BlockBefore
Decorative drawing: a small American settlement seen from a low hill. Not a photograph of this place.

Quansoo, Massachusetts

34 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Chilmark town. It lies in ZIP code area 02535. The Survey maps it on the Tisbury Great Pond quadrangle.

Quansoo within Dukes County

Then and now

1887 to 1994

The same ground, surveyed 107 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Quansoo, surveyed 1994
Topographic sheet of Quansoo, surveyed 1887

Topographic sheets covering this place

34 sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

In the county-history sources

24,949 words on this township

The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, published 1911 names this settlement in its chapter on Chilmark Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Payment of these quit rents was to be in perpetuity, and constituted an "acknowledgment" of the continued sovereignty of the Lord of the Manor and his heirs or assigns. In the management of the Manor granted to the Mayhews, they alienated portions of the soil, but retained the "acknowledgment" of certain annual, or more frequent, payment of trifles to signify their manorial privileges. During the lifetime of the elder Mayhew none of the manor was alienated, except two pieces in the Quansoo region, to his grandsons John and Thomas Mayhew, and it is not known that he demanded any quit-rents from them. In a sale of a part of the Elizabeth Islands, however, he instituted the custom of requiring quitrents, and the first case was that of John Haynes, who agreed to pay "2 good sheep at the Manor House on November 15 th yearly and every year."^ It is not known where the "Manor House" was, if it existed in anything more than name. Possibly it was the house occupied by John Mayhew at Quansoo, or Quanames. After his death, Matthew Mayhew, as surviving patentee, kept to the custom of requiring the annual payments of such ''acknowledgments" in true English style. Usually in the mother country the quit-rent was "a good fat capon," to be delivered at Christmas or Whitsuntide, or oftener, but Mayhew varied his requirements to all sorts of small articles. One was obliged to bring annually to him "a good chees,"^; another "one nutmegg" as a tribute,^ and he required "his beloved brother John," who was permitted to occupy certain land, "one mink skin" to be paid yearly "at my mannor house in the mannor of Tisbury," on the 15th of November each year.^ Benjamin Skiffe was made to bring "six peckes of good wheat," annually.^ As late as 1732, Sarah, widow of Thomas Mayhew (3), in a deed to her two daughters conveying land in Chilmark, referred to the "Quitt-rents which shall hereafter become due unto the Lord

Passage source: The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, published 1911.

Thus, at the close of the 17th century, about 25 years after John Mayhew first built himself a house at Quansoo, the town population compi'iscd the following heads of families : Experience Mayhew, John Mayhew, Pain Mayhew, Thomas Mayhew, James Allen, Ebenezer Allen, Nathaniel Skiffe, Benjamin Skiffe, Nathan Skiffe, Samuel Tilton, William Tilton, John Tilton, Nathan Bassett, William Hunt, and Rodolphus Thacher, fifteen households in all.

Passage source: The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, published 1911.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Chilmark Town - it names this place 2 more 2 times.

Fires near this place

4 since 2015

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 4 fires within 5 miles of Quansoo between 2015 and 2018, burning about 2 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause Fires
Equipment and vehicle use3
Debris and open burning1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
24 May 2015Equipment and vehicle useunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control5011032
6 April 2015Equipment and vehicle use1.0 acresMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control5006779
6 April 2015Equipment and vehicle useunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control5006749
21 April 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Dukes County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 5,280 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 5,280 specimens collected within 10 miles of Quansoo between 1828 and 1975: 3,216 Animalia, 1,558 Plantae, 270 Chromista, 182 Unrecorded, 41 Fungi, 13 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A AND P STARRETT, A. B. Hervey, A. B. Seymour and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Image SpeciesYear Collected by Where, as recorded
A photograph of the species Tipularia discolor, not of this specimenTipularia discolor (Pursh) Nutt.1828OakesMartha's Vineyard
A photograph of the species Actinococcus subcutaneus, not of this specimenActinococcus subcutaneus (Lyngbye ex Hornemann) Rosenvinge1871W. G. FarlowGay Head
A photograph of the species Anguilla rostrata, not of this specimenAnguilla rostrata (Lesueur, 1817)1871U.S. Fish CommissionVineyard Sound
A photograph of the species Astyris lunata, not of this specimenAstyris lunata (Say, 1826)1871United States Fish CommissionGreat Harbor, Gay Head [=Aquinnah]
Callithamnion plumula (J.Ellis) Lyngbye1871W. G. FarlowMartha's Vineyard, Gay Head
A photograph of the species Chaetomorpha linum, not of this specimenChaetomorpha linum (O.F.Müll.) Kütz.1871W. G. FarlowMartha's Vineyard, Gay Head
A photograph of the species Chaetomorpha melagonium, not of this specimenChaetomorpha melagonium (F.Weber & D.Mohr) Kützing1871W. G. FarlowMartha's Vineyard, Gay Head
A photograph of the species Coccotylus Kützing, not of this specimenCoccotylus Kützing, 18431871W. G. FarlowGay Head
Cottidae1871U.S. Fish Commission
A photograph of the species Alosa pseudoharengus, not of this specimenAlosa pseudoharengus (Wilson, 1811)1899not recordedMassachusetts, Katama Bay near Edgartown
A photograph of the species Centropristis striata, not of this specimenCentropristis striata (Linnaeus, 1758)1899B. BeanMenemsha Bight
A photograph of the species Cepaea hortensis, not of this specimenCepaea hortensis (O.F.Müller, 1774)1899Reid, Rev G D Prime, HenryMartha's Vineyard, Oak Bluffs

All 5,280 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Tississa0.8 miles34
Nabs Corner1.9 miles34
West Tisbury2.2 miles33
North Tisbury3.9 miles33
Chilmark4.4 miles33
Christian Town5.4 miles33
Menemsha5.4 miles33
Nashaquitsa6.1 miles33

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikidata item Q122563502The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 616225. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.