USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 22
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24
At the foot of this hill stood a weathered house in which Edwin Luce lived alone for many years. Some called him the hermit of Indian Hill. He welcomed visitors to his land, but he was disturbed when summer people broke into his home during his absence, to pump a glass of water, or to have a look around. He kept a record of the visitors to the hill, and his pencilled notations run as follows : 1899, 526; 1900, 691; 1901, 609; 1902, 586; 1903, 811; 1904, 758; 1905, 600; 1906, 694; 1907, 585; 1908, 711. This was a tally of the days before automobile travel became general, and it reflects almost a full decade of prosperity for livery stable drivers; or, if
.
242
MARTHA'S VINEYARD
not prosperity, active business of the character which made these stables more important in their time than garages are in the inner spirit of summer resort life today. A great many things would have gone differently if it had not been for the livery stable. Vacations were not dynamic, in the modern sense, at their best, but without the livery stable they would have been completely static.
On the summit of Indian Hill is a boulder, and here have perched at least two generations of summer visitors to have their pictures taken: at the foot of the rock, too, an untold number of peanut shells and candy cartons have been tossed, to be removed slowly in winds and rain.
XXXVIII A Hotel Is Born
The new Edgartown did not grow entirely from the old roots cultivated by the sea captains. Almost twenty years after the launch- ing of the Katama project, the town itself was without a summer hotel. The first bathhouses, a set of three, were built on a sandy crescent of Chappaquiddick beach, across Edgartown harbor, in 1883, but this enterprise suggested only faintly the beach around which summer life in the new century was to center. In five years the number of bathhouses increased to thirty-five, and in 1890 it had mounted to fifty, still a small beginning.
In 1890 the fate of the hotel at Katama was already more or less evident, and the ventures of the seventies were staled and lack lustre. Wherever Edgartown men gathered to talk of the future, conver- sation came around to the need of a new summer hotel, in the town itself. How else could any ground be gained or held as a watering place? When steps were taken to do something, the leader in the new project was Dr. Thomas J. Walker, a doctor of the old school and leading physician of the town. With him was associated the Rev. Luther T. Townsend of Watertown, a summer visitor himself, and both men pledged subscriptions of ten shares toward a capitali- zation of $5,000 consisting of fifty shares of $100 par value. In a few decades the ready money in Edgartown had dwindled, and even
243
SUMMER RESORT
wishful thinking was on a smaller scale. Later, however, the capitali- zation of the new hotel was doubled, Dr. Walker and Dr. Townsend doubling their own subscriptions. The remaining stock was taken by investors in the town.
Public interest in the new hotel ran high, and the venture was almost a community crusade. A site was chosen at Starbuck's Neck, the extremity of North Water Street, where the ranks of the whaling captains' houses came to an end. The place was high and offered a broad view of the harbor and Chappaquiddick; from the rear, one could see Vineyard Sound and Cottage City in the distance.
The name of the new hotel was in doubt until the last. The Vine- yard Gazette was authorized to announce a contest for the selection of a name, and Edgartown residents deliberated and produced such nominations as the following :
Belvedere, Pullman, Cliff House (although there was no cliff), Hotel Edgartown, Harbor View, The Edgartown, Hotel Nunpaug, Ocean Zephyr Resort, Great Harbor House, the Unexpected, The Swasey (after the first owners of the land), Monticello, Vacuna, Emprise, Alpine, Starbuck, Acme, Sea- bright, Magnolia, Vacation, Martha's Inn, Ocean Spray (the ocean being several miles distant), Hiacoomes, Vineyard Inn, Eureka House, Atlantic House, New Era, Alpha, Orient, Lovely Resort, Buena Ventura, Enterprise, Quenomica, Hygeia, Vista, Montezuma, Old Colony, Pilgrim Hall, Bartholomew.
However, as the voting went on, some of the less effulgent names assumed the lead; in the second month of the voting Harbor View was well ahead, Edgartown was runner-up, and Martha, Mizpah and Emprise followed. The name Harbor View was suggested by Leonard C. Bliss, one time Edgartown storekeeper who became head of the Regal Shoe Company, and contributed to the growth of the watering place both as a resident business man and as a sumn- mer resident through later years.
Mr. Bliss was considered a double for Benjamin Harrison. In 1884, being confronted with a problem, he wrote to Lyman Abbott, then editor of the Christian World, inquiring as follows: "A tenant who sells periodicals, confectionery and cigars desires me to build an addition to the store for billiards. Would it be consistent for a
1
244
MARTHA'S VINEYARD
Christian to grant this request? I have no scruples but that billiards in the absence of immoral surroundings, are as innocent as croquet. But as some of the brethren have a prejudice, and I a pecuniary interest, I desire your opinion to help me decide the question."
Dr. Abbott replied: "In regard to yours of March 4, I write to say that experience has demonstrated pretty conclusively that the billiard room as a public resort is morally disadvantageous. It is always a place of smoking and lounging, often of profanity even when drinking is excluded . .. The only way it seems to me in which the billiard room can be kept pure and innocent is by having it in a private home, or possibly in connection with a social club, unless it could be made also practically a ladies' game and really used by ladies . . "
The new Harbor View Hotel, resembling a roomy, over-grown house, and with little pretense except its size and its broad verandas, was opened to the public in July, 1891. The formal reception and ceremonies were delayed until later in the season when some four hundred invitations were issued, the piazzas were hung with Chinese lanterns, the parlors decorated, and the whole hotel brightly illum- inated. An entertainment was provided by Miss Mattie Josephine Atkins, of Denver, a graduate of the Emerson College of Oratory, and the string quartet of the Fitchburg band supplied music for dancing.
Despite a great deal of motherly anxiety on the part of the town, and an illusion of prosperity, the Harbor View was not, initially, a success. Some of the stockholders were wiped out, but Dr. Walker and Dr. Townsend made sacrifices and held on. When, after two or three years, the building was offered for sale under the terms of the mortgage, these two men bid it in and, still later, Dr. Walker acquired the whole property. From the time the hotel fairly started and the promotion and building expenses written were off, the Harbor View became exactly what it had been intended to be, the nucleus of a new and growing colony of summer visitors. There were two ties between the new and the old, for W. D. Carpenter, son of the Hon. Erastus P., came up from the Mattakeeset Lodge to be manager for a season; and in 1910 Dr. Walker bought the empty relic on the Katama Plain and moved the south wing to Starbuck's Neck as
VELLEN'S
A.G.SHUTE.
-
Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Laura J. Spear
August diversion, 1893 : foot races on Main Street, Edgartown. This is the final of the 100 yard dash, won by Marcus Wilson Jernegan, now professor of American History at the University of Chicago. The prize was a $3.00 sweater.
-
L
.
4
SUMMER RESORT
245
an adjunct to the Harbor View. There it still stands, its Alpine peak of a roof jogging the memories of the few who remember the day of glory.
The place quickly occupied by the new hotel in the summer life of Edgartown is indicated by this list of the events of the gay season of 1893 : a cantata, Pillar of Fire; an illustrated lecture, Life and Times of Columbus; patriotic services on July 4; fire balloons on July 14; an illuminated boat parade; a Harbor View tennis tourna- ment on courts built at the hotel; baseball games; a musicale at the Harbor View; Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy, at the town hall; a sum- mer social; a tub race at the bathing beach; a hop at the Harbor View; excursions to the South Beach; and foot races on Main Street.
In 1893 a summer visitor from New Jersey operated the first naphtha launch in the harbor, and in 1901 the Harbor View became a long distance telephone pay station. The resort was getting on.
This was also the period of incubation of the new Ocean Heights. The first had been at Oak Bluffs, between Farm Pond and Senge- kontacket. The modern development of that name is just outside of Edgartown, lying between the county road and Sengekontacket. Robert M. Laidlaw, a native of Scotland, was the leading figure in the company which purchased a part of the former Beetle farm at this place. In the course of years Ocean Heights was to take root and grow.
XXXIX Chappaquiddick
An interlude of the rise of Edgartown was a flurry of land develop- ments on Chappaquiddick in 1889 and 1890. This was the more curious because Chappaquiddick, despite its rolling terrain and vistas over blue water and land dotted with pines and bayberry bushes, could be reached only by small boat. Katama had been considered difficult of access, but at least there was a road.
Apparently the purchase of Chappaquiddick land by summer residents, among them Horace W. Gridley of New York, set the
1
T
246
MARTHA'S VINEYARD
ball tolling. Joseph Enos, whose residence happened to be on the Edgartown side (he is remembered running a watering cart in the village, for fees paid by householders), was first in the field. He had fifty acres of Chappaquiddick land surveyed into lots, with many avenues, planning to sell enough lots at $5 cach to pay for the survey. There turned out to be about 240 lots of about fifty by a hundred feet. The largest open space, Island Park, was seven hundred by one hundred feet.
On the plan, the Enos lots (they never acquired a fanciful name) are shown beginning a short distance northeast of the old Chappa- quiddick schoolhouse. They extend southeast, irregularly, in rec- tangles, like a cross word puzzle. The avenues were named Samson's, Muskeget, Flag, Grove, Ocean, Meadow, Park, Washque, Pocha, and Enos-among others-and all were thirty feet wide.
A grand selection of the Enos lots was held on July 6, 1889, and clam chowder was served free. Up to that occasion, 127 lots had been sold, many of them to Providence residents.
That same year Richard E. Norton & Co. planned the develop- ment of Washqua Farm, "The Region of Perfect Content." The tract consisted of about two hundred acres bordered by Pocha Pond, Katama Bay, and the broad Atlantic. A pier was constructed, and prospective customers were invited to travel to Katama by the railroad and to cross in a boat to Chappaquiddick. The lots, con- ventionally, were fifty by a hundred feet, and avenues were named Tackanash, Sea View, Surf, Atlantic, Occan, and Quanamaqua. Bordering Washqua Farm was Howwosswee Patk. Fout years later, the Norton brothers announced another development, Chappaquid- dick Camp.
Not far behind Mr. Enos was Governot William H. Handy of Chappaquiddick. The title was a courtesy title, but it was not with- out warrant since Mr. Handy was an all year resident and general factotum. One Edgartonian recalls him driving his horse along the road on Chappaquiddick Point, mail bags over his shoulder, reins clutched in the fingers of one hand, as he stood erect in the truck wagon and called commands to his horse. Governor Handy was a colorful figute. His lots were in the Samson's Hill region and they covered about two hundred acres, fifty of which were platted at once.
247
SUMMER RESORT
There was a full fledged boom in progress, and if it was a small boom, one must remember that Chappaquiddick is a small island and was reached by a small ferry. A great impetus was added when it was announced that Capt. Francis C. Smith, veteran of the Oak Bluffs development days, had acquired a home on Chappaquiddick and was to be sales agent of the Handy lots. Benjamin G. Collins surveyed this development, as he did most of the others.
Early in July of 1889-at about the time Mr. Enos was serving free clam chowder -- Captain Smith and Governor Handy completed an observation tower on Samson's Hill, southwest of the meeting house. The tower was twenty-two feet high, twelve feet square on the ground, and eight feet square at the top. There were two floors. "See"? inquired Daniel T. Webquish, an old Chappaquiddick Indian. "See all over God's creation and part of Chatham" !
One of the early purchasers of Handy lots was Mr. Gridley, whose interest had done so much to launch the boom. The Handy avenues were named Chapel, Collins, Pease, Webquish, and Handy. A site was set aside for a Union Chapel, as if the old meeting house were too small.
That same fall, Captain Smith projected a development in his own name, known as Seaview City. Seaview City would be a con- spicuous sight from Edgartown, across the harbor if it existed today. The tract ran from Caleb's Pond, bordered for some distance by the county road, toward Samson's Hill. It was long and narrow. An eight acre hotel site was reserved between Hotel and Chappaquid- dick Avenues. Other avenues included Massasoit, Huxford, Ripley, Pequot, Eagle, Norton, Bathing, and Ocean. .
The greatest force of the boom was soon spent, but in 1890 steps were taken by Lester W. Clark, and Horace Bacon, summer residents, and Samuel Keniston, publisher of the Vineyard Gazette, to incor- porate the Chappaquiddick Land Co. They proposed to start with an authorized capital of $40,000 with a right to increase the amount to $150,000; but someone at the State House persuaded them to be content with the more modest limits of $25,000 and $50,000, respectively. The charter rights gave the company the privilege of building piers and bridges, and of operating ferries. R. E. Norton & Co. sold about fifty acres of land to Mr. Clark. There is no indi- cation that the Chappaquiddick Land Co. was ever active.
€
1
248
MARTHA'S VINEYARD
As recently as 1903 an East Samson's Hill addition was surveyed by Benjamin G. Collins, but the Chappaquiddick developments never kept up with the swift pace of their first enthusiastic year.
Most lovers of Chappaquiddick rejoice that it is still elemental, without communities of cottages and hotels. There were probably twenty-five houses on the island in 1797, with some 190 or 200 inhabitants, as many as 75 of them Indians. There are fewer houses today, fewer inhabitants, and almost no Indians at all. No pilots resort to Samson's Hill to watch for incoming vessels, but any mortal may walk to the hill, a little breathless with the old worldy aspect of the landscape, and see Tuckernuck come up on the horizon like a mirage on a clear day.
XL Development by Electricity
When Edgartown was threatened with the suspension of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad, a new cry went up: "Electrify" ! Science had moved on, and a new force was capturing the imagina- tions of the land. For Cottage City there was but a small step from the horse railroad to electric cars. At the illumination which marked the end of the season of 1895 there were two symbolic set pieces : one, a fireman with a hose pointed, indicating the superiority of the Cottage City fire department; and the other, an electric car showing plainly on the side the words, "Cottage City Street Railway."
The snort of the iron horse having failed to accomplish miracles for the sea captains, their successors looked to the new elixir. Already, in the fall of 1892, a company had been formed under the name Dukes County Street Railway Company to carry out the dream of an electric railway from Cottage City all the way to Gay Head. The length of track was to be about twenty-five miles, and the capital stock was fixed at $200,000. A provisional board of directors, included Professor Shaler, Henry L. Whiting, and Charles Strahan, editor of the Martha's Vineyard Herald. The new road was to swing near Lambert's Cove on the North Shore, and there to make connections with the New York boats at a hypothetical wharf.
249
-
SUMMER RESORT
"This is one of the most important localities of the whole coast and will undoubtedly be secured and developed into a second Bar Harbor," said the promoters, alluding to Lambert's Cove. The vision of the future was promulgated on a grand scale; but it never came to fruition. The Dukes County company survives only in musty records, and its route as an imaginative line on the map.
This left the Cottage City electric railway to become the pioneer. The horse car tracks had been extended to the New York wharf in 1892, and cars had run on a thirty minute headway and a five cent fare. The line had also run to the Prospect House at Lagoon Heights, so that passengers could have a three mile ride for a nickel. The electrification took place in 1895, the year of its celebration in fire- works. Non-residents were behind the project, marking the growing influence of mainland capital and enterprise in the life of the resort. This particular syndicate was headed by Josiah Quincy, assistant secretary of state under Cleveland, and one time mayor of Boston, who had become a summer resident of West Chop. The Quincy group purchased the old horse car road and began the erection of a power house at Eastville, near the site of the historic camp meeting landing. Efforts were made to obtain a franchise to enter Vineyard Haven, but there were complications and the Vineyard Haven route was taken by a new company, the Martha's Vineyard Street Railway Company, chartered in May, 1896.
The Martha's Vineyard company, in 1897, operated a line from the head of the Vineyard Haven wharf to the Lagoon Bridge. Since the bridge was not strong enough to support a street car, there had to be a stop, and passengers were required to walk across and board a car on the farther side. Whatever else electricity had done, it had brought to the Vineyard, at the very beginning, a taste of the cor- porate confusion which came in on the wings of the new century.
The earnings and expenses of the two companies are a record in the modern language. The report of the Cottage City company, following the season of 1895, showed net income from operations of $5,430.84. Assets were listed at $73,490.85; the capital stock was $25,000 and the funded debt an equal amount. Loans and bills payable came to $13,658.78, against which the company had a
250
MARTHA'S VINEYARD
surplus of $8,832. 07. There were twenty-six stockholders, and they received an encouraging dividend of four per cent.
In the year 1900, the Cottage City company reported a deficit of $964.06. Assets were listed at $70,723.45, and gross liabilities at $70,279.59. The Martha's Vineyard company showed a net income of $633.88; gross assets were $13,602.05, and gross liabil- ities $12,432.35.
Thus, after a few years of operation, the lines were a cause of concern rather than of comfort to the stockholders. For a time there was warfare between the two companies. The Josiah Quincy syndi- cate withdrew, and the Cottage City line was operated in conjunction with the lighting company. But it obtained power from the station at Eastville, now controlled by the opposition, and in the busy days of the 1901 season the Martha's Vineyard company cut off the current from its rival, halting the cars and requiring summer crowds to walk.
Eventually the two companies merged. The last new spirit was injected into the electric railway in 1908 when a reorganization was directed by Eugene Carpenter, an electrical engineer of considerable experience. But now the automobiles were purring over the tar road which ran along the tracks, and passing the cars with no effort at all. In 1916 and 1917 an increasing number of these automobiles carried on their windshields this strange device: "Jitney." So came the end of electric transportation on Martha's Vineyard.
Edgartown never succeeded in winning its electric line, although committees were appointed, mass meetings were held, and promoters added columns of figures for years. The old question of alternative routes, shore or inland, came up and was thrashed out time and again. Once the Martha's Vineyard company was ready to build a line from Cottage City to Edgartown if Edgartown capital would contribute $15,000 of an estimated investment of $35,000. But the sea captains of the old whaling port were not now so numerous or so flush, and although it was urged that no single electric line in the state had failed to earn handsome dividends from the start, the lesson of the snort of the iron horse was not easily ignored.
Although the new marvel of electricity did not fulfill the fine promise of the late nineties, the Vineyard would have been poorer
251
SUMMER RESORT
if the electric railways had never been built. They contributed color, novelty and not a little pleasure to summer life, and furnished an impetus which quickened the prosperity of the resort. Contemporary civilization has devised many motions, swift and sure, such as that of the streamlined train, the modern automobile, the airplane, and the speedboat, but there has never been a motion so peculiarly thrilling as the rocking of a small streetcar in its swift course over a clear stretch of track, say the down grade between Cottage City and Eastville. Or is it memory that makes it so?
The rush of cool air against the face, the changing views, the children holding fast to ribboned hats, the conductor passing himself along the running board hand over hand (a feat as engrossing as that of the captains making steamboat landings at Oak Bluffs wharf), the motorman in front turning his mysterious brass handles, the smell of iron wheels and track, the impatient wait on the switchouts, the finesse of switching, the click of the wheels running free, the flashes of blue and purple lightning from the overhead trolley after dark.
Sometimes a car came to a halt at some random spot between towns. The belt had slipped off the engine at the power house, and the conductor must get off and walk to the station to jog the engineer. It might happen that the engineer would chance to discover the mishap and replace the belt while the conductor was off on his mission, and the car would race to overtake the conductor, bells clanging.
The street railways gave these experiences, and now these memo- ries, to Martha's Vineyard.
XL Irrepressible Conflict
Long after the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company made its exit, the Vineyard Grove Company, its rival, lingered on; and it became, under successive managements, involved in litigation and controversy with the cottagers of Oak Bluffs and with the town. The various stages of conflict ran through several eras, and more
-
-
252
MARTHA'S VINEYARD
than once the state supreme court was called upon to decide questions of rights, some abstract and some immediately tangible.
The Vineyard Grove Company, founded on moral and semi- religious grounds to guard against the worldliness of the Oak Bluffs Company, had been partly lured and partly pushed into the oppor- tunism of speculative business. The land acquired on the Highlands for a retreat for the camp meeting was never needed for that pur- pose, and therefore something had to be done with it. The Baptists provided one solution, and another had to be the continuance of a land business in outright commercial style.
Ownership of the beach and waterfront on the Oak Bluffs side, which had gone with the Sea View property, was eventually acquired by the Vineyard Grove interests which thus inherited not only their own but their earlier rivals' difficulties. The original Oak Bluffs beach was to be the first scene of strife. In 1895 the company applied to the Harbor and Land commissioners of the state for a license to build a pavilion over tidewater. This was opposed vigorously by owners of some of the largest and most costly cottages of Oak Bluffs who feared that an amusement enterprise under their windows would be a nuisance. The cottagers won an initial victory, for the commissioners rejected the petition on the ground that it went beyond the original charter rights of the company.
By this time the bathing tower erected by the Oak Bluffs Com- pany was in bad condition, and the present owners decided to tear it down. Now the old tower had been accepted as a landmark; but the Vineyard Grove Company erected a pavilion between the beach and the street which seemed to cottagers a new encroachment. The structure rose above the level of the bluff and interfered with the view. A number of cottagers arrived in June or July, became indignant, and retained counsel. A committee waited upon the selectmen, but the selectmen did not see what they could do, since the Vineyard Grove Company owned the property upon which the pavilion stood. For some seasons the matter drifted.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.