It was standing room only Sunday afternoon for the installation of the Rev. Cathlin Baker as the 50th minister and first woman to lead the 336-year-old First Congregational Church of West Tisbury. On hand to participate in the celebratory event were 22 clergy and delegates from the Barnstable Association of the United Church of Christ, Island clergy and friends and supporters from Union Theological Seminary in New York city. It was there that Cathlin Baker received her master of divinity degree.

Widow’s walks attest to them, historians tend to overlook them, and now at last, they have been given a chance to speak for themselves. Or rather, to sing for themselves.

They are the wives of Vineyard whalers, whose husbands left for voyages of up to four or five years, and who were left to tend farms, manage general stores and mind their husband’s assets in a society unaccustomed to accepting women’s role in the public sphere.

Anybody listening to music anywhere on Martha’s Vineyard but at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs on Friday night was listening in the wrong place.

Which means all but about 50 people on the Island. For that was the total crowd which turned up to hear the Elio Villafranca trio’s two shows at 7 and 9 p.m.

And that is sad thing, as much as the man who brought the trio, broadcaster, documentary maker and general jazz aficionado Jim Luce, tried to make light of it before the trio’s second show.

Racks of hats and T-shirts for the optimists, sweatshirts and raincoats for the cautious, coffee cups for grown-ups, balloons for kids, hair products for the stylish and umbrellas to keep their hair dry — all of them lined outdoor tables for the length of Circuit avenue on Saturday at 5 p.m., ready to celebrate the fourth annual Oak Bluffs Summer Solstice.