USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 13
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"Is there any way that you can conqur satan, and come and make my hens pictures with mine as nice as possible, if they will not allow you to make them you are not to blame, you cannot help it. Times are hard now, so much sin."
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In her instructions for the treating of hens, Nancy Luce listed every ailment, followed then by her prescription, and the words, "I cure them so." At the end of the long list she added this Prayer :
"Oh, I pray for my Lord Jesus Christ
To destroy all sin, and all misery, for the afflicted, For the poor harmless dumb creatures, And all the troubled in the wide world around,
For all that breathes the breath of life,
Dumb creatures and human, too,
O Lord, my God of heaven.
I pray for Thy Kingdom to come, to destroy all sin,
To be done on earth as it is done in heaven;
For the poor harmless dumb creatures;
O Lord, I pray for all the inhabitants of the earth,
To be prepared to live in this world, And in the world to come.
O that I may leave this world of misery,
O that I may see my Lord Jesus Christ, And live with him in heaven; i
O that I may meet my poor deceased friends in heaven,
O that I may rise above those earthly afflictions,
Sickness, trials and trouble. Amen."
The poor deceased friends she hoped to meet in heaven were no Luces or Cottles or Athearns of the town of West Tisbury, but her hens with far stranger names. Some of them she christened : Teedie Tainie, Letoogie Tickling, Teppetee Tappao, Pondy Lily, Tealsay Medoolsay, Ottee Opheto, Aterryree Opacky, Phebea Peadeo. The bantams, Beauty Linna and Ada Queetie, were forever in a separate place in her heart.
"Tweedle Tedel Bebee Pinky's name," wrote a visitor to her home, "reminds one of a Spanish infanta's christening. There is a subtle distinction in the nomenclature of some of these feathery folk, and character in each. What a fine Magyar tang has Joatie Jofy! You would say she had been at Szegedin with Kossuth in '49. Feleango Appe, Kalaely Rosicky, Levendy Ludandy-what a gypsy breath and breeziness in all these! And there is Melcany Teatally, as if in whimsical reminiscence of an Irishman who had signed the pledge."
Nancy Luce wrote her poems laboriously, printing and elaborating
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the titles and initial letters. A lament for her bantams was entitled Poor Little Hearts, and some stanzas were :
"A sketch of two Poor little Banties, They died with old age, over twelve years ago, Poor little Ada Queetie died over thirteen years ago, Poor little Beauty Linna died over twelve years ago.
"O my Poor deceased little Ada Queetie, She knew such a sight and her love and mine, So deep in our hearts for each other, The part of her and her undergoing sickness and death, O heart rending !
"Poor little heart, she was struck with death at half past eleven o'clock. She died in my arms at twelve o'clock at night, O heart rending ! I could been heard to the road from that time till daylight, No tongue could express my misery of mind.
She had more than common wit And more than common love, Her heart was full of love for me,
O do consider my Poor little heart."
Then there was Death, a lament for "Poor Tweedle Tedel Bebee Pinky. She is gone. She died June 19th, 1871, at quarter past 7 o'clock in the evening, with my hands around her, aged four years. I never can see poor little dear again."
"Poor Pinky, that dear little heart, She is gone, sore broke in her, Died in distress, poor little heart,
Soon my turn will come, and I must follow on, I hope to land on that blest shore, Where no sickness, no trouble, no trials, Distress me no more."
Now and again the intensity of her feeling would rise to such an adjuration as this, which is not easily forgotten :
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"Be good and kind to all that breathes, Act up our good savour's laws, Have tender feelings in your hearts For all the poor harmless dumb creatures."
Her hens Nancy Luce kept in the cellar, in curtained compart- ments, except those which she had in her own living rooms. When they died she buried them, and had gravestones placed above their bodies. It was her wish to be buried with the hens, but she was finally dissuaded. Until April 9, 1890, she lived her strange existence; and after her death her house passed into alien hands, and the gravestones of the hens were used for doorsteps. Now they are preserved in the West Tisbury public library.
Gone is Nancy Luce, but her strangeness, the far-off sorrow of her face and utterance, live after her on Martha's Vineyard. In retrospect one of the oddest circumstances of her life is that which made her melancholy passion an inseparable attraction of a summer resort. The gay laughter of summer visitors as they jogged behind a livery stable horse, the chatter, the tassels of the party wagon swinging in the breeze, the rattle of the whip in the patent leather whip socket, the long miles of dirt road dusty in August, the sweet fern steeping in the sun-these are memories still, but memories misty and incon- sequential. The long note of suffering and desperate passion sounds through the interval of years with an imploring contrast.
XXI An Octagon for Peanuts
On a Friday in early January, 1866, twenty vessels passed Martha's Vineyard bound over the shoals. That weekend a terrific northeast storm came up without warning; the gale blew snow before it, and the temperature dropped almost to zero. From Chappaquiddick, on Monday morning, it was possible for Islanders to see the masts of a schooner which had struck on a shoal off Cape Pogue. The seas were rolling and breaking mast-high. From one of the schooner's masts a flag flew, and there were dark forms in the rigging which could only be men.
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An effort was made to reach the schooner, but there was no possible chance against the storm, and the Islanders waited and watched. Not until four days had passed was it desperately possible for a whaleboat to be launched through the surf and to surmount the seas. There was then only one man left alive in the rigging; four days he had been suspended, freezing, within plain sight of the church spires of villages, but as far removed from safety as if he had been in mid-ocean.
The survivor was badly frostbitten, and he had beaten off the ends of his fingers by thrashing them to keep off the deadly cold. He was brought to Edgartown and cared for, and it was found that he had been saved by pluck and a rubber overcoat. A whole day earlier he had said goodbye to two others, last of the crew to hold to life in the driving storm.
This man was, it turned out, Charles S. Tallman, a resident of Osterville, on Cape Cod. The vessel was the schooner Christina, laden with cement. Edgartown people cared for Mr. Tallman as tenderly as possible; but he was shortly removed to Holmes Hole, somewhat against his will, since he said he believed he had fallen among Christians. For weeks he hung between life and death, and the physicians did not know to what degree amputation would be necessary. At length he recovered, his hands and legs cruelly mutilated by the effects of the zero cold and the long exposure.
The Vineyard Gazette referred to him as "one of nature's noble- men" and, in the summer of 1874, the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company, through the Hon. E. P. Carpenter, presented him with a small octagonal building not far from the Sea View hotel. Here Mr. Tallman sold peanuts, pictures of himself with a note as to his experiences on the back, and other souvenirs and refreshments for the summer crowds.
For years the coming of summer saw Tallman in his octagon; he had become a character, a part of resort life. He was an institution which gave color to the season, and helped to thread one season more closely upon another. His picture shows him with his crutches, seated beside large depending tassels from some imagined drapery of the photographic studio, a man with heavy black beard and moustache.
In the summer of 1877 he sold eighty-five bushels of peanuts.
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XXII
Baptists on the Highlands
In 1873 the receipts of the horse railroad from the Highland Wharf to the camp ground amounted to $2,107.65. The expenses were $1,642.50, leaving a profit of $465.15. The total liabilities of the Vineyard Grove Company were $28,475.84, and the total assets $11,151.70, not counting unsold lots valued at $65,000. Whatever the value of the lots, they were not selling. The difficulties of the company were obvious. It was presiding over a successful develop- ment, for the Highlands included the highest and some of the most sightly land in the resort; many large cottages had been built, looking out upon broad reaches of salt water. The Highland House was a successful hotel, and visitors by the thousands were landing at the wharf and using the railroad. Yet money was not coming in, and there was a debt, all the more onerous because the agent of the com- pany was a retired Methodist clergyman and the directors were conservative gentlemen from the ranks of the camp meeting asso- ciation.
Thus it happened that discussion of an annual outdoor meeting for the Baptists seemed to offer a ray of hope. There was no chance now that the circle laid out on the Highlands would ever be taken by the Methodists. All talk of their removal was past, and there was no chance, either, that the camp meeting association would step into the declining real estate market and help the individuals who had gone into the Highland venture to protect the camp meeting. The individuals were entitled to less sympathy, since their enterprise-no matter how disinterested at the beginning-had turned into a land development scheme on a grand scale during the boom.
The Methodists had long welcomed other denominations at their meetings; Baptist clergymen, in particular, had preached. One summer there had been baptismal ceremonies by immersion at the Highland beach. Hundreds of Baptists, ministers and laym'en, were regular visitors to the Island, and it seemed a logical step for the Baptists to set up an establishment of their own, with the good wishes of their former hosts. The idea was agitated by the Baptist minister at Edgartown.
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Visiting Baptists were friendly to the idea, for they could see a future no less fruitful in prestige, religious benefits and practical success than the present achievements of the Methodists. Moody and Sankey were then famous, and it was reported that one or both would come to the Island for the August preaching.
With this new project in the air, real estate operators other than the Vineyard Grove Company were not inactive. It was argued that West Chop would be, in all ways, a finer site for the Baptists, com- pletely removed from all rivalry with the Methodists, in surround- ings even more spacious and happily still pristine-or almost so- despite plans showing cottage lots, streets, avenues and parks. The Katama Land Company came forward with the offer of an outright gift of fifty acres, including a grove-the only grove the concern had. Questions were raised, obviously originating with Captain Jernegan and his Katama associates, as to whether the Highlands would be a wise choice for a Baptist camp meeting. The price of land there was relatively high, the surroundings were not all that could be desired. No, all in all, Katama was the place.
If West Chop or Katama had won the Baptists, events might have been changed in decisive ways. But from the beginning, the Baptists themselves had kept their eyes on the circle and ground all laid out by their friends of the Methodist persuasion; by being prop- erly hesitant they were able to win proffers of the most generous kind from the Vineyard Grove Company.
A tentative group known as the Baptist Vineyard Association was formed in Boston in July, 1875, and the first Baptist camp meeting was held on the Highlands in August. The association was chartered Jan. 1, 1876, by an act of the Massachusetts legislature, and in 1876 the arrangement with the Vineyard Grove Company became perm- anent. The plan was "to promote fraternal love and more intimate acquaintanceship among the members of our denomination, to dis- cuss plans and methods of Christian work, to cultivate a deeper spiritual tone and greater earnestness, to inspire fresh zeal, and in all proper ways to help each other by counsel and suggestion, that from a week of healthful recreation we may each return to his own field better fitted for the work assigned him in the Master's vineyard. To any who know aught of the attractions of Martha's Vineyard as a summer residence, no other words are necessary."
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The plans for the gatherings were promulgated by William F. Sherwin of Newark and John E. Simonds of Boston.
In return for the concessions granted by the Vineyard Grove Com- pany-which included the free grant of land, free use of the Highland Wharf, special privileges for Baptist clergymen and laymen-the company stipulated that a meeting of a week's duration must be held each year; and this meeting was appointed to fall just prior to the Methodist gathering. The Baptist association, too, won a tenth share of the proceeds of all sales of lots made by the company, and Baptist ministers were to be entitled to lots without charge, provided they built cottages within a year.
There was a shift of activity toward the Highlands as the Baptists moved over and invited their friends. Lots sold again, and the Vine- yard Grove Company slowly emerged from the doldrums.
In the fall of 1877 the Baptists voted to erect a wooden tabernacle or temple in the center of the circle on the Highlands. The plans were drawn by Henry M. Francis, a Fitchburg architect .; As was to be expected, the temple turned out another octagon, with a monitor roof, atop which was a flagpole, the tip of which was one hundred and forty feet from the ground. The monitor top, also octagonal, measured sixteen feet across, and its apex rose sixty feet above the ground. The main roof extended one hundred and twenty feet in its longest measurement, and was supported by posts at the edges, twenty feet high. Six entrances were provided, and the spaces between the other supporting columns was partly filled with cross-hatching and lattice work. Around the entire temple, twelve feet above the ground, the columns were connected with fancy cut palings about three feet from tip to the junction with the roof.
The dedicatory services in the new temple were held on Sunday, August 18, 1878, with an audience of some two thousand persons, and the aid of eighty prominent ministers. At this meeting pledges of $1,367.60 were made toward removing the incumbrances on the new structure, the cost of which had been, including fixtures, $3,187.
The Vineyard Gazette remarked, "On general principles there is no reason why camp meetings should not be as profitable for Baptists as for Methodists." The word "profitable" was used in an unexcep- tionable sense.
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ـجاه ماالشا ميدة فينية hmarverd
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HIOHLANDS
the property of the
The first plan of Vineyard Highlands: a legacy of confusion from the founders. The architectural details were selling points for summer visitors.
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The next year the Methodists discarded their canvas tabernacle and built a permanent structure, not of wood, but of iron. It, too, had a monitor top, far loftier than the Baptist Temple. The base of the iron tabernacle was round, but from the round roof arose a second, and from the second a third, which was heptagonal, and crowned by a domed cupola and staff. Thus the Methodist monitor top was an ambitious, elaborate affair. The tabernacle roof was sup- ported by columns. On the east rose a quite enormous entrance, high- roofed; and on the other three sides were ordinary entrances. Although the sides of the structure were open, curtains were provided which could be let down in case of rain or wind.
The Methodist tabernacle was dedicated August 6, 1879, in the presence of thousands who sat on the old benches and upon new seats under the iron roof.
Still another plum was to fall into the hands of the Vineyard Grove Company. Hardly had the Highland Wharf become the Baptist Landing-so designated by a conspicuous sign-than a num- ber of teachers who chanced to have chosen the Island for their sum- mer homes began to talk of forming an organization. The school of Agassiz on the island of Penikese was in their minds; why not a summer school on Martha's Vineyard?
The leading spirits were Colonel Homer B. Sprague, later president of the University of North Dakota, but at that time principal of the Girls' High School, Boston, and Truman J. Ellinwood, shorthand reporter of Henry Ward Beecher's sermons. These two, and other educators and scientists, discussed the outlook; and their discussions crystallized into the Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute, with a corps of about a dozen instructors. The object, they then announced, was "to meet the vacation wants of such as wish to continue the study of some specialty with the rest and recreation of a delightful seaside resort."
Afternoon and evening lectures were planned over a period of five weeks, the tuition fee being set at fifteen dollars. The courses offered included rhetoric and English literature, taught by Colonel Sprague, who had been an English teacher at Cornell; phonography or short- hand by Mr. Ellinwood; micrology by the Rev. John D. King, of the Vineyard Grove Company; German, French, zoology, ento- mology, Greek, Latin and elocution.
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During its early years, the Institute teachers held classes in their own cottages and general lectures were often given in Union Chapel. But the aim from the very start was to acquire a building which would belong to the Institute itself. Colonel Sprague was diligent in consulting men of wealth with a view to encouraging a gift, but he was not successful. At length the Oak Bluffs Company offered to put up a school building, and a picture of the proposed structure appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. But at the last minute the plan fell through because the site offered was deemed unsuitable, and the Institute was saved for the Highlands.
In August, 1880, the Vineyard Grove Company made a grant of land, comprising six lots, and public subscriptions were solicited to defray the cost of building. As a result Agassiz Hall arose, on the high ground to the rear of the Highland House. It was a plain building, except for its somewhat flimsy appearing verandas and the jutting dormers of its roof, four stories from the ground in front and three in the rear. There were sixteen classrooms, an assembly hall, a reception room, and facilities for social meetings. Many of the teachers had contributed to the building fund, and they continued to work for the Institute with zeal and devotion.
Colonel Sprague, whose health had not been good, gave up the presidency, and was succeeded by William J. Rolfe, an eminent Shakespearian scholar. It was Professor Rolfe who delivered the address at the dedication ceremonies in July, 1882. The previous year the Highlands had held an illumination for the first time, taking over the tradition of the camp ground and Oak Bluffs. This year, with Agassiz Hall thrown open, the Highland illumination became an event worthy of comparison with the achievements of the older districts of the resort.
An arch spanned Jordan, proclaiming the message, "With Joy We Greet You," fire rafts were floated in the lake and burned in different hues, and the cottagers joined with the adherents of the Institute to make the occasion memorable.
It was necessary still to raise three thousand dollars toward the six thousand which Agassiz Hall and its equipment had cost, and the Institute went to work vigorously. Without state aid, without financial resources, and in the face of many obstacles, the school
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became nationally known; but its deficit continued, and in 1888 the debt was still about twenty-three hundred dollars. In that year Dr. William A. Mowry succeeded to the presidency, and shortly was impressing upon the Institute a new character and a new purpose. He visualized the school in terms of its effectiveness in the field of education, and by personal effort and leadership of his faculty he began to realize his aims.
In the first year of his administration Dr. Mowry founded the School of Methods which he placed under the direction of A. W. Edson, then agent of the Massachusetts Board of Education. This school offered instruction during vacation to school teachers who were interested in improving their methods of teaching and in studying problems of education from the teaching standpoint. Now came years of expansion. The Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute was the first summer school for teachers, and its program anticipated the courses which were later offered in the summer schools of colleges and universities. Particularly, the school on the Highlands took the lead in the application of the new study of psychology to educational problems.
In the first decade of its existence, the Institute had fifteen hundred students, and almost a hundred instructors were identified with the faculty. Then, under Dr. Mowry, there were as many as seven hundred students in a single summer, students from all the states of the Union. By 1895 the school was recognized as the leading institution of its kind.
But in later years colleges and universities took over the field; they gave academic credit, and the Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute could not. Its mission ended, and its work in new hands, the school surrendered its charter and went out of existence in 1907.
Long years before the closing of the school, however, it was an unescapable influence in the life of the resort, for it attracted students and teachers, and old cottages were filled, and new ones built. The Baptist Landing was also the Institute Landing. True, students and professors were not a monied lot: a correspondent complained in 1891, when the weather was retarding the season: "The Summer Institute arrivals have helped somewhat, but those attending are generally not overstocked with money and cut down the prices of
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rooms and board so low that, with the exception of boarding houses where they can accommodate a large number, there is 'no money in it' for persons who have invested money in property for its income."
This was the manner .in which the Highlands came into new activity in the days when the Vineyard Grove Company had too many unsold lots and too many unpaid bills. The plank walk which ran between the horse railroad and the street on one side, and the lake on the other, became an important thoroughfare. There was found Rev. J. D. King's museum, Mozart Cottage, at which one might view the skull of a mound builder, an Aztec water jug, stone battle axes, and a needle from the leg bone of a bird. Here, too, was a shop selling pottery made from Gay Head clay; and another museum, specializing in shells and mosses, where summer visitors stopped to buy souvenirs-painted scallop shells, inscribed "Greetings from the Cottage City," and pressed sea moss for the collection at home.
XXIII
Home Fires
Between the years 1865 and 1870 the population of the town of Edgartown declined from 1,846 to 1,516; and that of Tisbury from 1,699 to 1,536. The war between the states had proved merciless to the whaling industry, that form of adventuring which seemed least deserving of further hazards or of outright destruction. The first ship sunk by the raider Alabama was the whaler Ocmulgee of Edgar- town, Captain Abraham Osborn: and Captain Osborn had the unusual experience of meeting as an enemy the Captain Semmes who had been a guest in his father's house on the Vineyard. Years later there was another such encounter, the circumstances slightly altered, when a stranger walked into Captain Thomas Mellen's store at Edgartown and recalled the sinking of Captain Mellen's ship Levi Starbuck by the Alabama. The stranger was the lieutenant who had boarded the Starbuck. But on this visit to Edgartown he was an old man, and Captain Mellen was older, also. The captain looked at the extended hand of his enemy, looked at it for a long time, without
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speaking or moving. His son said that fifteen minutes passed before Captain Mellen put out his own hand and shook that of the lieuten- ant of the Alabama.
The destruction by the Alabama and Shenandoah among the whal- ing fleet was almost complete; the industry was prostrate when the war ended. Claims submitted to the court of Alabama Claims by Vineyarders for ships and property lost, and for damages due to interrupted voyages, approximated $600,000. New vessels were fitted and sent out-in pursuit of that maxim of the whaling business enunciated by Samuel Osborn Jr. : "Fit again." But the old days had gone, beyond recall, and the years brought this truth home in forceful ways.
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