Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, once said, “My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.” Were Mr. Jefferson able to come to the Vineyard today, he might amend that assessment.

An island is in some ways the most fitting place in which to celebrate the freedoms associated with Independence Day. Our physical separation from the mainland alone gives Vineyard inhabitants a kind of renegade, if not revolutionary, approach to life. Tapping into that romantic, even swashbuckling, image may be one of the things that attracts so many people to Martha’s Vineyard for the Fourth of July holiday.

Stepping off the ferry in Vineyard Haven or Oak Bluffs, the burdens of mainland life dissolve like the foam of the waves sloshing against the ferry dock. People become almost immediately aware of the Vineyard’s bounty of blessings: sparkling beaches, pristine villages, inviting shops and restaurants and friendly, if fiercely independent, year-round residents.

That we are free to enjoy these features can be traced back to the efforts of Messrs. Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and others. That the particular charm of the Island has continued through these centuries is a credit to the Vineyarders who followed Mr. Jefferson’s blueprint in the Declaration, in which he wrote, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

This is most certainly an Island where those who are governed (men and women alike) take a strong hand in their own lives and well-being. Everyday people are actively involved in all aspects of government in each of our six towns. Fishermen, construction workers, teachers, shop owners, restaurateurs and others who have a stake in the Island’s present and future sit on town boards, attend town meeting and endlessly debate community issues.

This is a place whose residents take great pains to protect the Island’s natural beauty, its woodlands and wetlands and wildlife, its fisheries, its farms and fields. While cautiously accepting of growth, they are also conscious of the risk of overdevelopment. That is why when you tour the Island, it looks much like it did decades, even centuries, ago. As Daniel Webster said, “May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country.”

There is much reason to celebrate our nation’s two hundred and thirty-sixth birthday, and much reason to celebrate the Vineyard itself. This coming Wednesday, the Island will be teeming with Islanders and vacationers alike, grilling, sunbathing, swimming and simply enjoying life. Flags will be flying from Aquinnah to Vineyard Haven to Chappaquiddick. The annual Fourth of July Parade will wiggle its way through the clean streets of Edgartown. Also on the Fourth will be a barbecue, fireworks and the weekly Family Dance-O-Rama with Deejay Shizz, someone Mr. Jefferson might need to have explained.

For one Vineyard summer resident, Filis Casey of West Tisbury, this will be an especially poignant Independence Day. Through her Alliance for Children foundation, Ms. Casey and her colleagues are on the verge of completing a new home on another island — Haiti — for sixty-five children, ages three to thirteen, that will enable them to escape the plywood tents they have been forced to live in for the last two years following that country’s devastating earthquake. Ms. Casey also is orchestrating a social network that will provide not only family-supervised housing for the youths — many of them orphans — but eventually medical clinics and women’s empowerment programs, what she calls “a fully sustainable village.”

“It may very well be finished on July Fourth,” she said. “My goal is to give the children independence, to learn to live within relationships and not in institutions.”

For Ms. Casey, the Vineyard is an inspirational place perhaps to reflect not only on the precious blessings cited by President Jefferson, but to devise ways to impart such blessings to others in desperate need of them.

Here’s hoping that she and every other Islander see their dreams for Independence Day fulfilled.