Returns of the Blind

[The following was extracted from original documents stored at the Massachusetts State Archives in Boston.]

Tisbury 1829:

Tisbury 6 May 1829

Pursuant to the within we have two Thomas Luce + Anthony Luce.

Thomas Luce aged seventy two or thereabouts
a revolutionary soldier drawing a pension
of 96 dollars for [illegible] with a small
real estate

Anthony his son aged thirty-five
totally blind and born so is poor
and destitute of property

Molly Look aged fifty years poor
circumstances[?]

Malisha Baxter a revolutionary soldier
drawing a pension from the general
government aged seventy one

Joseph Daggett aged Seventy two
supported by the Town

John R.[?] Norton }Selectmen
Jonathan Luce Jr. } of Tisbury

Chilmark 1829:

There is No Blind Person in the
Town of Chilmark.

Mayhew Cottle
Ephraim Mayhew
John Davis } Selectmen of Chilmark

[Note that in the 1855 census, there was one person categorized as "Blind" in Chilmark, 5 in Tisbury, and 4 in Edgartown.]