C. Baer

(Photo: Up-Island fisherman Dan Look (1867-1924) stands beside a rare Great White Shark. Menemsha, circa 1910-20. No machine guns used.)

Samuel Mead of New York, a wealthy young firearm inventor, organized a “shark-shooting frolic” on Martha’s Vineyard in 1875. As he rushed to leave home with his new homemade machine gun, his hair-trigger weapon struck a piece of furniture, firing a bullet into his forehead and killing him instantly.

This Was Then: Parachutes and peacock plumes - The Martha's Vineyard Times By the mid-1890s, Cottage City (Oak Bluffs) was a resort town in decline. Massive fires had claimed the two largest landmarks in town — the Sea View Hotel and the Casino — in 1892, together with the H...

Prior to Broadwick, there were female aeronauts like Minnie Bonnette who would parachute from balloons in the 1890s. Bonnette wound up in a wheelchair after an 1897 accident. www.mvtimes.com/2024/09/11/p...

1915. “Big as a man, but rather short” with big white teeth, hairy body, and long tail, reported Forrest Bosworth. It "made for" Welcome Tilton, who fled. George Eustis watched it rob his henhouse. Martha Murray saw it off North Road and declared, “It wasn’t a man.” Remarkable stories were rife.

"Study Hall" cartoon - students in chaos

MY Mom saved a ton of cartoons she drew on index cards in high school. Here's one she drew in 1948, as a sophomore at Tisbury High School.

The life and death of Myra (Blankenship) Reehle (1866-1893) of Edgartown, Mass. and her husband Jacob, who was sworn to secrecy by U.S. President Grover Cleveland for his actions afterward.

This Was Then: The rich stories gravesites tell - The Martha's Vineyard Times In the Old Westside Cemetery on Robinson Road, just behind Edgartown School, stands a grave marker like no other. Amid stately rows of traditional granite, marble, and slate headstones, cordoned off w...

A curious monument in Edgartown, Mass., and a presidential secret offshore. www.mvtimes.com/2025/04/30/r...

I certainly don't intend to disparage anyone by digging this up, but I think many would be surprised at what once went down on this island. I also found inspiration exploring Weaver's long and successful career in TV, here and abroad - his work and contributions were not insignificant.

newspaper clipping

21 were arrested.

A racially-fuelled fight broke out on Martha's Vineyard in 1958 between 21+ teenagers carrying switchblades, pipes, and broken bottles. It made national news. Among those acquitted was Lloyd Weaver, 17, g-g-grandson of Frederick Douglass, who later became a producer at CBS News and Nigerian TV.

In 1883, Richard G. Shute of Edgartown, Mass., filed patent #284338 for a set of eight android shoemakers.

Providence gangster Joseph Fisher, one of two men charged in the 1929 robbery of the steamship company in Oak Bluffs. The Labor Day safe heist was probably the first time explosives were used on the island for criminal ends. By 1935 Fisher had become “Rhode Island’s Public Enemy No. 1.”

Interior of Bill Ripley’s diner, “Nonpareil” on Oak Bluffs Avenue, Oak Bluffs, MA. "This was a very popular place for the young night set in the 1920s," recalled my grandfather.

Spoiler: It wasn't built, its funding foiled by a school project proposed at the last minute to ward off school regionalization. In April 1926, angry Chappy voters responded by petitioning the Massachusetts legislature to secede from Edgartown. Not surprisingly, that plan failed, too.

The 632-foot Edgartown-Chappaquiddick bridge, designed in 1925. The 20-foot-wide cement slab roadway would rise 50 feet above the water and provide conduits for water, gas, electricity, and telephone wires. Chappy residents “will have the advantage of fire and police protection,” it was promised.

OPEN LAPTOP

Elijah became a carpenter + city watchman in Troy, NY until his death in 1845 upon "blowing out his brains with a pistol", according to the papers. His teen daughter married a whaler 21 years her elder and moved to Holmes Hole (now Vineyard Haven), Mass. What became of her two brothers is unknown.

My g-g-g-grandfather's math schoolbook, 1808, Nassau, NY. Many pages are dedicated to practicing conversions between New York dollars, New Jersey dollars, Massachusetts dollars, etc. ...At that time, every state had its own currency system, and their dollars were not equal.

Yup - Vineyard Haven

The Improved Order of Red Men (and its ladies' counterpart, The Degree of Pocahontas) was popular here in the early 20th century. The members, none of whom were Native American, wore long black wigs, feathered war bonnets, and fringed buckskin outfits. Until 1974, it was open to white members only.

Roaring Brook, Chilmark, MA. Ruins of the old brick factory.

In a 1939 affidavit, a Chilmark witness testified that “Luther B. West went to school with her older sisters, and was thought to be a girl and was named and called Mary A. West. When Mary A. West was in her teens, her name was changed to Luther B. West, and she was thereafter known as a male."

His younger brother Luther, formerly Mary West, similarly transitioned in his teenage years, but did not attempt a legal name change. Luther ran a very successful stove factory and became president of the West Silver Co. in Taunton. Both brothers married off-island women; neither had children.

The 1850 petition to the governor to change his name went smoothly, but the Boston Courier newspaper got wind of the story, publishing a short piece titled “A Singular Freak of Nature” which was picked up by newspapers from Buffalo, N.Y., to Port Gibson, Mississippi.

a small schoolhouse

In 1860, the teacher, Mr. William West, of the Chilmark (Mass.) Southeast District School, was openly transgender. He had grown up as a girl named Rebecca. But in 1850, with the help of his father, a storied whaling captain, he legally changed his name at age 15. He later became a Quincy realtor.

The first passenger elevator on Martha's Vineyard was steam-driven. It was built in 1872 for the Sea View hotel, next to the steamship wharf in Oak Bluffs. “All rooms are provided with speaking tubes, water, and gas,” reads an 1873 report. The Sea View burned down in a massive 1892 fire.

INVENTORY

In 1818, John Symmes published a theory that “the earth is hollow, and habitable within,” with openings at the North and South Poles. Inside was a “warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men.” They became known as "Symmes Holes", or after 1861 as "Holmes’ Hole".

In 1890, owner James Leary brought an even longer raft to the Island. It consisted of 7000 pine logs, stretching more than 1000 feet in length in 17 sections, and was described by the papers as “hitched tandem, like the joints of a backbone… suggesting the back of an enormous dislocated sea snake.”

Captain F.J. Riley of the Underwriter reported to the New York press, “You should have seen the crowds at Vineyard Haven. Thousands boarded her. She was black with human beings. Old and young men and women and girls came out in rowboats to get a sight of the concern.”