Gazette Chronicle
Excerpts from town columns of the Vineyard Gazette of January 1890:
Gay Head: The fisherman who have been fishing the past season at Noman’s Land have now all returned with good fares. Mr. Wm Vanderhoop was high hook with 1,800 pounds. The season lasts about a month.
Steam tug Geo. W. Hunt is expected this week from New Bedford with coal, provisions and other supplies. On her return trip she will take a cargo of codfish to the mainland.
From Feb. 6, 1948 article by Joseph Chase Allen: It is probable that not in many a year has a winter excited so much comment as the present one, and all in the same vein.
From the Feb. 1, 1991 column by Arthur Railton:
You’re getting old if you can remember when:
You came to the Vineyard on a steamer, not a ferry, and she landed at Oak Bluffs. But not in a slip.
And a few folks, the rich and the adventurous, arrived by seaplane, flying from Woods Hole and landing in Vineyard Haven harbor.
And if you said you were going to the “crick,” you didn’t have to explain where it was.
When streets were topped with scallop shells and it took weeks for your bare feet to take it.
From the Vineyard Gazette editions of January, 1955: The first of the three town meetings on the regional school issue — those in Tisbury and Oak Bluffs — are to be held tonight. It is to be hoped that voters on both sides will turn out so that there will be a really representative vote. The regional school question is vital to everyone. Discussion has been widespread. Summed up, we believe that they fall under two headings: those relating to education and the opportunities to be provided for Island children, and those relating to hard cash.
The first exports from New England to Europe were two cargoes of sassafras, gathered by Martin Pring and his company on Martha’s Vineyard and the neighboring islands, and taken by Pring to England in sloop Speedwell and bark Discoverer, two small vessels. They came over in 1603, setting sail from Milford Haven, April 10th. With the sassafras on board they sailed from the Vineyard August 9th and arrived at Bristol, England, Oct. 2, 1603. Sassafras at the time was held in high esteem for its medicinal qualities.
The year 1977 will be remembered for its great winter freeze and as a time when the Vineyard tried and failed to secede from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There were large events during the past year and small, quiet ones. Millions of gallons of spilled oil from the wreckage of the Argo Merchant missed the Island’s shores and went elsewhere.