The Liberty Pole today

Revisit some Vineyard history this Independence Day…take a stroll up beyond Vineyard Haven’s busy downtown.  About halfway to the Library and almost directly across the street from Owen Park you’ll pass a non-descript single story building in front of which stands a stout flag pole.  Affixed to it is a brass plaque telling of the bravery of three young Tisbury women who routed the British in the early days of the American Revolution.

The Vineyard, being in a vulnerable military position cut off from the revolutionary army and completely dependent on its own resources, declared its neutrality as tensions flared.  But it would be wrong to assume that this expressed the mood of the Island.

Sometime during 1775 Islanders erected a ‘liberty pole’ in the spot where the flagpole now stands.  As a show of solidarity with the patriots who initiated the Boston Tea Party, residents brewed tea with the last of their British stamped store then poured it over the base of the pole in order to ‘grow’ the cause of Liberty.

And so the pole stood as the Unicorn, flying the colors of Mother England limped into the harbor with a broken spar. Under the laws of neutrality the ship was permitted to anchor but the ship’s captain had more in mind than that.  Having spied the fine sturdy Liberty Pole, he demanded it be given to him as a replacement spar.

News of the British demands spread through the town like wildfire.  But when friends Polly Daggett, Parnel  Manter and Maria Allen got wind of it they decided that the British should not best them that easily. 

The night before the Liberty Pole was supposed to be turned over to the British the three young women using means which to this day remain a mystery set off up the hill and blew the Liberty Pole beyond any use but winter tinder.  The Unicorn limped away sparless. 

View to Vineyard Haven's outer harbor where the Unicorn would have anchored

Years later the British had their revenge when they stripped the Vineyard bare of all its winter store and livestock save one pig.  It was after the events of Grey’s Raid, as this event came to be known, that the hill at the intersection between the State and Lambert’s Cove Roads earned the name Redcoat Hill, for having been used as the crossing point for Up-Island's livestock. It now provides acres of quiet pasturage.

(Legend has it that the surviving pig was the pet of a young Tisbury boy. It survived the raid  by being hidden under the petticoats of the boy’s grandmother.  How it fared on the Vineyard through the subsequent lean winter is not known and may be better not explored, though we like to think its descendents still are enjoying Island life)

VH's Revolutionary-era graveyard

View from Redcoat Hill to Tashmoo, VH

As you go about your July 4th celebrations take a moment to notice the history that surrounds us, unknown and silent but still very much part of who we are.  You might even want to wander among the ancient headstones to find the resting place of the young women and their families in the old cemetery that lies just behind and adjacent to the Tisbury Town Hall…if you find them, take a moment to remember.
 

photos by Ella DaSilva