# MVPCS land evidence collection Research snapshot: 23 September 2026. Site: Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School, 420 and 424 State Road, West Tisbury, Massachusetts. Current parcels 16-96 and 16-96-3. This is a finite collection of material acquired online, not an exhaustive search of every offline record or a completed title examination. ## Start here Open `index.html` in a browser after extracting the entire ZIP. It works offline; original source links require an internet connection. Open `MVPCS_Land_Evidence_Guide.pdf` for the illustrated narrative. Use `05_Research_Catalog/source_catalog.csv` or JSON for source URLs, dates, evidence scope, acquisition status and rights. ## What the evidence supports The current school building dates to 1996. The registry indexes the acquisition deed to Options in Education Inc. on 29 April 1996, Book 675/page 665, for $240,000. That same deed is cited on both current assessor lots; the sale price is not two separate purchases. Their reported areas total about 7.26 acres. The 1972 USGS map depicts woodland across the current tract. It was revised from 1969 aerial photographs and field checked in 1972. This is the clearest acquired pre-school land-cover evidence. The 1951 sheet locates the site in an earlier road landscape, but white map background is not evidence of cleared land. No named earlier building, farm or owner has been established for the exact school footprint. The oldest acquired historical map is dated 1698. The 1811, 1828 and 1861 papers, the Christiantown chapel photo, and the 2011 oblique aerial provide surrounding-area context. They are NOT established parts of the school parcel’s title or occupancy history. The 1828 item is an estate inventory, not a will. ## Contents and use 01_Maps_and_Imagery: nine unmarked aerial mosaics, world files, current parcel GeoJSON, a 2024 satellite composite, two original USGS PDFs and unmarked map crops. 02_Public_Records: actual 1996 deed-index screenshot and rendered text. 03_Newspaper_References: short Gazette headline screenshot; article URLs and paraphrases are in the catalog rather than copyrighted full-article copies. 04_Historical_Context: full native scans where available, lower-resolution Harvard Forest map reproductions, historic community documents and nearby photographs. 05_Research_Catalog: provenance, source metadata, findings, gaps and SHA-256 hashes. 06_Visual_Plates: annotated maps and a nine-frame aerial timeline. ## Dating and image transformations The service called “1990s” was photographed over the Vineyard in 1999, as shown by the supplied MassGIS flight-status PDF. The service called “2001” uses April 2003 photography for the islands. Other labels follow dataset years/ranges; exact local flight days were not verified. The latest acquired aerial is 2025, not a live 2026 view. The satellite view is an annual 2024 mosaic, not one day’s exposure. Aerials are north-up Web Mercator tile mosaics (EPSG:3857), with no missing tiles in the saved extent. JPG world files (.jgw) use that CRS; set EPSG:3857 explicitly when loading them into GIS. GeoJSON is longitude/latitude (EPSG:4326). Current assessor outlines on earlier images do not show historical lot boundaries. Scales use the approximate ground correction at latitude 41.4195 degrees. USGS close-ups were rendered from the original PDFs. Modern parcel outlines were transformed into the PDFs’ NAD27 polyconic map coordinates using their embedded georeferencing. Registration and historic map accuracy are limited; overlays are approximate and are not legal surveys. The full original PDFs remain unaltered. Digital Commonwealth scans were acquired at full native IIIF resolution. The 1698 map reproduction was cropped only to remove a modern caption below the map. Its photographic glare remains. Other historical originals were not retouched. The 2011 Foster photo is supplied unaltered, under its stated no-derivatives license. ## Gaps and unresolved evidence The complete 1996 deed image, a legal survey, parcel-specific probate/will records, and a pre-1996 aerial were not obtained. A 1994 imagery service returned NoData. Several Commission PDFs returned HTTP 403 and a 2026 agenda returned HTTP 404. Reference-only entries are clearly marked. No blank image is passed off as aerial evidence and no candidate predecessor deed is presented as a proven link. The highest-value next retrieval is the two-page deed at 675/665, followed by its prior-deed and plan references. See `research_gaps.json` for precise identifiers. ## Rights and attribution Each source retains its own rights; this ZIP has no blanket open license. MassGIS: MassGIS (Bureau of Geographic Information), Commonwealth of Massachusetts EOTSS. USGS government maps are public domain. Historic archival items carry repository rights statements in the included metadata. The 2011 oblique photo is © David R. Foster, Harvard University, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The chapel photo’s rights were not evaluated by its repository. Newspaper content belongs to the Vineyard Gazette. Satellite: Sentinel-2 cloudless - https://s2maps.eu by EOX IT Services GmbH (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2024), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Derived satellite plate retains that license. Source attribution is also in the catalog and on visual plates. This research collection does not grant additional commercial reuse or republication rights to third-party material.