This week the flag at Meadowbrook Farm in West Tisbury flew at half mast, and Christmas lights still glittered on the boxwood beside the barn: tributes to Marjorie Manter Rogers, who died on Jan. 3 in the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital at the age of 84. Her family, the Manters, go back 14 generations on the Vineyard.

Editor’s Note: Memorial Day is a day of flags and remembrance established after the Civil War, where some 620,000 men died, more than in any other American war in history. The battle at Gettysburg is probably one of the most poignant symbols of that war.