Martha's Vineyard in the American Revolution

By Thomas Dresser and Mat Tombers

As an isolated island outpost, Martha's Vineyard faced some unique challenges during the American Revolution. Neutrality was maintained at the start of the war due to the impact of the British regulations on the fishing and whaling industries. While political expediency may have dominated the day, Vineyard Patriots protected their homeland against the Royal Navy and contributed to the revolutionary effort against marauding British redcoats. In 1778, two key events--one involving three young women and the second an armada of forty naval ships--crystalized the opinion of Vineyarders that they should no longer remain neutral to British incursions on the Island and, more broadly, on American soil. Join local author Tom Dresser as he reveals the unheralded contributions of islanders to the fight for freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Nov 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781439674178

Thomas Dresser

Tom Dresser started his professional literary career while in fifth grade, publishing a monthly newspaper, the Springdale News, until he went off to college in 1965. In 2002, Tom began a career as a bus driver, wending his way over the winding, hilly West Tisbury school bus route. The kindergartener he picked up in 2002 he dropped off for high school graduation in 2015. For more than a decade, Tom drove tour buses around Martha's Vineyard. His self-published booklet, Tommy's Tour of the Vineyard, still stands as a premier tour guide for Martha's Vineyard. Tom also drove tour vans and limousines on the Island. Today, Tom devotes himself to enjoying time with nine grandchildren and savoring life with his wife of twenty years, Joyce Dresser. It's been a great run.

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Part I

THE BEGINNING

In the beginning, Vineyarders considered themselves English citizens, transplanted to the New World. They governed themselves according to English customs and laws. Revolution and independence were not on their mind. They revered whoever wore the crown three thousand miles away. However, several Vineyarders sought to thwart British rule. Some men attacked merchant ships; others ignored the tax on tea or openly insulted the arrogance of British sea captains.

Over the course of a quarter century, from 1750 to 1775, colonists, especially in Boston, realized that Parliament revised how it governed the colonies, specifically by imposing taxes on its American citizenry. Ostensibly, this was to pay for expenses incurred defending the colonists in the French and Indian War; in reality, that war was fought as much to defeat French interests in North America as it was to defend the colonists.

Still, in the 1750s and early 1760s, a majority of colonists considered themselves loyal subjects of the king and were uncomfortable showing disdain toward Parliament. One man from Martha’s Vineyard became a leader in his role as a minister, preaching in Boston. More than many others, his sermons were thoughtful and inspirational as he delivered increasingly rebellious remarks in Boston in the 1750s and early 1760s in response to the increasing reach and control of Parliament. The words of that one man, Jonathan Mayhew, proved a major influence in the shift of public opinion toward Revolution in Boston and affected Martha’s Vineyard as well.

1

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY

The American Revolution was not planned.

It happened.

And it happened because a nexus of circumstances and events handled poorly in England prompted a retaliatory response by the colonists. Actions taken in Parliament were deemed illegal by rabid colonists eager to rebel against what was deemed intolerable. Events were misinterpreted, exaggerated, then exploited to reveal the tyranny of King George III and Parliament when implemented in America.

The colonists did not plan to break from England. Most Americans considered themselves loyal British subjects, despite living three thousand miles away. Colonists fought side by side with British redcoats during the French and Indian War. Colonists considered England their mother country; there was no reason to separate. And while colonists enjoyed self-government, they still respected the king, and were, in their minds, still his loyal subjects.

And yet there was, or came to be, a deep division between the two sides that led to the Revolutionary War.

When and where did the Revolution begin?

In elementary school we recall hearing of the shot heard ’round the world. We read about the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, with Patriots hiding behind stone walls firing at redcoats, assembled in parade formation. That was when the revolution became the Revolutionary War.

The battles on Lexington Green and at the rude bridge in Concord proved to be the straw that broke the back of Parliament and the king. However, the seeds of that straw were sown a quarter century earlier, in 1750. Many patriotic names come to mind when one looks back over the million or so inhabitants of the thirteen colonies in 1750. Consider those colonists, living their lives, seeking neither war nor independence, yet intolerant of unfair governance and treatment.

Squint closer at the assembled throng. Zero in on the citizenry of the mid-eighteenth century in America. Now focus on one person, born on Martha’s Vineyard thirty years earlier, and see where his story leads.

Jonathan Mayhew was the eighth child of Experience and Remember Mayhew, born on the shores of Tisbury Great Pond, on October 8, 1720. His mother died two years after his birth. Jonathan Mayhew grew up in the family farmstead in the fields and woods by the waters of Quansoo, in Chilmark. Most likely he followed animal tracks and walked along Native American trails over the hills and through the fields and woods of Chilmark. From Quansoo, he moved to Cambridge in 1740, graduating from Harvard College in 1744 and earning his Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, five years later.

Jonathan was the scion of Thomas Mayhew, one of the first white men to settle Martha’s Vineyard. Descended from four generations of Mayhew ministers and missionaries on the Island, Jonathan was educated and trained to continue the family tradition, dedicated to preaching to the Native Americans, a local Wampanoag tribe, converting them to the Congregational tenets of Christian ethos.

Young Mayhew, however, was cut from a different cloth. While he surely admired and respected his forbears, he was born to a generation with loftier expectations and more immediate needs. Preaching to and for the Wampanoag tribe of Martha’s Vineyard was fine for his great-great-grandfather Thomas Mayhew (1592–1682), his great-grandfather Thomas Mayhew Jr. (1622–1657), his grandfather John Mayhew (1652–1689) and his father, Experience Mayhew (1673–1758). Young Jonathan sought a wider congregation.

This is the nexus of the American Revolution. It began with Jonathan Mayhew’s thoughts and ideas, the words of his sermons and conversations he engaged in with fellow revolutionaries, from James Otis to John and Samuel Adams.

Jonathan Mayhew is credited with coining the phrase No taxation without representation. Whether or not he made it up is immaterial. Certainly, he used the phrase and popularized it to inspire and involve a great many colonists, angered by Parliament’s failure to respect their rights, much less their wants and needs.

Unless the colonists were represented in Parliament, taxes should not be levied against them. That’s what the American Revolution was all about.

In both religion and politics, Jonathan Mayhew provided a radical interpretation, explanation and expansion of current thought.

In religion, Mayhew believed divine will was the power of love rather than an unrelenting force. He rejected Calvinist dogma and Anglican authoritarianism. Jonathan Mayhew believed in individual responsibility and private judgment; that is where his views on religion and politics entwined. Mayhew’s sermons and beliefs laid the foundation for the Unitarian denomination in the Protestant religion.

Mayhew spoke of the unity of God, the subordination of Jesus Christ and the salvation of character rather than original sin.

And Mayhew abhorred that the Church of England, the Anglican Church, intended to install a bishop on American soil, fearful a bishopric would pose a threat to religious liberty. That liberty had been the hallmark of New England religion since the days of the Puritans in the early 1600s. (Ironically, Mayhew’s grandson the Reverend Doctor Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright followed in his grandfather’s footsteps in the clergy. Wainwright assumed the role of bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of New York in 1852, a role Jonathan Mayhew fervently disapproved.)

In politics, Mayhew set the tone for separating from England, citing historical precepts that defined the situation between Parliament and the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. He adamantly believed in individual rights.

His challenging career began when the council that was to invite him to become the second Congregational minister, refused to convene for his nomination. None of the ministers approved of his interpretation of the Congregational creed. His father, Experience, had to issue the official invitation to serve as minister in the Old West Church, on Cambridge Street, in Boston.

Over the course of his relatively short career, 1750–65, Mayhew preached dozens of sermons at the Old West Church. His church was a simple wood-frame structure built in 1737, the bailiwick of his father, Experience, as well. (The British destroyed Old West, as they feared the Patriots would use the steeple as a signal tower to alert sympathetic Cambridge residents. Patriots did just that in the Old North Church, on April 18, 1775, when they hung two lanterns, signaling the British redcoats would go by sea before their march to Concord. The present Old West Church was built in 1806.)

Jonathan Mayhew was the father of civil and religious liberty in Massachusetts and New England, according to Robert Treat Paine, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. https://fee.org/articles/jonathan-mayhew-america-s-first-revolutionary-preacher-patriot/public domain; Wikimedia.

Two sermons by Jonathan Mayhew typify his ardent support of civil liberties and distaste for British rule. In 1750, his Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission was a bold justification for the execution of King Charles I by Oliver Cromwell and his followers in England a century earlier. Mayhew’s forty-page Discourse explored the unwritten English Constitution, which guarantees its citizenry are originally and essentially free. That precept was asserted by Roman predecessors of the English, that the people were jealous of their liberties. Mayhew stated that the king ruled solely by grant of Parliament and served at the voluntary consent of people. By the end of his Discourse, Mayhew proved that the people were totally within their rights to overthrow the king in 1651 because he had denied his citizens their rights.

The Discourse justified the phrase No taxation without representation.

Mayhew’s Discourse was prominently promoted and promptly published throughout the colonies. Two years later, it was printed in London, in 1752, and created considerable commentary. The Discourse laid out a coherent argument that the rights of the colonists must be protected at all costs. Still, the basic underlying assumption was maintained: that the colonists still considered themselves loyal subjects of the Crown.

The Discourse sermon was discussed intently on both sides of the Atlantic. John Adams believed everyone had read it. Many people believe this speech set the wheels in motion for future rebellious attacks on Parliament, attacks against taxing the colonists without their participation in their government.

While his sermons were eagerly read and discussed by the public, Jonathan Mayhew did not always adhere to the social mores in his private life. He was immune to the dissent he fomented. At times, he expressed anger more vehemently than need be. And as a young minister of good standing, he lived a lively social life, dining out with friends, with no interest on settling down. He maintained a love of the outdoors, hunting and fishing, as befitted a son of Chilmark.

The congregation of Old West breathed a collective sigh of relief in 1756 when Mayhew married Elizabeth Clarke, daughter of a prominent, wealthy Boston physician. Thirteen years his junior, Elizabeth was attractive and a woman of good character, an ideal match for this most popular orator of the era. Jonathan and Elizabeth Mayhew had two daughters, one who died in infancy. (Their daughter Elizabeth was the mother of Reverend Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, the Episcopal bishop.) A portrait of Jonathan and Elizabeth Mayhew was painted by John Singleton Copley; unfortunately, it was destroyed in the great fire of Boston in 1872.

Micajah, another Mayhew and cousin of Jonathan, dominated Martha’s Vineyard to the middle of the eighteenth century.

2

THE MAYHEW DYNASTY

Just as political upheaval coursed through the streets and bars of Boston in the mid-eighteenth century, there was political upheaval in the town meetings and farmsteads on the remote island of Martha’s Vineyard, some eighty miles to the southeast of Boston. A political decision was reached on April 3, 1751, by the power brokers on Island, that life would not continue as before.

Thomas Mayhew (1593–1682) emigrated from England to Watertown, intent on working as a property manager in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although he failed in business, he succeeded admirably in land management. In 1641, he purchased two land grants from the king, one from the Earl of Stirling in New York, the other from Sir Fernando Gorges in Maine. With that property, He became, to all intents and purposes, the sole owner and ruler of a personal fiefdom, that of Martha’s Vineyard, the Elizabeth Islands and the island of Nantucket.¹

From 1641 to 1751, Thomas Mayhew and his expanding progeny maintained a firm political grip on his purchase while developing and devoting a great deal of energy and effort in becoming prolific missionaries, of whom Jonathan Mayhew, in the fifth generation, was the most prominent.

Thomas Mayhew assumed the self-appointed title of governor for life and ruled Martha’s Vineyard from the time of his initial settlement to his death in 1682. In 1663, the heir of the Earl of Stirling sold his grant to James, the Duke of York, brother of King Charles II. That threatened the proprietorship of Thomas Mayhew, but he ignored all inquiries from the Duke of York.

Pre-Revolutionary Vineyarders were conflicted over the Mayhew dynasty on Martha’s Vineyard. Wood panel by Charles Banks, An Early Rebellion; courtesy of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

In 1664, the Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam