suit was brought against Jerome Wheelock, builder of the dummy, for damages for twenty-one days of delayed operation at $300 a day. Wheelock entered a counter-suit which was decided against him. Eventually, in the fall of 1876, he settled with the railroad company for the sum of $2,000 and the episode of the dummy was ended.
So great was the excitement surrounding the noble appearance of the Active and the triumphant opening of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad that this affair almost made an anticlimax of an event which occurred just six days later; an event which was, in its place, also historic and unique. General Ulysses S. Grant, the president of the United States, stepped from the steamer River Queen at the Highland Wharf and was whisked away in glory in a magnificently decorated horse car drawn by six horses to the camp ground.
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XVI
General Grant at the Cottage City
The presidential party arrived on Lincoln's old steamer about four in the afternoon; the guests included General Grant, Mrs. Grant, Vice President Wilson, Secretary Robeson, Postmaster General Jewel and Governor Talbot of Massachusetts and his staff They went at once to the cottage of Bishop Haven on Clinton Ave- nue, there to recruit a little before appearing to the people. But they had already appeared to the people. The people were everywhere, straining, peering, yelling their excited cheers. Such was the press in the narrow avenues that it was hard to get the president through.
After tarrying only a short time at the cottage, the distinguished guests moved on to the canvas tabernacle in the great circle, now filled to the outermost cottages with eager throngs. The president of the United States was presented from the preachers' stand, he bowed acknowledgment of the cheering, and the other guests came forward in turn. After that America was sung, and Grant made his way back to Clinton Avenue, clasping the hands of hundreds who pressed in upon the party. Again he appeared on the cottage balcony, surrounded by flags and bunting, then disappeared and was seen no more until 6 o'clock when he dined at the Central House.
In the evening President and Mrs. Grant entered a carriage drawn by a pair of noble black horses and were driven out through the picket fence to the region of Oak Bluffs. The Foxboro brass band marched ahead, and other carriages followed in line. A halt was made while the president entered the cottage of Dr. Harrison A. Tucker on Ocean Avenue, and there from a balcony Grant had an excellent view of the grand exhibition of fireworks and the illumi- nation.
All Oak Bluffs was bright with flags, the open parlors of cottages revealed banners and bouquets of flowers. Everywhere, almost, were Japanese lanterns. As the darkness increased, colored lights, singly and in groups, swam through every vista. There was a brisk east wind which somewhat restricted the outdoor illumination in the most exposed part of the grounds, but colored lights in windows took the place of lanterns outside. Dr. Tucker's cottage seemed to
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be in a "mimic state of conflagration all evening. The whole interior would suddenly become irradiated, at one time gorgeously beautiful, at another time lurid and infernal." All evening an unbroken series of rockets and roman candles shot into the sky in the most ambitious and gorgeous exhibition of fireworks the young resort had ever seen. A wreath with the word "Peace" in the center was illuminated in Ocean Park in tribute to the president, and was considered extreme- ly beautiful.
At length the president returned to Bishop Haven's cottage for the night. There, at eleven o'clock, he was favored with a serenade by a mixed quartet. He appeared on the balcony and spoke as follows :
"I thank you for your cheerful greeting. No doubt you are tired and sleepy, as I am, so I will not detain you. Good night."
After a visit to Nantucket and the Cape, the president returned to the camp ground to remain over Sunday and to attend the services of the great day of the season. A mighty Love Feast was held in the tabernacle, at which Postmaster General Jewel spoke for the dis- tinguished guests. He wished that the sentiments and enthusiasm of the assemblage might penetrate the forty millions of people in the United States, and that its influence might extend throughout the whole world. In his view, it was the surest path to good citizen- ship, to true Christianity, and to the higher life in heaven.
"For this let our prayers ascend to heaven and let God be praised."
Whereupon a chorus of amens and hallelujahs rose from the con- gregation, and a mighty sum of voices, roused by emotion, joined in singing "From all that dwell below the skies."
Grant did not speak. As he sat on the platform he held on his knee a small boy, the son of Rev. James D. Butler, chaplain of the Seaman's Bethel at New Bedford (successor to Rev. Enoch Mudge, the Father Mapple of Moby Dick) and chaplain also of the Bethel tent at the camp meeting. This small boy was William Morgan Butler, and he was to become a United States Senator and close associate and friend of a future president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge.
Years later a former pastor of Grant said he felt certain that it was at the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting that Grant found peace with God. On that Big Sunday Bishop Haven preached on
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the text "Multitudes, Multitudes, in the Valley of Decision," and the president was profoundly moved. He spoke of taking the com- munion which followed, and but for the hesitance of one of his party would have done so. This is preserved in the rich family tradition of the Uphams, within which is bracketed the whole hun- dred years of the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting. For Rev. Frederick Upham was Methodist pastor at Edgartown in 1823, and his influence upon Jeremiah Pease, the founder, was indubitably great. In the twentieth century, Rev. Francis Bourne Upham was to be president of the camp meeting association; and between these two lay countless instances of leadership by the generations of clergy- men who bore that name. In 1870 Rev. Frederick Upham had preach- ed his semi-centennial sermon at the grove.
There was one other event of that presidential visit, a reception at the Sea View, with Holder M. Brownell as host. Grace and refinement, an almost endless review of beauty and fashion, and collations and decorations of the finest the region had ever known distinguished the occasion.
From the Vineyard Grant went to New Bedford, not on Lincoln's River Queen but on his own Monohansett, most famous of all Martha's Vineyard steamboats, which had been in service as his dispatch boat during the war. The president spent much time in the pilot house where, during the days of the struggle, he had often pored over maps and charts at a small mahogany table.
It would be satisfying to record that Grant's visit to Wesleyan Grove and Oak Bluffs was the climax of an era, the supreme ful- fillment of a resort development worthy of being linked with his name. There was a peculiar appropriateness in his entrance upon the scene at the cottage city where the style of architecture, the manner of living, the diversions, the whole spirit reflected a quality which his name, more than any other, evokes for the present generation. Grant could nowhere have been so completely absorbed into an environment which was his own day, his own moment, emphasized and decorated.
Yet despite this unique appropriateness, Grant's visit was not a landmark in point of time or relationship to the swing of the cycle of life. It was not a climax. The post-war days were over, and the
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nation was in a slough of business failure, deflation and disillusion- ment. But it was not an anti-climax, for there were many decades of brimming pleasure, more years and greater years, still in store for the city of cottages.
XVII Debts are Coming Due
In February, the very month in which the stockholders of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad were associating, Tarleton Luce of Bellevue Heights had gone into bankruptcy, his $60,000 gains swept away. Thus there was an overlapping of phenomena : as the Islanders began to build their anti-climactic railroad, the fruits of the financial deluge brought about largely by the building of too many railroads in too free a fashion throughout the country at large-these fruits caught up with them, passed them and waited at the next turn of the way, and at the next, and the next.
Already neatly painted stakes seemed neglected and vain in the fields, and grass was beginning to grow over the cracked edges of concrete roads that led nowhere in particular. Years later C. G. Hine was to write of Cedar Neck: "Father had no intention of turning the Neck into a lonesomeville, for he had it duly surveyed by Mr. Horatio N. Pease of Edgartown, and laid out in lots, that all the world might share in his good fortune. But no one wanted any of the lots as it turned out, and now we rejoice exceedingly that such was the case, for today we are monarchs of all we survey, provided, of course, there is a good thick fog on, or we do not look over the edge of the bank. The stakes which outlined the avenues and lesser paths have utterly disappeared, and no one knows where they stood or whither they have gone, nor cares; and we reign supreme over the cedars and the pines with none to dispute our sovereignty."
It was well enough to take pleasure in the countryside delivered from the regimentation of painted stakes and plans filed at the registry of deeds; but the owner of Cedar Neck had spent two thousand dollars on his footbridge to the Vineyard Haven road.
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The stakes and the plans and the concrete had cost money, and devel- opers found themselves confronted with bills to be paid, and no prospect of money coming in from purchasers. Visitors continued to come in great numbers, summer life at the Island resorts-at least the ones with habitations already constructed-went on apace; but the market for lots in the old style did not extend beyond the season of 1873.
Martha's Vineyard had reached that stage of its progress at which the "season" stood out as signally important; the season might be good, or it might be poor. It was the subject of forecasts long in advance, and post-mortems long after its passing. Business which previously had known only one direction-and that upward-now might turn in either of two ways; the balance had come back into life. As the farmer thinks of a crop, and the manufacturer of output and sales, so the resident of a summer resort thinks of the season, until the word becomes a symbol, an index not alone of commerce and finance, but of the emotional and sentimental side of human affairs.
In November of 1874, the rolling stock of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad was in the hands of the sheriff, on attachments obtained by creditors. Up to September 30 the cost had been, by official state- ments, $85,000. But the actual period of operation had been slight, there were unexpected bills coming in, and the season of northeasterly gales had arrived. The rapid construction of the road had been a remarkable achievement, but now it appeared that some of the work could have been much more satisfactorily done if more time and attention had been expended. When the gales blew and the water became white and drab, swelling and mounting, until the tides poured into the Island harbors like rivers and washed over beaches and into high places, the defects of the road and the roadbed revealed themselves. The tracks were buried deep, or washed away for long stretches, or heaved this way and that. It soon appeared that one of the features of the shore route was that the road might have to be built again before the summer of every year.
The report to the railroad commissioners in November, 1875, following the first complete year of operation, showed that the total means applied to the construction, equipment and purchase of prop-
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erty had been $90,757.09. The amount of capital paid in, true to the agreements, was $40,000; the funded debt, represented by bonds held by the Old Colony, was $36,000. In brief, resources of $76,000 had been provided to meet a cost which had mounted to almost $91,000.
The total of debt liabilities was $48, 176.33; and the total prop- erty and assets were put at $91,388.27. The receipts from the passenger traffic of the road were reported to be $13,170.54, a figure not far from that estimated in advance by Samuel Osborn on the floor of the Edgartown town meeting. Expenses charged to the passenger department were $8,167.92, leaving net passenger earnings of $5,002.62. Passenger trains had run 12,554 miles, and 28,911 passengers had been carried.
Difficulties were adjusted, and the season of 1875 was embraced with hope, but with the results disclosed in the foregoing report. Then, on April 4, 1876, a town meeting was held at Edgartown which furnished a striking and at times a dismal parallel with the first railroad town meeting of 1874. The question now was whether the town should sell its interest. When the article of the warrant was reached, Ichabod N. Luce rose to his feet and moved, in brief lan- guage, that a committee be named to dispose of the stock.
To this Mr. C. F. Dunham offered an amendment providing that the sale should be conditional on realizing the par value. Mr. Luce rejoined that it was better for the town to sell out at any price. Captain Grafton Collins asserted that it would be better to give the stock away than to keep it -- there spoke bitterness and disillusion! Captain Collins added that there had been no dividends and wouldn't be for fifty years.
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