Visiting family ahead of the Thanksgiving travel rush, I celebrated Veterans Day on Martha's Vineyard. My first undergraduate school was the College of Charleston, founded 1770. But despite Rutledge, Heyward, and Lynch, among many others including the humble Jackson family, conservative Charleston was mostly Tory during the Revolution. If you want to start a revolution, you need to go to Massachusetts.
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His marker was added for the SAR by the DAR. Hers was from the
Coastal Defence Chapter of the DAR. |
“Early in the Revolution Island attitudes were at least neutral if not favorable toward the Crown. The Islanders’ unmatched whaling skills were prized by the British, as they watched lucrative profits return to England. As such, the Vineyard enjoyed an administration of benevolent neglect from abroad. As early as 1775, however, as the British began closing nearby ports and occasionally coming ashore to requisition livestock, Islanders hardened their hearts towards the lobsterbacks.”
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2010/07/02/behind-birth-vineyard-revolution
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| Oak Hill Cemetery was the scene of a morning memorial. |
“The most infamous and humiliating chapter in Vineyard history occurred on Sept. 11, 1778, the terrible Grey’s Raid, when ruthless British Maj. Gen. Charles Grey unleashed the full brunt of British Naval intimidation on the beleaguered Island with nearly 40 ships and over 4,000 troops. It was a bloodless pillage but a pillage nonetheless, as Islanders were forced to march 10,574 sheep, 315 cattle, innumerable bales of hay and 229 arms to present-day Vineyard Haven. Unsatisfied with these ill-gotten spoils, Grey’s men then scoured the countryside, looting house and field.”
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2010/07/02/behind-birth-vineyard-revolution
Previously on Necessary Facts
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