From a July 1, 1960 column by Joseph Chase Allen:

Looking backward, the most astonishing thing to contemplate is the realization of how brief the span of years there is between the electrified present and the primitive colonial age, a span which my personal memory cannot cover of course, yet it can visualize the dovetailing of one age into the other.

The appearance of the first automobiles on the Island, the way in which the telephone lines extended like groping tentacles, from the first short line to become a network following all highways. These and various other things, yet while I saw them taking place there were still hunters who used the muzzle-loading fowling piece that had not changed in principle for a century, and the kitchen of George Oliver Tilton, used by the family only in summer, still had its great fireplace equipped with all the equipment for cooking and which was used to some degree by Mrs. Tilton instead of a stove or range.

She, like some other women of her age group, would declare that white flour biscuits could not be properly baked except in an iron frying pan on top of the stove rather than in the oven. In this respect they were following the example of ancestors of more than two centuries before, who baked over fireplace embers.

And whether or not this was a holdover from something ancient, various housewives made “white seaweed” pudding. It was never called Irish moss by such people, although that is what it was, but children gathered it on the beaches and it was washed, soaked, dried and pulverized, the eventual dish turning out to be a variety of blancmange. Seemingly everyone liked it very well, although without the sweet sauce and the cinnamon, the pudding tasted very much like a poor grade of library paste.

Older members of the craft still made occasional wooden axles for oxcarts and tip carts, hewing them from hickory logs, and shaping axle arms and “tree” in a single piece.

I recall but two cases where a body was buried in a strictly homemade coffin, actually no more than a rough box. In one case it was an elderly man, the other, an infant. The details surrounding the former case might well be woven into something of a story, but it will not do. The old order has changed, thanks be, and whatever the sins of the present generation, they are not as horrible to contemplate as those of some of the past.

Everyone knows the Tabor House Road today, but sixty years ago and even later, the southern portion, from Middle Road to the brow of the first hill, was known as the Moses Look Road. The Tabor House Road was only known by that name from the North Road, south, to somewhere around the location of the Tabor House itself. The explanation probably is that these two portions of the present highway were originally private ways leading to the homesites mentioned.

Capt. Stephen Flanders, mentioned in some of the Gazette items of seventy-five years ago, lived in what is now known as the Blue Barque. Short, broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced and with a heavy white mustache, he looked the master mariner of tradition. He held some office in the Chilmark Methodist Church and it was he who raised and lowered the tall windows when necessary, using a pole with an iron fixture on the end somewhat resembling a boat hook.

The pews of this church, like various others of that day and before, were provided with doors. But these doors were also equipped with locks. I often wondered why, because even a small boy could easily climb over them.

An evangelist visited the Island holding “services” in various places including some private homes. He was elegantly dressed, wearing a white starched collar and cuffs, with a huge pair of cuff-links, quite as large as half dollars. Somehow they always caught on the cuffs of his coat in such manner that they were displayed to the very best advantage. Said evangelist wore a mustache and goatee, and used a heavy shawl or steamer rug instead of an overcoat.

Fred G. Vincent had a portable steam engine which he had hauled about and used for sawing wood and certain other purposes. Capt. George Donaldson had a tremendous pile of cordwoood stacked in his yard when the minister came by and said: “When are you going to saw that wood, Captain?”

“Just as soon as that fiddling deacon of yours gets his damned machinery together!” was the answer.

At the “Fisher Place” on the North Road, Seven Gates Farm had a treadmill, operated by a pair of horses, which ran a threshing machine and other apparatus. Such treadmills and windmills were the only power available for farm machinery at the time.

Zadoc Athearn owned the present Priester place in North Tisbury, and was the miller of the village, although aging and bowed, and his mill was in a state of dilapidation at the time. He was the last of his family to own and operate the mill, which was established there before 1700, quite probably by Simon Athearn. Until the death of Zadoc, none save Athearns had owned the land or operated the mill.

Compiled by Alison L. Mead