USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 14
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Soon after the war there were some one hundred and fifty-five whaling vessels at sea from New Bedford, Fairhaven and Edgartown, and thirty-six were commanded by Vineyard captains. Then, in 1871, the Arctic fleet suffered a fresh disaster, this time from the grip of the ice; thirty-three vessels were crushed or abandoned that year, among them two Edgartown vessels: the Champion, of which Captain Grafton N. Collins was agent, valued at $40,000, and with three hundred barrels of sperm oil on board-vessel and outfits in- sured, oil uninsured; and the Mary, William H. Munroe, agent, valued, with her oil, at $25,000. She was partly insured. The loss of the oil on the Champion was put at $12,000.
Among the Vineyard men on the lost vessels were Capt. Jared Jernegan of the Roman; Capt. Ariel Norton of the Ashawonks; Capt. Henry Pease Jr. of the Champion; Capt. Abraham Osborn of the George; Capt. Leander Owen of the Contest; and Capt. West Mitch- ell of the Massachusetts.
The Europa of Edgartown, with three hundred barrels of oil, escaped from the ice, and was brought down by her master, Capt. Thomas Mellen, with officers and crews of other vessels on board. Captain Mellen left his vessel on the Pacific coast and came home by the Pacific Railroad. The Europa arrived at her home port the following summer-in August, 1872-having been absent just twelve days short of six years.
In May, 1872, the ship Splendid, Capt. Nathan M. Jernegan (not to be confused with Capt. Nathaniel M. Jernegan), arrived from
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a voyage of fifty-five months in the Pacific, having taken 2,150 barrels of sperm oil, an excellent voyage.
But the sale of the ship Vineyard-to be broken up, after about fifty years of whaling-reduced the Edgartown fleet in 1872 to three vessels: the bark Clarice, and the ships Europa and Splendid. True, Samuel Osborn Jr. was increasing his interests, and in 1880 he was to be, in all likelihood, the largest individual owner of whaling property in the United States, with eight vessels at sea. The total gross product of ships sailing out of Edgartown for which Mr. Os- born was agent, and which he mostly owned, was about $600,000. He was agent and a large owner in the Europa, which had escaped the ice in 1871. His schooner Emma Jane paid for herself and her outfit within three months from the time she first sailed, obtaining in all $42,000 worth of oil. But other vessels suffered large losses : the bark Mary Frazier was blown to sea and lost after being seized and detained by the Portuguese government.
Despite this whaling enterprise which still lay ahead, Nathaniel S. Shaler wrote of Edgartown in 1874 : "In a commercial sense it is a place far advanced in decay : of all its whaleships, which got from the sea the hard-earned fortunes of its people, there is but one left. This lies upon the ways, stripped of its rigging, looking like a mere effigy of a living craft. But the thrift and cleanliness of the sailor is marked in every paving stone and shingle of the village. As soon as a mariner comes to fortune, his first effort is to get a comfortable home, a big, square, roomy house, which shall always be shipshape and well painted. I never thought so well of white paint before I saw these handsome houses, actually resplendent with a hue which is so often merely garish in its uses . . . Little by little the popula- tion is drifting away; some houses stand empty, and the quick agents of decay which make havoc with our frail New England houses will soon be at work at them, and even Yankee thrift cannot keep it away."
Somewhat different it was at Vineyard Haven where: "We thread our way through a fleet of vessels which have found some excuse in the threat of storms for seeking shelter here. Huddled together so close that abuse and badinage can be plentifully exchanged by the crews, lie the motley throng : lumber ships from Maine, their decks
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piled high above the bulwarks with the yellow, fragrant spoils of the pine woods; colliers from Nova Scotia with voluble Frenchmen for crew . . .; coal ships from Philadelphia, manned with the typical tobacco stained American sailor. Along with these, a herd of vessels engaged in wandering up and down the seas in search of hard-earned gains. Here and there trim, dandified yachts bring their white paint and polished brass into glaring contrast with the grime of utilitarian trade."
Vineyard Haven's business of maintaining its port had not suf- fered; Edgartown's old industry was fast slipping away. Such was the state of affairs when the sea captain capitalists turned to new enterprise-first a shoe factory, in which Samuel Osborn and Captain Nathaniel M. Jernegan were interested; and then to the Oak Bluffs development, Katama, and the railroad, as the tide of summer busi- ness rose.
For the most part the projects of the boom period had been Edgar- town projects, financed with money which had been earned at sea; and all that lay between Eastville and Cape Pogue-the crowded camp ground, Highlands and Oak Bluffs-were within the town of Edgartown, adding to Edgartown prosperity, to Edgartown valua- tion figures, and to Edgartown taxes. And there a pinch came. The open spaces of East Chop and the Bluffs had been peopled, but these newcomers brought unexpected points of view, and they understood not nor cared to understand Edgartown.
XXIV Fierce Civil Strife
The beginning of the tax trouble was innocent enough. In Feb- ruary, 1868, the matter of taxing the property of the camp meeting association was considered by a committee of the state legislature. Of the hearing a correspondent wrote to the Vineyard Gazette :
"The question before the committee was not whether the pro- prietors of Oak Bluffs should be compelled to recharter the great parade and call it Heretic Landing or the Shawl Retreat or the Moon-
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light Ramble or the Billing and Cooing Promenade, or the Home of the Fleas; nor was it a question whether the residents of Eastville should be permitted to hang clothes out on the line during camp meeting week, or to have the smoke issue from their heretical chim- neys when the wind was blowing in the direction of the camp ground, or whether the Eastville boys should be permitted to swing on the Eastville gates during the holding of said meeting. None of these exciting questions was considered, and I doubt very much whether they are called up before next winter. The simple question before the committee last week was whether or not the camp ground should be exempt from taxation."
This was harmless fun, but it was characteristic of the unrealistic way in which Edgartown had become accustomed to treat the camp meeting and the new resort. The recommendation of the committee was that all property of the camp meeting association not used for religious purposes should be taxed, and that same year the town assessed a tax of eight hundred dollars. Thereupon the association voted to ask the town for an appropriation of two hundred dollars for police on the camp ground in the year 1869. This request was granted; and, on the face of the matter, the town was left six hundred dollars to the good. The holdings of the Oak Bluffs Company at the time were taxed on a valuation of fifteen thousand dollars.
From 1869 on there was an issue which grew and rankled in bosoms on both sides, and had great results. In the fall of 1872 the "friends of a division of the town" held a meeting in the Vineyard Grove House on the camp ground. They discussed the question of a name for the new resort town, when it should have been severed from old Edgartown, and Bonaire was favored. Later there was some sentiment in favor of annexing Oak Bluffs and the camp ground to Tisbury.
This early division sentiment blew over, without attaining major proportions, for the resort was still young. Yet in December of 1871 there had occurred an event which might have given pause to the old guard of Edgartown : a baby was born, a son, to Mr. and Mrs. Frank P. Vincent within the limits of Wesleyan Grove. For the first time a child had been born on the camp ground, and this not in summer but in winter. The child was named Wesley Grove,
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and he grew up to become a distinguished surgeon and a member of university faculties. The frosts had made the ground crisp, and the passers-by among the closed cottages saw the whiteness of their breaths and hurried about their business. The resort may have been bleak, but it was not deserted, and places where children are born have a way of becoming towns.
Whenever tax bills were presented, the issue of division was raised again, for the owners of property at Oak Bluffs or the Highlands were never quite satisfied that they were receiving a fair return for what they paid. They came to the Island for a few months or weeks only, and it seemed to them that the requirements of the resort were skimped or ignored. They had no opportunity to hear the debate at Edgartown town meetings in winter. As the years passed, it looked more and more as if the old town enjoyed a large and unholy profit exacted from non-residents.
But it was not necessary for the non-residents to come to conclu- sions of their own: always present were the veterans of Eastville, led by that old abolitionist, Ichabod Norton Luce, and the former sheriff, Howes Norris. Eastville, long an oppressed and remote minor- ity, now found an opportunity to take power and to accomplish revenge. Revenge for political obscurity, revenge for the Edgartown opposition to the Lagoon Bridge and shore road to Vineyard Haven, revenge for all the expenditures of the old town against which East- ville had fought. For years the Eastville residents had been taxed for improvements in Edgartown which they could not use nor enjoy, and they had been compelled to pay and pay. Now a new day was dawning and they prepared to make the most of it. The omens were ill for those who had offended.
In the fall of 1876 a taxpayers' meeting was held in the Methodist Tabernacle, of which the Vineyard Gazette said: "The whole idea of overtaxation by the town of Edgartown has grown out of the fact that the Methodist brothers themselves have been heedless in their expenditures on their own private grounds; and now, when the necessary assessment is made to meet the bills, feel that they are paying a high price for a 'whistle' and blow upon it a blast which they suppose will frighten out of their propriety every good citizen of Edgartown. It was laughable to witness the ignorance which prevailed among some of the clergy in reference to taxation."
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This was the old unrealistic attitude continuing; whatever their ignorance of town affairs, the clergy were becoming heated; and any lack of experience and knowledge could be supplied readily by Howes Norris and Ichabod N. Luce whenever a pinch might come.
Secession now became a regular phase of late summer or fall; it broke out as surely as the dog days came. In August, 1877, another mass meeting was held in the Tabernacle. It was announced by the colored crier, George Washington Peckstout, in the same manner as religious events, public functions, and the Katama picnics. It was announced, too, by the presiding elder from the stand. This was the second time that business matters had been debated in the Tabernacle, and there was some criticism, part of it, no doubt, inspired by the shrewdness of Edgartown.
As to the proceedings themselves, the speakers thought that sum- mer residents paid a large share of the taxes and received very little in return.
Edgar Marchant declared in the Vineyard Gazette that "a more erroneous impression never took possession of an evangelical body." The secretary of the meeting, the Old Editor said, "strutted, and crowed, and grinned, and raved, like one fully mad, or possessed of an evil spirit, and made assertions which every well informed man present knew to be false, and some of which were flatly contradicted on the spot." This was a description of the platform style of the Rev. John W. Willett, of Westerly, R. I.
The Boston Herald printed a report of the meeting, and the Old Editor took it apart, paragraph by paragraph, interpolating his own comments : "This is a lie, pure and simple," "Another lie, a supreme, defiant, splendid lie," "A lie like the above would 'reach the dignity of a crime' did it emanate from the source of truth."
This was the last trenchant blow Edgar Marchant was to strike, for he died in January, 1878, at the age of sixty-three. The Vineyard Gazette had been his child and his great love, but he had worked also on the Boston Traveler, the Gloucester Telegraph, the Woburn Journal, the Essex Statesman, the Abington Standard, the Randolph Register, and the Woburn Advertiser. In 1862 he had gone to the Massachusetts General Court with every vote of the county cast for his election. He was full of fire and words, as a journalist ought
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to be, and the shifting dust in the winds of years has not even yet covered the clear, firm footprints of his eager march through life.
The division meeting, after all, was far from unanimous. Some taxpayers argued that it might be as well to remain with Edgar- town as to form a new town which would be completely in the hands of sixty voters-the all year residents of the resort area. Ad- dresses by Hebron Vincent, Capt. Nathaniel M. Jernegan, Joseph Thaxter Pease and Richard L. Pease, in defense of the old town, were not without effect. Yet the outcome was a vote in favor of memorial- izing the legislature for an act to divide the town.
The next summer a division meeting was called at Union Chapel -and this time the call was sent only to those who were in favor of secession, because no more discussion of the question was desired. It was voted to name a committee of twenty-five to proceed with the effort to divide the town, this committee including Howes Norris, Oliver Ames, Dr. H. A. Tucker, Joseph Dias, Colonel Sprague of the Summer Institute, G. M. Landers, A. S. Barnes, and the Rev. J. W. Willett.
Howes Norris was the son of a sea captain, and the founder of a ship chandlery business; he was also marine reporter for the Associated Press, and it fell to him to found a newspaper, the Cottage City Star, to carry on the fight for division. Oliver Ames was the son of Oakes Ames, and the division fight led him to high places : as a summer resident he remarked that he would go to the state senate to help out. He went to the senate, and from the senate he moved on to the governorship. Of Dr. H. A. Tucker a great deal remains to be said later. G. M. Landers was of the firm of Landers, Frary & Clark, and Connecticut banking commissioner. Dr. Tucker, Mr. Landers and Mr. Barnes had three of the most striking cottages on Ocean Park.
The lines were now fairly drawn, and the fight was to the finish with no quarter. Perhaps the end should have been foreseen, even thus early. The Eastville group had joined hands with the camp meeting association, and a group of influential summer residents stood ready with ample resources. In the indictment against Edgar- town there were many counts; first the high cost of the Beach Road, which, it was asserted, had been a racket in behalf of Edgartown
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laborers; then the fifteen thousand dollar loss in the Martha's Vine- yard Railroad, which had been planned not to aid Oak Bluffs and the camp meeting, but to take crowds away to Katama; again, the failure to put through roads in and around the resort, from the time of the Lagoon Bridge affair on, was a piece of grave injustice. Some important ways in Eastville had been built only when the inhabitants gave bonds that there should be no cost to the town.
One argument, however, and that the most convincing of all to the modern mind, was not employed : manifest destiny. In the light of justice and representative government, in the light of dollars and cents, the tie between Edgartown and the resort may have been questionable or wholly wrong, but in the light of destiny it was as tenuous as a hawser under tension, pulling and fraying apart.
Edgartown, on its side, volleyed and thundered. Particularly it used with telling effect the argument that secession was a scheme of wealthy non-residents who had no business to be heard in town affairs, and whose interests were pitted against the town.
The illumination of 1879 was distinguished by secessionist ban- ners and transparencies. A hand was shown squeezing a lemon labeled Cottage City into a bowl marked Edgartown. A banner bore an inscription : "Go, if you want to. 1877"-"This is a child of Edgar- town. You can't go. 1879. Mr. J-n." The allusion was to Capt. Nathaniel M. Jernegan. Another banner portrayed two men, one fat and one lean, with the legend, "Edgartown before and after division."
There were two division meetings in Union Chapel, one called by the divisionists, and one called by those "in favor of full and fair discussion" -- which meant the opposition. For the reassurance of summer residents who were hesitating on the fence, a curious docu- ment was signed by five permanent residents of the resort. It pledged on the third Monday of every August "a meeting of non-resident taxpayers and legal voters (of the hypothetical new town) at which all matters to be inserted in the warrant and to be acted upon at any future regular town meeting of said town (excepting such questions as appertain to the ordinary and necessary municipal expenses of the town) shall be presented and voted upon by such meeting of non-resident taxpayers and resident legal voters; and that the deci-
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sions of such meetings shall be carried out and ratified by us at future legal town meetings; and that especially all questions of appropriation of money shall be submitted to the decision of such meeting . . , and we hereby pledge our good faith as honorable men to the faithful execution of the above stipulations, according to their purpose and intent." The signers were Samuel Butler, Joseph Dias, Capt. Otis Foss, Charles Talbot and Elihu M. Mosher. Most of the leaders, it appeared, were too cagey.
The annual town meeting at Edgartown in 1878 had appropriated the sum of five hundred dollars for practical use in fighting division. Thus the tables were turned on the secessionists, who were taxed for funds to defeat their own cause. Accordingly Howes Norris, et al, entered suit against the town, and the case went on its slow course through the courts. Ultimately the Supreme Judicial Court of Massa- chusetts decided that "the inhabitants of the town of Edgartown and all their officers should be enjoined and commanded that they shall not at any time, by their vote or by taxation or by the pledge of the credit of the town or by the use of its funds, or in any other manner make any provision directly or indirectly for the payment of expenses or services incurred by any party or parties in resisting the division of the town .
This injunction cause was the occasion of a dramatic event in the town meeting of January, 1880. N. Sumner Myrick, a young attorney just admitted to the bar, -who was to be, in future years, when his hair was gray, a loyal summer resident of Edgartown- arrived mysteriously at Eastville and was put ashore from a tug shortly before the meeting. He proceeded to Edgartown with Howes Norris; and when that juncture had arrived at which the voters were about to vote an appropriation to fight division, young Myrick strode into the hall flourishing a legal paper. Whether this was the actual court order or merely a threatening letter from the law offices of Stetson and Knowlton does not now appear; Mr. Myrick recalled it as the injunction itself, although contemporary accounts differ. At any rate it was sufficient. Samuel Osborn Jr. blustered, but the wind was gone from the sails of the town, and adjournment came with no appropriation voted for the fraternal combat.
Meantime the Cottage City Star had declared : "If we are to desig-
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nate the great incubus that hangs upon us, the signal obstacle to all advancement in goodness, the preventive to the attachment or the maintenance of moral or spiritual excellence, it is our unnatural and unjust alliance with the fossil portion of the inhabited earth known as Edgartown."
This expression was the work of the Rev. E. H. Hatfield. Mean- time, too, it had become clear that the issue of the struggle hung upon the election of a representative to the General Court. The winter of 1879 had seen a bitter struggle, with victory for the town only through the influence of Capt. Benjamin Clough of Tisbury, repre- senting the county.
As to the rights of the matter, Edgartown-with its five hundred dollar war chest-had made a valiant effort, but had hardly answered the case of the divisionists. For instance, it was read into the record that in 1865 the valuation of Edgartown had been $1,035,467 : in 1878 it had increased to $2,043,525, of which the resort represented $1,197,435. Of the total assessments in the years 1876, 1877 and 1878-$97,373.27-the resort had paid $59,505.89, and had re- ceived $36,661.50, leaving a net gain to Edgartown of $22,844.39.
At this time there were nineteen cities and 306 towns in the state, and the proposed new town of Cottage City stood ninety-fourth in real estate and 142nd in entire valuation. The population was 502, or more than that of fifteen established towns.
The town, through Judge C. G. M. Dunham, had been able to say only that the actual petitioners for division represented a small part of the valuation.
Ichabod N. Luce had said that he desired division because he wanted the law to correspond to the fact. The town was divided in most respects already, and the rupture was growing wider and deeper every day.
Despite a favorable report, the division act had been defeated because the Island's own representative was against it. Now, there- fore, the divisionists went up and down the Vineyard roads and stirred antagonism and rebellion against the old shire town. A county convention was held at West Tisbury at which the machine, working smoothly, nominated Beriah T. Hillman of Chilmark, an anti- divisionist, over Stephen Flanders of Chilmark, by a vote of seven-
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Photograph by the Mosher Photo Service
Looking down from the heights at Vineyard Haven. Commerce is cloaked in pleasant trappings in such vistas of the port.
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teen to twelve. Shortly after, a second convention was held by bolters and divisionists, and Mr. Flanders was nominated to oppose Mr. Hillman at the election. Resolutions were adopted that "the tyrannizing yoke of Edgartown" must be thrown off.
The election attested the sedulous work of Howes Norris and his divisionists. Mr. Flanders was elected over Mr. Hillman by a vote of 449 to 409. Of the votes cast for Mr. Hillman, 307 were counted in Edgartown. Although the result seemed conclusive, the Edgartown forces found grounds for a contest, and a period of wrangling ensued, during which, among other things, an effort was made to throw out the whole vote of the new town of Gay Head. The validity of the election, nevertheless, was upheld, and Stephen Flanders went to the legislature. The end was near.
Without a real show of opposition, the division bill was reported favorably, and on February 17, 18So, it became a law. Edgartown was divided, and there was a new town called Cottage City. The name was a compromise. Logically, perhaps, Oak Bluffs should have been chosen, but this was the name of a land development which the camp meeting association had seen fit to place on the opposite side of a high picket fence. The post office at the resort had been called Vineyard Grove for a period and this, too, was a possibility. Bonaire and Marthasburg had adherents, but fortunately few. It chanced that H. A. Blood, a former mayor of Fitchburg, and a rail- road executive, had exploited the phrase "The Cottage City of America" in a great deal of advertising; indeed, the resort was known far and wide as the Cottage City, and this name was adopted.
Years later, however, it was to be abandoned. There was always some dissatisfaction, and the dissident group found a technical justification in the fact that Cottage City was a town, and hence could not be a city. To speak of the town of Cottage City was as absurd, they argued, as to speak of a hypothetical city of Cottage Town. Whether it was this meticulous regard for accuracy or a desire for a prettier name which ultimately prevailed, the change came in 1907. Oak Bluffs was again on the map, a memorial to Capt. Shubael Lyman Norton and his companions, and this time it had come to stay.
The first town meeting of Cottage City was held in March,
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1880, with Ichabod N. Luce as moderator. Fireworks were displayed in Ocean Park, there was a congratulatory meeting in Union Chapel, and a committee of twenty members of the state legislature came down to see the new town started.
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