Martha's Vineyard Campground

About this property

Wesleyan Grove is a 34-acre (14 ha) National Historic Landmark District in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Named after John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church. Also known as the Martha's Vineyard Campmeeting Association (MVCMA) or the Campgrounds, it was the first summer religious camp established in the United States. It is famous for its approximately 300 colorful cottages in a style now described as Carpenter Gothic. Just after the American Civil War, the area developed as a large Methodist summer campground with open air Christian revivals. This meeting style became popular around the United States at the time, and many other similar camps were founded using similar models, such as Ocean Park, Maine, Merrick, Long Island, and Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Colorful, ornate, gingerbread cottages were built in an oak grove around a central church tabernacle. The grove was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, recognized in 2000 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and declared a National Historic Landmark by the US Department of the Interior in 2005. The first so-called campmeeting in what became known as Wesleyan Grove was held in 1835. Over subsequent years, participants began arriving early and staying after the revival. Nine tents provided shelter for the first campers in 1835, but as the campers grew in number, families chose to pitch tents of their own; there were 100 tents in 1851 and that increased to 320 by 1858, located around the preaching ground. During one Sunday in summer 1858, there were a full 20,000 people listening to a sermon. In subsequent years the congregations grew enormously, and many of the thousands in attendance were housed in large tents known as "society tents." A congregation from a church on the mainland would maintain its own society tent. Conditions were cramped, with men and women sleeping dormitory-style on opposite sides of a central canvas divider. Society tents were arranged in a semicircle on Trinity Park. Over time, families began leasing small lots on which to pitch their own individual tents. "Between 1855 and 1865 the campmeetings began to change in character. They continued to be religious in nature, but the participants also began to enjoy the benefit of the sea air and social interaction as they revived both mind and body." In the 1860s and 1870s, the family tents were rapidly replaced with permanent wooden cottages. There were 40 cottages in 1864 and 500 by 1880. As of 2019, there were approximately 318 cottages remaining. They are referred to as the gingerbread cottages. One source provides this description of the original buildings:[They were] between 11 and 16 feet in width, with wide, double-door entrances and tall roofs with steep gables pitched at 90 degrees. They were one and a half stories in height, and generally twice as tall as they were wide. The wooden platforms over which the tents had been erected morphed into the wide front porches of the cottages.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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