Vineyard Gazette
The student of Vineyard history, at least such history as has been published, will recognize the fact that it was largely through the clergy that things were accomplished during the first hundred
African American History
Oscar E Denniston
Bradley Memorial Church
Denniston House
Profiles

2004

When taken out of context, listening to Gustavo Simoes talk about
football can be quite confusing.

"I played football all the time as a kid in Brazil," the
high school senior and Vineyarders center said after practice Monday.
"And I had seen football on TV, too, but I never played it until I
came here."

Put in context, the confusion is easily sorted out.

1978

Something happened to Carly Simon the moment she stepped onstage at the Chilmark concert. The performance she worried so about was riveting; the crowds she expected to be rowdy welcomed her warmly.

Backstage, she had mingled among the carefully screened (and tagged) collection of people, accepting hugs of encouragement, words of support.

“There was so much paranoia before the event, about what might happen, what it might turn into that I was really quite scared,” she recalled some days later.

1954

Samuel Cronig, best known as Sam, a grocer of Vineyard Haven, bought a box of “gold-coin” chocolates this week, chocolates which are so moulded and wrapped as to resemble twenty-dollar gold pieces. “I’ve got an anniversary coming up, or rather it has passed but the observance is due, and I want to give these away to commemorate the event,” he explained. “It’s a fifty-year anniversary, you see.”

But it wasn’t a wedding anniversary. Rather it is the anniversary of Sam’s arrival in America, fifty years ago, shortly before Halloween, a day which he will never forget.

1931

Just a few issues back, this column carried the biographical sketch of Joseph West of Chilmark, who is a deaf mute. This present article contains a similar sketch of his sister, Mrs. Sophronia E. Hillman, whose faculties are normal. Reared in the same family, it is interesting to correspond the two stories relating to Chilmark of nearly three-quarters of a century ago, as seen by two different pairs of eyes, directed by natural inclinations that had little in common.
 
This is the story of one who has lived always in the eternal silence, nearly three-quarters of a century without ever hearing the sound of human voice or the song of a bird, and who has never been able to voice a greeting to a friend, for Joseph E. T. West of Chilmark is a deaf mute, the last man of that town to be so afflicted.
 

1927

The student of Vineyard history, at least such history as has been published, will recognize the fact that it was largely through the clergy that things were accomplished during the first hundred and fifty years of the Island’s existence as a colony and province. Not only did they preach the word of God to whites and Indians, but they worked energetically to promote various industries and acted as advisors in settling all manner of disputes which arose, besides writing wills and other legal documents and keeping records, in many cases, being the only ones now existing.
 

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