Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry features yet more photos from the two federally recognized Wampanoag Tribes. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

Today I continue to look at some of the history of the Wampanoag Tribes of Mashpee and Gay Head (Aquinnah) with some AI enhanced photo features gathered from newspaper clips and archives.

The Wampanoag, the “People of the First Light,” are comprised of two federally recognized tribes: the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe located in Mashpee, Massachusetts; and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) located on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Their people have inhabited this land for 12,000 years.

Here is a photo taken at the Massachusetts State House in 1962 of Wampanoag Indians Mabel (Nokomis) Avant of Mashpee and Lorenzo D. Jeffers, known as Chief Mittark, attending a hearing in favor of a bill to improve Moswetuset Hummock in Quincy, Massachusetts, by making a recreational area.

Below are photos of Moswetuset Hummock, the summer seat for the Moswetuset Tribe in Massachusetts. The tribe’s name is how the Commonwealth of Massachusetts got its name. The wooded hummock in Squantum, Massachusetts, is formally recognized as historic by descendants of the Ponkapoag people.

This photo collage contains scenery and two historical markers, one a granite Moswetuset Hummock Commemorative Marker. The other marker (in the upper left-hand corner), erected in 1930 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission, reads:

Moswetuset Hummock was the seat of Chickatawbut, Sagamore of the Massachusetts Indians; adjoining were their planting grounds. “Massachusetts” means “at the Great (Blue) Hills.” With Chickatawbut, Governor Winthrop made a treaty which was never broken.

The location was the seat of the ruling Moswetuset Sachem (Native American chief) Chickatawbut. During the warm season he conducted tribal council here. Members of the Moswetuset (Massachusett) tribe for centuries made the shore of Quincy Bay their seasonal home.

Moswetuset Hummock is understood to be the site where Chickatawbut met and negotiated with Plymouth Colony commander Myles Standish and Tisquantum, aka “Squanto,” a Patuxet Tribe guide.

Chief Mittark was born Lorenzo Dow Jeffers (1892-1974) in Nantucket, Massachusetts, to Thomas Conant Jeffers and Isabella (Manning) Jeffers. He was a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah).

From 1908 to 1909, Lorenzo attended the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. After he left there, he lived in Nantucket, working as an Assistant Engineer in an ice plant. His full student file can be viewed on the Carlisle School Digital Archive Site.

Lorenzo married Edith E. Manning, daughter of Thomas E. Manning and Evalina E. (Smally) Manning, on 8 April 1911 in Gay Head. They left descendants including Edith Jeffers, who married Cummings Earl Vanderhoop.

Lorenzo married (second) Rachel Elizabeth Webster, daughter of Peter J. Webster and Lavinia (Fry) Webster, on 12 October 1921 in Westerly, Rhode Island.

Lorenzo’s mother, Isabella Manning, was born in Gay Head to Thomas Manning and Evalina E. (Smally) Manning.

In 1950 Lorenzo was named civil defense chief for the town of Gay Head.

This article reports:

The civil defense organization of all 351 Massachusetts cities and towns was completed yesterday with the naming of a director for Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard.

Gov. Dever announced that Lorenzo Jeffers, a Pokanauket (aka Pokanoket or Pakanokick) Indian “whose ancestors were waiting to receive the explorer Bartholomew Gosnold when he made the first landing on their shores in 1602,” would be civil defense chief for the town. Gay Head has a population of 114.

Below is a photo of Lorenzo’s father, Thomas Conant Jeffers (1854-1929), son of Deacon Thomas Jeffers and Lucinia (James) Jeffers.

Here are two photos of Lorenzo’s grandparents.

The first photo shows (from left to right): Deacon Thomas Jeffers (1854-1916), son of Amos Jeffers and Bethia (Cooper) Jeffers; and Aaron Cooper, listed in the 1860 Gay Head census as the son of Aaron Cooper and Phebe Cooper.

The second photo is Mrs. Lucinia (James) Jeffers (1835-1932).

Here is another photo of Aaron Cooper and Thomas Jeffers.

This photo caption reads:

Wampanoag farmer, entrepreneur, and activist Aaron Cooper (standing, left) with his rig and three tourist-passengers visiting Gay Head (now Aquinnah) on a day trip from around 1900. Tourists viewed ox-cart rides to the Indian village atop the cliffs as an exotic experience, while Wampanoag residents relied on them for seasonal income that supplemented fishing and farming. The woman seated next to Cooper is Tamson Weeks (1799–1890), a prominent 19th-century Wampanoag healer and herbalist; the man standing at the far right is Deacon Thomas Jeffers.

According to sources, Thomas C. Jeffers’ father, Thomas Jeffers, was a whaler in his younger days and lived on his family estate for the duration of his life.

In 1884, when the City of Columbus ship was wrecked on Devil’s Bridge, Thomas C. Jeffers led a lifeboat with his father, Deacon Thomas Jeffers, and brother Henry Jeffers that rescued 20 of the men aboard the ship. Thomas C. Jeffers was awarded with a silver medal from the Humane Society for his successful efforts and was known to rescue many other smaller wrecks off the coast of Gay Head (Aquinnah).

Below is a newspaper clip from the Worcester Daily Spy announcing medals and cash awards for Gay Head heroes involved in the rescue of City of Columbus passengers and crew.

This article reports:

The Massachusetts Humane Society made the following awards today:

To Joseph Peters, Moses Cooper, Samuel Harkins, John Vanderhoof, Samuel Anthony, James T. Mosher, Charles Grimes, Leonard Vanderhoof, Thomas C. Jeffers, Patrick L. Divine, and Peter Johnson, to each man the silver medal of the society “for gallant and successful efforts in saving 20 of the passengers and crew of the steamer City of Columbus, Gay Head, January 18, 1884,” and twenty-five dollars [about $852 today].

To William S. James, a boat.

To Thomas Jeffers, Henry Jeffers, John Lula, Charles Stevens, and Simeon Divine, the society’s certificate “for humane and intrepid exertions in attempting to save life at the wreck of the City of Columbus, Gay Head, Jan. 18, 1884,” and $10 each [$341 today].

…To Zaccheus Cooper, James Thompson, Aaron Cooper, Horatio N. Pease, Thomas Jeffers, and Charles Lyon, $5 each for caring for rescued persons in their houses [$170 today].

To be continued…

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Note on the header image: Ousamequin, or “Massasoit” (Wampanoag term for “Great Sachem”) and Governor John Carver smoking a ceremonial pipe at Plymouth Colony in 1621. Credit: Sutro Library; Wikimedia Commons. [052825]

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