Opinion
Editor’s Note: The Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard: Colonization to Recognition, is a newly published book by Thomas Dresser of Oak Bluffs. What follows is an excerpt from the chapter Sachems Under Duress. It appears here with permission from the author.
GOOD FENCE VIEWERS
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
From a Summer, 1992 Gazette:
“Edgartown, sometimes called Old Town, August 7, 1849. Half past five in the morning, and not another soul up in the house. A little rain last night, but a pretty fair and cool morning.” So wrote Daniel Webster at the Gibbs House in Edgartown on his second visit to the Vineyard. He had made one stay in Edgartown July 4, 1848, but no mention of the trip found its way into the Gazette.
Remembering Cee Jay Jones, the unofficial summer ambassador in Oak Bluffs, who died Oct. 9 at the age of 100 in Winston Salem, N.C.
Broadcast from Oak Bluffs
Listen to the voters in Oak Bluffs; their collective voice is loud and clear. At the annual town election in April they swept two longtime incumbent selectmen out of office and voted in two newcomers. At a special town election last week they broadcast a forceful message about their desire to curb spending and balance the town budget in real time, rejecting by a wide margin two questions that would have allowed the town to exceed the state law that caps annual property tax increases at two and a half per cent.