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Marthas Vineyard

The Praying Indians of the American Revolution

More than a century after the Puritans converted praying Indians and organized them into towns, they fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

The Puritans considered the native tribes idolatrous savages who needed enlightenment and redemption. Some Puritans thought the Indians belonged to the 10 lost tribes of Israel.

Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, (1629–1686, 1689-1691)

The Massachusetts Bay charter declared part of the Puritan mission to convert the native people. In their own words, they came to North America,

To winn and incite the natives of the country to the knowledge and Obedience of the onlie true God and Saviour of Mankinde, and the Christian Fayth.

And the first seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony featured a Native American saying, “Come over and help us.”

Gérard Dicks Pellerin a-1640xl pc065135 10-02-04

Praying Indians

On October 28, 1646, in Nonantum (now Newton), Puritan missionary John Eliot preached his first sermon to the Massachusett tribe. He spoke in their own language. Then he eventually translated the Bible into the Massachusett language and had it printed — the first Bible published in America.

Eliot and other missionaries then continued to convert native people.

The Puritans set the praying Indians apart from their own towns and from disagreeable neighboring tribes. Natives who converted became farmers, established homesteads, built frame houses, lost their tribal identities and intermarried with blacks and whites.

Praying towns in Massachusetts included Gay Head and Christiantown on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. On the mainland, they included Nonantum, Natick, Mashpee, Grafton, Dartmouth and Herring Pond in Plymouth. In Connecticut, Nipmuc praying towns included Maanexit, probably today’s Fabyan. They also included Quinnatisset, six miles south of Maanexit, and Wagaquasset in Woodstock.

That seems like a lot of praying towns. But historian Gary Nash argued after 10 years of effort, only about a thousand natives settled in four praying towns. Fewer than 100 declared their conversion to Puritan congregationalism, wrote Nash.

Why would the indigenous people convert to the Puritan religion? The short answer: they hoped to avoid war and to protect their territory. Typically, the weaker and more demoralized tribes responded to the missionaries. The Mashpee Indians, for example, pretty much stayed out of King Philip’s War and kept their land on Cape Cod.

Glover’s Regiment crossing the Delaware with Gen. Washington

Glover’s Regiment

During the American Revolution, as many as 100 praying Indians enlisted in the Continental Army. They integrated with other units. Some Indian mariners belonged to John Glover’s Marblehead storied regiment, and some belonged to the 1^st Rhode Island regiment.

The 1st Rhode Island earned a reputation as the Black Regiment because it had many African-American soldiers. But it also included Native Americans. They fought well at the Battle of Rhode Island, which Lafayette called “the best fought action of the war.”

But Glover’s Regiment deserves special mention. Historian Patrick O’Donnell explains why in his new book, The Indispensables.

…the American Revolution would have met an early, dramatic demise had it not been for the SEAL-like operations and extraordinary battlefield achievements of this diverse, unsung group of men and their commander…

Glover’s elite unit rescued the Continental Army from destruction after the Battle of Long Island in a Dunkirk-like evacuation. The regiment also saved the patriot cause when it ferried 2,400 men, their horses and artillery across the Delaware River in a blinding snowstorm.

Praying Indians also fought in the battles of Bunker Hill, Battle Road and Saratoga.

Praying Indians Who Served

Historian George Quintal, Jr., compiled their service histories in his book Patriots of Color: ‘A Peculiar Beauty and Merit.’

They included:

James Anthony, born in Natick, served for eight months in 1775 under Col. Jonathan Ward. He then re-enlisted from 1777 to 1780 in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment. He also fought at Saratoga and camped at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777. Anthony got his discharge on March 14, 1780.
Alexander Quapish, born around 1741 in Yarmouth, Mass., enlisted in Dedham in 1775. He belonged to Col. Loammi Baldwin’s main guard. But he got sick in March 1776 and died in Needham. A man named Michael Bacon took care of him in his last days and buried him. Bacon was likely the father of a 10-year-old drummer boy Quapish befriended.
Ceasar Ferrit had West Indian, French, Dutch, and Natick Indian ancestry. He was born around 1720, raised in Boston by an English family and moved to the praying town of Natick in 1751. Ferrit volunteered as a minutemen at Lexington and Concord with his son John. He also helped ambush British soldiers in Lexington. Ferrit served in militias and regiments from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York. He was about 61 when discharged in 1781.

Today, descendants of the praying Indians from Natick have organized as the Praying Indians of Natick and Ponkapoag.

The State Seal

The Massachusetts state seal depicts the arm of Myles Standish brandishing a saber above the head of a Native American standing at peace.

The current state seal features an arm holding a sword poised above a Native American. The motto, translated from Latin, reads, “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.”

Many view the seal as offensive, and in 2021 Gov. Charlie Baker ordered a commission to recommend changes. Then on May 17, 2022, the commission voted unanimously to change the seal.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: First seal of Massachusetts Bay Colony By Viiticus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112564338

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The Deaf Vineyarders Who Talked With Their Hands

During the 19^th century, deaf Vineyarders made up a disproportionate number of people born on the island in southeastern Massachusetts.

Deaf Vineyarders demonstrating Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language

One in every 155 people on Martha’s Vineyard was born deaf. Elsewhere in the United States, it was close to 1 in 6,000. In the town of Chilmark, deaf Vineyarders comprised one out of 25 people. But within Squibnocket, a village of Chilmark, they formed 25 percent of the population. .

The deaf Vineyarders were born with no other anomalies than total deafness. Their deafness was believed the result of a recessive gene traced to Kent County in England, where some Martha’s Vineyard settlers had originated in the late 17th century. Some came from an area in Kent called the Weald. Intermarriage probably contributed to the spread of deafness.

The 1st Deaf Vineyarders

The first known deaf Vineyarder was Jonathan Lambert, who arrived in 1694. Two of his seven children were deaf. Lambert came to the island using what was probably a regional sign language from Kent.

Deaf islanders developed their own sophisticated sign language, used by both the deaf and the hearing.

Deaf people weren’t considered disabled. They were completely integrated into island life. Deaf people owned farms, ran businesses and served in town government.

If you wanted to live in Chilmark, you pretty much had to learn Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language.

In the late 19th century, the number of deaf Vineyarders began to fall as more people married people from away. The last person who used the Vineyard’s sign language died in 1952.

Martha’s Vineyard Sign Languaage merged with mainland signs to form American Sign Language.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell conducted genealogical research on the deaf Vineyarders, trying to isolate the cause of deafness.

He opposed the use of sign language, believing it set deaf people apart. Bell also thought it isolated them from the rest of humanity and promoted intermarriage – which produced more deaf people.

He believed in eugenics. Once he said, “Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriages of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy.”

Bell instead promoted oralism – teaching deaf people to speak and to read lips, or speech-read.

As Bell’s fame spread, he traveled the country preaching the gospel of oralism.

He succeeded. But many consider Bell to have done a great disservice to deaf people.

Parents of deaf children who didn’t teach them sign language deprived them of the ability to start learning . That however, was not the case when parents used sign language with a deaf baby. Deaf children taught oralism developed language slower, which thus impeded their mental development.

Eventually deaf children with deaf parents who used sign language were found to do better academically than deaf children with hearing parents.

Today, many deaf advocates say sign language for deaf children is a human rights issue.

This story about the deaf Vineyarders was updated in 2022.

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William Fry, Pirate, Finds a Permanent Home – Gibbeted on Nixes Mate

In July of 1726, William Fry stood trial in Boston for murdering a ship’s captain and embarking on a monthlong piracy spree. The trial lasted but two days, and Fry was convicted. Within days, he would be paraded to the gallows and hanged.

But he didn’t go as most did, remorseful and tearful. Rather, when the cart arrived to haul him off, he jumped up and enjoyed the parade, waving flowers in one hand. When asked for his final words, he sought no forgiveness. Rather, he warned other ship captains to treat their crews well if they wanted to avoid being killed at sea.

And as the hangman dropped a poorly made noose over his head, Fry scoffed at the man. He informed him: ‘You do not know your trade.” Fry adjusted the noose and slipped it into place before dropping to his death.

The flamboyant Fry’s body would soon hang on Nixes Mate, a small island in Outer Boston Harbor near Long Island. It serves as a navigational aid to sailors.

William Fry

Fry’s story elicited tremendous public interest, as did all cases involving pirates. The prolific minister Cotton Mather had tried desperately to coax a confession and repentance from Fry. Mather took pride in his reputation as a minister who could convert hardened criminals to religion as they headed to the gallows.

Crowds attended the sermons he preached at hangings, where he tried to serve up a cautionary tale for young people. He would often furnish the condemned men with prayers to recite as they went to the gallows.

In Fry, however, he met his match. Fry had a history as a boxer in Jamaica. Though he had sailed with pirates before, he signed on the Elizabeth Snow as a legitimate boatswain. It’s not precisely clear what caused him to turn pirate and lead a mutiny, but he spelled out the facts at trial.

Nixes Mate

Fry and two other men seized control of the ship. They offered the captain a chance to jump overboard, but he pleaded for his life. So Fry and his compatriots shoved him over. As the struggling captain grabbed at a line to save himself, one of the attackers cleaved off his hand with an ax, sending him to his death.

The mate fared no better. When he fought for his life, he was struck with the ax across the shoulder and sent tumbling into the sea.

Poor Pirate

Fry turned into a remarkably poor pirate. After seizing the Elizabeth Snow in May, he attempted to seize another vessel, but ran it aground off North Carolina. He seized a second vessel, but the pilot on board outsmarted him. The pilot deliberately sailed past Martha’s Vineyard, claiming he didn’t know his location. Then, as the vessel neared Boston, he overpowered Fry and with the help of other captives sailed the ship into Boston Harbor. That set Fry’s appointment with the noose.

Cotton Mather

Fry’s standoff with Cotton Mather was equally fruitless. Though Fry never buckled on the gallows, Mather publicized his case in a pamphlet and made him look every bit a dunce. Though Fry insisted he had suffered “bad usage” at the hands of the Elizabeth Snow’s captain, Mather never publicized his complaints. Some historians have noted that the vessel was a slave ship, and the captains of such ships were often ruthless with their crew. Others note that many sailors who turned pirate were impressed into service, inspiring their decision to step outside the law.

Regardless, Mather had his own uses for Fry’s story. He used it to highlight the end that comes to depraved, wicked and stupid people. The town officials had an even more gruesome use for the pirate. Gibbeting was the practice of stringing up a corpse and hanging it in the harbor as a warning to other would-be pirates. And that’s exactly what happened to Fry, on the island of Nixes Mate. (Then called Nick’s Mate.) His bones rattled in the winds for many months.

Display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Replica of Edward Jordan’s gibbet.

Nixes Mate

The island itself, now part of the Boston Harbor Islands owned by the National Park Service, has a curious history. Granted to harbor pilot John Gallop in 1636, he used it for grazing sheep. At that time it was reported to be 12 acres in area. Over time, however, the island has been reduced dramatically in size to its present area of about 200-square feet. Upon which stands a granite base and a wooden pyramid that acts as daymarker for sailors trying to navigate into the harbor.

Legend says the island was named for a Captain Nix or Nick, murdered by his first mate. The mate was tried and hanged on the island. In his final words, he protested his innocence. If he was hanged, he warned, the island would sink into the sea as testament to the wrong done to him.

The island did disappear after his hanging.

But a better explanation for the island’s disappearance: People quarried the island for rocks used as ballast in sailing ships.

The actual origin of the name remains lost.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Nixes Mate By Eric Kilby from Somerville, MA, USA – Nixes Mate, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44427125. Gibbeted pirate By Dennis Jarvis from Halifax, Canada – DSC07278 – Gibbet, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66916336.

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Thomas Macy Fined for Befriending Quakers

In the summer of 1657, a rainstorm drove four men to the home of Thomas Macy in Amesbury, Mass. They sought shelter and directions to Hampton, N.H., and to Casco Bay. Macy was wary, but he let them stay a short time while the rain let up.

Macy was a founder of the town of Amesbury and its first town clerk, having moved from Salisbury. His position, however, did not place him above the law, and Macy was very much breaking the law by opening his home to the visitors.

Puritans landing in the New World.

Macy was a Baptist. That already placed him in a difficult position with the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts, who banned Baptists from preaching. But to make matters worse, the men now seeking shelter in his home were Quakers. One was Edward Wharton; some sources say the others included William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson.

Stephenson and Robinson, Quakers banished from Massachusetts, had chosen to return. They did it to protest a recent law that ordered the death penalty for banished Quakers without property who returned to Massachusetts. In October of that year, that’s exactly what happened to Robinson and Stephenson. Two others, known as the Boston Martyrs, suffered the same fate. A statue to one of them, Mary Dyer, now stands in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Statue of Mary Dyer in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Thomas Macy

For Thomas Macy, the consequences of his actions were less severe. A 1657 law made it a crime to entertain Quakers. Macy’s neighbors notified the Rev. Worcester of the infraction, and he placed the matter before the General Court.

Thomas Macy’s house, known as the Macy-Colby House, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Macy pleaded innocent of holding Quaker leanings. “On a rainy morning there came to my house Edward Wharton and three men more; the said Wharton spoke to me, saying they were travelling eastward, and desired me to direct them in the way to Hampton, and asked me how far it was to Casco Bay.

“I never saw any of the men before except Wharton, neither did I inquire their names or what they were; but by their carriage I thought they might be Quakers and told them so, and desired them to pass on their way, saying to them I might possibly give offence in entertaining them; and as soon as the rain ceased (for it rained very hard) they went away, and I never saw them since.

45 Minutes

“The time they stayed in the house was about three quarters of an hour, but I can safely affirm it was not an hour. They spoke not many words in the time neither was I at leisure to talk with them, for I came home wet to the skin immediately before they came to the house, and I found my wife sick in bed. If this does not satisfy the Honored Court I am subject to their sentence.”

The explanation did not satisfy the honored court, which fined Macy 30 shillings and admonished him. The episode inspired John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, The Exiles.

With the increasing intolerance of the Puritans, the finding could not have surprised Macy. He had apparently already been plotting an escape.

1827 medal depicting Tristram Coffin

He had joined with Tristram Coffin in planning a new settlement — out of the reach of the Puritan extremists. Coffin, also a Baptist, had left England at the start of the English Civil War in 1642. He had gathered a group of like-minded investors and had arranged to purchase the island of Nantucket from Macy’s cousin, Thomas Mayhew.

Nantucket

Mayhew had settled on Martha’s Vineyard where he served as governor. He acquired Nantucket via a grant and purchase from Native Americans, and he was ready to sell the whole of Nantucket less a portion he retained for himself.

With Nantucket falling under the jurisdiction of New York, the new residents hoped to make it a more tolerable place. For the sum of 30 pounds and two beaver hats, the investors bought Nantucket in July of 1659 and made it their new home. The island did become the tolerant locale that the founders envisioned, with Quakers making up a large portion of the population.

Macy remained a lifelong Baptist. The Macys established a family there, and he died at 74 in 1682 after a successful career. His wife Sarah lived on another 24 years, and she did in fact become a Quaker late in life.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Macy-Colby House By Daderot at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17590751.

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What They Say in New England About Local Characters and Customs

Henry Wheeler Shaw, the 19^th-century humorist known as Josh Billings, said genuine proverbs are like good cambric needles: short, sharp and shiny. In New England, there are plenty of them, about the weather, about holidays and about each other.

In Bath, N.H., someone who makes a strong but odd statement was said to be ‘equal to Priest Sutherland,’ a minister in the town for 50 years who made strong but odd statements.

Also in New Hampshire, ‘leaning toward Sawyers’ was an expression used when someone left the house surreptitiously for a drink. The Sawyer family kept a store where drinks could be purchased in Sugar Hill.

Maine loggers blamed annoyances and misfortune on the mythical character Sock Saunders. If a logger slipped on a log but caught himself in time, he said, “Foxed you that time, Sock Saunders.” If he cut himself, he said, “Got me that time, Sock Saunders.’

A Connecticut toast goes, “Here’s to the Nutmeg State—who has a grater?”

In Massachusetts, they say a rib was taken off Billerica to make Bedford. And for someone who finally realizes something obvious, they say, ‘Dawn breaks over Marblehead.’ When Marbleheaders ran into each other they’d say, “Down bucket,” or “To hell I pitch it.” No one seems to know why.

Travelers used to say that Cape Codders called a house a house, but a house with a shed was a village. (That no longer applies.) Cape Codders were called ‘Chowderheads’ and ‘Mooncussers.’ Cape Codders called people who lived off the Cape ‘Off-Capers.’

Nantucketers called Martha’s Vineyard residents ‘Old Town Turkeys,’ while a Nantucketer was a ‘Scrap Islander’ to a denizen of Martha’s Vineyard. Nantucketers liked to say something was ‘as handy as Caleb’s cheese,’ referring to Caleb Macy, who liked cheese so much he kept one hanging from a string in his sitting room.

Northampton, Mass., was called ‘Pudding Town’ and its people ‘Puddingers,’ after the residents’ custom of eating hasty pudding and milk for Saturday evening supper.

All Boston residents were ‘beaneaters,’ and Boston folk were ‘full of notions.’ ‘Brahmins’ were the clannish, aloof, old New England families. Of them it was said,

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

‘Cold roast Boston’ referred to Brahmins because they ate roast beef on Sunday and cold leftovers on Monday. The Codfish Aristocracy was a class of nouveau riche who had acquired wealth from the codfishing industry.

Poor Irish were ‘shanty Irish,’ while shanty Irish with notions of respectability were ‘lace-curtain Irish.’ Above the ‘lace-curtain Irish’ were the ‘two-bathroom Irish,’ then the ‘wall-to-wall Irish,’ then at the pinnacle of Irish society were ‘Irish who had fruit in the house when no one was sick.’

‘Black Irish’ were Irish people with dark hair and eyes, said to be descendants of shipwrecked sailors of the Spanish Armada.

Harvard’s battle cry of ‘Oh, Rinehart,’ started on June 11, 1900, when an undergraduate called up to the dormitory window for John Bryce Gordon Rinehart (Class of 1900). His cry was picked up across the Yard by hundreds of students, and was repeated during any campus ruckus.

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Dorothy West Gets Rediscovered by Jacqueline Onassis

Dorothy West at 88 lived quietly in the Martha’s Vineyard village of Oak Bluffs when Jacqueline Onassis encouraged her to finish her second novel, The Wedding.

Dorothy West

West had belonged to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, founded two literary magazines, maintained a close friendship with Langston Hughes and published her first book, The Living Is Easy. The magazines failed and her book didn’t sell. She also didn’t marry Hughes, though she proposed to him because she wanted to have a child.

For 40 years, she worked as a journalist, mostly writing a column for a small newspaper on Martha’s Vineyard. Onassis, her Martha’s Vineyard neighbor, read her column and encouraged her to finish The Wedding, which she had begun in the 1960s.

Then Onassis, an associate editor at Doubleday, published the book.

Boston Beginnings

Dorothy West was born June 2, 1907 in Boston, Mass., to Isaac Christopher West and Rachel Pegues Benson. Her father, who had been enslaved, became a successful fruit merchant known as ‘The Black Banana King.’ Her mother had 21 siblings.

Dorothy grew up in Brookline, Mass., wrote fiction from a young age and won several local writing contests. She attended the Girls’ Latin School, now Boston Latin Academy, and studied at Boston University. At 18 she tied for second place with Zora Neal Hurston in a national writing contest sponsored by the National Urban League. After she attended the awards dinner in New York City, she decided to move to Harlem and join the black cultural explosion that was sweeping the world — the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem Renaissance

As the youngest member of the Harlem Renaissance she earned the nickname ‘The Kid.’ She traveled to the Soviet Union in 1931 with a group of African-American writers to make a film about race in different countries. She stayed for a year, though the film was never made. She asked her friend Langston Hughes to marry her, though it isn’t clear whether they were romantically involved. Another Harlem writer, Countee Cullen, proposed to her, but she declined.

Langston Hughes

When she returned to the United States, she founded two magazines, The Challenge and The New Challenge. She published work by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and Margaret Walker. After the magazines folded she went to work for the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration.

But she kept her ties to Boston, contributing to the city’s literary magazine for African-American writers, The Saturday Evening Quill.

Oak Bluffs

Oak Bluffs cottages

Then she moved to Oak Bluffs, an appropriate setting for her first novel. Oak Bluffs grew out of a Methodist camp meeting place. Tents on platforms morphed into cottages decorated with gingerbread and painted in bright colors. In the early 20^th century, Oak Bluffs became a summer enclave for the black bourgeoisie. Sen. Edward Brooke and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell had homes there, and Martin Luther King visited occasionally. King wrote some of his speeches on Oak Bluffs porches.

Dorothy West took a clerical job at the Vineyard Gazette and wrote short stories for the New York Daily News. In 1948, she started writing a column about Oak Bluffs for the Gazette. That same year she published her first novel, The Living Is Easy, which explored racism and class consciousness among the African-American upper middle class. The book won critical acclaim but sold poorly.

The Wedding

In the 1960s she began work on The Wedding, a portrait of Oak Bluffs’ black aristocracy and its preoccupation with skin color and social class. She stopped working on it because of the rise of the radical black power movement. She worried the Black Panthers would denounce the book.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as editor.

The Feminist Press reprinted The Living Is Easy in 1982, which brought attention to West’s role in the Harlem Renaissance. Her column caught the attention of summer resident Jacqueline Onassis. Onassis visited her and encouraged her to finish The Wedding. She did, dedicating the book to the former First Lady.

The Wedding became a best seller, and Oprah Winfrey made it into a television miniseries starring Halle Berry. Then Doubleday brought out a collection of her short stories and a memoir, The Richer, The Poorer. And another First Lady, Hillary Clinton, attended her 90^th birthday party.

Dorothy West died on Aug. 16, 1998 at the age of 91.

Photos: “Dorothy West” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia. “OakBluffs1” by Elkman at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Phansen. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. This story was updated in 2022.

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