Women of Martha's Vineyard

Thomas Dresser

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781609499037
• eBook ISBN: 9781614239307
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Generations of women have traveled to Martha's Vineyard to find solace in its calming waves and varied shoreline. Many prominent and capable women set down roots, contributing to the fabric of the community on the island. Learn of the brilliant poet Nancy Luce, who lived in isolation with her chickens. Emily Post, whose name is synonymous with good manners, sought respite from her personal struggles on the Vineyard. Famed horticulturalist Polly Hill left a perennial legacy for islanders with her tranquil arboretum. In the twentieth century, novelist Dorothy West captured the beauty of Martha's Vineyard with her work. Historian Thomas Dresser provides a series of biographical sketches of these extraordinary women who were bound by their love of the island.

Chapter 1

Nancy Luce (1814–1890): Poet, Entrepreneur

West Tisbury

Nancy Luce lived on Martha’s Vineyard her entire life, unmarried and alone, on a farm on New Lane in what is now West Tisbury. She raised chickens, tended a garden and wrote and sold pamphlets of her poetry. Her unusual lifestyle was not typical of the social fabric of the times.

Over her lifetime, she elicited both praise and rebuke. She was an eccentric character who managed to forge a place for herself in her community. For decades, her only companions were her hens. She was reviled as unusual yet wrote poetry that has a beat and a message that resonates today. Nancy Luce was a complicated individual.

A piece by historian Arthur Railton noted that “when she couldn’t hand-letter the booklets fast enough to satisfy the demand, she sent a collection of her full length poems to a printer in New Bedford who produced a little booklet entitled Poor Little Hearts. A good title because it was Nancy who first made the heart symbol famous. But folks just smiled at the crazy hen lady and her childish poetry and her silly hearts.”²

Railton acknowledged her wayward ways yet respected her ingenuity and fortitude in the rugged rural farmland of nineteenth-century Martha’s Vineyard. “And soon this recluse, in a tiny farmhouse on a dirt lane a mile off the main road in West Tisbury, became a celebrity—the Island’s first. Her writing, along with her butter-and-egg money, paid her bills. She supported herself until she died in 1890 at age seventy-five, our first successful woman entrepreneur. Our first professional writer.” Railton congratulated Nancy Luce on her attributes in making a name for herself.

Nancy Luce seated with her beloved chickens. She had gravestones carved for her favorite hens. Courtesy of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

In her younger years, Nancy was well known as a horsewoman. Apparently she was attractive, charming, handsome and a bit of a tomboy. And she had several suitors. She rode her spirited horses through the fields, jumping fences and stone walls. Her parents were well-to-do; she was well-dressed, and the family owned several horses.

Nancy Luce “became betrothed to a young seaman, and their wedding was planned to take place on his return from a voyage. But he never returned. ‘Lost at sea’ was the only information passed on to the relatives, his sweetheart and those who lived after. The high-strung intellect of Nancy Luce cracked from grief and strain.”³

The loss of her fiancé was devastating. Nancy Luce fell into a depression that contributed to a lifestyle quite different from that of her youth. The news story continues: “She devoted her life to the care of her parents, who suffered prolonged illness in their latter days and eventually exhausted much of their means as a result. When they too had gone, a strange, even weird being replaced the girl who had once been the village belle. The ‘crazy character’ ridiculed, jeered at, despised as a human freak, by the sons of men who had once sought her favor.” Moses Norton of Chilmark recalled that “a wedding was planned, but when her fiancé was lost at sea, she came apart.” She cared for her aging parents but then became “weird in appearance, speech and action.” These events occurred in 1840, when Nancy was twenty-six years old.

An article in the 1950s⁴ attempted to reconcile Nancy Luce’s unusual behavior with her upbringing. It was titled: “Nancy Luce: A Vineyard Character Thwarted in Love?” She inherited her parents’ farm but little more. Besides egg sales, she encouraged tourists to take her picture and sold them poetry. “The sale of these droll pictures, and a printed effusion called Poor Little Hearts, with the proceeds of her cow and hens, serve to supply her wants, though her surroundings are very desolate…The house is a model of neatness.” Nancy Luce personalized her eighteen hens in the homestead with names; they served as companions. She wrote, “Now my days are all dark, and these animals are all the friends I have.”

According to one unnamed, undated publication, Nancy Luce was “discovered” by Rodolphus Crocker, a stable master of Vineyard Haven who recognized her potential as an attraction for tourists. “He quickly perceived the drawing power of Nancy Luce.” The story continues: “Nancy Luce became famous in an instant. Pictures of her pathetic self, her hens and her lonely home soon adorned the Martha’s Vineyard guide books and a stream of summer visitors constantly wended its way ‘up island’ from the Methodist camp ground in Oak Bluffs. The hearts of the stable keepers, of which the far-seeing Mr. Crocker was one, were made glad.” Nancy Luce proved good for the business of tourism.

A sympathetic take on Miss Luce was offered by Marcia Torrey of Barrington, Rhode Island, in a letter to the editor of the Gazette: “My own feeling is that her losses were more than she could bear and the loneliness she felt caused the change. With no one to turn to she bestowed all her love on her hens, and her poetry was a form of therapy for her.” Ms. Torrey believed Nancy Luce expressed her emotions in writing and that her love of animals showed that “she was indeed a very sensitive person.”⁵ That Nancy Luce utilized both poems and chickens as a source of income indicates her resourcefulness. In the nineteenth century, it was unusual for a single woman to live alone; Nancy survived on her wits and her aberrant behavior.

Nancy was not without human contact, albeit limited to West Tisbury. She wrote numerous letters in the 1840s to a merchant, Edward Munro, that survive in a file at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. The excellence of the handwriting stands out, as does the weak spelling. The content of the letters is intriguing, from requests to purchase tobacco to those for water paints, which she resold or used herself. In September 1842, Nancy wrote, “I think it is best for me to try to make a few pictures if I can to take up my mind so that the medicines can have a chance to help me if possible. ([M]y mind is so out of order because I cant ride somwhere [sic] it damages my health and the medicines cant [sic] have so much chance to help me).” The medication was likely to relieve the grief of her broken love, her aged parents and the destitute, lonely life she led.

Another cache of letters contains correspondence with William Rotch of West Tisbury, who befriended Nancy and later administered her estate. On April 16, 1885, Nancy Luce requested to barter: “I want to know if you willing, or not, to let me have some grain, and take eggs for it, if not, I must put off all my hens, and never keep any more, and cry till I die, they must not starve, dont [sic] be concerned, you shall have your pay.”

Many letters were sent to physician Dr. William Luce, no known relation. In August 1873, she wrote of her will: “I convey my land, fences, house, buildings to Dr. William Luce, for you to have after my death, to pay you to take good care of my graves, and gravestones, and graveyard fence, and bury me side of Poor Pinky, to the east of her, and get me a good grave stone to my grave.” Another letter, a decade later, mentioned similar concerns. The gravestones of her chickens were as important as her own.

A small news item reported that “Miss Nancy Luce received many callers on the 4^th and everything went smoothly. Last Independence day she was much annoyed by parties who were meddlesome and noise [sic]; so this year she called in the aid of the constable of the West Tisbury district, who peremptorily checked any attempt at riot. The bland and courteous officer also acted as usher and escorted the company in the best room.”⁶ Nancy Luce was not afraid to seek protection when she deemed it necessary.

Life was not always so smooth. Just a few months later, on October 24, 1870, in a letter to the editor of the Vineyard Gazette, she complained about visitors from Holmes Hole who bothered her with loud noise and a taunting manner: “I staggered about the house after they went for a little while forced to be careful and not fall, I was so beat out. I kept talking to them on goodness, they would not mind it…they are cruel. I want folks to call on me that has [sic] tender feelings for me in sickness, and not make noise to put my head in misery. A good many very nice folks calls [sic] on me.” Nancy Luce was not averse to proclaiming her beliefs but likely it was to a disinterested audience.

Incidents erupted over the years as visitors taunted, annoyed and harassed her. She wrote to Jeremiah Pease on April 15, 1879, in reference to young boys who attempted to break into her house. Saying she felt she was being “murdered alive,” she requested, “You must stop all infernal squealing, singing they call it.” Her visitors probably considered it an act of compassion to visit her; she perceived it as torment.

An item in the West Tisbury police blotter reported, “Oct. 26, 1882: Miss Nancy Luce, a maiden lady who lives alone…now has a new pistol and claims she has a right to defend herself. During the last day of the Agricultural Fair, twenty carriage loads of people visited her. Some of them carried their fun a little too far by shutting their hostess in a closet, but they made up with her by purchasing a large number of her books.”⁷

Visitors continued to parade out to her humble New Lane abode. An unidentified booklet, published around 1900, described the memorable atmosphere: “Many of the sedate middle aged men and women of Martha’s Vineyard today will realize the meaning of this plaint, for in their childhood days a visit to Nancy Luce was a never-to-be-forgotten lark, and a treat in store to be anticipated with the annual visit to the cattle show at West Tisbury.”

Her unusual lifestyle, focused on her beloved hens, intrigued her many visitors. The piece continues: “To the great majority of people who knew or knew of her, Nancy Luce was a fantastic character, a crazy, ridiculously behaving being, someone providing a laugh, someone to torment until she went into a fit of temper.”

Gravestone of Nancy Luce in the West Tisbury cemetery. Small chicken statues decorate her grave year-round. Photograph by Joyce Dresser.

Hens. It always comes back to the hens of Nancy Luce. She treated them like humans, in some cases better than humans. As Samantha Barrow wrote in Edible Vineyard, “She eked out a living from the sale of her carefully written poems and photographic self-portraits with her hens. She was, at her peak, a bona fide celebrity, but a public figure maligned as much as celebrated during her lifetime.”

Nancy Luce recorded her lonely existence in poetry and photographs, advocating protection of her beloved hens. She sought comfort in her simple life, though neighbors and visitors often denigrated her aberrant behavior.

Former West Tisbury poet laureate Dan Waters writes, “Whenever a favorite hen died, she would write an elegy to it and have a headstone made for its grave. Modern-day Vineyarders still visit and leave loving tributes at Nancy’s grave, in the form of assorted ornamental chickens.”

Over a half century, Nancy Luce published a number of poems and books. Sickness, Etc. is a twenty-four-page booklet written in 1865 that details her travails in caring for her hens and visits from the curious: “Within 13 years, 7 folks have asked me raven [sic] to let them come here alive, they impose on me. They would destroy everything. And drive my hens in woods, I cannot live without hens.” On the last page, she wrote, “Them that calls on me, must come with good hearts, tender feelings, speak the truth, to my face, and behind my back, but gross sinners must keep away. Strive for the love of God in your hearts.”

A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce was published in New Bedford in 1871, reprinted in 1875 and again in Cottage City (Oak Bluffs) in 1888. One booklet, entitled Poor Little Hearts, includes the tender line in the frontispiece, with Nancy’s primitive illustration: “This heart with a little one in it, Is to give you to understand, That hearts can be united.”

Originally printed in 1860, Poor Little Hearts was included in a volume entitled Consider Poor I, published in 1984 by Walter Magnes Teller; it was recently republished by the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. Mr. Teller’s intent was “to dust off and rescue from near oblivion an estimable person and poet.” He did that and more.

A review of Consider Poor I noted that the book offers “a more sympathetic perspective of this woman, sometimes treated unfairly by history.” And “from early on she was an entrepreneur.”⁸ She managed to live alone, wrote well and proved herself...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• 1. Nancy Luce (1814–1890): Poet, Entrepreneur
• 2. The Adams Sisters, Lucy (1861–1954) and Sarah (1863–1938): Performers
• 3. Emily Post (1872–1960): Manners Maven
• 4. Katharine Cornell (1893/98–1974): Actress
• 5. Lillian Florence Hellman (1905–1984): Playwright
• 6. Dionis Coffin Riggs (1898–1997): Poet, Author, Columnist
• 7. Dorothy West (1907–1998): Writer
• 8. Polly Hill (1907–2007): Horticulturist
• 9. Nancy Whiting (1925–2007): Activist, Librarian
• 10. Helen Vanderhoop Manning (1919–2008): Educator
• 11. Betty Alley (1912–2009): Heritage Keeper
• 12. Patricia Neal (1926–2010): Actress
• 13. Helen Lamb (1915–2011): Camp Director
• 14. Doris Pope Jackson (1915–2012): Innkeeper, Artist
• 15. Gladys Widdiss (1914–2012): Tribal Elder, Potter
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author