At 3:45 am on Friday, Jan. 18, 1884, the 275-foot steamer City of Columbus, bound for Savannah from Boston, struck Devil’s Bridge off Gay Head, and sank beside the treacherous rocks. Despite the heroic labors of local residents mostly Wampanoag fishermen willing to brave the bitter, dangerous winter surf more than a hundred […]
There should be a warning on the cover of Tamara Weiss, Amanda Benchley, and Elizabeth Cecil’s new book, “Vineyard Folk: Creative People and Places of Martha’s Vineyard,” that reads, “Not just a gorgeous coffee table book.” It is testimony and a treatise for why we should all be working not just to preserve the land, […]
Electric-powered vessels are apparently on the table for the Steamship Authority, but they come with built-in hurdles. They are expensive, which is the highest hurdle, but they would also require
The Martha s Vineyard Times
Roberta Gilluly Tilton (“Bobbie”), born January 1937 to Walter S. Gilluly and Hilda Marie Norton in Edgartown, departed this life from an undiagnosed heart condition on July 2, 2020, in Providence, R.I.
After her father died in 1941, Bobbie, her mom, and sister Jean moved from their Ocean Heights home to live with her grandparents, Orin Norton, blacksmith, and Elsie Maude Shurtleff, on their farm in Edgartown.
Her favorite memories from childhood were the smell and look of her grandfather’s apple orchard in bloom, swimming in Yvonne Canha’s water ballet classes at the Bend in the Road, tap dance classes, helping her grandfather prune the apple trees, ringing the bell at the Methodist Church with her sister Jean and her grandmother on the day WWII ended, and her first-ever trip off-Island to Boston with her mom and sister after the war, when she was 8 years old.