Colonizing Dukes County
In 1641, while engaged in business ventures in the vicinity of Boston, Mayhew succeeded in acquiring the rights to the islands that now constitute Dukes County: (Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands). He bought the County for 40 pounds and two beaverskin hats from William Alexander, the 2nd Earl of Sterling. To resolve a conflicting ownership claim, he also paid off Sir Ferdinando Gorges, thereby acquiring a clear title.
Mayhew established himself as governor of Martha's Vineyard in 1642 and sent his son, Thomas the Younger, with about forty English families to settle there. He himself followed four years later. Together he and the younger Thomas established Martha’s Vineyard’s first settlement and called it Great Harbor, now Edgartown.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Mayhew
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“I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)