USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 3
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But all thought of fatigue vanished when one stood for the first time on the cliffs.
"It is what Niagara would be," wrote Daniel Webster, "if in- stead of one hundred and fifty feet of falling water, it exhibited a perpendicular bank of that height, composed of lines, strata and sections of various earths of brilliant and highly contrasted colors."
Gay Head dazzlingly bright in the full sun of a summer day; Gay Head serene and gilded as it matched the afterglow in the western sky toward which it looked; Gay Head, a wonder which raced in the veins and throbbed in the temples-here nature had become, with- out warning, fiercely imaginative.
When one had looked his fill from many angles, he could dig in the clay for fossils with which some strata were thickly stored. Professor Silliman had found the vertebra of a lizard as large in circumference as an ordinary plate, relic of a creature which he said must have been a hundred feet long.
Aside from the spectacle of the cliffs themselves, there was a private marvel arranged by the government of the United States. Since the headland was a vital marker for coastwise shipping, Con- gress had voted funds for a lighthouse as early as 1798. A new tower was erected in 1858 and 1859, and there was installed one of the most remarkable lenses conceived by man. Augustin Jean Fresnel had completed his researches into the nature of light, and his dis- coveries had found application to the building of lighthouses in 1822, with the use of separate rings or prisms of glass to build up a single giant beam of light. This particular lens, the most ambitious which had been constructed up to that time, was exhibited at the World's Fair in London in 1851. It was purchased by the United States government for the sum of $16,000.
The lens was made of one thousand and three prisms. To the lay eye it seemed to be built of glass clapboards at top and bottom, with enormous bullseye magnifying lenses in the center. The clapboards, of course, reflected the light and accumulated it as they passed it successively to the bullseye through which it shone far out over the
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sea. This elaborate structure of glass was held in an iron frame and the lantern revolved by clockwork.
Visiting the light the year after its completion, General David Hunter Strother, who wrote in Harpers Magazine under the pseu- donym Porte Crayon, thus described its impression upon him :
"The whole dome of heaven from the center to the horizon was flecked with bars of misty light, revolving majestically on the axis of the tower. These luminous bars, although clearly defined, were transparent, and we could distinctly see the clouds and stars behind them. Of all the heavenly phenomena that I have had the good for- tune to witness-borealis lights, mock suns or meteoric showers-I have never seen anything that, in mystic splendor, equalled this trick of the magic lantern of Gay Head."
Even today, in a generation surfeited with marvels and bored with the nightly radiance of more than one Great White Way, there will often be many automobiles at Gay Head, waiting as the dusk increases until the curtains in the tower are furled and the light kindles again into a beacon, a magic lantern of the sky.
As for the Indian community of Gay Head, that, too, was unusual. After King Philip's war there were few Indians left in New Eng- land. Here on Gay Head, alone in all the New World, the hands ot white men and red men were never raised against one another. The wisdom of Thomas Mayhew showed what fairness and understand- ing, coupled with an ability to lead men, might have accomplished elsewhere as well; and the lives of the Indians through the years showed the adaptability and vigor of their race. In 1665 "Caleb Cheeshahteamuck, Indus," was graduated from Harvard College in a class of seven members; a Vineyard Indian, whose birthright was skill on shore and sea, had mastered Greek and Latin and become a scholar by the white men's standards, all within twenty-five years of the settlement of Great Harbor on the Vineyard !
While King Philip waged his war of extermination, Gay Head Indians drilled under arms, in loyalty to Governor Mayhew, and under his authority; a circumstance far more remarkable than would have been the arming and drilling of a regiment of Germans during the World War. Unfortunately the point of view of Governor May- hew was never to become common.
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Wherever one comes upon the Gay Head Indians, in whatever year, they are able, friendly, alertly aware of the value of their two cultures. In 1888 one of their number was to serve with distinction in the Massachusetts legislature, and in the World War they were to send more men into service, proportionately, than any other town in the state.
But the fact of their being Indians was of greatest interest to travellers and, later, to summer visitors; that and their yokes of oxen, their thrifty community, the charm and physical beauty espec- ially of their children, the unaccustomed sight of American Indians at home in their own land. To many visitors it was disappointing not to find tepees and feathers; there were none, although excursions for many years were to be advertised with circulars bearing pictures of conventional Indians in costume, at the door of a wigwam.
VI "The Groves Were God's First Temples."
All this time-up to the year 1860, when Edgartown was fancying herself as a future watering place-no one seems to have thought of the possibilities of the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting. They proved to be of the most amazing character. But in order to appre- ciate what happened in the sixties, it is necessary to turn back to much earlier years and to watch the beginning and lusty growth of the camp meeting.
The religious background of Martha's Vineyard has no chapters of witch-burning and repressive zeal; in this respect the Island did not share in what is generally understood to be the austere heritage of New England. Vineyarders were austere enough, at times, but they were, from the beginning, a community of individualists, living and planning in their natural temper. The rulers of the Island in the formative years, the Missionary Mayhews, instead of destroy- ing the Indians with an Old Testament scheme of life like John Eliot, gave them a new opportunity of self-realization. The same capacity to hold life above dogma was evident in the affairs of the white men themselves.
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As a matter of fact the Island was politically a part of New York, and spiritually a place by itself. It was significant that Jonathan Mayhew, of Chilmark birth, was to become the first great American religious liberal, the founder of Unitarianism.
Early in the nineteenth century the spiritual welfare of Edgartown was in the guardianship of Parson Thaxter, who had been the chap- lain of Prescott's regiment at Bunker Hill. He wore the cocked hat and knee breeches of pre-Revolutionary days, and was by way of being a Unitarian, a fact which led some of his flock to regard him as a gentle heretic. His death seemed to confirm the passing of an old order; indeed the last years of his life had overlapped the vigorous rise of Island Methodism.
There had been Methodists on the Vineyard before 1800, but the "new religion" first began to take hold with earnestness between 1810 and 1820. A milestone was the arrival of the Rev. Erastus Otis in 1809, a minister whose preaching established a new style and a new heartiness, winning converts in the face of derision and opposition from the conservatives. This zealous evangelism with its revivals and rousing sermons struck a responsive chord.
"Why, Sir," wrote the Rev. Samuel Devens, "this place has been the stronghold of fanatical preachers, and not seldom patients have been transferred from the hands of the clergyman to those of the physician. What think you of meetings every night in the week for six weeks, yes for three months in succession, prolonged sometime even into midnight, until the vestry floor, by its apparently lifeless trophies, bears melancholy witness to the tremendous effects wrought upon the nervous system by the machinery of superstition? Such unwelcome statements I would not publish unless supported by the best of evidence. They proceed from the lips of those who have been constant attendants on such occasions."
"A farmer, who had been in the habit of attending the protracted meetings," Mr. Devens continued, "was much wrought upon. One day, while hoeing in his field alone, he was worked up into a state of uncontrollable ecstasy. In the wild rush of his feelings he threw his hoe into the air with all the momentum that lay in his muscles and shouted to the top of his lungs."
Mr. Devens, a Unitarian divine interested in carrying forward the
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influence of Parson Thaxter, was not an unprejudiced witness. But there is no room for doubt that religious fervor ran at a high pitch, and that Methodism rose triumphant on its wings. Indeed, the growing congregations occupied one church after another in rapid succession, each larger than the last, and in 1843 they dedicated a monumental structure with a stately tower far higher than the chaste steeple of the Congregational church a few blocks away, with classic pillars of heroic size, and a lofty and vast auditorium.
The vogue of camp meetings was a timely growth which fitted inevitably into the zealous evangelism of the Vineyard Methodists. In the summer of 1799 the McGee brothers, one a Methodist clergy- man and the other a Presbyterian, were in the course of a journey from Tennessee to Ohio and had occasion to halt for a few days at a small Kentucky settlement on the Red River. When Sunday came there happened to be an unusually large congregation assembled at the only place of worship, a small church which had been built by Presbyterians. At the close of the services, the two McGees were invited to preach to the people, and they did so in such a fashion that men and women wept aloud and called for divine mercy, others sprang to their feet, praising God and shouting hallelujahs, and there ensued such a scene of ecstasy and excitement that the regular minis- ters walked out in high dudgeon, with the few of their flock who were willing to follow them.
The singing, yelling and praying went on at a great rate, and news of the affair spread rapidly, with the result that in the afternoon greater crowds poured in from the countryside. The multitude be- came so great that the McGees removed the services to the neighbor- ing forest, a stand for preaching was thrown together, and the meeting continued long after sundown with no lessening of the public excitement.
On Monday the people returned to the grounds, prepared to stay. The story is that some brought tents and provisions. A camp meeting was in progress, and for several days it continued at a glorious pitch. Members of many denominations mingled, forgetting all differences, and seeking together the means of grace by prayer, hymn singing, repentance and preaching. The marvelous success of the series of meetings became known everywhere, and preachers far and wide
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went out into groves and invoked the power of God to shake the world from its lethargy and to save and restore the souls of the people.
Within a few years camp meetings had spread to Cape Cod, and in the year 1827 the Rev. John Adams-"Reformation John" -- who was Methodist pastor at Holmes Hole, brought the institution to Martha's Vineyard. This minister was a flaming sword, an exhorter, a mighty shaker of the devil's kingdom, and his week of open meetings near the West Chop lighthouse brought forty sinners into the fold and demonstrated the power of the camp meeting.
It would have been strange if the Edgartown Methodists had de- layed long after this. In 1835 six of them put aside their worldly occupations and went out to a certain grove. It was Jeremiah Pease, a lay exhorter and later a camp meeting chorister and tentmaster, who had chosen the site in William Bradley's sheep pasture near the Vineyard Sound side of East Chop.
Here stood a grove of enormous oaks, the largest in New Eng- land; and at only a short distance was a lake of fresh water, then called Squash Meadow Pond. The land sloped gently, embracing the lake and shelving into a white beach. Despite its natural beauty, the spot was a solitary one. Bordering the grove was the open land of the sheep pasture, "the poorest land that ever lay outdoors" as some Islanders have later said; but even poor land will yield remark- able crops if sown with dragon's teeth. And as it was, these acres grew blackberry vines, huckleberry and bayberry bushes, beach plum and sumach. There were thickets of scrub oak, occasional pines and cedars, here and there a wild cherry tree, and in the open spaces wild grass which turned to red in the fall. On either side of the pond, the shore line rose into bluffs where patches of turf overhung the beach, and from which one could look far out over Vineyard Sound.
The nearest settlement was at Eastville-known as the East Side to some, and as the Barbary Coast, in more or less humorous allusion, to others. Eastville nestled close to Holmes Hole harbor, across fron the village, although it belonged within the limits of the town of Edgartown in all except loyalty. The residents paid taxes to Edgar- town, but omitted all allegiance which was not required; in fact, they offset the necessary form by expressing hostile opinions in
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public. For instance, when Tarleton C. Luce of East Chop was asked about a procession of Edgartown teams going to work on a new road, he remarked, "It's a caravan from hell." But this refinement of antagonism belonged to the future.
Eastville was a small and ancient community, well steeped in stories of shipwreck and salvage, smuggling and sea treasure. From the salty past had come the suggestion of the Barbary Coast. There was a landing less than a mile from the oak grove and Squash Meadow Pond, but the road was sandy and narrow,-no more than a cart track. To reach Eastville from Holmes Hole, one had to cross the harbor by boat, or take a circuitous route by land around the head of Lagoon Pond, driving some seven and a half miles to reach a destination not one mile distant in a straight line. The way to the oak grove followed the same course. From Edgartown the grove was between seven and eight miles over a sandy road which stretched over hills and through miles of scrub oak, although the distance in a straight line was no more than six miles.
Instead of using the inland route, the camp meeting pioneers of 1835 transported themselves and their gear by water, rafting ashore what was necessary and using skiffs for the rest.
Could there have been a camp meeting site less likely to figure largely in the summer resort history of Martha's Vineyard? It was inaccessible, it was unimproved, it was barren. The turf, once broken, revealed yellow sand and gravel, which did not easily grow over again. How could one dream of soft green grass where only bay- berries and brambles would grow? But the oaks were full of years and majesty, the pond was blue and serene, the sea winds were gentle in summer as they swept across East Chop, and from the bluffs there was a noble outlook . .. the place was ever so impracticable and ever so beautiful.
No more material than necessary was brought from Edgartown. A rough shed was built, largely of driftwood of which there was a plentiful although variegated supply; in front of the shed was an elevated stand and seat for the preacher. The whole structure was known as "the preacher's tent," and in it the clergy were to lodge, bedded on the ground in clean rye straw. Looking backward, years later, Hebron Vincent wrote: "Fortunate was he of the cloth who
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Camp meeting pastorale, from a lithograph "conceived and caused to be executed" by Hebron Vincent in 1853
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had a quilt or an overcoat for a pillow." He was in a position to know for he himself had been admitted to the ministry in 1834.
A railing in front of the shed, enclosing a space about twelve by twenty-five feet, made provision for a choir and for repentant sinners when they came forward for prayers after the exhortations. Seats within the enclosure were used alike by singers and the reclaimed souls.
In a semi-circle about the shed and stand, nine tents were pitched, some of them made of old sails, and none completely symmetrical. Some of the tents had extensions of canvas, in the form of awnings, under which meals could be eaten. All were occupied by companies, for the most part church societies or groups, a canvas partition being run through the tent to separate the sexes. Both men and women slept on straw on the ground. Not much cooking was done at the grove. The campers brought with them cold corned beef, brown bread and sweet cake, and the steeping of fresh tea to go with these provisions was the most ambitious venture. --
The area cleared of underbrush was "not so large but a marksman might throw a pebble across it with sufficient force to kill a bird." Probably the encampment occupied about half an acre. For the worshippers seats were provided, many of them made from split trees with pegs driven for legs. There were no backs.
The first voice was raised from the preachers' stand on Monday evening, August 24, 1835, and throughout the week, morning, afternoon and evening meetings were held. There were also prayer meetings in the society tents. Hebron Vincent wrote, "The waving trees, the whispering breeze, the pathetic appeals, the earnest prayers, and the songs of praise, as well as the trembling of the sinners under the Word, and the shining countenances of Christians lighted up with holy joy, all conspired to say, 'Surely the Lord is in this place !' "
According to the official report of the meeting, Friday was "em- phatically the great day of the feast. Heavenly music saluted our ears at an early hour, which if it could not be called a serenade of angels, was certainly that of happy souls saved from sin. The spirit of devotion during the morning exercises was deep and general among the hosts of God's elect."
On Saturday morning the campers formed a procession and bade
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one another farewell; then came the benediction. Some two or three hundred brethren and sisters arose from their seats and stood awhile, in testimony that God had deepened the work of grace in their hearts during the meeting.
A few hundred persons attended the meeting; Hebron Vincent thought that no more than a thousand were on the ground at any one time. But there were sixty-five converts. It was voted unani- mously to purchase such lumber as had been used in the construction of the camp, and to keep it on the ground in readiness for another year, the first collective property of the camp meeting.
The new temple had been consecrated. Zealous brethren of the "new religion" had planted the seed of an institution which was to grow and grow; but what fruit this seedling was to bear in a far-off time of harvest was hidden from their eyes. The encampment broke up, the grove shed its leaves in fall and became cold and dank in winter, and the cries of the sea gulls overhead were no more than an eery whisper after the full-throated hymns of the evangelists in the cathedral of oaks.
VII
"The Angel of the Lord encampeth . .. "
Again when summer comes the campers are in the grove, and strong is the Word among them. There is a "universal spirit of agonizing prayer for 'all the mind of Christ.' " Spectators gather to look on, but they manifest the utmost decorum and propriety in their behavior so that "scarcely the smile of contempt or the curled lip of the scorner" is to be seen; the preachers eschew fine style and subtle themes-their subjects are emphatically evangelical and prac- tical, "depravity, atonement and holiness"; many are baptized by water, and a great number are baptized with "the Holy Ghost and with fire."
One day "an awful sense of the presence of God pervades the encampment, and the slain of the Lord lie upon every side . . and at eight o'clock we retire to our tents to besiege the enemy in his
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lurking places. The battle waxes warmer and warmer until after ten o'clock when the enemy gives way and the shout of triumph rings all through our lines. Some now retire to rest, but many remain upon the field to consecrate a glorious victory."
The beauty of the grove, the splendor of the oaks, and the blue strait beyond the beach where vessels pass-they are not proof against periods of bad weather. But when the clouds open and the deluge comes, the brethren say, "Not only the natural, but also the spiritual rain descends richly, refreshingly and copiously upon us, agreeable to the promise (Ezek. xxiv 26) 'And I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.' " Used to discomfort, prepared for rude living, the campers are not disheart- tened; and when the skies clear, they rejoice yet again.
At times prayer meetings in the tents continue late into the night "in such active and determined operation that the brethren are un- willing to stop them, and the work goes on until a late hour in a manner which baffles description." When the secretary calls around at the tents for reports, he is told : "We are almost all sanctified in out tent," "We have had a clean victory in our tent," and "Report Fourth Street tent all in order." Some are converted, some are reclaimed and others are quickened.
Now, after the worshippers have been on their knees for an hour, comes one of the heaviest thunder storms known on the Vineyard for years. But those who are kneeling remain "for a long time suppliant before Him in whom we have trusted. The vivid flashes of lightning play about us but do not harm us; the rain descends; and as the almost deafening claps of thunder break near us, seeming to rend the very heavens, the repeated response at the top of the voice of 'Hallelujah' from a devout minister of Jesus, accompanied with expressions of praise to God from many others of the company, presents a scene of moral sublimity which it is difficult to describe. The remembrance of it can never be effaced from the powers of recollection. God keeps Israel in peace this night."
The campers do not pretend that stillness in meetings or in revivals is a virtue. There is noise enough at the grove-"not (for the mom- ent, at any rate) the crash and roar of the cataract, the momentary discharge of heaven's artillery . . . but the calm, deep flow of the
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river, gathering strength from its tributaries, and thus wending its way on in majesty to its ocean terminus. It is, indeed, the sweet gushing utterance of praise from the lips of Christian men and women whose hearts are imbued with a deep and abiding sense of the great love and mercy of God manifested in their redemption."
And now a veteran Wesleyan arises and "standing among us as one who has come down from a former age, declares that he has conversed with Wesley."
At half past two on an August morning-long before the dawn has begun to flush the sky above Cape Pogue-the entire encamp- ment is aroused by a procession of singers who "after marching several times around the circle, engage in a prayer meeting which continues until broad daylight. Several of the companies leave the ground in marshalled processions, and move to the shore singing the songs of Zion."
Each summer there are three outstanding ceremonies, the Love Feast, the Parting and the Sacrament. The first of these is a time of "general victory and of general triumph with the people of the Lord." All the campers are gathered together, and one by one they present their testimonies, as many as can be heard in the time avail- able. Sometimes, in an hour, a hundred and fifty are heard, most of them giving "pointed professions of perfect love." It is "a pleasing family interview" at which all may speak of "their age in Christ." Sometimes the feast reminds the campers of Pentecost; "for, al- though we cannot say that we have testimonies from 'Parthians, Medes, Elamites, etc.' yet we do hear speak in the language in which we are spiritually born Americans, a Swede, a Swiss, an Englishman, an Irishman and one of the descendants of Ham." And most soul- stirring of all is to see a deaf and dumb sister "speak by signs of the goodness and wonderful works of God." There is "no Ashdod in the language of those who testify for Christ on these occasions."
The Sacrament, too, is impressive. On one occasion "the Lord's Supper is administered to two hundred and thirty-seven communi- cants, besides the preachers. It is a season of great power and solem- nity, in which many are refreshed with the bread which cometh down from heaven, and with the wine of the kingdom. The spec- tators of this scene, who surround the table, look on with the most
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