USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 23
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Then the committee obtained further advice, and a suit was entered in the name of the attorney general. William M. Butler was retained to represent the plaintiffs, and the first case of Attorney General vs. Vineyard Grove Company went on its way to the supreme court
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All sorts of boats in all sorts of poses dominate the scene at Menemsha
Photograph by Augustus Bradford Merry
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of the state. The plaintiffs contended that under the conditions of sale by the Oak Bluffs Company, covenants had been entered into with the cottagers requiring that no structure be built on the beach; the beach had, in short, been dedicated as an open space, and the view from the bluff was embraced in the dedication. The word "dedication" was on everyone's tongue again; here the case grew directly from the Cottage City park case, and relied hopefully on that decision. But the defendant argued that there could be no dedi- cation for the purpose of a view, which, after all, was a form of emptiness; and pointed out also that there had always been bath- houses, a pagoda, a wharf, and a railroad running under the bluff- enough, surely, to show that the Oak Bluffs Company and its succes- sors in title had every right to build what they pleased.
The case was not decided by the supreme court until 1902, and then came a decision written by Oliver Wendell Holmes-now chief justice, and no longer with a "Jr." after his name. In a tem- perate, clearly phrased summary of the whole situation he upheld the plaintiffs. Not only was the open space dedicated to the public, but the view of the sea from the bluff was a valid part of the dedi- cation. As to the earlier structures which had been built on the beach, the court held that they had been contemplated in the original dedi- cation, that they were for the most part incidental to public use, and could not be construed to establish a right more extensive than over the ground they actually occupied.
For some years there was peace; then something happened at another spot in the resort, the shore of Lake Anthony bordering the original Vineyard Grove Company tract. Just at the turn of the century, the pond had been opened to the sea, between two jetties of stone, and thus turned into a harbor for yachts and small vessels. Dredging was carried on at intervals for several years, and in 1902 the material brought up from the bottom was used to cover the flats on the harborside. Along these flats, partly over the water, had run the famous plank walk of the old days, linking the Highlands arca with the camp ground; in fact there had been no other walk by which one might reach the Highland wharf. In summer the plank thoroughfare had been crowded with pedestrians, and along its course had stood the Rev. John D. King's museum, the barn of the horse railroad, shell and souvenir stores, and other structures.
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The plank walk had disappeared long ago, and eventually the Vineyard Grove Company decided the land could be sold for cottage lots. In 1908 three of the lots were sold to a Philadelphia dentist who erected a house and a garage. This closed forever the route of the famous plank walk which the resort at large had considered a public way. The question was raised whether the whole area between the water and the street-which ran parallel a short distance inland- had not been dedicated to the public by the company. Another suit was brought, and again a case of Attorney General vs. Vineyard Grove Company occupied the attention of the state supreme court.
This case was roughly parallel to the first suit of the same name, but it rested upon less concrete assumptions of fact. The original projectors of the Vineyard Grove Company were not available to testify as to their intentions. Had they meant to reserve or to dedicate the then useless strip of marshy land to the public? Probably they could not have answered, in any event; it seemed more likely that they might never have thought about the issue at all. The three confusing plans of the company were no help, although the first did indicate the disputed strip with the name "Lakeview" as if it might have been a park. As for the old plank walk, it had been closed at times at the company's order, but these times had been in winter when there was little or no public use of the walk. More- over, the town surveyor of highways had once ordered the walk closed, and he would have had no concern with it unless it had been a public way. There was, as in the other cases, no doubt that lots had been sold at higher prices because of park frontage or views, but was this particular view or outlook involved as a definite contractual relationship?
This time the decision went to the company. All the specific items which had swung the balance in previous cases were here lacking; time had erased the blackboard.
After this case there was, again, a lapse of years during which the memory of the early days became an even dimmer thing; how and why the Vineyard Grove Company had been formed was largely forgotten. The newer generation knew the corporation prin- cipally because it operated the Oak Bluffs bathing beach. The sale of lots, by former standards, was in the doldrums, partly because
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the most desirable land had been taken up. The Baptists continued to meet on the Highlands, but their annual sessions were soon to cease and their temple to slip into decay. The Martha's Vineyard Institute was closed, and its buildings neglected. Agassiz Hall pre- served no sign of its old pride and dignity, for its steps were sunken, the piazza floors trembled underfoot, the canvas covering of the roof waved and flapped in the wind, and even the concrete foundation walls had crumbled to pebbles. At last, in 1920, the Vineyard Grove Company was sold to new interests, for the first time becoming entirely a mainland concern.
The more energetic management of the Oak Bluffs bathing beach came as a sharp reminder to summer patrons that the old days of shiftlessness were over. Cottagers were expected to pay for what use they made of the beach, and the company intended to control its property as it saw fit. Summer visitors and others who objected to rates or rules had little recourse, since the company controlled all the accessible beach except two short strips owned by the town. Of these, only one was open as a bathing place.
Between the Oak Bluffs bathing beach and the steamboat wharf was a strip of the company's shorefront which was unimproved save for barriers placed by the state Department of Public Works to prevent erosion. The bluff ended in a ragged tangle of long grass and weeds; here and there it broke away into yellow sand which made up the face of the cliff; and there was more or less litter of paper bags, boxes, peanut shells and the like. Ocean Park was main- tained by the town at considerable expense, but directly across the street, in the direction of the water view, lay this waste bluff, weedy and sagging. The prospect was one of shiftlessness and decay. Not unnaturally, when summer residents gathered and discussed the beach, they said it would be a good thing for the town to take over this strip for public purposes, improving it like a park; and when business men of the resort talked of development and better summer business, as they did constantly, they thought of the beach as the place to begin a program of advancement.
In 1925 the subject began to be considered at town meetings, and in December of that year a proposal to take the beach between the wharf and the bathhouses was put before the voters. The plan was
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opposed by pessimistic counsellors. For instance, the town counsel, Judge Frank Vera, said that there would be a, land damage case, to be tried before a Bristol County jury, and that the jury would undoubtedly find damages of from $150,000 to $200,000 in favor of the Vineyard Grove Company. This prophesy was remembered later.
The following spring the matter was brought up again at a special town meeting and this time, despite the opposition of the company, the town decided to take the strip of beach by right of eminent do- main. The vote stood eighty to forty; but the whole number of registered voters in the town was 573. The company made its last stand at a hearing before the park board on the proceeding of taking the beach, but the result was a foregone conclusion. The town went ahead as rapidly as possible, and lost no time in building concrete retaining walls, grading the bluffs, applying topsoil, and cultivating green turf to greet the arriving visitor.
A year later, in May, 1927, the issue of land damages, on the company's suit, did come before a Bristol County jury in New Bed- ford. The jurors embarked on a steamer on a sunny day and viewed the new waterfront park. Apparently it seemed to them attractive. In the courtroom they listened to a variety of conflicting testimony. The president maintained that the beach was worth $110,000, based upon its possibilities of development. The company's 638 bathhouses had resulted in a profit of $24.22 apiece during the pre- vious season, he testified, and the jury was apparently to draw the conclusion that a multiplication of bathhouses on the strip of beach in question would result in a multiplication of this profit.
A Cape Cod real estate developer came to the witness stand to say that he believed the Vineyard ought to attract 100,000 visitors. He described a possible development of the waterfront, showing on an elaborate drawing how a row of stores and amusement places would look along the bluff. He had included a radio shop, a hot dog and lunch room, a woman's wear shop, a children's store, a haberdashery, a beauty shop and a photograph studio, not to mention another carrousel. This development, he said, would cost, perhaps, $82,040, and would prove a good investment. The jury, unacquainted with the history of the resort, could not compare this proposal with
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the enterprises of other years, nor could it understand why no major project had been launched by private capital at Oak Bluffs since the days of the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company. Indeed, the jurors were nothing taken aback that this developer from the mainland should, in his artistic drawing, put almost as much business on the bluff as the whole town had been able to accumulate since its beginning.
For the town, Island real estate experts gave their opinions of the value of the land at from $7,500 to $18,000. For the company, another expert mentioned $150,000 and was willing to go even higher. The psychology of the occasion was with him, for there is a human tendency to see all abstract opportunities as large, and the very nature of a summer resort encourages every possible embellish- ment of the future-until it comes to the point of spending one's own money. The assessed valuation of the strip of beach was $18, 100, and an assessor of the town testified that the maximum overnight population of the resort was about 16,000 a figure to be compared with the conjectural 100,000 of the Cape Cod expert.
The case ran its course and in due time the jury returned a verdict of $77,250 which the town would have to pay for beach on which the commonwealth of Massachusetts had spent some $20,000 for control of erosion; beach which the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company had carried at no value whatever; and bluff which, until the town's intervention, had run to weeds, grass and rubbish. Exceptions were taken to the state supreme court, but they were not sustained, and the bill fell due. The Vineyard Grove Company had discovered gold in one of the most unlikely of all places.
However, the full meaning of the verdict of the sanguine Bristol County jury did not become manifest until the town of Oak Bluffs discovered, some time later, that the price of $77,250, plus steadily accumulating interest, included the beach only to the high water mark. There had been an error by someone, and the public still did not have a right to enter the water except at extreme high tide; and if the tide receded, there was no right to come out of the water until the next flood. Under new management, the company proceeded to station a policeman on the beach to prevent all persons from crossing. The upshot was that the town made the most of the two
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parcels of shore which were all its own, and sought by band concerts and other means to invite the public.
This particular difficulty was eventually compromised. But in the years that followed there was a more active interest on the part of the company in its general holdings. The public had lost sight of the restrictions in the original deeds, but it was now reminded, for instance, that buildings must be used exclusively for domestic pur- poses, that gaming and lewdness were prohibited, that no intoxi- cating liquors could be made, sold or kept for sale on the premises, and that cottagers were subject to "such rules, by-laws and regula- tions as may, from time to time, be adopted" by the company or its successors "for the due and orderly government of the grounds, and for police and sanitary purposes"; and that the penalty for violation was outright forfeiturc.
The different plans of the development were brought to the front again, and cottagers found that odd corners and open spaces were still claimed by the company. Sometimes it was necessary for a sum- mer resident to negotiate for land which he believed to be his own, or part of a park, or of a street. As the company carried on its own exploration of land titles, the boundaries of streets and parks became unsettled and disputed.
Sometimes cottagers were willing to purchase a release of the restriction in the old deeds, and the company was usually ready to grant such releases at the rate of $100 a lot. But there were several decisions of the state supreme court which seemed to make it clear that such releases were of no valuc whatever. For instance, in the case of Rose F. Goulding vs. Lydia E. Phinney-which was, as it happened, an Oak Bluffs case-the court had held that such restric- tions were not for the benefit of the developing corporation alone, but for the benefit of purchasers in general and their grantees, and a deed from the company purporting to release its rights, where no other owners of lots on the tract joined, was of no effect. At least two other cases went back to the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company restrictions, Hopkins vs. Smith and Sayles vs. Hall, reminding the inquirer what an amazing amount of law had been brought into existence by the development of this summer resort.
Another phase of the increased activity of the Vineyard Grove
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Company related to old rights of way. A landowner on the High- lands, for instance, found his direct access to the beach, which lay across the company's land, disputed. He had acquired rights of the old Highland House, and the hotel had enjoyed two easements, one the right to go to and from the beach "in the way now used," and, the other to use the beach in front of the hotel property. The com- pany contended that the first easement had lapsed (indeed, no one knew where "the way now used" might have been-presumably it had eroded into the sea), and the second easement was argued to give no right of passage over company land. The land court found against the company. Exceptions were taken to the state supreme court, but the full bench upheld the decision.
Soon the property owners of the Highlands began to form a pro- tective association, and their joint action resulted in the setting up of a new corporation, the Highlands Property Trust, which acquired by purchase all the holdings of the Vineyard Grove Company, in- cluding the original Oak Bluffs bathing beach which Capt. Shubael Lyman Norton had started so many years before. The purchase was completed in the late winter of 1933, and as a result of the transfer the Oak Bluffs Beach was sold to the town of Oak Bluffs for $35,000.
The leaders in this renaissance of the Highlands were George B. Dowley, Ernest H. Cook, A. E. Vondermuhll, and Andrew A. Highlands, all summer residents. A year earlier, somewhat in antic- ipation of the purchase, the same group had taken over the High- land bathing beach (the old wharf had long since disappeared) and replaced the old structures with an attractive beach clubhouse and bathhouses, a new venture in the resort life of the Island.
These, then, were the far-off events toward which the course of the Vineyard Grove Company had led since the boom of the late sixties of the preceding century; and the errors of commission and omission which so liberally sprinkled the trail were expiated in the interest of the summer resident in slow time.
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XLII
Endings
Late in the month of June, 1SS9, the locomotive of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad was hung with streamers of black crepe; deep in mourning, the Active steamed from Edgartown to Cottage City with a puffing which seemed measured and solemn. Capt. Nathaniel M. Jernegan was dead, and his body was being brought from Boston where he had ended his days as inspector in the custom house. But after Captain Jernegan's funeral the mourning black remained on the engine to serve a further purpose. Capt. Grafton N. Collins had died at Edgartown, a day later than his old associate; the two cap- tains had begun and ended their careers together, and their mourning was united.
This was the beginning of a period of conclusion which in some of its phases has been described already. The outstanding figures in the summer resort development of Martha's Vineyard passed from the scene, and their era ended with a sharpness of definition which is often lacking in human affairs.
Hebron Vincent, last survivor of the small group of Edgartown Methodists who founded the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting, died in 1890. In the words of scripture, "His eye was not dim." It would be a serious mistake to think of Hebron Vincent as a ranter and shouter of those naive early days when emotional religion was taking the town by storm. He was one of eleven children, the son of a farmer, and by some surpassing diligence he educated him- self, won admission to the ministry, and but for ill health would have become a college graduate. As it was, Wesleyan University bestowed upon him an honorary degree of M.A. in 1869. For twelve years he was a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Agricul- ture; he wrote on the Mental Faculties of Domestic Animals, and on Green Manuring; and he was the first to suggest the holding of farmers' institutes. For many years he was a member of the Edgar- town school committee, president of the Dukes County Educational Society, and prolific in ideas as to education. He became Register of Probate of the county, and a friend and counsellor of younger generations.
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Summer morning detail, Edgartown waterfront, 1935
Photograph by the author
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In years when the cause of anti-slavery was unpopular, he was a vigorous champion of abolition, with no slight intention of giving quarter. Old photographs show his lean face, a furze of white hair under the chin, at the cheeks and temples, and thinning somewhat above the forehead. A high white collar sheaves the throat, and a black tie is knotted in broad and painstaking decorum. The eyebrows are white and inclined to be bushy, and the eyes under them are deep and bright. The deepest lines are about the thin, firm mouth. All in all the expression seems to preserve for all time a quizzical dignity, an alertness, a spirit gleaming within. He was eighty-five when he died.
Hebron Vincent wrote two volumes of history of the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting, the first covering the period from 1835 to 1858, and the second devoted principally to the decade from 1858 to 1869. The tone of the two volumes is marked by a noticeable change : the first records with a literalness now amusing some of the extravagances of the early meetings; the second is broader, milder; and more content.
Joel H. Hills, whose promotional instincts had been brought among the sea captains of Martha's Vineyard by some ill star, died in 1892, at his Oak Bluffs cottage. Among his pallbearers were Capt. Shubael Lyman Norton and Dr. Harrison A. Tucker; and the Hon. Erastus P. Carpenter of Foxboro accompanied the body on the journey to the mainland. What of Joel Hills? His business interests tell something : among them were the Kankakee, Ill., Slack Water Navigation Company, and the Eyelet and Buttonhole Attachment Company. He was also concerned in the Shelter Island develop- · ment. His personal interests, too, are informative : he was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery, the Newton Jersey Stock Club, the Boston Corn Exchange; and he was one of the original trustees of the Newton Public Library, and a thirty-second degree Mason.
Ichabod Norton Luce died in 1894 at the age of seventy-five. "And who is a radical"? asked the Rev. John D. King, one time agent of the Vineyard Grove Company, at his funeral. "The radical is one who is not controlled by the beggarly motives of party expe- diency, and who comprehends the future as well as the present,. or
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he is the man whose better humanity inspires ideals far in advance of the wornout traditions of the past." Ichabod N. Luce was a tall figure standing apart : abolitionist, boat builder, mariner, forty-niner, senator, keeper of the Gay Head Light, denouncer of speculative enterprises, divider of a town.
In 1895 William Bradley and Samuel Osborn died : the former not a captain but a captain's son, merchant, and director of the great Oak Bluffs Company, one time postmaster at Edgartown and a director of the Martha's Vineyard National Bank; the latter agent, owner and outfitter of whaleships, ruthless and forbidding of coun- tenance, a strong, hard, substantial man who "took his thousands from the savings bank to be lost in Katama and the Martha's Vine- yard Railroad stocks." He believed these enterprises would mean the up-building of Edgartown.
Following the disaster of 1871, Mr. Osborn went to Congress in an attempt to obtain from the federal government compensation for the loss of whaling vessels, and the lost season of the Europa. It took him two seasons as a Congressman before he was successful; and later he said that the quality of the debates in the House of Rep- resentatives in Washington was nothing compared to those of the Edgartown town meetings. It is told of Samuel Osborn that he said to green young men from inland, who were contemplating shipping for whaling voyages, "There's just this about life on a whaleship-you have to take your mince pie cold."
It has been recorded already that Holder Milk Brownell died in 1893, and Dr. Harrison A. Tucker in 1894. Capt. Shubael Lyman Norton lived until 1901, to the age of seventy-six, and then the venerable East Indiaman and father of all Oak Bluffs went from the scene in which he had played a role second to none. Just a year later, the Hon. Erastus P. Carpenter, Captain Norton's principal associate, his friend and enemy, died also. In 1901 Mr. Carpenter had built the Sea Cliff Inn on Nantucket, and his son, Will Carpenter, former manager of the Mattakeeset Lodge, went to manage it.
Who was left as the new century gathered its first momentum? Not one of the actors in the comedy drama of railroad financing, real estate development and resort building in miniature. And what
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of their work, their infinite pains, their hopes, their costly ventures, remained for the rising generations to see and to enjoy?
The Sea View was gone, with its old rival the Highland House. The Martha's Vineyard Railroad ran for the last time in 1896, the Old Colony at last taking its loss after years of defaulted interest payments and foreclosure proceedings. There was nothing soon but a right of way and a streak of rust; the trestlework along the beach whitened and splintered in the storms and suns of many seasons, until passersby of a new generation had forgotten why it was ever built. The right of way proved most enduring of all, for instead of an intangible grant to operate over certain land, it had conveyed actual title of the land itself, and thus a series of law suits, real estate transactions and surprising anachronisms was projected into the new century.
On its voyage to the Island, the old Active, pride of the railroad, had undergone an adventure. Now it saw adventure again. Its name had been changed in later years to South Beach, and contractors in Boston purchased the South Beach for dull but useful labor. James E. Chadwick of Edgartown, for one period a director of the old railroad, was now charged with the duty of shipping the locomotive. Track was laid in Main Street, and the South Beach, once the Active, made one final, glorious progress through the heart of the town to the water. A length of track was laid ahead, and then picked up behind. There was a tight squeeze when the time came to turn at the foot of Main Street, and the buildings on either side were rubbed a little; but the turn was made, and the engine steamed to the coal wharf where she was loaded on a schooner.
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