From the Vineyard Gazette editions of September 1942:

The primaries for the nomination of candidates whose names will be on the ballot at the state election in November will be held on Tuesday, September 15. Not for many years have the primaries held so much interest to Vineyarders, with two contests for county offices in which the Republican nomination is usually the equivalent of election.

For the first time in the history of Martha’s Vineyard, or of the motion picture industry, the Island is to be the scene of a World Premiere tomorrow night, with the first public showing of The Moon and Sixpence, made from W. Somerset Maugham’s famous novel, at the Edgartown Playhouse. The event will bring together a neighborly gathering of the Island’s own celebrities along with the off-Island press. The Island’s first World Premiere will not follow tradition in all respects. There will be no bright lights, partly because of the dim-out but partly because the theatre does not boast an electric sign. 

The latest major rumor about Martha’s Vineyard, extraordinarily persistent, is to the effect that the entire Island is to be taken over by the Army, the Navy, or anyway by the government. All the plans of every sort, which have been undertaken here, or are now being discussed, are fully accounted for without any shred of substantiation for this latest and greatest of wartime whoppers.

Four times around Martha’s Vineyard on a wheel in a single day is the bicycling record established on Tuesday, Sept. 1, by Rev. Harry Butman and it is a record likely to stand for a long time. Mr. Butman started out on Tuesday at 4:45 a.m., and at the conclusion of his first trip, ate breakfast. During the morning he made his second circuit followed by lunch and another trip in the afternoon. The fourth was an evening trip after supper.

Negotiations are underway which will remove an ancient landmark from its original site in Eastville, Oak Bluffs, and transfer it to Edgartown, in the vicinity of Eel Pond. This is the Oliver Linton House. Records show that the Linton house, long referred to as the Claghorn Tavern, is one of the oldest on the Island. The locality in which it stands was a principal landing place in those days, with a wharf at the end of Old County Road, and certain places in which Capt. James Lawrence, hero of the loss of the frigate Chesapeake, was said to have slept before sailing forth to his death. Tales of romance and mystery have always been told of this portion of Eastville, know to older people as the Barbary Coast, and the old house has figured in many of these.

It should be Fair time along about now. The old handbills used to read, “Ho for the Martha’s Vineyard Cattle Show,” but it is not Ho for anything this September, because of the great war. The Fair was something you could count on, but this year the war, with its difficulties and impossibilities of transportation, has intervened.

One of the most important sales of real estate in recent years is the transfer of the western portion of Mohu, the tremendous estate owned by Mrs. William M. Butler, widow of Senator Butler, to Albridge C. Smith 3rd of Princeton, N.J. Mohu is one of the largest and most beautiful of the estates on Martha’s Vineyard, surpassed in size and shore front only by Seven Gates Farm. Until recently, it included several small houses, besides the big house occupied by Mrs. Butler. The Butlers moved to Mohu more than twenty years ago, having first made the beautiful Edgartown house built by the late Dr. Daniel Fisher, their summer home.

There is a critical shortage of scrap iron which now threatens to hold back the war industries. Walkers and cyclists who can locate discarded cars and old stoves, boat engines or abandoned farm tools or machines will help a great deal if they will report their finds to the local salvage officers. It is said that old stoves make excellent scrap iron. Automobiles and boat engines are prizes. They should be reported so that trucks may go after them.

The Vineyard will soon be bragging about its only admiral, for Edward Hanson Smith, a captain in the Coast Guard, has been nominated by President Roosevelt to be a rear admiral. The son of Capt. and Mrs. Edward Jones Smith of Vineyard Haven, he was born in that town Oct. 29, 1889, the descendant of seafaring stock on both ancestral sides. Compiled by Alison Mead