USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 6
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interests in the straw plant were sold to Vyse & Co. of London; but he continued as manager. Now he joined the throngs who visited Wesleyan Grove, and saw the crowds on the camp ground and the open pasture lying close by. The situation leaped into his under- standing.
The camp meeting association understood that the tract of land which was now so important and unattainable could have been purchased from Captain Norton for the sum of $3,000. But the Hon. Erastus P. Carpenter had come to Martha's Vineyard, and a new day had opened. Soon there would be advertisements and cir- culars, plans and maps everywhere :
HOME BY THE SEASIDE OAK BLUFFS, A NEW SUMMER RESORT
One Thousand Lots for Sale
The Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company, having pur- i chased the beautiful Grove, together with a large tract of land adjoining the Wesleyan Camp Ground, offer for sale at a price within the reach of all, lots in their beautiful grounds called Oak Bluffs, which have been surveyed and laid out by Robert Morris Copeland, Esq., the well known landscape gardener, with a view of meeting the tastes and wants of the people, and making it the most desirable and beautiful retreat in New England for families who desire a cheap and quiet home by the seaside during the summer months.
The natural beauties and advantages of this spot are well known to all who have sojourned for a season at the yearly gatherings of the Camp Meeting Association. Retired and quiet, yet easy of access from all points, with an extensive sea view, with facilities for bathing, fishing and sailing, and all kindred recreations, unsurpassed by any on our New England coast, Oak Bluffs offers unequalled attractions to those who desire the benefits of the sea air and out of door exercise with- out the discomforts of a fashionable and crowded watering place. The company have completed a wharf located at a point within three minutes' walk from any lot in the grove, for the accommodation of steamers and sailing crafts, which will afford frequent and easy communication with all parts of the country.
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A plan of the grounds exhibiting lots, avenues, parks, etc. is now ready.
For plans, terms, and conditions of sale, address or apply to SHUBAEL L. NORTON, President,
Oak Bluffs Land & Wharf Co. Edgartown, Mass.
XI A Seven Foot Picket Fence
The present generation does not need to be reminded what hap- pens when a war ends : how a whole nation suddenly becomes like a group of noisy children liberated from school or from duress, how anxiety and discipline are suddenly sent spinning away into the mist of discarded days, how everything seems possible and nothing impossible, how humanity plunges with vaulting ambition and light hearts into new enterprise, and how eager thirsts and hungers respond to each promise of fresh fun and joy.
Wesleyan Grove had already proved a natural outlet for the feel- ings of the war-liberated East. The conjunction of events was match- less. Here was the encampment near the sea, offering no real barrier of expense, no restraint which could not be reconciled, no reminder of responsibility, no stale lag from the past. To be sure, the sur- roundings at Wesleyan Grove were moral and religious. But flirtation was innocent; indeed, no visitor to the camp ground in the expansive days failed to remark upon the beautiful girls, and the custom of promenading by the sea, under the moonlight. So safe and respectable were the surroundings that the best families permitted their daughters to go "bluffing," and it was seldom that any harm came from the practice. Mere presence at the grove was sufficient for young people as for old; further introduction was unnecessary.
Throughout the encampment life was informal, social sponsorship would have been absurd, young people ran together as naturally as sheep in a pasture in the great outdoors. Those who dwell in tents at close quarters cannot have too many reserves; they must be intimate. At Wesleyan Grove they met at the pumps or at tent doors in various stages of undress, their housekeeping arrangements were not
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private, they were thrown into an easy way of life which was not regimented by the ringing of the camp meeting bell.
As cottages succeeded tents, the informality and intimacy were hardly lessened. Most of the cottages were developed by obvious steps from the tent idea. They had wide doors, like church doors, which opened to expose the entire interior of the cottages themselves, thus admitting all possible fresh air, preserving the idea of life in the open, and putting the family life forever on display. One passed under the trees, through winding walks, around circles, and every- where could not fail to observe what the cottagers were doing --- whether meals were being served, or daughters were lying in ham- mocks reading, or mothers sitting with their sewing, or social gatherings exchanging the gossip of the day.
Cottages were so near, moreover, that it was almost possible to proceed from one to another by hopping the gaps between piazza railings. Seated on these ornamented porches, the cottagers could hardly be said to be separated at all; they were part of one large concourse, a series in continual repetition, of delightful family groups-delightful because this was the life, the freedom, the change in which they took an ineffable pleasure.
The recreations were those which appealed to all who craved physical expression and contact with outdoor variety-sea, sea air and sunshine, escape into the woods and fields. Their skin felt the touch of magical influences, their bodies exulted. Certainly the age was not a vigorous one as historians now view it, but it was emerging from a stagnant background against which it made a not unimpres- sive contrast. Young men and young women knew no thrills of nude bathing parties at midnight, or joy rides over smooth roads; but they knew the same essence of escape and release. To be con- vinced of the high level of the flesh and the spirit upon which these campers lived in eager youth, just after the Civil War, it is only necessary to have heard the reminiscence of a white haired grand- father or grandmother. Not the content of the reminiscence but its manner-the far away look in the wistfully smiling face, the musing fondness, the light of an old excitement-tells the story of Wesleyan Grove.
The camp meeting services, too, were an exercise in expression.
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True, thousands of visitors at the grove-for the most part the transient sojourners-stayed away from prayer meetings and preach- ing services or paid little attention to them; but thousands of others found an ascending thrill of expression in the collective singing of hymns-that mighty aggregate of voices, thousands together, soaring into the summer sky-and when the benediction came they had never felt more hallowed and at peace. There was a spell, a touch of something eternal on the camp ground, the bluffs and the beaches in those years.
Not from the East alone, but from the whole country the summer visitors came flocking to Wesleyan Grove.
"These thousands of people who frequent Martha's Vineyard at this season have more and fresher pleasures than those who summer at Newport or Long Branch," reported Harper's Weekly, in 1868. "Here you see the latest fashions, and innocent flirtation is not unknown among the lads and lassies. They play croquet. Just below the steamboat landing there is a beach for bathing. And then there is fishing and sailing for those who are fond of aquatic sports, several good sailboats being always at anchor off the pier. When evening sets in, the girls put away their croquet and attend to the tea-making; then comes the evening service around the cottage doors, while outside the young people are promenading in the gaily lighted streets of the improvised village."
Oh to be young again, and at Wesleyan Grove when the skies were all clear, when the spirits leaped in expectancy, and the sun and sea air touched the flesh with a caress which one could wish might last forever. Each generation chances upon its own fulfillment, and the generation which saw the end of the war between the states had no more characteristic fling into the realm of its desires than on the camp ground at Martha's Vineyard.
All this was one phase of the national reawakening, but another was being enacted in the stock market, the counting room, and on the frontier. Confidence was everywhere, speculation had lost its monstrous reputation, visions grew. The years ahead were to see the building of incredible miles of railroads, the piling up of pyramids of finance, the glorification of trade and industry. Fortunes were to
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Photographs courtesy of Miss Chloe Coffin, James E. Chadwick, and Dukes County Historical Society
Upper left : Oak Bluffs in 1870, before the Sea View was built. Visitors walked across the open land to camp meeting. Upper right : the horse railroad linked the Highland wharf with the camp ground. Note the passengers with beaver hats. Lower left : Circuit Avenue in an informal moment. Lower right : under the big top, when camp meetings were held in a canvas tabernacle.
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be made in the West, no one was troubled with bankruptcy, money was plentiful, and expansion was in the air.
By a fortuitous combination of circumstances, this aspect of the national surge had come to Martha's Vineyard in the person of the Hon. Erastus P. Carpenter of Foxboro. The development of the camp meetings through the years since 1835 was to seem slower and more labored by contrast with the strides of the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Co., imbued with the spirit of the day.
The camp meeting association was up in arms, for it saw the ruin of religion and peace with the coming of the boom. There was a plan to buy out the new company, but the price was out of all reach. Then there was renewed talk of moving the camp meeting to some other place. Ah, but "there is too much property here, to say nothing of attachments to the place, to surrender for any ordinary cause, the privileges and blessings of this beautiful city, the admiration of all visitors to the spot." The camp meeting association had to own defeat. Hereafter it would be just one phase of a rollicking summer resort. But the surrender did not come gracefully, or without a struggle. From August, 1866, until April, 1867, the hostilities raged, and then settled down into an injured enmity.
"The members of the Land and Wharf Company," Hebron Vin- cent recorded, "are all of them highly respectable, some of them Christian men" and although they admit that they are bent on busi- ness, they insist that they have no plans at all antagonistic to the aims of the camp meeting. Nevertheless, the association feels that there is not a harmony of interests, and it seems hard to the directors that "gentlemen whose contiguous lands would never have been worth a tithe of their purchase money but for this religious meeting, should avail themselves of the opportunity to plant by their side a large interest so diverse in nature and object." Even after explana- tions had been made, this feeling persisted. However, as Hebron Vincent wrote, "The arrangements on both sides of the line are fixed facts . .. There could be nothing gained, but everything vitiated, by unfriendly words or acts."
In April, 1867, the Oak Bluffs Company agreed to sell or lease all its lots subject to the restrictions and regulations of the camp meeting association.
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Editorially, James M. Cooms Jr., in the Vineyard Gazette, ex- pressed an Edgartown point of view in these words: "We are not so close an adherent of optimism as to have readily acquiesced in the removal of the camp meeting from our Island, for although we may not see that direct good that it is the purport of this association to effect, and for which they do labor, and with that earnestness and zeal which should profit them much in spiritual things, yet we have taken knowledge that the leaven of good is there, and in time 'chat little leaven will leaven the whole.' . . . We believe the pleasures indulged in here to be perfectly legitimate, also that good has a wider range than that accorded it by the bigoted adherents of a sect church. Good may work out of the cultivation of the social elements as well as the religious. It is certain that men cannot be kept from evil by having moral maxims rehearsed to them as to how their outward life shall be, but by a cultivation from the inward to the outward. It is better to be good than merely to behave well."
A truce had been declared, but the camp meeting association proceeded to erect a seven foot picket fence to surround the whole of its thirty-six acres. The new barrier, one of the greatest undertakings of the kind which the region had ever seen, continued from the lake- side all the way around the camp ground to the waters of the lake again. From this time on the gates swung shut at ten in the evening, not to open again until morning. No one seemed to guess that, half a century later, some sober clergymen, with eyes smiling, would confess how they had, upon occasion, made use of loose pickets or managed to climb over the top of the fence in perilous and undig- nified fashion.
Mr. Cooms of the Vineyard Gazette thought this new Great Wall smacked of phariseeism.
"We can but think," he wrote, "that the camp meeting association will never regret this proceeding but once-and that regret will be for all time. It is carrying matters a little too far."
Mr. Cooms was wrong; the picket fence came to be, in a few decades, a dim and not unpleasant memory.
Not content with such a purely defensive measure, the camp meeting association, through a group of its directors and leaders, reached out in the spring of 1869 and purchased from Tarleton C.
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Luce, an Eastville property owner, fifty-five acres of land on the opposite side of the lake from the camp ground, reaching toward East Chop and including the highest bluffs of all. This region was known as the Vineyard Highlands. The purchasers were William H. Phillips of Providence, George F. Gavitt of North Dighton, Leonard Whitney Jr. of Watertown, John D. Flint of Fall River, and Lewis B. Bates of Taunton.
The first intention was that the newly acquired property should vest in the camp meeting association, but there were obstacles. For one thing, the conservativism of a great many adherents was firmly opposed. At length the five purchasers associated with them a number of other Methodists interested in the camp meeting and organized a new company, which they named the Vineyard Grove Company. One of the larger group, Rev. John D. King, who had somewhat broken down in the ministry, was appointed agent.
The Highlands, he testified years later, "was bought by a few of us; I had a small interest there, as a protection against what was claimed to be the enroachments of the Oak Bluffs Company; they didn't know but they would want a place to flee to, and it was bought for that purpose . . . " Did he know the officers of the Oak Bluffs Company? "We fought rather shy of each other, but we had a civil acquaintance."
With that superb and merciless irony of which human events are endlessly capable, the defenders of the camp meeting had brought into existence another land company which was never called upon to furnish sanctuary for the Methodists, but became, in other hands and decades later, a far more formidable antagonist of the camp meeting and of the resort than these founders had ever conceived.
X11 A Summer Resort is Built
One of the first acts of the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company was to have its lands laid out into cottage lots, avenues and parks. Robert Morris Copeland, of Boston, who made the topographical survey, showed an aversion for straight lines; there was hardly one
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in this new community of pasture land. Instead, the streets and avenues made twists and convolutions almost as involved as those of the camp ground which had been derived from the circles of tents. The first plan produced by Mr. Copeland was dated October 25, 1866, but it was never filed at the registry of deeds. After con- sideration, the directors thought it wise to increase the area of park land, and the stakes were ordered pulled up from a broad space lying nearest the salt water.
Through this and other changes, Oak Bluffs lost such names of avenues and streets as these: Suckamuck, Penobscot, Bomozeen, Potanoomut, Katahdin and Piscaiaquis. But it retained Penacook, Narragansett, Samoset, Kennebec, Tuckernuck and Naumkeag. The names on the camp ground were of different inspiration : they included Fisk, Beulah, Siloam, Pease, Commonwealth and Trinity.
The camp meeting landing was still at Eastville, and the Oak Bluffs Company now proceeded to build a wharf directly into Vine- yard Sound, not only offering access to their own land but far easier access to the camp ground itself. This new wharf was in what was known as bold water, with no shelter from seas in time of storm or from winter ice. Mariners doubted whether the structure would stand, but it braved the weather without difficulty, and its comple- tion in early July of 1867 marked a far reaching change in the affairs of the island. The wharf had cost about $5,000.
At the head of the wharf was erected a wooden building, ninety by twenty feet, a story and a half high, the first floor of which was designed for storage, office space, and restaurant facilities. The second floor was divided into lodging rooms for rental. This structure, bare and crude, without any sign of the customary ornamentation of the day, is known as the first hotel at Oak Bluffs, although one may question whether it was a hotel in any real sense of the word; at any rate, it differed little from some of the lodging establishments of the camp ground, except in size.
Already one cottage was going up on the Oak Bluffs tract. It was a pretentious summer residence for Mr. Carpenter himself. Before the end of 1867, three cottages had been built, and several contracts for the sale of lots had been completed. Outright sales began in 1868. By the end of 1869, the Oak Bluffs Company had
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sold about three hundred lots, with the proviso that they should be built upon within a year.
Activity on the camp ground continued undiminished. About forty-five new cottages were built in 1868. A mainland newspaper correspondent reported : "The most indifferent mechanics, who can only occasionally hit a nail on the head, collect five dollars a day for their unskilled and inaccurate services." But there were able mechanics at work also. "Many of the Druids are already on the ground," the correspondent continued (he was writing in July), "but the ringing hammer, their secular songs, the midnight serenade and the games of croquet all indicate the fact that the Presiding Elder has not yet pitched his tent." The air of Johnny Comes Marching Home, he added, would soon be changed and softened into Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy.
A Boston Transcript correspondent noted that some of the visitors "sad to say, are on the heretic side; but the pure air and simple life must be good even for heretics."
These comments were an accurate index of what was taking place. The spirit of play and a keen awareness of the boom could not be kept out of the camp ground even by a seven foot picket fence. A full week before the camp meeting there were from 1,200 to 1,500 persons in the grove. Fifty or sixty carpenters were at work, and it was not unusual for a cottage to be raised and finished "with its appendages" in a few days.
Here Hebron Vincent walked and asked himself, "Is it a reality? Am I really in the old Wesleyan Grove, or am I in some fairy-land? It must be the same place; but, O, how changed! The old oak forest, which I entered, with a few others, about thirty-two years ago, for the purpose of selecting a spot for the camp meeting site, has been cleared of underbrush and has become densely populated over broad acres. Instead of a few hundreds of poor, humble followers of the Master, who came here to worship, dwelling in rough tents, we have now, it is true, a remnant, a sprinkling of these, but mostly those of fashion, and many of wealth."
He estimated that the combined wealth of those having cottages and tents on the ground would amount to several millions of dollars.
About six hundred tent and cottage lots had been licensed by the
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camp meeting association for the year, and there seemed no limit to the future demand. The finance committee adopted a resolution that it was against the policy of the association for one person to hold for occupancy for himself or for hire more than one tent or cottage lot.
Across the lake or-as the saying was now to be-"over Jordan" the Vineyard Grove Company had employed one Charles Talbot to lay its land out into lots. The company had fixed its capital stock at $12,000, and had, in 1869, sold $12,000 worth of lots. One tenth part of all the proceeds from sales for the first year was to go to the Preachers' Aid Society of the Providence Conference of the Methodist church. The company was making plans to follow the lead of its vigorous rival at Oak Bluffs : a wharf was to be built; a bridge across Squash Meadow Pond, so that hereafter there would be two bodies of water, Sunset Lake inland, and Lake Anthony lying toward Vineyard Sound; and a plank walk from the projected High- land wharf to the camp ground.
Around these three centers, the activities of buying, selling and building went on at a rapid pace, gaining momentum, arousing hopes and expectations of a future of boundless development. The greatest of the three was the tract of the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company, in the hands of the Hon. E. P. Carpenter and the sea captains. In October, 1870, the inventory of the assets and liabilities of the company read as follows :
Assets :
Lots on the Bluffs
$15,000.00
Lots on diff. parts Grounds
46,600.00
Land recently purchased
3,466.70
Oak Grove House
8,000.00
Oak Bluffs House
2,000.00
Bath Houses
2,000.00
Wharf
6,000.00
Gate House
2,000.00
Cottage, Tuckernuck Ave.
1,500.00
Oil House
300.00
Police Office
300.00
Old Barber's Shop
200.00
Fire Engines
200.00
Sundries
500.00
Total
$88,066.70
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Amt. due from sundry parties
Amt. Funds in hands
$14,380.00 9,859.00
Total
Total Amt. Assets
$24,239.00 112,305.70
Total Amt. Liabilities
1,300.00
The statement showed how the Oak Bluffs Company was going ahead with conviction and enterprise, not simply to get rid of its lots, but to build up a watering place of importance. In two more years the statement of assets and liabilities had changed in almost incredible fashion; in October, 1872, this was its revelation :
Assets :
Sea View House
$80,000.00
North Bluff
40,000.00
40 lots leasing at $1,000
40,000.00
30 lots leasing at $500
15,000.00
170 lots in the market
42,500.00
13 lots in the market
5,200.00
Oak Grove House
10,000.00
Island House
8,500.00
Bath house and arbor
5,000.00
Wharf and Gate House
8,000.00
Chapel stock
7,500.00
Pavilion
3,000.00
Cottage, Penacook
1,200.00
N. B. Steamboat Co.
1,500.00
Nantucket Steamboat Co.
1,500.00
Leases
1,150.00
Restaurant
600.00
Store Room
400.00
Police Office
300.00
Old Barber's Shop
200.00
Fire Department
500.00
Costello Building
500.00
Arcade
5,000.00
Smith, Lewis & Carpenter
450.00
J. & W. R. Wing
650.00
Concrete
1,400.00
Treas. Hands
305.19
Sundries
100.00
Total
$279,955.19
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Liabilities :
N. B. Institution for Savings
$40,000.00
M. V. Bank
5,000.00
Treasurer's Note
3,000.00
W. R. Penniman Note
5,000.00
W. R. Penniman Note
5,000:00
W. R. Penniman Note
3,834.50
W. R. Penniman, Extra Work
3,000.00
Sherman & Gifford
1,735.24
Pitkins Brothers
5,689.70
Town Tax
1,200.00
Chapel Tower
730.00
Bath Houses
680.00
White & Bros.
123.39
E. M. Mosher
295.00
Smith, Lewis & Carpenter
277.30
Bradley & Cleavland
104.64
Ripley & Tripp
100.00
Elevator
2,175.00
On Settlement
581.65 ;
B. S. Peirce
14.00
Sundries
100.00
Excess of assets above
201,314.77
Total
$279,955.19
This balance sheet reflected the broad program of building and improvement which the company had pushed ahead, spending freely. But it did not reflect other contributions which the company had made in the cause of progress. One of the most important of all concerned the extension of the Vineyard Sound Railroad, as it was then called, to Woods Hole, the heel of Cape Cod and the nearest place on the mainland to Martha's Vineyard.
If an Island-bound visitor left Boston by railroad, he could go only as far as Monument Beach, where it was necessary to alight and proceed by stage for a long and tedious journey to Woods Hole to board the steamboat. There was, of course, a train to New Bed- ford, and a boat connection at that city. But the direct route to Boston was broken by a wide and serious gap.
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