Martha's Vineyard Museum

Table of Contents

Summary Information

Biography/Historical Note

Scope and Content of Collection

Administrative Information

Related Materials

Index Terms

Collection Contents

Descriptive Summary

Repository	Martha's Vineyard Museum, Gale Huntington Research Library 59 School Street P.O. Box 1310 Edgartown, MA 02539 (508)627-4441
Call Number	RU 395
Creator	Home Club (Edgartown, Mass.)
Title	Home Club records
Date	1899-1932
Extent	2 boxes (1.008 cubic feet)
Language	Language(s):The materials are in English.
Abstract	The Home Club of Edgartown, Massachusetts was an exclusive men's social club active in the early 1900s. Records of the club include, bound volumes of meeting minutes, an account book, a visitor's log, mortgage documents and printed membership lists. Additionally, there is a 1907 historical account of Edgartown created by C. G. and Thomas A. Hine.

Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use and Reproduction Restrictions

Requests to reproduce material from this collection should be directed to museum staff. Reproduction fees may apply.

Acquisition Information

The materials in this collection were acquired from various sources, including: three volumes of clerk's records, 1905-1913, and one account book, 1900-1906, gift of Elmer J. Bliss, November 10, 1939, (Accession no. 1939.023); two printed volumes, Constitution, By-Laws and House Rules…(1903), one gift of George K. Searles in June 1935 and one gift of William Worth Pease; visitor's book, gift of C. Stuart Avery June 24, 1964, (Accession no. 1964.017); historical account, The Only Edgartown…, gift of Alexander O. Vietor, August 25, 1965, (Accession no. 1965.022). Additional unidentified records of the Home Club were gifted by Chester E. Pease in 1935, (Accession no. 1935.047). The immediate source of acquisition and date of accession of the remainder of the materials are unknown.

Publication Information

Martha's Vineyard Museum

Gale Huntington Research Library
59 School Street
P.O. Box 1310
Edgartown, MA 02539
(508)627-4441

Processing Information

Finding aid prepared by Jean Cargill January-March 2008. Revised by Insley Julier in July 2013. Machine-encoded by Nathaniel Janick April 2014.

 Creation of this finding aid was sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Related Materials

Related Materials

See also, RU 28, Edgartown Yacht Club Annuals and Ephemera.

Biography/Historical Note

The Home Club was an exclusive men's club on the harbor in Edgartown, Massachusetts, active during the first quarter of the 20th century. The club's stated objectives were; establishing and maintaining a reading room, social meetings and encouraging yachting. Twenty-five townsmen signed an agreement to form the Home Club in December 1899 for "social and progressive purposes." All officers and active, voting members were permanent residents of Edgartown and a "suitable box with balls and cubes" was employed for secret voting. Gentlemen who visited for the summer season might be nominated as non-resident members, and later a junior membership was added. The club arranged to rent a house with a dock at south Main Street known as the "Harbor Side Cottage" for club functions that occurred throughout the year.

The charter members were: J. Munroe, Littleton C. Wimpenney, W. Channing Nevin, E. Coffin, E. L. West, Walter S. Osborn, Charles H. Marchant, John W. Pease, Charles A. Joy, H. L. Wimpenney 2nd, John E. White, H. L. Wimpenney, H. A. Pease, William H. Mayhew, Jethro Cottle, Theodore S. Wimpenney, Thomas A. Dexter, Jason L. Dexter, J. F. Norton, Ellsworth Vincent, Samuel Keniston, Charles W. Fisher, Clarence H. Collins and Benjamin G. Collins. Elected as founding officers were: President, Littleton C. Wimpenney; Vice President, W. Channing Nevin; Secretary, Charles H. Marchant; and, Treasurer, John E. White.

Members enjoyed benefits such as, a reading room with subscriptions to popular periodicals, complementary cigars, card, billiard, and pool tables, a piano and a private pier, moorings and a beach. Organized activities included; dramatic entertainment, ladies nights, sardine lunches and oyster suppers. Additionally, the club held sailing regattas.

On September 14, 1904, the Home Club's Yachting Division attempted a coup to overtake the Home Club. The Yachting Division proposed; that its officers take over as officers of the club; that the organization change its name to the Edgartown Yacht Club; and that the month of the annual meeting be changed from December to July. Despite favorable votes on all proposals, all actions taken on September 14th were rescinded by a vote of the members at the October meeting. In 1905, the Edgartown Yacht Club became a separate, incorporated, private seasonal club with a rented club house on lower Main Street. The yacht club was led by Edward H. Raymond, who had originally served as an officer in the Home Club's Yachting Division.

Despite earlier political upheavals within the club, in 1905 the members agreed to legally incorporate as the "Home Club of Edgartown," and purchased the Elizabeth J. Fisher property on the south side of Water Street for a year-round club house. The Home Club added to its Water Street holdings in 1906, by purchasing the adjoining property to the north, known as the Faulkner property. Improvements to the club house included the introduction of acetylene gas, and later, electric lighting and the construction of a 150 foot pier.

Scope and Content of Collection

Organizational records, 1899-1932, bulk 1899-1913, of the Home Club of Edgartown, Massachusetts, include; record books of meeting minutes, printed member lists, printed volumes containing the constitution, by-laws and rules, a draft mortgage document, a corrected mortgage document, an account book and a visitors book. The early meeting minutes of the Home Club, 1899-1904, are titled; Secretary's Records, while later minutes dating from the incorporated club, 1903-1913, are titled; Clerk's Records. Charles H. Marchant recorded the minutes, serving as Secretary and later Clerk from 1899-1913. Some loose, printed notices, announcements and other ephemera have been pasted in with the minutes. The records trace the club's activities, interest in yachting, periodical subscriptions for the reading room, and upkeep and improvement to the club's properties. They also describe the failed 1904 attempt of the Home Club Yachting Division to take charge of the organization and change its name to the "Edgartown Yacht Club." Additionally, the collection includes a historical account: The Only Edgartown on the Face of the Earth: Bits of its History and Legend, its Stories by Sea and Land, as Told Around the Hearth of the Home Club and Gathered from the Files of the Gazette, written and illustrated by C. G. Hine and Thomas A. Hine and presented with their compliments to the Home Club in 1907. In the corner of the title page, the creators have noted: "This edition is limited to one copy. And this is it!" The brown, leather bound volume has gold embossed print on the cover, a printed title page and typescript text. It contains 28 original photographs pasted in, with handwritten captions.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged by record form and therein in loose chronological order.