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It now also owns and operates several businesses, including three stores and a shellfish hatchery. After the arrival of the English, these lands became reduced in size.
After receiving the lighthouse license, VERI undertook a series of fundraising activities that engaged the community of Martha’s Vineyard. Today, only six visible tribal communities remain. One day, Moshup was making his way across the mainland to the headlands of the Aquinnah Cliffs. As a result, the existing 52 feet tall conical brick tower and dwelling were constructed by Caleb King of Boston in 1855 and the lamp was lit in 1856.
1,000 individuals donated more than $2,000,000 to complete the project. After the building was completed, Paul Revere provided some copper and tin used to augment the weatherproofing of the Light.
In 1844, the octagonal wooden light tower was moved back 75 feet from the eroding clay cliffs by John Mayhew of Edgartown at a cost of $386.87. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was granted $570 by Congress for that purpose.
Charles also visited island schools where spoke to children and worked on lighthouse programs with teachers
In 1990, William Waterway Marks appointed Richard Skidmore and Joan LeLacheur as Keepers. Richard and Joan became the Keepers for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and during President Barack Obama’s 2009 vacation on the island he and his family were given a personal tour of the lighthouse by Joan LeLacheur.
On April 8th, 2010 keeper Skidmore entered the Lighthouse grounds and found 40 feet of split rail fence missing.
Other land owned by the Tribe include parcels in Christiantown and Chappaquiddick. With the European settlers came much adversity for our tribe - disease that virtually wiped out whole villages, systems of government that bore little resemblance to our tribal practices and values, missionaries intent on converting us to Christianity, and private models of land use and ownership that conflicted with our tribe's own communal practices and values.
photo credit: Richard Skidmore
By the time of the move, just 2 years after the need was announced, 3.4 million dollars had been raised for the project. The previously dim Gay Head Light was now bright enough to be confused with the second order Fresnel lens that was in the Sankaty Light on Nantucket, and at least one shipwreck occurred. From this vantage point, there is water on three sides, and Noman’s Land can be seen to the south and the Elizabeth Islands (both parts of Dukes County, but mostly unoccupied) are on the opposite horizon.
He and assistant keeper Max Attaquin, also a Wampanoag, remained until 1933. In August 1854 Congress approved $30,000 for the construction of a new brick tower to fit a first-order Fresnel lens, and a new keeper’s residence also made of brick. But gradually, the ocean's force of wind and tides broadened and deepened the opening, creating an island named Noepe. The Wampanoag were the first people of Noepe.
The ancestors of Wampanoag people have lived for at least 10,000 years at Aquinnah (Gay Head) and throughout the island of Noepe (Martha's Vineyard), pursuing a traditional economy based on fishing and agriculture.