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The first people on Martha’s Vineyard were Indians of the Wampanoag tribe, who probably were able to walk here before the sea filled the lowest valleys and plains. Wampanoags still make up a large part of the town of Aquinnah, known as Gay Head until the spring of 1998. The modern history of Martha’s Vineyard begins with the arrival of a single English ship in 1602, commanded by Bartholomew Gosnold, who built the first colonial settlement in New England on Cuttyhunk, a small island just across Vineyard Sound. Gosnold crossed the sound to visit the Vineyard many times during the single summer season he remained in the New World; the Indians called it Noepe, meaning “Amid the Waters” – a reference to the two distinct and often conflicting tidal currents the native people saw at work around the Island. Gosnold named it “Martha’s Vineyard,” probably after his infant daughter and because the Island was covered by wild grapes.

The right to settle permanently on the Vineyard was purchased by Thomas Mayhew Sr., a miller from Watertown, Mass., who obtained his title from two English noblemen who held overlapping claims to the Islands. His son Thomas Jr. moved to what is now Edgartown with a handful of settlers in 1642, and his father followed soon after. The senior Mayhew established himself as governor of the Island; the younger became a teacher and missionary to the Indians, converting the first of them to Christianity less than a year after his arrival.