Remembering Ravenhurst Part 1

Ravenhurst was the name my mother's family gave to their old farmhouse on Martha's Vineyard.  My mother said it had watched over generations of her family.  It was one of the older Mayhew family homesteads in Chilmark that belonged to my grandmother, Ida Emma Mayhew Bailey who had inherited it from her father Henry Mayhew.

Ravenhurst

My mom explained that the house she spent her summers in and later came to call home didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing (which made it suspect as a home in my eyes) but was nevertheless a cherished part of her childhood.  Muz (Ida) had grown up in that house.  Her sister (Franny) was born in that house.

Muz and Grandpa Charles at Ravenhurst in the late 1920's or early 1930's.

After marrying Charles Ezra Bailey, Muz moved to New York City where she taught piano while her husband, a tenor for the New York Metropolitan Opera House, gave voice lessons. However, the family returned to their beloved farmhouse on Martha's Vineyard every summer. When Muz separated from my grandfather in the late 1930's she and her two youngest children lived their full time.  Ravenhurst was a place of inspiration and it was where Muz composed the musical piece, "Chilmark's Welcome To The Warships" which she dedicated to the "North Atlantic Squadron which practices off South Beach, Chilmark, Mass." Located in the rural part of the island Ravenhurst was set amidst rolling hills and rocky meadows that fueled the childhood imaginations of my mother, Virginia, aunt Franny, and uncle Arthur.

Uncle Arthur and Aunt Franny at Ravenhurst in the late 1920's

Uncle Arthur and my mom get ready to pick blueberries at Ravenhurst in the early 1930's

In 1929, eleven year old Harriet Frances Bailey (Aunt Franny) wrote the following poem about the old Mayhew family homestead.

RAVENHURST

It has held up a baby's stumbling feet.
It has made a shroud for the dead.
And I love every pane, every book, every chair,
Every rug, every sill, every bed!

Its couch is made holy by touch
Of a simple, resting head,
It had tears in its pitying eyes.
When it knew that a strong soul was dead.

Each board was made blest by a footstep,
And its heart held many a tear
When it knew that that earnest foot now
Resteth tranquilly in the bier.

It has laughed with me then, and has cried with me now
And every single hall
Has known and has echoed every grief
That hath made my heart so full.

It is hallowed - for every rafter
That adorns the low roof above
Every board, every shingle, is loyal,
And is consecrated to Love.

Mom in a tree in 1964 (photo cutesy of Eddie Hagihara)

My mom remembered Ravenhurst as the sturdy house that saw them through the storm of the century that took place on the evening of her 10th birthday on September 21, 1938.  She told me that she and Muz had washed the clothes midday and had put them out on the line to dry.  When the wind started to pick up an hour later, my mom went to secure the clothes but they had already dried from the high wind speed. Curious she headed toward the Menemsha Creek and was surprised to see it running backwards away from the sea.

Menemsha Creek (photo from an old postcard that my mother kept)

The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 took a lot of the island residents by surprise.  The storm system had developed off the Cape Verde Islands in the beginning of September.  By the 19th of September it had turned into a Category 5 storm just east of the Bahamas.  Forecasters believed the storm would make landfall in South Florida and then re-curve out into the Atlantic.  Instead, the storm took a sharp right turn moving north at rapid pace along the Gulf Stream Current paralleling the eastern seaboard.  It made landfall over Long Island as a Category 3 storm travelling at a rapid speed over Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  It exhibited the fastest forward speed (travelling 600 miles in 12 hours) of any hurricane recorded which is why this storm is also known as The Long Island Express.  Its rapid speed along with the astronomically high tide of the Autumn Equinox caused an extremely destructive storm surge.  The Southern New England marine community was hit especially hard and whole fishing fleets were damaged or lost.  The storm caused 564 fatalities and over $4.7 billion in property damage.  On Martha's Vineyard, the small harbor town of Menemsha was decimated as the fishing shacks were swept away by the storm surge. The boats came free of their moorings and were dashed against the shore.