Sophia Teller Block Dies at 94; Weaver Loved Island Lifestyle

Sophia Teller Block, a well-loved Vineyarder known for spinning and weaving wool and for her love of the old-fashioned lifestyle, died Sept. 28 at the age of 94. She had resided on Music street in West Tisbury in the old West Chop lighthouse keeper's house since 1953, living with her husband William until his death in 1993, after which she kept the home on her own.

Sophie, which was generally how she introduced herself, was born in 1911 in a New Orleans, La., orphanage which her father had been employed to direct and operate.

Sophie grew up in Manhattan, was graduated from Friends Seminary and attended Simmons College in Boston. Her happiest childhood memories were of summers in the Belgrade Lake section of Maine where her parents, Chester and Eva Teller, were pioneer owners and operators of summer camps for children.

The Tellers' summer home, Lovejoy Farm, was on the Back Road in Oakland, Me. Nearby lived Marsh and Alice Larkin, who scratched a hard living from ungenerous local soil. The Larkins' homestead had neither electricity nor plumbing. Water came from a wooden bucket raised and lowered by a rope in an artesian well located between the house and road. Sophie was fascinated by watching Alice make pies, bread and other goodies on her iron stove, trim wicks on kerosene lamps, and do all the chores of an early 19th-century country housewife.

Sophie first came to the Vineyard in 1946 to visit her brother and sister in law, Walter and Jane Teller, who had rented a camp in Lobsterville. For the next seven summers, Sophie and Bill Block rented in Menemsha, first house on the left of what is now called Larsen Lane. Walter Teller caught the spirit of those years in his book An Island Summer. The Blocks (name slightly changed) appear in some of the chapters.

One evening while rubbernecking (as they called driving slowly around the Vineyard), Sophie spied a nearly invisible "For Sale" sign on an old house on Music street in West Tisbury. Nearly hidden by overgrown lilac bushes, it had been on the market for several years, undoubtedly due in part to lack of electricity, plumbing and floor-joists that could keep the first-floor floorboards from bouncing. Water was collected via gutters on the roof, stored in an underground cistern and dispensed into an iron kitchen sink by a cast-iron pump.

The house originally stood on the bluff at West Chop, overlooking the harbor. It had been built for the U.S. Treasury in 1817, when the lighthouse was established, to be the light-keeper's dwelling. The current floor plan strongly suggests that the beacon originally stood in what is now the eastern part of the main structure. After cliff erosion forced the light to be moved back from the brink in 1846, the house was moved to its present location. In 1862, the house was purchased by Capt. William Swayne Weeks. The Blocks purchased the property from his daughter, Francis Adelaide (Addie) Weeks, in 1953.

The house was repaired and upgraded during the winter of 1953 and 1954. Plumbing, a stainless steel kitchen sink with single-lever faucet, an electric clothes washer, refrigerator and telephone were allowed as concessions to the modern age. However, other fripperies such as dishwasher, clothes dryer and microwave oven were always banned.

Almost immediately after the purchase, Sophie started lengthening her summers on the Vineyard. By the mid-1960s, she had become essentially a year-round resident. By degrees, her husband, William, reduced the days spent lawyering in New York, and he retired to the Island in the mid-1970s.

Sophie created on Music street an ambience and way of life highly influenced by the Larkins' home on the Back Road. She collected old things, preferably of simpler varieties: crockery, bottles, jugs, glassware, eating implements, pots and pans, cooking accessories, kerosene lamps, candlesticks, etcetera. To childhood-learned skills of knitting and sewing, Sophie added carding and spinning woolen yarn and weaving - primarily using antique tools that she and Bill purchased on their travels.

She was an avid exhibitor at the annual Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair, often winning 20 or 30 ribbons the same year. This past summer, at age 94, she took home two ribbons, one a first prize for muffins. Those who knew Sophia knew that she used old utensils to bake beautiful pies, breads and cookies in her turn-of-the-century cast-iron stove that replaced the one installed in 1953. A piece of freshly baked apple pie or coffee cake was often available for her many visitors.

Sophie and William traveled to New England and Ireland frequently during the colder months in the seventies and eighties. Those trips provided opportunities for Sophie to acquire more old homemaking skills and additions to her collections.

After her husband's death in 1993, Sophie continued the lifestyle she had developed, progressively slowed by advancing age and infirmities. She kept busy with her vegetable garden, baking, crafts, hanging laundry outside to dry in the sun, driving to stores and the post office, and socializing with friends, new and old. She crocheted baby booties using the softest lamb's wool for the inside pieces and kept up lively correspondence with her friends and family. She traveled to Chicago, Ill., and New York to visit with grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and toured Ireland with her son, Noah, and his wife, Susan.

"She truly loved the Vineyard," observed her granddaughter, Jennifer. "She loved the quiet, especially during the off-season. She loved the Island's simplicity and insulation from the bustle of her earlier life in New York city."

Happily, Sophie was able to continue living alone and on her own terms until about three months before her death. After falling, she was obliged to accommodate a live-in care giver. The afternoon of her last day she had tea and cake with a neighbor and that evening passed away gently.

Sophia Block is survived by her sister, Millie Stolwein; sons Adam and Noah; grandchildren Adrian and Jennifer; great-grandchildren Jay, Isabella, Alexandra and Anna, and numerous nieces and nephews. Mrs. Block will be interred next to her husband in the West Tisbury Cemetery.