From the Dec. 16, 1949 editions of the Vineyard Gazette:
Edward T. Vincent of Edgartown took a few minutes on Wednesday to look back over the long course of years. The day was his 80th birthday, and he was receiving congratulations and messages of esteem and friendship by mail, telegraph and telephone, some of them from a great distance.
“It’s the best birthday I ever had,” he said.
“I’m just as well as it’s possible for a man of 80 to be,” Mr. Vincent said, smiling, and his appearance bore out his words. Rugged, hearty, his eyes showing the light of an undimmed spirit, he was a portrait of contentment, but not of repose. He does not intend to be inactive.
“I have lots of friends, good friends,” he went on, “and they are nice to me. I’ve made a lot of new friends since I was brought to realize that it wasn’t good for me to stay home and mope. I enjoy myself every day of my life and I’m going to keep going as long as I possibly can. That’s all the philosophy I’ve got.”
But it wasn’t all, or nearly all. Mr. Vincent is full of philosophy, whether or not it is called by that name.
He was born at Katama in the house now owned by Dr. James C. Wilson which then stood about where the road turns into the South Ocean Club restaurant. When he was still a child, his parents moved to Clevelandtown and lived in the house now owned by Major LaBell. The house where Mr. Vincent now lives was built by his father, Deacon Samuel Warren Vincent, and part of his boyhood was spent there.
Some 10 years after his marriage he bought the house that had been his birthplace and moved it to its site on Mill Hill; then, about 1916 or 1917, he and Mrs. Vincent went to be caretakers on Nashawena Island where they lived for five years, lacking a few months. Since their return, Mr. Vincent has made his home continuously in Edgartown.
Asked about the good old days as compared with the pessimistic present, he observed, “Things aren’t as they used to be but the way I look at it, there’s as much opportunity. I don’t despair a bit. In fact the only thing that makes me despair is when I have a tinge of arthritis.”
“There are an awful lot of good people in this world,” Mr. Vincent added.
Among his birthday greetings was a clipping showing pictures of a man active at 100 years, and suggesting that Mr. Vincent would do as well at that age. Obviously. he’d like to. He does not now have much actual labor or responsibility because he leans on Patrick and Henry Delaney. Pat, his foreman, handles the moving and contracting business still carried on in Mr. Vincent’s name.
Asked whether, if he had to do it over again, he would be as much of a rebel, Mr. Vincent chuckled and said, without hesitation, “More, I guess. I think this town could stand a lot of rebellion.”
In the era from 1900 to 1910, he was a leader of the insurgent young political group in Edgartown known as the Molly Maguires. As a member of the school committee he was fighting for better schools, but the big campaign of the Moll Maguires was for a town landing place. A special act of the legislature was obtained, authorizing the town to take the Daggett property — later the summer home of Mrs. Agnes M. Jenks and now a Colonial Inn annex — for $800.
“We had the special act,” Mr. Vincent recalled, “but we couldn’t get the selectmen to go ahead. Littleton C. Wimpenney was the chairman of the board — he’d been a selectman for 35 years, but the Maguires turned him out at the next election. I’ve always felt badly that the town didn’t get that property. The house and upper part could have been sold for more than the cost, and the landing would have been free.”
Mr. Vincent married the former Lydia West Vincent, a fifth or sixth cousin, at the home of her father, Elijah B. Vincent, on the Great Plain in 1892. They observed their golden wedding anniversary in 1942 with five children and nine grandchildren gathered around them. Mrs. Vincent died in 1947, and not until this past year was her husband persuaded that loneliness and grief should not continue, with the harm they were causing him. Now, at 80, he offers his philosophy of optimism.
A birthday party was given in his honor Wednesday evening at the home of one of his daughters, Mrs. Frank Prada. The family and a few friends shared the celebration, which featured a birthday cake, cards, gifts and an evening of pleasant conversation.
He intends to go off-Island soon after Christmas to visit his daughter Doris, Mrs. Richard E. Norton, who lives in Scituate, and various friends. “I don’t intend to hurry back,” he says.
Every Wednesday night he goes to prayer meeting at Vineyard Haven, since Edgartown does not have prayer meetings any more. For a while he was out so many nights, and out so late, that Pat Delaney was worried about him.
“Don’t I look well?” Mr. Vincent asked. “Don’t I look better than I did this time last year?” Pat said yes. “All right then,” said Mr. Vincent. “What are you worrying about?”
Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
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