Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry has more photos, history and genealogy about 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.

My first subject is Melissa (Belain/Bleam) (Jeffers) Cujffee/Cuff (1837-1913), daughter of George Johnson Belain/Bleam and Sophia (Peters) Belain/Bleam.

Melissa married 1st James Jeffers, son of William Jeffers and Laura (Johnson) Jeffers, and 2nd Levi Cujffee/Cuff, son of Daniel Cuff and Mary (Dodge) Cuff.

Levi Cuff was a mariner and is listed, along with many others from the Wampanoag Tribe, onboard the ship Splendid sailing from Edgartown, Massachusetts, to San Francisco, California, for the Dukes County Mining Company in this newsclip dated 18 September 1849.

Next, here is a photo of Tamsen (Bunker) (Thomas) Weekes/Weeks (1805-1890), born to Betsey Bunker from information provided on her death record. Tamsen was a prominent figure and noted medicine woman, healer, and herbalist of the Gay Head community.

Tamsen was reported to be a direct descendant of the Sachems Mattack and Mittark, and it is from her lineage and genealogy links that the modern Jeffers family descend.

Here is another photo of Tamsen.

I found Tamsen in the 1870 census listed with her husband Tristram Weeks and two children. They married on 5 April 1845 in Chilmark, Massachusetts. She was previously married to William Thomas.

I also found the Weeks family on this map made by Edward S. Burgess from his publication “The Old South Road of Gay Head,” printed in 1926 by the Dukes Historical Society.

Tamsen and Tristram had one son, Tristram Weeks Jr., who married Susanna Cooper, daughter of Zaccheus Cooper and Mary Ann (Attaquin) Cooper. Mary Ann is the great-granddaughter of Solomon Attaquin.

Tristram Jr. was a mariner and is listed in this newspaper clip from 1872 as a crew member on the bark Merlin, commanded by Albert A. Thomas, which sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the Pacific Ocean.

View more records listing Tristram Jr. on a crew list at New Bedford Whaling Museum.

An important source for information about the early tribal families is New Bedford Communities of Whaling: People of Wampanoag, African, and Portuguese Island Descent, 1825–1925, published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Northeast Region Ethnography Program.

Tamsen and Tristram also had one daughter, Elizabeth Weeks, who married Louis Attaquin. She will be featured in an upcoming story soon that will include more on the family’s history.

Below are two photos. One is of the rescue crew and the other is a life preserver from the ship City of Columbus, which crashed on the underwater rocks of Devil’s Bridge at Gay Head (Aquinnah), Martha’s Vineyard, on 18 January 1884, when a gash was torn in the hull and seawater rushed into the steamer.

Fred Poole, assistant keeper of the Gay Head Light (lighthouse), spotted a light from the wreck and summoned volunteer lifesavers who were experienced Wampanoag boatmen. Of the 132 passengers and crew on the City of Columbus, only 29 could be saved by rescuers.

Here is the Gay Head rescue crew during the City of Columbus tragedy.

This is the photo of the life preserver from the City of Columbus.

Here is a newspaper clip on the rescue crew entitled “The Tribute to the Gay Head Lifeboat Men.” It praises the heroism, gallantry, and selflessness of the Gay Head tribal men who worked tirelessly to save lives and showed great tenderness and care for the victims of this tragic accident.

This article reports:

The subscription fund which has been opened for the benefit of the gallant men who manned the lifeboats which went out from Gay Head to rescue the survivors of the City of Columbus is a recognition of a deed whose unselfish heroism well merits a memorial. The simple and hardy men who live upon that bleak headland displayed qualities of courage and endurance which lift their lives above the common level, and command for them the admiration of all who are acquainted with the facts. These men come of a race which has been crowded back before advancing civilization, until in our Eastern communities only a remnant is left here and there. Their life is one of frequent hardship and of scant enjoyment, and little happens to disturb its quiet or occasion any notice of its seclusion. But when the City of Columbus was seen upon the rocks in the early dawn of that chill morning, the sea breaking over her, and a few benumbed and almost exhausted men clinging to her rigging, these men were quick to take their lives in their hand and to face the peril of wind and wave to save those who were in such great need. The story of what they did is known to all. It was done without reward or the hope of any. It was the simply prompting of duty and humanity, felt as keenly by these rugged men as by finer natures, and responded to unhesitatingly. From the quiet of their uneventful lives they rose to the level of this heroic deed, and would sink back again contentedly without any sense of special achievement or special desert, if the world chose to let them.

But the gallantry of their deed and the tenderness and honesty with which they have cared for the bodies which were cast up upon the shore make it fitting that their conduct should be recognized. The appeal for such recognition is not local merely. It appeals to all who appreciate courage and self-sacrifice, and the effect of it will be not only to give an unlooked for but well deserved reward to these men, but to make it clear that those who imperil their lives to save others, and who, anywhere on our rocky coast, patrol the shore and are at hand when help is needed will not go unthanked or unrewarded.

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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• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 2)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 3)
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• 1928 Great Wampanoag Powwow (part 1)
• 1928 Great Wampanoag Powwow (part 2)
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• Photos from the Past: Wampanoag Tribes of Mashpee and Gay Head (Aquinnah) (part 1)
• Photos from the Past: Wampanoag Tribes of Mashpee and Gay Head (Aquinnah) (part 2)
• Photos from the Past: Wampanoag Tribes of Mashpee and Gay Head (Aquinnah) (part 3)
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