When John Alley was a kid, his Uncle Fred would pay him to mow the lawn at the West Tisbury cemetery. One day, just as he was leaning over between two headstones, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Young John headed for the hills.

“That was it! I lost the lawnmower and ran,” remembered Mr. Alley, thinking one of his silent friends had come back from the dead. Turns out it was just Prudy Whiting letting young John know that her father’s sheep were on the loose.

The day before the centennial celebration of Shearer Cottage in Oak Bluffs, Gretchen Tucker Underwood noticed that the landscaping around the 100-year-old red inn on Rose avenue was not quite ready for the impending party.

The Highlands, as they are familiarly known, are located on East Chop, the general boundary being laid out like the Methodist Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs, with a central circle ringed by house lots along curving avenues.

A 128-year-old painting of a Vineyard sheriff has been rehung in the Edgartown courthouse after extensive restoration. The painting of Sheriff Frances Cottle Smith was accidentally slashed from behind while in storage when the courtroom was repainted four years ago.

And behind an oil painting with an accidental slash lies an intricate family story.

The restoration work was spearheaded by Ann A. Perkins — a Los Angeles resident who is the great-great-granddaughter of the subject in the portrait — and her husband, John.

My grandfather, Charles Shearer, was born into slavery. Henrietta Shearer was of Native American and African American descent. They were both educated at Hampton University.

Editor’s Note: The following is an edited excerpt of an interview done in 2004 by Linsey Lee with Leona Coleman Flu, the daughter of the first black stage manager in the Boston theatre district. A summer resident of Oak Bluffs from childhood on, Mrs. Coleman now lives in Atlanta, Ga. The interview is published in Ms. Lee’s book More Vineyard Voices; it appears here with permission from the author, who heads the Martha’s Vineyard Museum’s oral history center.