Historic Nantucket, Early Fall 2024, Vol. 74 No. 2
Board of Trustees 2024–25
Annabelle Fowlkes, President
Wendy Hudson, Vice President
Carla McDonald, Vice President
Craig Muhlhauser, Treasurer
Sara Schwartz, Clerk
Lucinda Ballard
Stacey Bewkes
Connie Cigarran, Friends of the NHA Representative
Amanda Cross
Cam Gammill
Lexi Gibbs
Graham Goldsmith
Ashley Gosnell Mody
Robert Greenspon
Connie Anne Harris
Ayesha Khan
Valerie Paley
Mary Read
Bill Richards
Marla Sanford
Roberto Santamaria
Denise Saul, Friends of the NHA Representative
Janet Sherlund, Trustee Emerita
Carter Stewart
Melinda Sullivan
Michael Sweeney
Jason Tilroe
Ex Officio
Niles D. Parker, Gosnell Executive Director
HISTORIC NANTUCKET (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices.
Cover: Storyboard, Tony Sarg’s Funny Fantasies, n.d.Paper, ink, paint, plastic NHA Collection, Gift of Elizabeth Murray and Philip C. Murray, 1983.57.72
2024 Reflections
FROM THE BOARD PRESIDENT AND GOSNELL EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR
As we near the holiday season, we want to take a moment to reflect on a remarkable year at the Nantucket Historical Association and to express our heartfelt gratitude for your support. Your generosity has been instrumental in helping us to preserve, celebrate, and share the rich history of Nantucket with our island community and beyond.
This past year was brimming with programs, lectures, special events, concerts, new exhibitions and more. The Whaling Museum continued to be a beacon of education and inspiration, drawing visitors from all corners of the globe. We unveiled Tony Sarg: Genius at Play and two other Tony Sarg exhibits across our campus, captivating both longtime enthusiasts and first-time visitors alike. Our commitment to telling Nantucket’s stories in innovative ways has never been stronger, and your support has been crucial in making this possible.
We expanded our reach through our education programs and engaged a broader audience by growing our youth programs and basket weaving classes. We substantially increased our school group offerings this year, providing unique educational enrichment opportunities. Our remodeled Discovery Center provided fun hands-on history experiences for children and families. And we launched new Decorative Arts online workshops, allowing more people to explore and create Nantucket’s decorative arts from anywhere in the world.
One of the highlights of this year was the “Sarg Community Day” which welcomed nearly 2000 people to Children’s Beach and celebrated Tony Sarg’s legacy with Morton the Sea Monster returning to the island. It is programs like these that bring our community together and foster a deeper connection to Nantucket’s history. We are thrilled to see so many of you participating and engaging in our events.
In addition, your support has enabled us to perform important work on our properties and enhance our collections. Our team has been busy throughout the year ensuring that priceless artifacts and documents are preserved and digitized for future generations, making our historical records more accessible than ever before.
As we look to the future, we are excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. With plans to perform critical preservation work on our historic properties, further expand our community outreach, and introduce new exhibitions that highlight different facets of Nantucket’s history, we remain committed to our mission of preserving and sharing the island’s unique heritage.
However, we cannot achieve these goals without the continued support of dedicated friends like you. As we approach the end of the year, we invite you to make a year-end gift to the NHA. Your donation will help us to continue our important work, ensuring that Nantucket’s history remains vibrant and accessible for all.
Every contribution, regardless of size, makes a meaningful impact and is deeply appreciated.
Thank you once again for your unwavering support and dedication. Together, we are preserving Nantucket’s past and ensuring that it remains a source of inspiration and pride for generations to come.
Warmest regards,
Annabelle Fowlkes, President, Board of Trustees
Niles Parker, Gosnell Executive Director
Departing Trustees
Thank you for your support and commitment to the Nantucket Historical Association
Sarah Alger
Sarah joined the NHA Board of Trustees in 2016. Throughout her tenure, she has been an active member of the Housing & Properties Committee, chaired the Committee on Trustees & Governance Committee, and served on the Executive Committee as Clerk of the board. Sarah played a pivotal role in many NHA property transactions, including the purchase of 4 Whalers Lane and the sales of 33 Orange Street, 2 Union Street, the Wannacomet property, and the Lightship Basket Museum property. She was instrumental in revising the bylaws, has been a valuable resource for the staff, assisted with the Lightship Basket Museum affiliation, led the process to find the new President of the board, and possesses exceptional knowledge of Nantucket as a year-round resident. Her generosity with her time and expertise, along with her support to the NHA through the annual fund, campaigns, membership and events is immeasurable.
Nancy Abbey
Nancy joined the NHA Board of Trustees in 2019. She has served on the Collections & Exhibitions Committee, the Education & Interpretation Committee, the Special Resolution Committee, and chaired the Audit & Risk Committee, where her guidance was invaluable. Nancy was also a member of the Executive Committee. She generously hosted an NHA event this past winter at her home in San Francisco. She supported the acquisition of the Cranberry Pickers painting by Eastman Johnson, which is displayed in the Williams Forsyth Gallery. Additionally, she has generously contributed to the NHA through the annual fund, campaigns, membership, and events. With a strong interest in education, she contributed to the printing of Time Travelers, an NHA experience that includes a printed passport, coloring book, and journal to guide families on an adventure through each of the Association’s Historic Sites.
Pat Anathan
Pat joined the NHA Board of Trustees in 2016. She has been an active member of the Housing & Properties Committee and has chaired the Collections & Exhibitions Committee. Pat and her husband, Tom, are members of the Friends of the NHA and have hosted NHA events at their home in Florida. Pat has also donated items to the NHA. Her enthusiasm for the collections and her support for the NHA through the annual fund, exhibitions, campaigns, and membership is unparalleled. She also supported the NHA acquisition of the Cranberry Pickers painting by Eastman Johnson.
Susan Blount
Susan joined the NHA Board of Trustees in 2016. Throughout her tenure, she has been an active member of the Finance Committee, Housing & Properties Committee, Collections & Exhibitions Committee, and served on the Special Resolution Committee and the Executive Committee as Vice President of the board. Susan also chaired the Marketing & Communications Committee and the Committee on Trustees & Governance, where she was instrumental in updating the governance processes and materials including the revision of the bylaws and articles of organization, updating the board recruitment process, board communication, and board training for new trustees. She assisted with the affiliation of the NHA with the Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum. Susan also served as the Interim President of the Board in 2022. All of this and she supported the NHA through the annual fund, purchase of the Cranberry Pickers painting, exhibitions, campaigns and membership.
John Flannery
John joined the NHA Board of Trustees in 2020. During his tenure, he has served on the Executive Committee as Treasurer of the Board, chaired the Finance Committee, and has been a member of the Audit & Risk and Housing & Properties Committees. His expertise and insight were invaluable when trying to navigate operations during the pandemic and he played a critical role in the executive director’s search. He graciously hosted the board for a retreat at his office in Boston. His extensive knowledge, insightful advice, and generous support of the annual fund, membership, campaigns, and events have been truly remarkable.
Kathryn Ketelsen
Kathryn served on the NHA Board of Trustees as one of the Friends of the NHA representatives for the last two years where she sat on the Education & Interpretation Committee. Prior to this, she served eight years on the board as a trustee from 2006-2014 and sat on the Housing & Properties Committee. She has supported the NHA through annual fund, campaigns, membership, and exhibitions.
Incoming Trustees
Welcome an exciting new group of Board Members to the Nantucket Historical Association
Connie Cigarran, Friends Representative
Connie and her husband, Tom, have been summer residents of Nantucket for 27 years. They live in Nashville, TN, and are the parents of 2 children and 5 grandchildren. Connie holds a BA in French and a Masters in Historic Preservation, and is a certified Montessori teacher. She has owned an antiques business and cofounded the volunteer-driven Antiques and GardenShow of Nashville 35 years ago benefitting Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Fine Arts Museum and the ECON Club of Nashville. Connie has been involved with the NHA as Chairman of the 2007 Antiques Show, serving two board terms, as Chair of the Education Committee, Chair of the Library Subcommittee, and currently as Vice President of the Friends of the NHA. For the past 3 years, Connie and Tom have spearheaded the ongoing effort to digitize the NHA Collection.
Lexi Gibbs
Lexi is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Howland Capital, bringing 24 years of experience to the firm. Her extensive tenure has been marked by a commitment to investment strategy, asset allocation, and risk management. As a private wealth adviser, Lexi specializes in tailoring comprehensive wealth preservation and growth strategies for families, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and business owners. Her depth of expertise extends beyond conventional investments, encompassing multigenerational wealth transfer, succession planning, and philanthropic initiatives. Since joining Howland Capital in 1999, Lexi has played a pivotal role in shaping the firm’s investment philosophy. Her strategic insights and meticulous approach have been instrumental in guiding clients through an array of financial landscapes and evolving market conditions. Prior to investment management, Lexi worked for Huntington T. Block Insurance Agency, specializing in fine arts insurance for museums, galleries, and private collectors. Lexi graduated with a B.S. in International Business and Art History, and a minor in French, from Lake Forest College and an MBA from the Stern School of Business, New York University. She also obtained her CFP™ and CDFA® certifications. Lexi lives in Boston with her husband and twin daughters. She has served as Chair of the Investment Committee and Vice Chair of the Board of Dana Hall School, Treasurer of The Vincent Club, and on the Board of Hill House. Lexi is also a member of the NHA Finance & Investment Committee.
Connie Anne Harris
Connie Anne is a retired business leader who now advocates and passionately fundraises for causes in health, women’s issues, and historical preservation. Her career in the media business spanned 30 years, and she is widely recognized for her extensive brand and team building achievements. Her corporate experience includes leadership roles at some of the most important brands in media. In 2013, she joined Glamour as Chief Revenue Officer, and then in 2014, was named Conde Nast’s first Chief Revenue Officer of the Year. Prior to Glamour she served for four years as Publisher of Time Inc.’s InStyle, where she was credited with the revitalization of the brand. She joined InStyle after a 14 year
career at Vogue where she was named Managing Director following the success of the September 2001 issue, which carried the most ad pages in Vogue’s history and was the subject of the documentary, “The September Issue”. Connie Anne serves on the Advisory Board of the Hospital for Special Surgery. She serves on the board of the Greenwich Emergency Medical Services, where her role is co-chair of development. She serves on the Board of the Greenwich Historical Society where she is a co-chair for the History in the Making Event and the Christmas Market. Connie Anne serves on the Board of the American Red Cross and is co- chairing the Red and White Ball for the second year in 2024. She resides in Greenwich, Nantucket and Vail with her husband Jeremiah and beloved lab Trixie.
Ayesha Khan
Ayesha is a graduate of Boston University with a BA in Applied Mathematics and Statistics. During her college summers, she visited her friend and Nantucket native, Nate Barber, who she eventually married. For a decade, she worked at Vitamin Water in New York City before moving to Nantucket in 2012 to get married. Ayesha, her husband Nate, and their two boys live on the island year-round. Nate works as a firefighter and contractor, while Ayesha works in the office for a local surgeon, Dr. Lepore, and their sons attend Nantucket Public School. A passionate advocate for environmental health, Ayesha co-founded the Nantucket PFAS Action Group, educating the community about the hazards of PFAS chemicals. Ayesha has diligently gathered and disseminated crucial information about PFAS, fostering awareness and change. She engages with scientists and regulatory bodies, significantly contributing to public debates and safety standards. Ayesha embraces Abraham Lincoln’s idea that, “we cannot escape history.” Her interest in joining the Nantucket Historical Association is driven by a desire to ensure that her sons and the Nantucket community can learn valuable lessons from the island’s history and highlight the relevance of historical perspective in solving today’s challenges.
Craig Muhlhauser
In addition to nearly 20 years of experience in President & CEO roles, Craig has over 25 years of design engineering, program management, sales, marketing and general management experience with leading companies including GE, United Technologies, ABB and Ford Motor Company across a wide range of global customers and industries, including consumer, industrial, utility, automotive, aerospace and defense. Craig holds a Master of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. Craig recently received his formal certification in Executive & Organizational Coaching from Columbia University in NYC. Craig is the Founder & CEO of CXO Insights LLC an executive coaching, advisory and investment firm. Craig was appointed to the Board of Nantucket Cottage Hospital where he serves as the Chair of the Board of Trustees. He is also a member of the Columbia University Learning Association. Craig and his wife Ann have been married over 50 years and relocated to Nantucket full time in 2019 to enjoy their golden years. They have two children, Kristin and Andrew, and five grandchildren and enjoy family, friends, supporting the Nantucket community and traveling together.
Incoming Trustees
Mary Read
Mary was raised in Orinda and attended St. Mary’s College, earning a BA in art history. She began her career in retail and fashion, working for Ralph Lauren and later worked at Gap Inc. (Banana Republic) as a production manager for women’s clothing. Mary has been actively involved at UHS (Campaign Committee), Katherine Delmar Burke School (Leadership Giving Committee for the Campaign for Girls; co-chair of Burke’s Family Festival), and Town School (trustee, co-chair of Town’s annual fundraiser). She also serves as a director for MCM Foundation, a family foundation focused on initiatives to support children and education. Mary and her husband, MacGregor, have two children: Brady and Charlotte. She and her family enjoy travel, time with extended family, being outdoors, and spending the summer and shoulder season on Nantucket.
Bill Richards
Bill is a partner at Gary McBournie, Inc., a residential interior design firm with projects across the US and in Europe, where he oversees operations and assists with design projects. Prior to serving as Senior Vice President and Technology Practice Leader at Eastern Insurance Group in Boston, he was the Senior Vice President at William Gallagher Associates. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Salem State College. Bill has served on the boards of Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre in Cambridge, MA and LaFontana Cooperative Apartments in West Palm Beach, FL. He currently serves on the Design Committee of Trianon Condominium. Bill is the co-chair of NHA’s 2024 Nantucket by Design.
Roberto Santamaria
Roberto serves as the Executive Director of Fairwinds, Nantucket’s Counseling Center. He previously served as the Director of Health and Human Services for the Town of Nantucket, Massachusetts for nearly nine years, where he led the town’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also served as an adjunct professor at Southern New Hampshire University and, before coming to the Town of Nantucket, he served as the Interim Director of Public Health and Deputy Director of Public Health for the town (Now city) of Framingham, Massachusetts; Director of Public Health for the City of Everett, Massachusetts where he also served as emergency preparedness coordinator; and a research assistant and hazardous waste assistant in the chemistry department at the University of Central Florida. He holds a B.S. in Molecular Biology and Microbiology from the University of Central Florida; a master’s in public health (MPH) from Boston University; a Master of Business Administration from Salve Regina University, and he is about to graduate with a Doctor in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He also has several certifications, including one in biochemistry from Harvard University, and a Six Sigma Green Belt from the Aveta Business Institute.
2025 FEATURED EXHIBITION
Behind the Seams
Clothing and Textiles on Nantucket
Opening Memorial Day Weekend | Whaling Museum
Drawing upon over two centuries of clothing and textiles preserved by the NHA to reveal how these objects embody stories of making, meaning, and island identity.
To learn more and support this exhibition, please contact the development team at giving @NHA.org
Friendship quilt, ca. 1850. Cotton. Made by Eunice H. Adams, Phebe Ann Adams, Sarah E. Adams, Lydia J. Brown, Rebecca H. Gardner, Sarah Greene, and Sarah Jenkins. Gift of Maud E. Backus, 1936.22.1.
Scene from Tony Sarg’s Almanac “The Original Tooth Carpenter,” 1921 NHA Collection, PH8-38-2
Tony Sarg’s
Moving Pictures
By Deborah Sorensen, Robyn & John Davis Curator of Exhibitions
Tony Sarg, the famous illustrator, puppeteer, and Nantucket summer resident, took an approach to visual storytelling and live performance that was grounded in expressive gestural movement. Starting in 1920, he began to experiment with animated moving images. Between 1921 and 1923, Sarg and partner Herbert M. Dawley produced at least twenty humorous short films using silhouette animation. This run of work introduced millions of moviegoers to the Tony Sarg brand of popular entertainment.1
Animation before Tony Sarg’s Almanac
Tony Sarg entered the world of animation as the field was transitioning from two decades of technical and artistic experimentation into the mainstream of popular entertainment and industry success.
• 1911–14: Newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo” and landmark “Gertie the Dinosaur” are among the earliest and most influential animated short films produced. They required thousands of drawings for only a few minutes of footage.
• 1916: Illustrator C. Allan Gilbert creates a short-lived animated series, “Silhouette Fantasies,” for Bray Studios.2
• 1917–18: Special effects pioneer Willis H. O’Brien creates prehistoric-themed stop-motion films for the Edison Company; works with Herbert M. Dawley; later creates King Kong.
• 1919: Silhouette animation shorts by German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger garner acclaim prior to her 1926 masterpiece The Adventures of Prince Achmed
• 1921–23: Tony Sarg’s Almanac employs costand time-saving silhouette animation.
• 1923: Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio founded; becomes Walt Disney Studio in 1926.
Advertisement for Tony Sarg’s Almanac, August 5, 1921
Published in Canadian Moving Picture Digest, Toronto, Canada Courtesy of Lantern Media History Digital Library
1 An estimated fifty percent of the US population attended motion pictures weekly in the early 1920s. See Steven J. Ross, ed. Movies and American Society, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014), 14.
2 “Silhouette Fantasies” (1916), The Bray Animation Project Accessed Aug. 20, 2024.
Why Animation?
“ Any problem, especially a mechanical problem, is an immediate challenge to me . . . . Take the animated cartoons in motion pictures. I wanted to attempt one, and when I looked into the current method of making them, I discovered that it was not a one-man proposition.”
— “Tony Sarg Has Never Done a Stroke of Work in His Life!” The American Magazine, May, 1926
Above: Tony Sarg’s Almanac on the marquee of the Criterion Theatre in New York, 1921
Photograph by Jack Sussman NHA Collection, PH8-8-1
Tony Sarg often shared stories about his early days as an illustrator and self-taught puppeteer, but his reasons for pursuing animation are less clear. Sarg immigrated to the United States in 1915, when the motion picture industry was still centered in New York City. He likely witnessed the frenzy of movie-palace construction and saw firsthand how films were displacing vaudeville as the public’s entertainment of choice.3 Whatever the motivation, the artist chose to pursue animation as a creative challenge in 1921.
The timing is significant in terms of Sarg’s growing celebrity. Between 1915 and 1920, Sarg established himself in New York as an in-demand illustrator and inventive puppeteer on Broadway. In 1921, he launched a new touring company, Tony Sarg’s Marionettes, and published The Tony Sarg Marionette Book (B. W. Huebsch, 1921)—one of the first books of its kind. The following year he began offering puppetry classes out of his Greenwich Village studio. Although Sarg quickly transitioned from backstage performer to producer, his reputation for successfully “vitalizing an ancient art” quickly took hold.4 The decision to add animator to his long list of credits may have been inspired by an interest in Chinese shadowgraphs, or shadow puppets, but it was also good business, putting his name in lights across the country as the Sarg company toured from town to town.5 After forming a partnership with producer and stop-motion animator Herbert M. Dawley, Sarg’s plans moved forward quickly.
3 Some theaters built around this time in New York City include the Rialto (1916), the Rivoli (1917), and the Capitol (1919, with 4,000 seats).
4 Quote from Hamilton Williamson, “Tony Sarg’s Marionettes,” Theatre Arts Magazine, vol. 2 no. 3 (summer 1918), 154. After 1919, a steady stream of articles cite Sarg’s skill and influence, such as Jameson Sewell, “The Marionette: The Movie of the Past,” Shadowland (Sept. 1919), 15–17; “Tony Sarg: Artist and Showman…” The Billboard (Dec. 25, 1920), 20; Fred J. McIssac, “Tony Sarg,” The Drama, vol. 12, no. 3 (Dec. 1921), 83–84.
5 Nat S. Green, “Oriental Marionettes: The Forerunners of The Modern Motion Picture,” The Billboard (August 6, 1921), 13. Sarg had the “unusual distinction of having his name in electric lights for a solid year in front of the Criterion theatre, New York…[as that city’s] permanent home of Tony Sarg’s Almanac,” from “Sarg’s Almanac takes Hold,” Motion Picture News (June 18, 1921), 3695.
Major Herbert M. Dawley, ca. 1919
From “Chasing the Dinosaur to his Lair” published in Moving Picture World, New York, N.Y. (May 17, 1919)
Courtesy of Lantern Media History Digital Library
Major Herbert M. Dawley (1880–1970)
Accounts of Major Herbert M. Dawley’s life are nearly as colorful as Tony Sarg’s. An actor in his youth, Dawley worked as a sculptor-designer for the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company before launching a motion picture company in Chatham, New Jersey, in 1917. He made rubber models of dinosaurs and sought ways of animating their movements before reaching out to Willis H. O’Brien, known for his stop-motion work in dinosaur-themed films. The pair collaborated on the 1918 feature The Ghost of Slumber Mountain, a dream fantasy with stop-motion prehistoric monsters. Its popular success led to many years of legal wrangling over credit and competing claims of wrong-doing.
In 1920, Dawley patented an articulated dinosaur model and, the following year, released another dinosaur-filled fantasy, Along the Moonbeam Trail, before joining with Tony Sarg to develop Tony Sarg’s Almanac. 6 After the Almanac, Dawley produced additional silhouette animations in Chatham and a series of inventive educational films for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1928 he worked with Austin Strong on A Play Without a Name and, in the early 1930s, even briefly operated his own marionette company. Today, Dawley is best remembered for his involvement with the Chatham Community Players as a director, producer, and performer from 1922 until his death in 1970.7
From “Cooking up an Ad Campaign” published in
Picture News, New York, N.Y.
Courtesy of Lantern Media History Digital Library
6 Herbert M. Dawley, Articulated Effigy, US Patent 1,347,993A, filed February 26, 1920, and issued July 27, 1920.
7 Robert W. de Forest and Henry W. Kent, “Report of the Trustees for the Year: MCMXXIV,” Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, No. 55 (1924), 27–28; Paul McPharlin. “A List of Puppeteers, 1524–1948,” The Puppet Theater in America – A History: 1524 to Now (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 413; Stephen A. Czerkas. Major Herbert M. Dawley –An Artist’s Life (Blanding, Ut.: The Dinosaur Museum, 2016), 48–113.
Above: Tony Sarg and Herbert M. Dawley on Nantucket, September 3, 1921
Motion
Getting started
It is unclear when and how Tony Sarg met Major Herbert M. Dawley. In one account, Sarg sought out Dawley for his expertise in motion picture photography. In another, the meeting was “a happy accident” that occurred while Sarg was experimenting with Chinese shadow-puppets, after which Dawley encouraged the puppeteer to apply the silhouette approach to the silver screen. The men were also near neighbors, with Dawley’s Chatham, New Jersey–based motion picture company located not far from Tony Sarg’s family residence in East Orange.8
In May 1921, the pair had an initial batch of films completed and formally established the Tony Sarg–Herbert M. Dawley, Inc. production company, capitalized at $10,000, for the purpose of developing “artistic Chinese shadowgraphs under the name ‘Tony Sarg’s Almanac’ [with T]welve issues a year.”9 Trade magazines announced the illustrator’s foray into animated pictures as a “striking success,” noting that theater owners across the country “immediately saw the value of Tony Sarg’s Almanac as a box office magnet.”10
Shadowgraphs
“The knights will not be marionettes, but shadowgraph figures operated with sticks from below, in Javanese fashion.”
—Hamilton Williamson, “Tony Sarg’s Marionettes,” Theatre Arts Magazine, May, 1918
A 1918 performance of The Rose and the Ring by Tony Sarg’s marionette company included a shadow-puppet interlude. Although noted with interest by theater critic Hamilton Williamson, Sarg himself never touted this interpretive choice when promoting his Almanac series a few years later. This may be because Sarg’s use of silhouette puppets on stage was not new, even if it was distinctive. There is a long history of shadow-puppet theatre in many different artistic traditions and cultures, including the jointed rod puppets of China and Southeast Asia; the Ombres Chinoises and Le Chat Noir cabaret of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France; and Little Theatre experiments in early twentieth century America.11
In motion pictures, illustrator C. Allan Gilbert’s “Silhouette Fantasies” were an early attempt at silhouette animation for Bray Studios in 1916, the same year that German artist Lotte Reiniger (1899–1981) began experimenting with the form. With a career spanning more than sixty years, Reiniger staged puppet shows and became the most notable practitioner of silhouette animation with over sixty film credits, including her 1926 masterpiece, Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed).12
8 Green, 13; Hamilton Williamson. “Old China Comes to Broadway: Explaining the art of Tony Sarg’s Shadowgraphs,” Motion Picture Magazine (Nov. 1921), 88.
9 “New York Incorporations Reach High Figures,” Motion Picture News, May 14, 1921, 3024; “Tony Sarg—Herbert M. Dawley, Inc.,” Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual (New York: Motion Picture News, Inc., 1921) 392.
10 The release of the first films brought steady press. In one trade magazine alone (Motion Picture News), Sarg’s name made headlines weekly: “Tony Sarg, Illustrator, Enters Picture Fold” (May 7, 1921), 2911; W. A. Johnston, “Welcome to the Fold” and “Tony Sarg’s New Invention” (May 21), 3160, 3182; “Tony Sarg Almanac an Instant Success” (May 28, 1921), 3306; “Sarg’s Almanac Takes Hold: One Reel Novelty Series Sweeping Country (June 11, 1921).
11 Helen Haiman Joseph, A Book of Marionettes (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1920), 24–43; Kathy Foley and Rainer Reusch, “Shadow Theatre,” UNIMA World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts, https://wepa.unima.org/en/shadow-theatre/. Accessed Sept. 11, 2024.
12 Frances Guerin and Anke Mebold, “Lotte Reiniger,” in Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project (New York: Columbia University Libraries, 2016), 1-3. https://wfpp-test.cul.columbia.edu/pioneer/lotte-reiniger/. Accessed Sept. 10, 2024.
Advertisement for Tony Sarg–Herbert M. Dawley, Inc., 1921
Published in Motion Picture News, New York, N.Y.
Courtesy of Lantern Media History Digital Library
Tony Sarg’s Almanac, 1921-1923
“ Here is something really different, differently real, a genuine innovation in pictures that promises to be something more than a momentary stunt scoring only as a novelty . . . the happy product of mechanical skill and inventive imagination. there’s wit and workmanship of a high order . . . ”
— “Brought Into Focus,” The New York Times, May 22, 1921
Between 1921 and 1923, Tony Sarg and Herbert M. Dawley produced at least twenty animated shorts under the banner of Tony Sarg’s Almanac. These one-reel novelty films were available to rent nationally for theatrical exhibition as part of a balanced program of entertainment that included newsreels, cartoons, travelogues, and feature films alongside live stage shows and musical performances.13 Bookings were made across the country, from New York to San Francisco. Conceptually, the series was a humorous look at modern-day scenarios played out in prehistoric settings—going to the dentist, making a movie, getting a haircut. The premise cleverly combined Dawley’s association with dinosaurs and Sarg’s winking artistry into a commercial product with appeal for jazz-age audiences.
Rather than create the thousands of drawings needed to produce a seven-minute animated film, Sarg and Dawley set up shop in Dawley’s Chatham film studio and used shadow puppets that could be photographed frame-by-frame. In an article for Photoplay, Tony Sarg explained their construction: “I transfer [drawings] to cardboard and generally color the figures black. Then I cut them out with scissors. The next step is to turn the cardboard figures into marionettes by equipping their legs, arms, necks, and other parts of their cardboard bodies with tiny hooks and hinges so that they move freely.”14 Sarg described a curious set-up for filming, involving a shadow box with a stretched sheet across its front (the photo seen here appeared in the article), within which he could manipulate puppets from above using “transparent wire.” This description reinforced his role as a puppeteer, but it is not the set-up he and Dawley actually used. Such a set-up would have been impractical if not impossible for the purposes of stop-motion silhouette
13
14
Richard Koszarski. An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 163–190.
Tony Sarg, “Movies on Strings,” Photoplay (Dec. 1921), 114.
Tony Sarg with shadow puppets used in Tony Sarg’s Almanac short “The First Circus,” 1921 NHA Collection, PH8-40-1
animation. Instead, the jointed figures were photographed “lying flat in the horizontal plane” by an overhead camera and moved in between exposures.15 The streamlined technique allowed the partners to produce films quickly—approximately one film every two weeks—with a limited number of assistants.16
Articles about the series almost exclusively focus on Sarg’s involvement and his reputation as a puppeteer, stressing the films’ pedigree as products of proven talent and skill. When interviewed, Sarg often provided lengthy details about the rich history and varied cultural traditions of shadow puppetry, as well as plans to present live “Shadowgraph playlets” on the New York stage—achieved in 1924 with The Chinese Willow Plate Story 17 Rarely, if ever, did he describe the stories or characterizations used in the series. Instead, he preferred to tout the amount of time and money saved.18 The efficiency of the operation, led by Dawley, was a clear point of pride for the energetic entrepreneur.
Installments of Tony Sarg’s Almanac
15 Arthur Edwin Krows, “Motion Pictures—Not for Theatres,” Educational Screen (Apr. 1941), 150.
16 Czerkas, 92; Elizabeth Toward (Robyn Ludwig), “Before McLaren: Canadian Animation in the Silent Film Era (1910–1927),” Cartoon Research (Oct. 8, 2014), https://shorturl. at/9AUYm. Accessed Sept. 11, 2024.
17 “Brought Into Focus,” The New York Times (May 22, 1921), 71.
18 John Monk Saunders, “Tony Sarg Has Never Done a Stroke of Work in His Life!” The American Magazine (May 1926), 103–104.
1921–22 (Rialto Productions)
• The First Circus
• The Original Tooth Carpenter
• Why They Love Cavemen
• When the Whale was Jonahed
• The First Earful
• Vamp No. 1
• Why Adam Walked the Floor
• Noah, Put the Cat Out
• The Original Movie
• Fireman Save My Child
• Flapper No. 1
• Great Scott Walter, Smoke Up 1922–23 (Educational Pictures)
• The First Barber
• The First Flivver
• The First Degree
• The First Golfer (also The Original Golfer)
• Baron Bragg and the Devilish Dragon
• Baron Bragg and the Ogling Ogre
• Baron Bragg and the Haunted Castle
• The Terrible Tree
Left: Scene from Tony Sarg’s Almanac “The Original Tooth Carpenter,” 1921 NHA Collection, PH8-38-2
TONY SARG'S MOVING PICTURES
After the Almanac
Tony Sarg and Herbert Dawley released the final installments of Tony Sarg’s Almanac in 1923. This was another eventful year. Dawley was dealing with court cases stemming from his troubles with Willis H. O’Brien, and Sarg was making plans (and oversized shadow puppets) for a new shadowgraph stage production, The Chinese Willow Plate Story. 19 The prolific artist was also just beginning his partnership with R. H. Macy & Co., designing the first of many spectacular holiday windows for the New York department store. Most disruptive, however, was a devastating fire at the partners’ Chatham studio in November that destroyed copies of Almanac films undergoing repair as well as puppets and equipment being prepared for Sarg’s shadowgraph play, pushing its premiere to the following February.20
Films from the Almanac series remained in circulation for many years, eventually becoming available on 16mm for home and school use. Dawley produced more silhouette films in New Jersey, and, in 1925, Sarg announced plans to produce a new series of insect-themed animated cartoons with colorful backgrounds.21 This description could be applied to some of Dawley’s subsequent films, which also feature fanciful insect characters. Although Sarg is not credited on Dawley’s later films, he is associated with at least one shadow-puppet prologue created for So This Is Eden, a 1927 live-action film sponsored by the Hoover Vacuum Company.22 A New Jersey laboratory is also listed among Sarg’s many studios in operation after 1923, but the nature of its use in the late 1920s and 1930s is unknown.
Tony Sarg with a shadow puppet from The Chinese Willow Plate Story, December, 1923
From “Classic Considers” published in Motion Picture Classic, Jamaica, N.Y.
Courtesy of Lantern Media History Digital Library
Right page: Storyboards, Tony Sarg’s Funny Fantasies, n.d. Paper, ink, paint, plastic NHA Collection, Gift of Elizabeth Murray and Philip C. Murray, 1983.57.72
19 “Tony Sarg’s Marionettes: Chinese Willow Plate,” Music and Musicians (July 1923), 17; “Victor Herbert and his Stop-Watch,” The Dominant (October 1923), 30.
20 “Musical Comedy, Drama and Motion Pictures,” Musical Courier (December 6, 1923), 64.
21 “Sarg to Resume,” The Film Daily (Mar. 15, 1925), 1. Herbert M. Dawley’s biographer, Stephen A. Czerkas, identifies an additional sixteen silhouette films released between 1923 and 1926 that Dawley likely created independently, including several for Pathe Review screen magazine, identified as the Silliettes, or Sillyettes, series; none appear to be part of the Almanac series nor otherwise explicitly associated with Tony Sarg’s name or brand. See Czerkas, 90; also “1-Reel Fairy Tales,” The Film Daily (May 11, 1924), 33.
22 Available online via the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mbrs02459205/.
What Might Have Been
One of the most tantalizing artifacts in the NHA’s Tony Sarg Collection is an undated presentation book for “a new technicolor short comedy created with three dimensional figures.” It includes colorful storyboard illustrations and character designs for a series of “Funny Fantasies,” as well as a detailed drawing of a camera set-up and puppet-sized diorama on an angled platform. This miniature set is divided by panes of glass to stabilize and separate the figures being animated, creating a dynamic depth of field for the camera. As such, it shares similarities with the tiered camera system Lotte Reiniger used for silhouette animation, as well as the multiplane camera used by Walt Disney for hand-drawn animation, such as in the “Silly Symphonies” series.23 But Sarg’s intention to use of these techniques for the animation of physical puppets appears to be unique. It demonstrates the quality of his mechanical mind and signals the unfulfilled potential of his film career.
Multi-talented and endlessly inventive, Tony Sarg lived many lives as a creator. After re-establishing himself in America as an illustrator and launching a new professional career in puppetry, Sarg used animation to blend both skills, amplify his name, and develop his brand of popular entertainment. It may not have been first, but Tony Sarg’s Almanac was the longest-running and most consistently acclaimed silhouette animation series created in this country. Its focus on artistry, humor, and name recognition modeled an approach to branding that artists such as Walt Disney readily adopted in the years that followed.
23 Leonard Maltin, “Walt Disney,” Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: Penguin Group, 1980), 51–52.
Above: Eunice Ross’s petition to the Massachusetts General Court, February 27, 1845. From the Massachusetts Archives.
Right: Detail from Edward J. Pompey’s January 1845 petition asking for a law to ensure all children equal access to education. Note the signatures of James Ross Jr. and Sarah Ross, Eunice Ross’s siblings. From the Massachusetts Archives.
Eunice Ross
and Her Family
By Barbara Ann White
On June 14, 2024, the Nantucket Public Schools presented an honorary high school diploma to Eunice Ross (1823–1895), the African American teenager who was instrumental in the integration of the Nantucket schools in the 1840s. At age seventeen, Ross passed the entrance examination required to attend the island’s new public high school, but her admission was blocked by the School Committee based solely on her race. The town’s further refusal to admit her by a vote at town meeting in 1840 set off a battle to integrate the island’s schools. For the next several years, fierce debate over school integration consumed Nantucket. Ross herself fought for her rights by sending a petition to the State House in 1845. By the time legal battles, ground-breaking statewide legislation, and voter action finally brought school integration in 1846, Ross was 24 years old, and she elected not to enroll.
The diploma presentation resulted from a partnership among the Nantucket Public Schools; the Town of Nantucket; the Museum of African American History, Boston & Nantucket; and the Nantucket Historical Association. “The awarding of this posthumous honorary diploma to Eunice Ross is so very important because it affirms Nantucket Public Schools’ dedication to fostering an inclusive learning environment where every student has the opportunity to thrive,” said Dr. Elizabeth Halley, the school superintendent, who presented the diploma. Dr. Noelle Trent, president and CEO of the Museum of African American History, noted, “Eunice Ross’s story highlights the inherent injustice experienced by generations of Black children pursuing their education. . . . Honoring [her] acknowledges her sacrifice and the long legacy of the civil rights struggle in this country.”
Historian Barbara White has written extensively about the integration fight of 1839–46 and Eunice Ross’s role in it. Here, she explores what surviving records tell us about Ross and her extended family’s life beyond the early 1840s.
White is the author of A Line in the Sand: The Battle to Integrate Nantucket Public Schools, 1825–1847 (2009) and Disturber of Tradition: A Portrait of Anna Gardner (2020).
I have been acquainted with Eunice Ross in a personal way since 1978, when I discovered her signature on a petition that had been misfiled in the Massachusetts State Archives. While pursuing my Master’s Degree in African American Studies, I had come across references in the Nantucket newspapers to petitions from the island and suspected they had something to do with the Black community. I could not find them locally and during the Blizzard of 1978, with classes cancelled at Boston University, I decided to check the State Archives, then kept in the basement of the State House.
1 The petitions are available through the Massachusetts Archives and the Harvard Library Digital Archives of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/31/re
One of the archivists asked me if I wanted to go into the vaults; I jumped at the chance. Down we went to the dark basement with hundreds of floor-to-ceiling metal shelves filled with files. He reached up and pulled out the first file for the Education Committee and papers dropped from the shelf to my feet. I saw familiar Nantucket names from the 1840s. The papers I picked up were six petitions which had never been put into the boxes, having sat between box and shelf for years. It is hard to describe how thrilled I was—four of the petitions advocated for school integration and two opposed it. Chronologically, it was the sixth petition that was the most important. It was written by Eunice Ross, who told her story of being denied admission to Nantucket High School despite being “amply qualified.”1
This discovery turned a routine history paper into something important—a smoking gun that proved that Nantucket had been responsible for passage of statewide school-integration legislation. I got a Rockefeller Grant, and Boston University published my thesis in 1979.2
Despite Eunice Ross’s importance in Nantucket history, only a few details about her personal biography have been discovered. She was one of five children of James and Mary Ross. For grammar school, she attended the one-room African School on York Street, where she was taught by the abolitionist Anna Gardner, who began teaching there at the age of 20 in 1836. Four years later, Eunice, Anna’s star pupil, took the examination to enter the new Nantucket High School. She qualified but was barred from attending because of her race. Eunice’s petition in the state archives is the only glimpse we have of her side of the story; it is also the only document we have from her, aside from her signature on other petitions.
The storm that Eunice’s denial unleashed was violent and personal, as she became the subject of contentious debates at School Committee meetings and of numerous articles at annual town meetings over six long years. She was also the subject of multiple letters to the local newspapers, many of which were ugly. One exchange of point and counterpoint letters, published in the Inquirer over a period of four months in 1843, exemplifies the arguments being bandied about in town. In these, Nathaniel Barney, writing under the pseudonym “B,” argued in favor of integrating the schools, while “Fair Play,” whose identity we do not know, argued against.
Fair Play’s first letter gives us a sample of what Eunice and her family had to read: “I propose a word upon the propriety of mixing white and colored children in our schools—I am opposed to it—first because it will inflict a permanent injury upon the schools, injuring both the white and colored children . . . . ” He wrote that integrated schooling would lead to interra-
2 See Barbara Ann White, A Line in the Sand: The Battle to Integrate Nantucket Public Schools, 1825–1847 (New Bedford: Spinner Publications, 2009).
Detail from the petition of Peter Macy and others, January 24, 1845, submitted in support of Edward J. Pompey’s petition. Petitions were often signed in long strips glued together so they could be signed at various places. When assembled, their lengths could look impressive. From the Massachusetts Archives.
Anna Gardner wearing the locket given to her by students at the African School. GPN1319.
cial marriage, which he declared “contrary to the laws of nature,” and offensively wrote that Black people have a “peculiar odor.” A few weeks later, Nathaniel Barney wrote an answer to each of Fair Play’s arguments. “Why was Eunice F. Ross refused her place in the High school?” he wrote. “Did she enjoy an equal privilege with the 17 who were admitted, when she was examined, none of whom was so well qualified as herself?”
Fair Play answered, “To my knowledge, this girl never had a place in the High School. The School Committee undoubtedly refused her admission to that school on account of her color, and this it was their duty to do for any peculiarity so obnoxious to the great mass.”
The letters went on for weeks. In one, Barney wrote, “Every body knows the injustice which was done that girl, and if she had been the daughter of some of our citizens, nay, if she had been the daughter of Fair Play, he would have known it; but she was the daughter of an obscure colored man.”
The Black community rallied to Eunice Ross’s defense and, as the story unfolded, to the defense of other young Black children who were later denied entrance to the town’s two grammar schools established in the mid 1840s.
Elections for the Board of Selectmen and the School Committee were contested on where the candidates stood on school integration. James Ross, Eunice’s father, ran for the School Committee in 1842 along with
nine other men from the New Guinea neighborhood. Furthermore, the island’s annual summer conventions of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society put the segregation of the Nantucket schools in the limelight. Papers across New England carried the story, most prominently William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist paper The Liberator, and Eunice’s story became material for famous off-island abolitionists such as Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and C. Lenox Remond. On the front
Record of the 1844 vote at Town Meeting for the School Committee. Fifty-six men ran for thirteen positions, ten of them members of the Black community including Eunice Ross’s father, James, who received 3 votes. Nantucket Town Records.
Original Motion at Town Meeting, 1840, by Edward M. Gardner to permit Black children entrance to Nantucket Public Schools. It was defeated. Nantucket Town Records.
page of the Inquirer, Remond wrote, “On your island of Nantucket, has the voice of the people been heard, in Town meeting assembled, refusing a well-qualified colored girl her place in the High School ? . . . Your citizens in their corporate capacity, conspire against the individual rights of a single member, and that, be it said to the shame of the conspirators, in the person of a helpless girl!”3 It is highly likely that Eunice met all of these prominent figures.
It is not hard to imagine the effect such intense attention and focus must have had on the teenaged Eunice Ross, who was recognized everywhere she went in the small town. Is it any wonder that Eunice appears to have became a virtual hermit afterwards?
Trying to piece together the rest of her life is difficult. The last primary-source evidence we have is her signature on an 1858 petition for equal suffrage submitted by her former teacher, Anna Gardner, alongside 277 other Nantucket signatures. When Eunice signed that petition she was 35 years old, and it is not clear what she had been doing since she had been denied admission to the high school. She appears in the 1860 federal census, age 37, living with her parents and one of her nephews, James G. Ross. No occupation is listed for Eunice in any census, and it appears that she never had a formal profession. It is possible that she was a seamstress or tutored children, but we are left to guess.
There is a tantalizing note in the New England Freedman’s Aid Society records for 1865 that simply says,
3 Nantucket Inquirer, March 4, 1843.
4
“From Anna Gardner that E. Ross cannot go to Maryland.”4 Anna Gardner headed south during the Civil War to teach freedmen. This note suggests that Anna, during a visit home in summer 1865, may have approached Eunice to join the NEFAS teaching corps that funded teachers throughout the South. It would have been a dangerous assignment. Maryland was a long way from Nantucket, and the Civil War had just ended. We do not know if Eunice had experience traveling or being away from her family. She was 42 and had no formal teaching experience. It is not surprising that she declined.
Eunice appears in the 1865 Massachusetts state census, living on Nantucket with her older sister Maria. She does not appear in the 1870 and 1880 federal censuses. She and many people in New Guinea appear to have been missed by the census takers in 1880, but it is also possible that she had gone somewhere else during this
Massachusetts Historical Society, New England Freedmen’s Aid Society Records (Ms. N-101), Daily Journal, vol. 2, p. 152, Sept. 25, 1865.
Headstones of Sarah Ross and Eunice Ross. Courtesy the author.
Masthead of The Liberator, 1835. From NHA MS260.
period. I would like to think that she may have been visiting, or even keeping house for, her nephew, Rev. James Gardner Ross, and his family in one of the places he lived during this time, Boston or New Haven. This is pure conjecture but it is a possibility.
The last piece of solid evidence about Eunice’s life comes decades later in her 1895 obituary, when she was 72. It says, Eunice Ross “was the prominent figure in an event in the town’s history, which, though well known to the older residents, will be of interest to our younger readers. It was at the time when the color line was closely drawn in the public schools, and an attempt to gain admission for a colored pupil on terms of equality with white scholars, was frowned upon.” It further notes, “She was an apt scholar, and Miss Gardner had advanced her until she was qualified for entrance to the High School, where she made application for admission. Public indignation was aroused at this (as then termed) ‘outrage.’ But the advocates of equal rights . . . clung tenaciously to their cause—and won the fight. Miss Ross was particularly fond of the study of French, in which language she became proficient.” This note indicates that Eunice continued to study throughout her life, including learning French.5
It is through Eunice’s family, however, that we can form a fuller picture of what her life was like after having been in the spotlight. We know she lived with her parents for a while. Perhaps it was their house in which she remained. We know that she was close to her sister, Sarah, because the two women are buried next to each other under twin headstones in Nantucket’s historic Colored Cemetery—a choice of final resting place that must have been made by Sarah, as Eunice died before her.
As the fifth child born to James Ross and Mary Pompey Ross, Eunice was the baby of the family. Her oldest sibling was already 15 years old when she was born. Not much is known about her parents. Mary Pompey was part of a prominent African American family on Nantucket. She died in 1855, aged between 75 and 78, when Eunice was 32. James Ross was born in Africa. We do not know when or how he got to the island nor whether he had previously been enslaved. We also do not know
5 Inquirer and Mirror, March 2, 1895.
6 “Notice,” Nantucket Inquirer, March 5, 1836.
where the name Ross came from. Did he arrive aboard a whaleship, or did he make his way out of the South or from elsewhere in New England? It is intriguing to think what James may have told his family about his life in Africa. How much, if anything, did he remember? We will probably never know the answer, but it is unlikely that he came voluntarily. Unless he was a small child, it is hard to imagine that he would not have talked about what he remembered of his life before his arrival on the island.
We do know from a notice James placed in the Inquirer in 1836 that he engaged in some form of medicine or folk medicine and that he worked with wood:
The undersigned respectfully informs his friends and the public at large, that he continues to act as usual in his professional sphere The undersigned flatters himself that his skill, (for which he is indebted to long and painful experience) in the cure of that excruciating disease, Rheumatism, is well known to the public—and, perhaps more feelingly remembered by those who have generously and patiently suffered under his prescriptions.
The rheumatic friends of the undersigned are particularly requested to bear in mind, that his rates of charges remain unaltered.
James Ross x his mark
N.B. Wood sawed to order—residence No. 1999 Guinea6
Map of the New Guinea neighborhood, redrawn from William Coffin’s 1834 map of town. Note locations of the African Baptist Church and Zion M.E. Church. NHA collection.
James Ross’s disadvantage of illiteracy undoubtedly made him committed to his children’s education, and all of his children probably attended school at some point. James was also politically active: his name appears on numerous political petitions. The year after he ran for the School Committee, he ran to be a town assessor. No Black man was ever elected into town government in the nineteenth century, and it is also not clear if Black citizens ever attended or voted at town meetings.
James Ross died in 1856, when Eunice was 33, one year after his wife’s death. His funeral was held at Zion’s Church, and the Inquirer reported that he had been about eighty years of age. His death may have left Eunice living alone in the family’s house.
Eunice’s siblings must have rallied around her during the controversy over the town’s refusal to admit her to the high school. Sarah M. Ross (1819–1896), born four years before Eunice, was the sibling closest to Eunice in age and is the one most likely to have supported Eunice financially after their parents’ death. The two sisters’ signatures appear next to each other on multiple petitions from their youth. I imagine them engaging in discussion as they put their names to a variety of issues pertaining to civil rights, including the right to interracial marriage and equal treatment on the railroads.
Sarah appears in three federal censuses, which record her being in service to, and living with, the Benjamin F. Coffin family on Main Street. When Sarah died in 1896 at age 77, her obituary’s first words were “faithful servant.” She had been “the faithful friend and servant” of the Coffins for 57 years, it said, adding that after the death of the elder Coffins, Sarah remained “an inmate of their home every season during” the annual visits of the family. Furthermore, “Although the infirmities of age have incapacitated her for actual labor for several years, yet has she remained an esteemed member of the household and a remarkable example of the faithful friend and servitor, covering a period of 63 years.” If these numbers are accurate, Sarah entered service when she was 14. Like Eunice, she remained single throughout her life. Did Sarah and Eunice live together during the off season when the extended family was not on the island?7
7 U.S. Federal Census returns for Nantucket, 1860, 1870, 1880; Inquirer and Mirror, Aug. 8, 1896.
The next eldest sister, Elizabeth (1817–?), was six years older than Eunice. Elizabeth married a man named William Miller from New Bedford in 1842, and the couple had a daughter, Martha B. Miller, in 1844. Neither Elizabeth nor William appear in the 1850 federal census, but Martha does, noted as living with her grandparents. Had Elizabeth and William died or moved away? It is not clear. The only petition that Elizabeth signed was in 1838 alongside her younger sisters, Eunice and Sarah. My guess is that Martha B. Miller lived not only with her grandparents but also with her aunt Eunice, who was 27 at the time. Martha Miller is listed in the 1880 census, age 36, as a live-in servant in the household of Linus and Mary Hooper on Centre Street, following in her aunt Sarah’s footsteps as a household domestic. Martha shows up in the 1900 federal census, at which time lived with her aunt Maria on York Street. Perhaps Eunice lived with them as well, or maybe she was in her parents’ house. Either way, the sisters lived
Martha B. Miller, daughter of Elizabeth Ross and William Miller and niece of Eunice Ross, 1886. GPN1195.
Sign from the boarding house run by William Whippey (or Whippy) and his wife Maria. Gift of Mary E. Long, 1992.212.1.
in the same neighborhood, if not the same house. I imagine the family gathered for dinners, holidays, and church services. Martha died in 1913 at age 69, having fallen on hard times. Her property was sold at auction for $100 by the town’s poor department which had taken possession of it, undoubtedly because she had been a recipient of the town’s charity.8
Eunice’s oldest sister, Maria (1815–1902), was eight years older than Eunice. Hers was a life marked by multiple tragedies. She married William Whippey (1801–1847) at the South Congregational Church (now the Unitarian Church) in 1837 when she was 22 and he was 36. They were married by African American minister Rev. J. W. Robinson. William Whippey was born in New Zealand, evidently the son of a Maori woman and a Nantucket whaler from the white Whippey family of Nantucket. Maria and William operated one of the boarding houses in New Guinea that catered to mariners of color, called the “Canacka Boarding House.”9 The couple’s first child, Mary, died at two months of age in 1838, one year after their marriage. A few years later, Maria gave birth to a son, William Jr. In 1846, an unnamed infant son died of tuberculosis. The next year, William Sr. died, also from tuberculosis, at age 46. Thus, at age 32, Maria was a widow. Tragically, their only remaining child, William Jr.,
8 Inquirer and Mirror, June 28, 1913.
died three years later, the third member of the family to die of tuberculosis. Maria appears in the 1850 census as “head of the household” with two male boarders, having lost her husband and her children. Again, we can imagine that Maria must have been supported by her family in these times of grief.
A few years later, on New Year’s Day 1854, Maria married George Nye in a ceremony led by Rev. James Crawford of the African Baptist Church. She was 38. He was 36 and a mariner from Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. State vital records note the death in New Bedford in 1859 of the Nyes’ eight-year-old daughter Marie W. Nye, while a report in the Inquirer says that Maria Nye’s only daughter Anna Maria Wilkerson had died. What happened to George Nye? And was this daughter, born in Nantucket in 1851, Maria’s third child, born out-ofwedlock? Or was she a relation of George Nye’s? I don’t know. What is clear is that Maria had now been twice widowed and had lost of all of her children.10
Incomplete and inconsistent census records and an obituary published in 1902 tell us that Maria returned to Nantucket around 1860 and secured a job as a stewardess on the steamers that connected the island to New Bedford. She got a house on York Street in New Guinea, which she shared with her sister Eunice for a time in the mid-1860s and with her niece Martha Miller around 1900. The obituary calls her “Aunt Maria” and remembers her as “well known to the traveling public.” She was the last surviving of the children of James and Mary Ross.11
The eldest of the five children was James Ross Jr. (1808–?), 15 years older than Eunice. James married Sarah Brown in 1831 at the South Church when he was 23.12 By 1850, when he was 43, the couple operated a boarding house valued at $500. Thus, James was the second person in the Ross family to operate a boarding house. In the state census of 1855, James and Sarah are listed as having three unrelated children in their household, ages 6 to 14. Were these the children of their tenants?13
9 Nantucket Inquirer, Aug. 26, 1837; Frances Karttunen, The Other Islanders (Spinner Publications, 2005), 64–65, 103.
10 Marriages Registered in the Town of Nantucket for the Year 1854, p. 127, Massachusetts Marriage Records, 1840–1915, Ancestry.com; Nantucket Inquirer, Jan. 4, 1854, and Mar. 1, 1859.
11 U.S. Federal Census returns for Nantucket, 1870, 1900; Massachusetts State Census, 1865; Inquirer and Mirror, Sept. 20, 1902.
12 “A Record of Births, Marriages and Deaths by order of the Town of Sherborn,” 1662–1834, p. 249, available online as part of Massachusetts Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988, Ancestry.com.
13 U.S. Federal Census returns for Nantucket, 1850; Massachusetts State Census, 1855.
New Guinea in 1858, a detail from H.F. Walling’s Map of Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket Counties. The house of James Ross Jr. appears at left; James Ross Sr.’s house is marked “J. Ross Est.” at top. NHA collection.
Along with his siblings, James Ross Jr. was politically active, his name also appearing on petitions. In 1850, he is listed a member of an integrated “vigilance committee,” Nantucket’s response to the strict new Fugitive Slave Law, part of the Compromise of 1850. Members included Edward W. Gardner, a cousin of Anna Gardner, who, in 1840, had proposed the first resolution at town meeting “to admit all qualified colored children to the high school.”14
In 1853, James Ross Jr. is listed as a member of the Pleasant Street Baptist Church, then under the leadership of Rev. James Crawford. The census of 1860 noted that James still owned the boarding house. In this census, his wife, Sarah, is labeled as mulatto. Ten years later, in 1870, James is recorded as age 64 with “no occupation.” By 1870, Nantucket’s population had plummeted and there was no clientele for a boarding house in the African American community. He died sometime
between 1870 and 1874, when Sarah passed away at age 65. When her brother died, Eunice was in her 40s.15
James Ross Jr. and Sarah had one child, James Gardner Ross, the third James Ross in as many generations. He was born in 1844 in the midst of the controversy over his aunt Eunice’s education. His middle name was probably a tribute to the various Gardners who had helped the African American community in multiple ways. In 1857, at age 13, he was baptized into the Baptist religion by Rev. James Crawford. The following year his father complained to the School Committee that his son, then 14, “had been severely punished by J. Bridgman, Principal of West Grammar School.”16
James took up the profession of barber. An 1866 advertisement lists his shop at the “head of York Street.”
In 1867, it is listed in Calder’s Block a few doors below the post office, and, in 1873, his shop moved again, according to an ad which only noted that he had moved to “new quarters.”17
In November 1866, at age 23, he married Rosa Henry, a young woman from New Bedford who had been born on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. In the 1870 census, James and Rosa are listed with two children, Lincoln P. Ross, age 2, and Stantley B. Ross, age 11 months.18 Tragically, both children died within a few days of each other in August 1870, for reasons that are not recorded.19 Another child, daughter Minnie G., was born in 1871, and another son, Leroy B., was born in 1876. Both were born on Nantucket, and Leroy died there at just two years of age in 1878.20
In the mid-1870s, James moved to Boston, where he was licensed to preach at the Twelfth Street Baptist Church. He studied theology at Newton Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1877. He accepted a call to min-
14 Nantucket Inquirer, Oct. 21, 1850.
15 Nantucket Inquirer, Jan. 7, 1853; U.S. Federal Census returns for Nantucket, 1860, 1870.
16 Inquirer and Mirror, Nov. 25, 1893, reprinting an article from the Jacksonville Southern Courier; Nantucket School Committee book 35, Minutes 1853–59, NHA, MS88, box 18.
17 Inquirer and Mirror, June 30, 1866, Mar. 4, 1867, and Apr. 18, 1873.
18 U.S. Federal Census returns for Nantucket, 1870; Marriages Registered in the Town of Nantucket for the year 1866, part of “Massachusetts State Vital Records, 1841–1925," FamilySearch.org (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N4Q6-B2Y), entry for James Ross and Rosa Henry, Nov. 8, 1866.
19 "Massachusetts State Vital Records, 1841-1925," FamilySearch.org (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N7VC-D9B), entry for Lincon P. Ross, Aug. 23, 1870, and Stantley B. Ross, Aug. 30, 1870.
20 "Massachusetts State Vital Records, 1841-1925," FamilySearch.org (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FXZT-MJY), entry for Minnie Grimes Ross, Nov. 24, 1871; idem, (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N753-SV5), entry for Leroy B. Ross, May 13, 1878.
ister at the Webster Street Baptist Church in New Haven and was ordained at the First Baptist Church of New Haven. An 1892 biography of him noted that during the eight years he was in New Haven, he raised the funds to build Emmanuel Baptist Church. “In the city of New Haven, and throughout the state, Rev. Ross was well known and highly respected; he engaged in much work outside of his church, serving on many committees . . . . ”21
In 1879, James returned to Nantucket to speak at the third anniversary of the Nantucket Union Temperance Society, an integrated group.22 By this point, the population of Nantucket had dwindled to around 4,000 people with the African American population down to just 27 individuals, many of them elderly, including his three aunts and his cousin Martha.
ing to the island. At the third anniversary of his pastorate at Main Street Baptist Church, the Inquirer and Mirror noted that Reverend Ross was beloved and that over 300 people paid their respects to him with “imposing ceremonies” and a “bountiful banquet.” The paper said, “To say his pastorate has been a successful one is putting it lightly,” as Main Street was the “leading Baptist church in the city and state.”24
In 1885, the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he accepted a call to Bethel Baptist Church. While serving their church, he was appointed by the Florida State Board of Health to “travel, lecture and help meet the health need of churches.” Under his leadership, the church built its first parsonage.23
The Bethel Church is today the largest Black Baptist church in Jacksonville, and it has had only fourteen ministers since the Civil War. The church archivist tells me it has always been an activist church, which fits into the history of the Ross family on Nantucket. According to their records, James Ross left Bethel in 1890 and organized Main Street Baptist Church two streets away, one of more than a dozen offshoots from the original Bethel Church. In 1892, he sold his Nantucket house on York Street, indicating he had no intention of return-
Sometime in the mid- to late-1890s, Reverend Ross left Florida. He appears next in Nashville, Tennessee, where an 1899 newspaper reported that he had preached his last sermon at the First Colored Baptist Church. The Inquirer and Mirror, quoting a Nashville paper, wrote, “Reverend J. Gardner Ross is a preacher of force, but yesterday he spoke with unusual feeling and vigor.” It noted the church regretted his departure and that “the colored people of Nashville have never had his superior in their pulpits.”25
From Nashville, I lose James Gardner Ross, age of 55, his wife Rosa, and their children. By this point in his life, only his cousin Martha and his aunt Maria were still alive, both living on Nantucket. Of course, we have no idea if these clippings were the only things that the family knew of the whereabouts of James G. Ross. I imagine that letters had been exchanged over the years.
This is as far was I have been able to trace the generations of the Ross family. While we could wish to know more, what is clear is that that Eunice Ross had a major impact on our island and our state in its civil rights history and that her nephew, James G. Ross, had a major impact in African American churches in Connecticut, Florida, and Tennessee. It is quite a legacy.
21 Inquirer and Mirror, Nov. 25, 1893; A. W. Pegues, Our Baptist Ministers and Schools (Springfield, Mass.: Willey & Co., 1892), 427–29.
22 Nantucket Journal, Sept. 3, 1879.
23 My thanks to Adonnica Toler, archivist for the Bethel Church and Eartha M.M. White Historical Museum in Jacksonville for her generous assistance.
24 Inquirer and Mirror, July 23, 1892, and Nov. 25, 1893.
25 Inquirer and Mirror, Oct. 28, 1899, quoting the Nashville American
Rev. James Gardner Ross, from Our Baptist Ministers and Schools (1892)
A Story of a Portrait
Four-year old Jane Sylvia sat for a portrait by wellknown island artist Ruth Haviland Sutton in late summer 1940. Sutton painted the portrait as a favor for Anthony “Tony” Sylvia, her mail carrier and Jane’s father. Also in the studio during the session was Maria (Bartlett) Manning, who took a photos of little Jane sitting for artist Ruth. One photo Maria submitted to Pictures magazine, where it won the monthly $25 prize in December 1940. The image was then chosen as the grand-prize winner for all of 1940, which increased Maria’s winnings by $100.
The portrait, the prize-winning photo, and the dress Jane wore that day were recently donated to the NHA by Jane’s daughter Marguerite Page, along with other photographs reflecting the family’s island connections.
Left page: Jane Sylvia by Ruth
Left: Girl’s blue cotton dress and white cotton pinafore Below: Photo of studio session by Maria (Bartlett) Manning Gift of Marguerite Page, 2024.23.1-.4
Haviland Sutton
Field’s Folly
Artist George E. Morris (1813–1916) captured this view of Field’s Mill during a visit to Nantucket in 1888. Also derisively called Field’s Folly, the building, once a house, had been modified in the 1870s by Thomas B. Field to support a horizontal windmill of his own design. The mill was unsuccessful, and Field removed the windmill’s vanes, leaving the building with an odd tower on one end. The building, which stood at the corner of North Liberty and Lily streets, eventually fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1897.
Nantucket Waiter / Waitress Race
Nantucket’s Waiter / Waitress Race, was an annual event from 1981 to 2008. The first race, held July 14, 1981, featured about 95 servers from local restaurants. Dressed in their work uniforms, they ran a circuit along South Water Street, Main Street, Centre Street, and Broad Street that started and finished at the Rose and Crown. Each server balanced a tray with a full glass of champagne and a small champagne bottle. In their other hand, they carried a small American flag. The first person to cross the finish line without dropping or breaking anything won. Patty Hughes initially thought of the idea after seeing similar races in Washington, D.C., and Paris. The five-dollar entry fee and subsequent luncheon proceeds were donated to the Boys and Girls Club. This shirt is probably from 1990 when Summerfest and the Waiter / Waitress Race occurred on the same weekend.
Above: Field’s Folly by George E. Morris, 1888 Gift of John Sylvia, 2024.8.1
Right: Waiter/Waitress Race t-shirt Gift of Katy Farrell, 2024.11.1
Pine-needle Purse
Gladys Sherman Ellis (1916–2011) was an accomplished artist, seamstress, furniture upholsterer, scrimshander, and basketry teacher from Mattapoisett, Mass. She designed and created many unique pine-needle purses, including this one, which originally belonged to Nantucket summer resident Irma Anapol. The basket’s edges and sides are made of coiled pine needles, an early weaving style used around the world. The decorative lace effect on the lower portion, some of which resembles chair caning, was created by wrapping raffia over a wire frame.
Alongside these techniques, the basket intentionally adopts the style of the Nantucket lightship basket purse. It has a wooden bottom, hinged lid, hardwood handle, and fancy ornament. Ellis’s talent for scrimshaw is displayed through the two carved ivory scallop shells on top and the ivory clasp and pin that secure the lid. Inside, the basket features a carved bird and engraved quarterboard. Her particular combination of pine-needle weaving, Nantucket-basket form, and scrimshaw became known as a “Mattapoisett basket.” Ellis taught classes at her Mattapoisett home and at basketry conferences, passing along her knowledge before her death in 2011.
Above: Mattapoisett basket by Gladys Sherman Ellis Gift of Annabelle Brown Folkes, 2024.28.1
Major Restoration Project Underway at the Old Mill
This past August, a major restoration project at the Old Mill, funded by the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee (CPC) began. The project includes critical work such as reshingling the entire structure, pest control and repairs, and overall structural repairs and reinforcement. It will also include visitor experience enhancements, including an unintrusive interpretive shed on the property for ADA accessibility.
To conduct these projects with preservation in mind, the NHA uses extensive records of our historic properties for reference. Each planned project begins in the archives with a detailed look at the building's construction and maintenance history. The NHA also works with preservation professionals, including Amy Boyce (President & Craftsperson of Husk Preservation Inc.) to ensure that any work accomplishes contemporary goals like accessibility, safety, and climate preparedness without disturbing the historic fabric of the building. Amy has worked under some of the best in the fields of masonry, timber framing, and millwrighting. Amy has visited over 200 mills worldwide and has participated in mill and preservation symposiums, workshops, and seminars here and abroad.
Built in 1746, the Old Mill is believed to be the oldest operating windmill in the United States. It is a smock mill with a fixed body containing the machinery and a cap that turns to face the vanes and sails into the wind. The Old Mill saw many years of use and is the only surviving mill of the five that once stood overlooking Nantucket town. When the mill appeared on the auction block in 1897, the NHA secured the mill with a successful bid of $885. After minor repairs over the years — and major overhauls in 1930, 1936, and 1983 — the mill can grind corn just as it has for over two centuries. The Old Mill was designated an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1992.
Whaling Museum Candle Factory Project Beginning this Fall
During the summer of 2023, the NHA worked with the Historic Preservation Program at UPenn, the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), and Integrated Conservation Resources, Inc. (ICR) to conduct an 8-week program with young professionals to, among other things evaluate the conditions of each of the NHA’s properties. As a result of this work, the team identified several priorities, the highest of which is the north wall of the Hadwen and Barney Candle Factory at the Whaling Museum. Over the years, numerous documented and undocumented alterations, repairs, and treatments have been made to this wall that has decreased the overall strength of the wall, and repairs over the years have not been made with comparable materials, which has accelerated its decay.
As a result of these preliminary observations made, the NHA has worked closely with Integrated Conservation Resources, Inc. (Architectural Conservators), and Old Structures Engineering (Structural Engineers who specialize in the design of stabilization programs for historic structures), to carry out a rapid initial review of the North Wall and formulate a plan to begin a restoration project. Beginning this fall, this project will include, in summary, removing previously incompatible materials, stabilizing brick cracks, repointing bricks, closing two upper windows, and installing reinforcing joints. The NHA thanks the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee (CPC) for generously funding this important project.
Research Library Restoration Phase 1 Complete
The Research Library reopened this past spring after completing a major renovation project from 2023 through early 2024, also funded by the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee (CPC). It included the conservation and stabilization of the historic concrete façade, the replacement of windows, doors, and entryway roof, and the installation of a new HVAC control system, fire suppression system, and water and drainage system. The NHA Maintenance team also took the opportunity to revamp the exterior grounds by adding a quaint butterfly-friendly garden.
LEARN MORE & SUPPORT
To learn more and inquire about supporting an NHA restoration project, please contact ask@nha.org
NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS
Summer Programs
Whaling Museum Offerings & New Multilingual Day
Programming at the Whaling Museum was robust and offered daily. With interesting spotlight tours that over 2,000 visitors participated in and our classic presentations Life Aboard a Whaleship and The Tragic Story of the Whaleship Essex, which over 9,000 attendees enjoyed throughout July and August. We were also excited to offer our first Multilingual Days at the Whaling Museum in July and August, which offered these daily programs and tours in various languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, and American Sign Language. We look forward to growing these diverse offerings in the future.
Summer Site Series
It was our second year offering the Summer Site Series at a few of our historic properties in July. Visitors, families, and youth camps joined us each week at the Old Mill, Old Jail, and Greater Light to explore and learn about each property on a deeper level. Program offerings included hands-on activities, artifact tables, and guided tours that brought the unique history of each site to life. Over 450 attendees came out to our properties for the Summer Site Series this year.
Discovery Center Activities
The Whaling Museum Discovery Center was funfilled this summer, with over 8,400 participants in Hands-on-History craft offerings in July and August. Hands-on-History offered crafts Monday through Friday for museum visitors, ranging from postcards to teacup designs, watercolors, shadow puppets, and hand puppets—all Tony Sarg-inspired! We also welcomed a Nantucket favorite, Nan-Puppets, for four performances, with a total of over 300 children and caregivers attending. Visitors also enjoyed new additions to the Discovery Center, including a puppet theater and captain’s quarters interactives.
Decorative Arts Workshops
Buzzing with creative activity, the 1800 House Decorative Arts held over 60 workshops and welcomed over 550 students this summer. From basket weaving, glass bead-making, blacksmithing, transferware, sailor valentines, and more, students celebrate and experience Nantucket’s rich history of early American craft. To continue the creative offerings for those who leave the island or prefer at-home activities in the off-season, we have launched a selection of our Decorative Arts Workshops to take online with a purchase of a materials kit, you are guided with videos to complete your project – learn more at NHA.org!
Sarg Community Day
Our Summer of Sarg culminated at Sarg Community Day this past August, where over 1,800 people joined the NHA at Children’s Beach Park to view the special recreation of Sarg’s original sea monster that visited Nantucket in 1937. Attendees were welcomed by the 75-foot “Morton” sea monster balloon! The program included performances by a local puppeteer and musicians, craft stations that highlighted different aspects of Sarg’s artistic career, a community parade, and posters displaying text content from the Whaling Museum’s Sarg exhibition that shared the history of the sea monster hoax and Sarg’s extraordinary career.
NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS
Nantucket by Design
This summer, we hosted a week of design events from July 15-18, celebrating the theme of craftsmanship. Nantucket by Design included an Opening Night Party, Book Fair, seven Panels, a Keynote, a Design Luncheon, Decorative Arts Workshops, Private Dinners, a Master Class, a Closing Party, and various Pop-Ups around the island, including The Colony Hotel at Hadwen House Garden. The event series had its most successful year yet, with over 50 supporting sponsors, and the NHA was thrilled to welcome design professionals and enthusiasts to the Whaling Museum and several Historic Properties to immerse them in Nantucket history while attending and supporting.
A Nantucket Night
The NHA introduced a new summer benefit event, A Nantucket Night, on Saturday, August 3, that was sold out! This event was directly tied to the NHA’s mission, and for its inaugural year, it celebrated the featured exhibition theme of Tony Sarg. It was also directly linked to the community program, Sarg Community Day, which was held just two days after. Guests enjoyed an appearance from Morton, the Sea Monster, in addition to custom event details, including linens, pillows, tote bags, plates, and more curated from Tony Sarg collection items. This enabled the NHA to create a first-ever special exhibition product line to be sold in the museum shop to benefit the NHA. Visit nantucketmuseumshop.org to learn more.
Baskets & Bubbly
Baskets & Bubbly had a record year of fundraising between its online auction and Celebration Under the Whale on Wednesday, August 14. All funds raised support the NHA’s efforts to preserve and promote the history and craft of basket making. Highlights included 65 online auction items, viewing of Youth Weavers weaving their current projects at our event, and the display of a new acquisition to the NHA’s collection, in memory of past Baskets & Bubbly co-chair Jackie Kupper, that included a nine-piece nest of baskets made in 2001 by Richard Cifranic that features ivory plagues by David Lazarus.
Summer Benefit Events
NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS
Fellowship
2024 E. Geoffrey and Elizabeth Thayer Verney Fellowship
Congratulations to Michael J. Chiarappa on being awarded the 2024 E. Geoffrey and Elizabeth Thayer Verney Fellowship. Established in 1999, the Nantucket Historical Association offers this annual fellowship, which is open to academics, graduate students, and independent scholars, to enhance the public's knowledge and understanding of the heritage of Nantucket, Mass. The fellowship encourages research in the collections of the NHA Research Library and is intended to enhance the public’s knowledge and understanding of the heritage of Nantucket, Mass., heritage.
Michael J. Chiarappa is a cultural and environmental historian who received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He has held faculty positions at Quinnipiac University and Western Michigan University and, most recently, was a Research Professor of Chesapeake Regional Studies and Director of Cultural and Natural Resource Initiatives at Washington College. His fellowship project will be titled “The Andrews Scallop Shanty: Curating Work and Memory on the Nantucket Waterfront.” The goal of this project will be to produce a publication that underscores the necessity of preserving the Andrews scallop shanty, connects it to the island’s wider working waterfront, and uses this content to assist the community in implementing an interpretive program for it. These outcomes can provide a template for other sites on Nantucket, will be of interest to general audiences, scholars, and community planners, and will be a significant tool in animating this historic site’s past and making it a vehicle for deliberating ongoing concerns surrounding cultural conservation on the island.
Staff Update
Where Are They Now?
Sophie Manning, a former NHA Guide at the Whaling Museum, graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame this past spring. She received the annual Thesis Prize for the best thesis in the History Department. Her thesis was “Harkis, Colonial Violence, and the Legacies of Decolonization in Algeria.” She has since joined Kobre & Kim international law firm in Washington D.C. as a litigation assistant. We congratulate Sophie on this esteemed accomplishment and wish her luck on her new career endeavors!
NHA Staff: New Faces and New Roles
Meet some of our new staff and staff in new, exciting roles!
Thomas Perich, Research Library Associate and Visitor Operations Assistant
Thomas was born and raised in Maryland and has had a love of museums for as long as he can remember. He first came to Nantucket as an intern with the Nantucket Historical Association in 2022 and immediately became interested in this island’s unique history. He returned the following summer after his graduation from Hobart and William Smith where he received a B.A in History, a B.A. in American Studies and a minor in French and Francophone studies. He took a short hiatus from working on island to spend a year teaching in the north of France before returning to the island in his new role this year. With a passion for storytelling, research, and public history, he has returned to Nantucket with a renewed drive to pull stories out of the archives and make this island’s past accessible and engaging in new ways.
Andre Sang Quakenbush, Maintenance Assistant
Andre Sang Quakenbush moved to Nantucket in 2011 for a job opportunity and has lived on the island ever since. He has since joined the Maintenance Team to assist with the many restoration projects and upkeep around the NHA campus. When Andre is not at the NHA he enjoys playing music, as a guitarist and a member in a number of island bands, as well as performing at the NHA’s Sea Shanty annual public program series.
Sara Williams, Social Media Coordinator
Originally from New Jersey, Sara moved to Nantucket after college, where she received a degree in International Journalism. She is a commercial and documentary photographer and a certified drone pilot. She also works alongside the Marketing team at Bartlett’s Farm. When not working, she enjoys spending time outside riding her bike, or snowboarding in the winter. Sara works alongside the NHA marketing team to capture moments and share stories of all the happenings around the NHA, from community programming to decorative arts and benefit events.
NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS
Nantucket Garden Club Awards NHA Staff Member
Kathrina Marques, NHA Landscape and Grounds Manager, received The Mr. & Mrs. William B. Macomber Conservation Award at The Nantucket Garden Club Annual Meeting at Great Harbor Yacht Club. This award recognizes her years of service to the NHA and maintaining the garden at the NHA's Historic Property, Hadwen House, in partnership with The Nantucket Garden Club.
2024 NHA Scholarship Award Recipients
Every year, the Nantucket Historical Association Scholarship is awarded to graduating seniors of Nantucket High School who is pursuing a four-year college degree and has also demonstrated a commitment to Nantucket’s community through volunteer time and initiatives. We congratulate this year’s recipients and wish them luck as they begin college this fall.
Rocky Monto has lived his entire life on Nantucket with his parents, Jennifer and Rocco, and his older sister Siena. Since Freshman year, Rocky has been deeply involved in the Nantucket High School Sailing Team and hopes to continue sailing as long as he can. He also cares deeply about his academics, becoming the Salutatorian of his class. Outside of school, Rocky loves playing guitar and taking walks along the Polpis trails. He has also studied Japanese for years and hopes to combine this knowledge base with further study in college in order to become fluent. In the fall, Rocky will be attending Haverford College to study Government and International Relations.
Siena Monto moved from the Vineyard to Nantucket with her parents, Jennifer and Rocco Monto, and her younger brother, Rocky, when she was just over a year old. She started her education in the Nantucket Public School pathways program after being diagnosed with Autism and remained there until 2nd grade. Siena then attended the Lighthouse School until 8th grade before moving on to Nantucket High School with her brother Rocky. In 8th grade, Siena began playing goalie for the newly formed Girls’ Ice Hockey team and continued for the next four years. She also volunteered at the Hospital Thrift Shop, took classes at the Nantucket Artists Association, and learned Japanese. Siena wrote a book called “The Farmer,” which ranked in the top 1000 in Amazon’s children’s book category. She was inducted into the National Honor Society and received the Endicott College Book Award. Siena was accepted early decision to Boston University, where she plans to major in Computer Science. Her two older brothers, Nick and Alex, also live in Boston. Siena loves playing video games and enjoys writing fantasy novels and creating their characters.
Scholarships
Above: Edwin Rudd, NHA Director of Facilities; Mark Delay, NHA Maintenance Assistant; Kathrina Marques; and Niles Parker, NHA Gosnell Executive Director.
Kenneth Louis Beaugrand
Thank you for years of service to the Nantucket community.
Kenneth Louis Beaugrand passed away on May 31, 2024, at the age of 85 on the island of Nantucket, his home for the past 30 years. Though a failing heart took him away from this world, it was his warm heart and quick smile that drew people to him during his life.
Ken was born to Louis and Gertrude Beaugrand on October 19, 1938, in Manhattan, New York City.
Ken took education seriously. He attended St. Basil Preparatory School in Stamford, Connecticut, followed by Brown University in Rhode Island, where he received a BA in 1960. He went on to receive his Law Degree from Columbia Law School in New York in 1963 and then a Master of International Law from the University of London in the UK in 1965.
He had a fulfilling career in law, starting when he was of counsel at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, an international law firm headquartered in New York City. He was recruited by Investment Overseas Services (IOS) and worked and lived in England, France, Switzerland, Holland, the Bahamas, Japan, and Canada, becoming a senior officer of the company. Ken met the love of his life on a blind date in London in early 1969. The first date did not go well at all, but he was persistent and managed to get a second date later that summer. He and Augusta W. Barnard were married in Geneva on November 22, 1969.
Ken and Augusta (Gussie) moved to Toronto, Canada in 1973 and Ken continued his legal career at Aird, Zimmerman & Berlis before shifting back to finance. He was notably Executive Vice President at Eaton Bay Financial Services, Senior Vice President of investments at the Imperial Life Assurance Company of Canada, and President and CEO of US Operations at Manulife Financial.
For many years, starting in the 1980s, Ken and family vacationed in the summers on Cape Cod and later on Nantucket. With all three children off to college, Ken and Gussie became year-round residents of Nantucket in 1994. He bought the Nantucket Real Estate company in 1996, which he ran very successfully for many years. He eventually sold the business and started transitioning into retirement.
But retirement didn’t suit him, and he took a strategic position with the Town of Nantucket that combined his knowledge of Nantucket, his experience in real estate, and both his legal and investment backgrounds.
Ken found ways to give back to his community throughout his adult life, but this was especially important to him on Nantucket. Ken served as warden of St. Paul’s Church from 2008 to 2016 and was on the vestry for nearly two decades. He was also chair of the long-term planning campaign and chair of the capital campaign at the Church. He was vice president of the Nantucket Historical Association, the Chair of the Nantucket Preservation Trust, the Chair of the Community Preservation Committee, and an eight-term President of the Nantucket Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB). He was a director and President of the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce, a committee member of the school housing project, a director of the Nantucket Housing Office, and a director of the Nantucket Rotary Club.
Ken is survived by his wife, Augusta (Gussie), his three children Christopher [Napa], Samantha [Boston] , and Jason [Sacramento], and his brother Raymond [Cape Coral].
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The NHA has been offering hands-on workshops in historic decorative arts for over 15 years on our campus on Nantucket Island. We’re excited now to offer a selection of our most popular workshops to our online community. Please join us to learn and participate in these time-honored traditions.
LEARN MORE AND SIGN UP AT NHA.ORG
Tony Sarg Creamer and Sugar Bowl
Tony Sarg-Inspired - A Nantucket Night Pillow
Tony Sarg Adventures Children's Book
Tony Sarg Genius at Play Exhibit Catalog
Tony Sarg-InspiredA Nantucket Night Plate Set
FESTIVAL OF TREES FESTIVAL OF WREATHS &
Save the Date for the NHA’s community-focused holiday celebrations!
