Historic Nantucket, Fall 2009, Vol. 59, No. 3

Historic Nantucket

Fall 2009 Volume 59, No. 3

A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

THE HADWEN & BARNEY CANDLE FACTORY: HOW IT WORKED

EDWARD F. SANDERSON FATHER OF THE WHALING MUSEUM

BUILT TO LAST THE MACY WAREHOUSE ON STRAIGHT WHARF

Fall 2009

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NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Board of Trustees

Historic Nantucket A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

Fall 2009

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Vol. 59, No. 3

Janet L. Sherlund, PRESIDENT Kenneth L. Beaugrand, 1ST VICE PRESIDENT

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Hampton S. Lynch Jr., 2ND VICE PRESIDENT Thomas J. Anathan, TREASURER Melissa D. Philbrick, CLERK

The Hadwen & Barney Candle Factory: How It Worked MARK FOSTER

C. Marshall Beale

The seasonal process of refining oils and making spermaceti candles

Robert H. Brust Constance Cigarran William R. Congdon Franci N. Crane Denis H. Gazaille

10 Edward F. Sanderson: Father of the Nantucket Whaling Museum

Nancy A. Geschke FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE

Whitney A. Gifford Georgia Gosnell, TRUSTEE EMERITA

ROBERT HELLMAN

Nina S. Hellman Mary D. Malavase

Portrait of the visionary who left an island legacy

Sarah B. Newton Anne S. Obrecht Elizabeth T. Peek

16 Built to Last: The Macy Warehouse on Straight Wharf

Christopher C. Quick David Ross FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE

Melanie R. Sabelhaus L. Dennis Shapiro

STEVE SHEPPARD

Nancy M. Soderberg

A post–Great Fire brick warehouse in the heart of downtown

Bette M. Spriggs William J. Tramposch executive director

editorial committee

From the Executive Director WILLIAM J . TRAMPOSCH

Mary H. Beman Richard L. Duncan Peter J. Greenhalgh

Book Reviews

Amy Jenness

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The Other Islanders

by Frances Ruley Karttunen GLENN M . GRASSO, PH . D.

Cecil Barron Jensen Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham Nathaniel Philbrick Bette M. Spriggs

COVER: View of the exterior of the Whaling

James Sulzer

Museum showing the south and east sides of the building including a glimpse of the original whaleboat carving, 1930. F4746

Ben Simons

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Nantucket Places & People,Vols. 1 and 2, and Law and Disorder in Old Nantucket

by Frances Ruley Karttunen STEVE SHEPPARD

NHA News Notes

Editor

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Elizabeth Oldham Copy Editor Eileen Powers/Javatime Design Design & Art Direction

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Historic Nantucket

Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research; firsthand accounts; reminiscences of island experiences; historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers. ©2009 by the Nantucket Historical Association 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.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554 –1016(508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228–5618, info@nha.org For information log on to www.nha.org

Printed in the USA on recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks.

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Of Cabinets and Curiosities Museums as “woods of learning” that Frank Oppenheimer started the n the early 1980s, Exploratorium because he was worried.

I followed an aged He feared that the children of the atomic gentleman around his age were not asking the same questions museum. Cane in hand, that he and Robert asked when they were Frank Oppenheimer young. He believed that, in a world of showed me what he had been specialization, it was becoming too easy up to in San Francisco’s cavernous Palace to retreat from active questioning, too of the Legion of Honor. He called his easy to assume that matters like nuclear place The Exploratorium, and today it is energy, ecology, one of America’s most population growth, popular museums, a economic policy, etc. perfect “cabinet of will be tended to by curiosities” for the scienceothers who know minded. That day, better, and that, in the hundreds of imaginations end, all would be well. were getting lost amidst Oppenheimer, interactive displays about however, knew the magnetism, echoes, colors awesome potential of the spectrum, waves, inherent in museums; etc. Here, one gains both he knew the potential an understanding of they had to be places natural phenomena as in which the well as a sense of the individual feels awesome power behind an encouraged to active imagination.

Frank Oppenheimer question and empowered Who could have been a to explore. And he knew better architect of such a that a world in which people dare to be place than Frank Oppenheimer, a worldcurious is a world that will end up in renowned physicist and brother of the safer hands.

“Father of the Atomic Bomb,” J. Robert Museums are often referred to as Oppenheimer. In the early 1940s, Frank cabinets of curiosity, or, as Frank followed Robert (“Oppie”) to a high mesa Oppenheimer would have it on this day in New Mexico (referred to then as “The of my visit, “woods of learning.” Although Hill,” today it is known as Los Alamos). to many they appear to be relatively For years they, along with thousands of static places, they are at their best when other young physicists, pooled their own they position themselves as places apart, imaginations toward one goal: to create a a kind of woods in which we can get lost weapon that would end the war. for a while and from which we can return So how did he go from mesa to refreshed. If a visit is provocative and if museum? And, what does this have to do imaginations are awakened, we will be with this issue of Historic Nantucket? compelled to return during different The story is a fascinating one and well seasons of our lives, each successive visit worth looking into, but suffice it to say NANCY RODGER, © EXPLORATORIUM, WWW.EXPLORATORIUM.EDU

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BILL TRAMPOSCH

bringing new perceptions, for people and their times are constantly changing.

Thirty years have passed since my visit, yet I often walk the halls of our Whaling Museum thinking fond thoughts of Frank Oppenheimer. I wonder often about those legions of people who come in and out of our own cabinet of curiosities and about the subtle and often not so subtle effects their encounters with us have upon them. I think often, for instance, of young Ernest Hemingway, at age eleven, staring intently at our giant sperm whale jaw (now in our Candle Factory). Did this visit from his Midwestern home inform his interest in writing about the sea?

The Candle Factory has stood for more than a century and a half, but a lot has changed within it and around it. It is a “still point in a changing world,” and it is perhaps those who enter it who are the ones who have changed the most over time. Think about it: when its mortar was still drying (1846), Nantucket’s vengeful Quakers were leaving our harbor shouting, “Death to the living, long life to the killers,” while today (like Hemingway), visitors stand in awe of these very creatures we once sought to kill.

How can such a simple structure be such a profound place? People and imagination make it so.

WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH

Executive Director Fall 2009

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The

Candle Factory

how it worked

★

A

★

mong the collections of the Nantucket Historical

Association, one artifact stands out from all others.

It is remarkable for its rarity and

the little-known history it represents.

That artifact is the Hadwen & Barney Candle House.

BY MARK FOSTER

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T

he old brick candle house is a lonely survivor of a Nantucket we rarely, if ever, think of: Nantucket the manufacturing center. Until the 1770s, Nantucket whaling produced only raw materials—oil and baleen. In 1772, whaling merchantWilliam Rotch changed that. In partnership with David Harris of Providence, Rotch built Nantucket’s first manufactory to produce spermaceti candles and refined oil. By 1832, there were forty-three oil and candle works in Nantucket. Annually, 250 workers produced 1,400,000 gallons of sperm oil and 1,200,000 pounds of candles. Turning the raw materials of whaling into finished products, Nantucketers came to dominate the manufacture of whale oils as they dominated whaling.

These oil and candle works were as essential to the whaling industry as a whaleship, yet today they are poorly understood.

Though 150 such works operated in the United States over the course of the nineteenth century, only a handful of refining buildings remain. As one of the most intact of those buildings, the Hadwen & Barney Candle House offers an opportunity for understanding and interpreting an industry once essential to a flourishing maritime Nantucket and the United States.

Fundamental to understanding the candle house is the refining process itself, and that is the focus of this article.

Built about 1847 by Richard Mitchell & Sons, from 1849 to the 1860s the factory was operated byWilliam Hadwen and Nathaniel Barney. Information on refining is scarce, but we are fortunate to have a source for this period both authoritative and local: Nathaniel’s cousin, Charles J. Barney. Born on Nantucket, he became foreman of Daniel Fisher’s works in Edgartown. The Rev. Lewis Holmes, a Baptist minister serving Edgartown, used Barney as a source in his 1857 book The ArcticWhaleman.What follows uses Barney as a guide, supplemented by other material, especially Campbell Morfit’s 1847 Chemistry Applied to the Manufacture of Soap and Candles, to describe refining at the Hadwen & Barney factory in the 1850s. ★ Raw Materials ★ Like other manufactories of the 1850s, Hadwen & Barney generally processed three raw materials: whale oil, sperm oil, and spermaceti.

“Whale oil” was the all-inclusive term for the brown, fishy-smelling oil from baleen whales. In the 1850s this was usually the right whale, but could include the bowhead, humpback, and grey whales and even dolphin, porpoise, walrus, sea elephant, and seal.

“Sperm oil,” when applied to unrefined oil, referred to the lighter, straw-colored oil from the blubber surrounding the body of the sperm whale. Hence, in the business it was called “body oil.” “Spermaceti,” applied to the unrefined article, referred to the thick, white material from the sperm whale’s head. It was called “headmatter.”

At left: Hadwen & Barney Candle House, circa 1910. The nine-foot stone wall at the rear of the building is the remains of the oil shed.

The chimney at the center of the candle house indicates that the boilers, used for refining sperm oil and spermaceti, are still in the building. The small, seemingly oddly placed dormer may have provided headroom for a vertical hydraulic press used in refining spermaceti. F3256

Though both oils came from whales, the oil of baleen whales, a common fatty acid, was fundamentally different from the oil of the sperm whale, a liquid wax. Because of this, whale oil was kept strictly separate from sperm oil and spermaceti on the ship, at the refinery, and generally in products. ★ The Oil and Candle Works ★ Arriving at the Hadwen & Barney manufactory, the raw materials entered a small complex known in the 1850s as an “oil and candle works,” or variation thereof. Typical of the period, the Hadwen & Barney works included three essential buildings: a candle house, a bleach house (or tryhouse), and an oil shed. The large, two-story candle house was used for refining sperm oil and spermaceti and candle making. The smaller, one-story bleach house, usually about one-third the size of the candle house, was used for the initial boiling and bleaching of oils and the refining and straining of whale oil.

The oil shed, a wide, one-story structure, similar in footprint to the candle house, protected the casks of oil from the Charles J. Barney, A22-75 weather during the seasonal refining process. A sizable yard allowed for temporary storage and maintenance of casks, movement of horsedrawn oil trucks, and other work. Some works also included a cooper shop, additional oil sheds, and a strainer house.

The 1858Walling map of Nantucket shows a small structure at the northwest of the property, probably the bleach house, and a larger at the northeast, likely the oil shed. Sanborn Insurance maps and a late-nineteenth-century photo show the remains of the nine-foot oil-shed wall enclosing the property’s north end. The bleach house may have been within this wall and integral to the shed. Today, only the candle house remains.

In simplest terms, refining consisted of three seasonally repeated processes: boiling, pressing or straining, and granulation.

Prior to refining, oil was considered “crude.” ★ Refining Sperm Oil and Spermaceti ★

Initial Boiling and Granulation In autumn, crude sperm oil and spermaceti were taken to the bleach house and boiled to remove impurities in preparation for granulation. Kept separate on the vessel, the two were now mixed in proportions similar to that in the whale: two-thirds sperm oil to one-third spermaceti. There are at least two explanations for this.

Sperm oil contained a small amount of spermaceti, and spermaceti a small amount of oil. Since both required refining to separate them, it was easier to refine them together. Mixing in specific proportions also made refining predictable: a given amount of mixed oil produced a predictable amount of oil and Fall 2009

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spermaceti. The necessity of this mixing being done by refiners is probably why spermaceti and sperm oil were kept in separate casks on the vessel.

Heated to 200 degrees, this initial boiling caused water left from storage to evaporate and material from trying out—blubber, dirt, etc.—to settle at the bottom. Once cool, the oil was bailed into casks and moved to the oil shed for granulation, a process in which, by leaving the casks exposed to winter’s cold, the oil solidified so that it “granulated, or separated into grains, or masses.”

First Pressing:Winter-Strained Sperm Oil During mild spells in winter, when the frozen oil softened, the oil was taken to the candle house and shoveled into small square bags of stout duck holding a half-bushel or more. The bags were folded into cakes, perhaps an inch thick, and layered between the heavy wooden plates of the huge lever press.When the press was full, the lever was lowered, locking the plates in place. The press end of the lever, or beam, was then secured by placing an iron pin through the press posts and across the top of the lever, and weights may have been hung from the other end.When the weighted end was released, the pressure of the lever gradually squeezed the liquid oil from the bags.

The presses used in the first and second pressings, requiring less pressure, were often called “slack presses,” while that in the final pressing, of greater pressure, was called a “taut” press. Originally, there were probably two lever presses at Hadwen & Barney, each with two levers. Remarkably, one of those massive presses remains in the candle house today, its huge timbers still black and greasy with oil. This is the only press of its kind remaining in the world.

This first pressing removed about two-thirds of the liquid oil.

Having been pressed, or “strained”—the terms were used interchangeably—in winter, this refined oil remained liquid to around thirty-two degrees, making it the most valuable lamp oil in cold climates. It sold for around $1.35 a gallon. This oil was called “winter-strained sperm oil” after the season of its “straining.”

The thick, brownish material remaining in the bags was removed and heated in the nearby boilers. The boilers consisted of large iron kettles set in brick, adjoining waste or cooling tanks, a hearth, and chimney (the bleach house probably had a similar arrangement). Today, the massive stone foundation for the boilers at Hadwen & Barney can still be seen, one of only two known to exist. Several layers of brick, on which the kettles of bubbling oil once stood, still cover the top. A close look at the rounded corner reveals a faint circle—the outline of a kettle baked into the mortar by the heat of the fire.

Once cool, the oil was returned to the shed for granulation.With most of the oil removed, what was left became more solid.

Second Pressing: Spring- (or Fall-) Strained Sperm Oil In April, when the temperature reached about fifty and the frozen oil began to soften, the oil was again brought to the candle house, bagged, and pressed in the lever press. The oil from this pressing, perhaps nine percent of the whole, remained liquid only to fortyfive or fifty degrees. It was called “spring-strained sperm oil” (or, if 

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Historic Nantucket

strained in the fall, “fall-strained”) and sold for about five cents less than winter oil.

Third Pressing: Summer-Strained or Taut-Pressed Sperm Oil What was left in the bags was heated in the boilers, then bailed into tubs holding about forty pounds each.With nearly all the oil removed, what remained hardened as it cooled. Removed from the tubs, the cheese-like cakes were stacked and left for several days to soften by heat, either in hot summer weather or in a room heated to ninety degrees. Once soft, the cakes were reduced to shavings with a draw-shave or to meal with a hand-cranked grinder, then folded in press cloth and placed within twine wrappers.

In either the heated room or hot weather, the bags were placed between the iron plates of a vertical hydraulic press. The single dormer of the candle house may have provided head room for such a press at Hadwen & Barney. With three hundred tons of pressure, this press squeezed out the last liquid oil. This oil, perhaps five percent of the whole, was called “taut-” (or “tight-”) pressed oil, after the pressing, or “summer-strained oil” after the season. It was the least valuable, as it thickened at around seventy degrees.

Refining Spermaceti: Bleaching,Washing,and Molding What remained in the bags, around ten percent of the whole, was spermaceti—“perfectly dry, free from any oily matter, and brittle,” but with grayish-yellow streaks. To whiten it, it was chemically “bleached” by heating to 210 degrees and adding an alkali, usually potash, while stirring. The alkali caused the remnant oil and other impurities to rise to the surface as a scum that was skimmed off.

The spermaceti was then “washed” by raising the temperature to 240 degrees and adding water a pint at a time. The heat was gradually reduced over four hours, until the alkali was vaporized and no more scum appeared. After standing several hours, the spermaceti was doused with a bucket of cold water, a cup at a time.

As the water sank through the oil, it carried the last of the dirt, etc, to the bottom with it.What remained above was refined spermaceti, “clear as the crystal water.”

Bailed into molds, the spermaceti hardened into brilliant white, semitranslucent crystalline blocks. For candle stock, a small amount of beeswax was added to reduce the spermaceti’s tendency to crystallize and become fragile.Where candle making took place is unclear—perhaps in one of the rooms facing Broad Street. The NHA collection includes commercial candle molds, made in New Bedford, which might have been used in this building. The candles were wrapped in paper and packed in boxes, ready for market.

Elsewhere, this final packaging was often done by women or children—that could have been the case on Nantucket as well. ★ Refining Whale Oil ★ Lacking the romance associated with hunting the toothy sperm whale or the elegance of the spermaceti candle, the refining of whale oil wasn’t as well documented. At present, available evidence implies that, aside from the bleach house, whale oil took a separate path through the works.

PETER VANDERWARKER

The Hadwen & Barney Lever Press The Hadwen & Barney Lever Press.

The first and second pressings of sperm oil, part of the refining process, were done in the giant lever press. At one time a standard of oil and candle works in Nantucket and New Bedford, this is the only press of its kind left in the world.

1905.38.1

Hydraulic Press, Robinson Oil Works, New Bedford, 1927. By the late 1830s, Nantucket oil and candle manufacturers were using hydraulic presses for the final (taut- or summer-) pressing of sperm oil.

Though the mechanical arrangement may have been different, Hadwen & Barney would probably have used a hydraulic press similar to that shown here at the Robinson Works, New Bedford. (Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum)

F6744

NHARL MS 1000-30

Hydraulic Press, Robinson Oil Works, New Bedford

William Hadwen

Nathaniel Barney

Detail from the 1858 Henry F. Walling Map of Nantucket. The Hadwen & Barney property is on the corner of North Beach and Broad Streets and bound north and west by two unnamed lanes. The smaller building at the upper left of the property may be the bleach house, and the larger building at the upper right the oil shed. The large building at the bottom is today’s candle house.

Detail from the 1858 Henry F. Walling Map.

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Initial Boiling,Bleaching,and Granulation In fall, the crude whale oil was taken to the bleach house, boiled to remove impurities, and bleached, to lighten it, by adding a quart of alkali per barrel and heating to 100 degrees, similar to the bleaching of spermaceti. It was then moved to the shed for granulation, forming grains similar to those of sperm oil.

First Straining:Winter-StrainedWhale Oil During a mild spell in winter, when the oil softened, it was taken from the shed and strained through “double cotton strainers.” This was probably done in the bleach house, with strainers stretched over or hung as bags from a frame, above a trough. The resulting oil—remaining liquid in colder weather and burning longer than sperm oil but with a fainter light and a fishy smell—sold for half to fourfifths the price.What remained was boiled and returned to the shed for granulation.

Candle Molds This candle mold was made for the commercial production of candles

by A. D. Richmond of New Bedford.

It is identical to the type recommended in 1847 by Philadelphia chemical manufacturer Campbell Morfit. Although it has no provenance, this and other identical candle molds in the NHA collection could have come from Hadwen & Barney or one of the island’s other oil and candle manufacturers.

Second Straining or Pressing: Spring- (or Fall-) StrainedWhale Oil During a mild spell in spring, the whale oil was brought out for further refining. Here, Charles Barney may differ from the practice at Hadwen & Barney, for he says whale oil was pressed. His account, however, was based on Fisher’s larger, more sophisticated works, which probably allowed for the separate pressing of whale and sperm oil. He also says the refining of whale oil developed only in the last twenty-five years. It may be that whale oil was only strained at Hadwen & Barney or pressed in the bleach house. Strained or pressed, the result was “spring- (or fall-) strained whale oil,” worth about three cents less than winter oil.

Boiler at the Robinson Oil Works, New Bedford, 1901 The boilers at Hadwen & Barney, in which sperm oil and spermaceti were refined, would have been similar to this boiler in the Robinson Oil Works, New Bedford, circa 1901. Here, oil or spermaceti is being heated in an iron kettle set in brick and the worker is pumping oil or waste into the adjoining tank.

(Stevenson, Aquatic Products in Arts and Industries, 1903)

Whale Foots The white, tallow-like material that remained was called “whale foots.” Foots were used for bar soap, “inferior” candles, and in lubrication for machinery. ★ Bleaching ★ If too dark, or for a more appealing product, oils could be further bleached. The common method was “panning,” placing the oil in shallow leadlined vats in an attic with a south-facing glass roof.

There, the sun whitened the oil and caused impurities to settle at the bottom. Panning could have been done in the Hadwen & Barney bleach house or oil shed. Oils could also be bleached by boiling with alkali. In either case, the result was often marketed as “bleached” oil. The residue of 

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Hadwen & Barney Boiler Foundation Uncovered During Restoration This massive fieldstone and brick foundation supported the boilers, along with the chimney and hearth, in which sperm oil and spermaceti were refined. At the rounded corner, the faint circular outline of an iron kettle can still be seen.

Only one other boiler foundation is known to exist.

★ Why

Whale Oils? ★

In 1855, though the number of island works had fallen precipitously to seven, Hadwen & Barney and Nantucket’s other oil manufactories still produced 67,500 gallons of sperm oil, 970,000 gallons of whale oil, and 142,000 lbs. of candles. Entering the marketplace via agents in distant cities, these varying grades of oil found hundreds of uses, and the market for spermaceti candles remained strong.

Sperm oil, until around 1850, was the best lamp oil available especially for cold climates. This was due to its relative inflammability, bright light, lack of odor, and especially its resistance to cold, which meant it did not gum up in lamps, but burned freely through long, cold, dark winters. Its high cost meant it was used mainly by the middle and upper classes, the government, and business. In cold climates it was often required for ship lights, lighthouses, and streetlights. It was also used for high-speed, light machinery, such as spindles in cotton mills and in sewing machines and in fine mechanisms like those of watches and guns.

The beauty of the spermaceti candle—semi-translucent, crystalline, and brilliant pearly-white—along with its bright light, lack of odor, and low maintenance—made it a necessary luxury, like good china, used by the middle class and wealthy. In the South and tropics the spermaceti candle was also practical: its high melting point meant it did not melt in tropical heat.

Whale oil, from baleen whales, was used in lamps as a cheap alternative to sperm oil, though it gave less light, more smoke, and had an unpleasant, fishy odor. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, however, whale oil found increasing use as a lubricant, especially in heavy machinery such as train engines, axles, and wheels.

Lighting and lubrication represent the largest single uses of whale oils, but before the Civil War whale oils were embedded so deeply in our society

bleaching was made into soap.

The various grades of oil produced by Hadwen & Barney had hundreds of uses, including lighting, but by the 1850s most oil went to lubricate the machinery of a rapidly industrializing United States— sperm oil for fine machinery, such as spindles in cotton mills, and whale oil in heavy machinery, such as train engines. The high melting point of the spermaceti candle made it practical in warm climates while its pearly-white translucence and bright light made it a luxury, like good china, used by the middle class and wealthy.

This process of refining, so foreign today, was once commonplace, unfolding seasonally at Hadwen & Barney and the other works scattered throughout the town. In autumn and when the weather “slackened” in January, during that mild spell in spring and hot spell in summer, these works were centers of activity—wood delivered, chimneys smoking, laborers rolling casks from oil sheds and candle houses. Consuming candle boxes and casks, employing hundreds, and, most important, turning the raw materials of whaling into finished products, these works were an essential part of the town’s life, economy, and built environment.

The refining process is a foundation for understanding these works, but it necessarily raises further questions.What role did these works play in the life and economy of Nantucket?Who worked there, what did they do, under what conditions? How did refining unfold within and shape the buildings, especially the surviving Hadwen & Barney

it is difficult to understand how everyday they were. Used in manufacturing paints, rope, woolens, and leather, in ointments made by doctors, in hair grease and make-up, as wax for shining floors, in soap for laundry and even soap sprayed on plants to protect against insects, whale oils were everywhere.

The Weekly Mirror, Nantucket, 1860 The large amounts of oil required for lighthouses provided lucrative contracts for oil manufacturers. Here, The Weekly Mirror announces that Hadwen & Barney had won its second contract with the government’s Light House Board to supply 25,000 gallons of “pure winter strained sperm oil” for lighthouses. The Mirror went on to note the importance to the island economy: “In freighting oil … vessels are employed; in preparing casks, coopers; in trucking casks full and empty, teamsters; in providing and repairing fixtures and apparatus, various mechanics.”

candle house?What evidence does this building hold for that process? How did these works add to the fortunes of merchants likeWilliam Hadwen and Nathaniel Barney?

By 1860, Hadwen and Barney had ambitiously built a second, larger works farther north. The Civil War, however, brought an end to the firm’s operations. The candle house served variously as steamship company offices, storage, and an antiques shop, while the bleach house and oil shed were removed and the property divided, until 1925. In that year, Edward F. Sanderson secured the property for the NHA’sWhaling Spermaceti Museum—as it remains today. It may be that this candles, NHA article will add to the respect for and pique more interest in this venerable building—one of the NHA’s most remarkable artifacts, a lonely survivor of a vanished but vital industry.

MARK FOSTER is an exhibit designer, researcher, and author, most

recently, of the children’s book Whale Port, A History of Tuckanucket (2007). The author would like to thank Ben Simons and, in particular, Robert Hellman, for the invaluable discussions that contributed to the writing of this article.

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EDWARD F. SANDERSON

The Father of the Whaling Museum

BY ROBERT HELLMAN

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THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

HAS MADE

A COMMENDABLE DECISION : TO HONOR A MAN WHO MIGHT BE CONSIDERED THE

“FATHER

OF THE

EDWARD FREDERICK SANDERSON. SOMETIME EDWARD SANDERSON

IN

JEFFREY A. ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHY

NANTUCKET WHALING MUSEUM,” 1925,

OFFERED HIS HUGE COLLECTION

OF WHALING MEMORABILIA TO THE

NHA,

PROVIDED

THAT IT COULD BE SAFELY HOUSED AND DISPLAYED .

A

perfect repository had actually come on the market earlier that year. A brick structure, built in 1847, immediately after Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, it had been Hadwen and Barney’s whale-oil processing plant and “Candle House,” on Broad Street at the head of SteamboatWharf. I cannot imagine a more appropriate structure for a whaling museum on this island than this building. It was built while Nantucket’s whaling was still alive, and contains the only remaining whaleoil beam press in the world in its original location. On October 19, 1925, Sanderson purchased that building for $35,000. There is little doubt in my mind that he bought the building with the intention of creating a whaling museum.

A few days after his purchase, the NHA set up a committee of its officers to develop a plan for the establishment of such a museum in the old Candle House and to raise funds with which to buy the building from Sanderson, at his cost. This was noted in an article in the Inquirer and Mirror on October 24, 1925, which says “[The building was] conveyed in trust to the Treasurer to hold pending the raising of the necessary funds.” It

NHA plaque commemorating Edward Sanderson.

has been said that Sanderson gave the NHA a one-year option to raise the money and take title. It actually took four long years for that to be accomplished, during which time Sanderson patiently waited, and continued to add artifacts to the collection.

Although to date I have found no hard evidence to prove it, I believe that Sanderson stored much, if not all, of the burgeoning collection in the Candle House during that long interval.

The October 1925 article referenced above states also that at that early date the Sanderson collection already had the fully equipped thirty-foot-long “old time whaleboat”—hardly appropriate to house in his Nantucket home. Even more compelling in supporting my belief, is an I&M article in July 1927 that refers to the Sanderson collection as having “the tryworks”—a massive structure of mortar, brick, and iron, which in no way was moveable from one building to another. It had to have been part of the original Candle House.

In the well-known whaling book The Yankee Whaler, written by the renowned whaling historian and artist Clifford Ashley, there is a photographic plate showing a dozen scrimshawed

Opposite: Whaling Museum in its inaugural year, 1930; Edward Sanderson (1908).

Below: The candle factory on Broad Street, circa 1890. P10354

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walking sticks with the caption “The collection of Edward F. Sanderson in the NantucketWhaling Museum.” That book was published in 1926. The collection was not formally given to the NHA until 1927, and there was no NantucketWhaling Museum until 1930. To my way of thinking, Sanderson would never have allowed the Ashley caption to be printed unless he fully expected his plan to reach fruition.While things seemed to be moving toward that end, a disturbing article appeared in the I&M early in 1927, expressing concern about the fate of the proposed whaling museum and “a fine collection of articles and books relative to whaling.” On January 8, an editorial entitled “A BAD THING FOR NANTUCKET” stated “The project to establish a whaling museum in Nantucket is said to be doubtful . . . owing to . . . a complete lack of interest among those who should feel otherwise.” Perhaps that rumor was “planted” to spur lagging donations. The ruse (if it was one) seems to have worked, for on April 9, exactly three months later, we read these more hopeful words: “Nantucket may not lose the proposed ‘Whaling Museum’ after all.” A little more

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than three months after that, on July 30, a letter to the editor, fromWilliam F. Macy, president of the NHA, tells it all: “All the whaling implements, the whaleboat, completely equipped, the tryworks, etc. have, through the generosity of Mr. Sanderson, whose generous gift makes the museum possible, already been turned over unconditionally to the Historical Association, and it remains for us only to take over the Candle House at its actual cost.”

By May of 1929, most of the needed funds had been raised, except for $10,000, for which a mortgage would be provided by the Pacific National Bank. In the files of the NHA library is a copy of a letter dated May 24, 1929, from Edward Sanderson, writing from his home in Paris, France, toWilliam Macy, which states: “I am very very glad that Nantucket is to have its Whaling Museum in the old Candle House . . . with heartiest good will to you and high hopes for the project for which you have worked so faithfully, I am Sincerely yours, Edward Sanderson.” Three months later, on August 24, this short notice appeared in the I&M: “Deeds have been passed this week,

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H E A RT I E S T G O O D W I L L TO YO U A N D H I G H H O PE S

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conveying the Hadwen & Barney Candle House and land at the head of SteamboatWharf to the Nantucket Historical Association . . . for the proposedWhaling Museum . . . the collection of whaling implements and material presented to the Association by Edward F. Sanderson will be installed by spring.” The museum opened on June 15, 1930, with official Dedication Ceremonies on July 24. The main exhibition hall was named Sanderson Hall.When the newWhaling Museum reopened on June 4, 2005, nearly seventy-five years to the day later, Sanderson’s name “disappeared” into the history books, or so it seemed. Happily, in January of 2009, a bronze memorial plaque was installed in the museum to set the record straight.

Having told the end of the story first, it seems appropriate to tell our readers a little more about Edward Sanderson and his whaling collection.

Sanderson’s Life Edward was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 16, 1874. His father was from central Massachusetts and worked his way westward, becoming an industrialist—in oil and coal in Pennsylvania, then in automobiles and trucks with theWhite Company in Cleveland. Edward attended Amherst College (as had his father), graduating in 1896, and went on to the Hartford Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1899. He became a Congregational minister with pulpits in Beverly, Massachusetts (1899), Providence, Rhode Island (1903), and Brooklyn, NewYork (1909). In 1915 he retired from the church and devoted himself to social-welfare endeavors.

He teamed up with a close friend from his childhood and college days, another minister, named Henry Park Schauffler, and in 1915 the two founded Goodwill Industries in Brooklyn, NewYork. Sanderson was the first director of that enterprise.

From 1916 until 1922 he became the third director of The People’s Institute, an organization created to teach social

Opposite: Sanderson Hall, 1930. P14997 Above: Whaling tools and lower jawbone in Sanderson Hall; Inquirer and Mirror spread from June 14, 1930, to celebrate museum opening. philosophy, primarily to immigrants on the Lower East Side of NewYork. (That organization functioned from 1897 to 1934, when it ceased to exist.) The NewYork Public Library holds all the papers of The People’s Institute. I quickly learned that Sanderson was a man who shunned the limelight. Nowhere could I find a photograph of this man, except one from the 1896 Amherst yearbook.We wanted an image of someone a little more mature looking than a college graduate. Amazingly, there was none in the NHA files. Even Goodwill Industries had no photo of one of their founders. The NewYork Public Library was not able to provide one from the papers of The People’s Institute. In a history of The People’s Institute, I found this telling sentence: “Sanderson, unlike his predecessors and his successor, preferred to maintain a low profile.” How true.

Finally, Ilse Kramer, archivist of the Central Church of Providence, provided us with a fine photo of him taken by a local professional photographer in 1908, when he was about thirty-five years old; it’s a nice semiprofile view. It is interesting to note that Sanderson seemed to like that photo, because years later, when he was at the Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper published his sermons, perhaps each week. In a column entitled “Mr. Sanderson’s Sermon,” dated Monday, April 7, 1913, we have his sermon of “yesterday” in print, flanked by a cropped version of the 1908 Providence photo. I feel it is fitting, therefore, that this, almost the only photo we have of him, was used together with the NHA plaque honoring this man.

Sanderson probably started coming to Nantucket around 1920 or a bit earlier, as a summer visitor from NewYork City.

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I think he may have been introduced to the island, and perhaps to the NHA, by his close friend and associate, the Reverend Henry Schauffler, who, by 1914, or earlier, was summering here at 25 Hussey Street.

Sanderson bought a number of antique dwellings on the island, and in October 1924, he bought Moor’s End at 19 Pleasant Street, whaling merchant Jared Coffin’s 1834 brick mansion. He soon undertook a major restoration and refurnishing of this imposing structure, bringing it back from a late-nineteenth-centuryVictorian incarnation to something approaching its original early-nineteenth century appearance.

(For details, see Aimee Newell’s 1999 Historic Nantucket article, “ShowingYou the House Restored: Edward F. Sanderson and Moor’s End.”) Sanderson became intrigued by the story of Nantucket whaling, perhaps stemming from his ownership of Jared Coffin’s home, and he began assembling a collection of whaling memorabilia with which to decorate his new home.

He was inspired to commission marine artist Stanley James Rowland to paint a whaling mural for the dining room, showing a whaling voyage to the Pacific, which still exists in Moor’s End. In the Inquirer and Mirror of September 4, 1926, in a letter to the editor about the proposedWhaling Museum, Henry Schauffler, now a vice president of the NHA, writes the following: “For more than a year Mr. Edward F. Sanderson has been making a collection of whaling implements—harpoons, lances, spades, figureheads, ship models, scrimshaw, rare old whaling prints, and books. This outstanding collection is constantly being added to. . . . The collection finally grew to such dimensions that he decided to offer it to Nantucket.” He even found in New Bedford an actual working whaleboat.

In my 1998 article for Historic Nantucket on “Whaling Tools in the NantucketWhaling Museum,” I imagined Sanderson acquiring his whaling gear by “scouring the shops and wharves of New Bedford during the first quarter of the twentieth century.” I have since come to doubt that assessment. My thinking now is that he employed various agents who did the “scouring” or perhaps more appropriately, the scouting, for him.W. Ripley “Rip” Nelson, chairman of the Nantucket Whaling Museum, in 1955, wrote an article for Historic Nantucket about the museum, commemorating its twentyfifth anniversary. In it he stated, “Mr. Sanderson’s emissaries bought lavishly, yet discriminately, and in a surprisingly short time succeeded in accomplishing what he had been told was 

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Plate from Clifford Ashley’s The Yankee Whaler (1926) showing some of Sanderson’s collection already “in the Nantucket Whaling Museum.” impossible.” I suspect that Nelson knew Sanderson personally, and got some of that information firsthand. In those twilight days of the nearly dead, but still breathing, New BedfordWhale Fishery, it was no doubt possible to acquire those tools fairly easily by anyone willing to put in the time and pay the price.

Fortunately for us, Edward Sanderson had the desire and means to do just that. He probably bought all that was offered to him, as I have seen much duplication within his collection.

As a longtime collector and sometime nautical antiques dealer, I know that most collectors do not often buy duplicates, unless trying to upgrade. Duplication, however, is actually desirable in a museum “study collection.”

I have tried, with only moderate success, to find sources for Sanderson’s collection, with only one significant find and another possible one. In the 1955 article mentioned above, Rip Nelson also wrote that Sanderson was guided in his collecting endeavors by whaling experts such as FrankWood, curator of the New BedfordWhaling Museum; Clifford Ashley, marine artist and whaling author; and Robert Cushman Murphy, assistant director of the American Museum of Natural History in NewYork City. Only the last name mentioned has been shown with certainty to have been a source for a substantial part of the Sanderson Collection, and that most interesting story truly warrants telling here.

Robert Cushman Murphy Robert Cushman Murphy (1881–1973) was an ornithologist of considerable renown. He was from Long Island, NewYork. He was first employed by the Brooklyn Museum, then involved in natural history as well as art. (Sometime in the 1930s that museum changed its focus dramatically, gave up the natural sciences, and became an important art museum.) In 1912 and 1913 Murphy was sent by the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History aboard the New Bedford whaling brig Daisy on a whaling and sealing voyage to the island of South Georgia, to study the pelagic birds of the South Atlantic. He spent nearly a year on that whaler and became very interested in the history and operations of Yankee whaling. Sometime prior to 1915, according to his own written statement, Murphy began assembling a sizable collection of whaling memorabilia using funds provided by the Brooklyn Museum. The collection included harpoons, whaling tools and miscellaneous gear, some scrimshaw, decorative arts, and other artifacts. The total cost for this collection was something in excess of $1200. Murphy even managed to buy the whaleboat from the Daisy in which he was carried on his birding forays. (That cost $24.50 plus $63.04 for freight and cartage.) The object was to set up a fine “permanent” whaling exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Except for a brief exhibition there in the spring of 1919, that plan never materialized.

In 1921 Murphy was engaged by the American Museum of

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COURTESY OF WENDY SCHAUFFLER LINDVALL

Natural History as Associate Curator of Birds. The NHA has copies of a number of letters from Murphy toWilliam H. Fox, director of the Brooklyn Museum, in 1925, by which time Murphy was assistant director of the American Museum.

These letters suggest that since it seemed highly unlikely that the Brooklyn Museum would ever again display the Murphy whaling collection, which they had owned for so many years, why not sell it to the AMNH to use in its Hall of Ocean Science, then under construction? After many letters and meetings, the Brooklyn Museum accepted Murphy’s offer and, by the end of 1925, the entire collection was transferred “across the river.”

Price paid was $1200—in three installments: $500, $350, and $350. But the AMNH installation never took place, that institution deciding it only wanted the Daisy’s whaleboat.

Ultimately, even that was never used, and eventually it was given to the Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island, NewYork) Whaling Museum, where it became the centerpiece of its display in 1942, and where it remains. The balance of the material fell back into Murphy’s hands, and according to a speech he made in 1967 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Cold Spring Harbor Museum, he stated that he “repurchased the rest of the collection and sold it—this time for more than it had cost—to the late Edward F. Sanderson, who gave it to theWhaling Museum of Nantucket.

There it remains in the old Candle House until today and, I trust, for ever.”

The second, and as yet unproven, source for part of Sanderson’s collection could be Clifford Ashley. Listed in the Annual Report of the Brooklyn Museum for the year 1919 is a loan from Clifford Ashley of “56 scrimshawn canes made by American whalemen”—doubtless borrowed for the whaling exhibition held there that spring. The NHA has copies of thirteen photographs of whaling items displayed in that exhibition. In two adjacent display cases are fifty-some scrimshawed canes, most likely the ones borrowed from Ashley. One of the photos is a close-up showing about half of the cane display. In that photo of twenty-eight canes I have been able to identify at least seventeen now in the Sanderson collection at the NHA. Most interesting, two of the canes are illustrated in the plate from Ashley’s book The Yankee Whaler mentioned near the beginning of this article, both of which are presently on display in the Scrimshaw Exhibit at the Nantucket Whaling Museum. The NHA has a rather generic listing of the Murphy collection showing very little scrimshaw and only one cane. For these reasons, I think there is a good possibility that a sizable number of Sanderson’s scrimshawed walking sticks may have been purchased from Clifford Ashley. The evidence for this, however, is more circumstantial than compelling.We may never know the complete scenario, but I think it’s certain that Robert Murphy and the Brooklyn Museum were also players in the story of Sanderson’s canes.

Edward Sanderson sold Moor’s End in about 1934, moving to Quidnet, on the eastern shore of Nantucket Island, as a fulltime resident. He died there on October 31, 1955, at the age of 81. In writing this essay I tried without success to find someone

On March 3, 2009, while Friends Edward Sanderson vacationing in Mexico, and Henry Schauffler at Moor’s End, circa 1924.

I was stunned by an e-mail from Ben Simons informing me that he had just received a phone call from Charles Sanderson, then of San Antonio, Texas—Edward Sanderson’s step-grandson—a man who had known Edward as his only grandfather and has visited him and his grandmother, Grace, at their home in Quidnet. Hearing from someone in the Sanderson family was an unexpected turn of events, even though Charles, who was eleven years old in 1955 when Edward died, could not add much to, or change, the thrust of my story. It appears here very close to the way it was originally written. What Charles did provide this June was a rare photo he had obtained from a cousin, of Edward Sanderson and his best friend, Henry Schauffler, a vice president of the NHA, believed to have been taken on the terrace of Moor’s End, probably in the late fall of 1924, before the extensive restoration of the house began. Edward (left) confers with Henry (right). No photos of these men on Nantucket have ever been found before. For me, seeing this photo was a real bonanza. Many thanks to Charles, who has now settled permanently on Nantucket.

—R.H.

still living on Nantucket who personally remembered Sanderson.

That failure was unfortunate, until a series of events put me in touch with his step-grandson, Charles Sanderson, living in Texas (see sidebar). Edward F. Sanderson’s image will remain near the plaque we have placed in the old Candle House—his choice for Nantucket’sWhaling Museum. There it will be on view to all— visitors and locals—hopefully, to quote Robert Murphy, “for ever.”

I want to offer many thanks to Mark Foster of Somerville, Massachusetts, whose remarkable Internet research disclosed facts that I might otherwise have completely missed.

ROBERT HELLMAN, a Nantucket resident and NHA museum interpreter, is a whaling historian and collector of antique whaling artifacts. He has catalogued the whaling tools in the NHA collection and written several articles for Historic Nantucket.

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B Y T H E WAY

S T E V E S H E P PA R D

The Macy Warehouse on Straight Wharf. T290

I Built to Last: The MacyWarehouse on StraightWharf

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t can be easily overlooked, there on StraightWharf surrounded by shops selling modern wares and souvenirs, but the rugged brick building across from the Grand Union parking lot is a historic gem that merits more than a second look.

The tall, simply styled Macy warehouse, since 1984 an important holding of the Nantucket Historical Association, is itself a shop of sorts today, but it perseveres as a testament to Nantucket persistence, ingenuity, and hope for the future. Indeed, the Macy warehouse is a durable reminder of the island’s once bustling and active waterfront. Perhaps more so than the shanties along nearby Old North and Old SouthWharves—which long ago were converted to artists’ studios and summer cottages—the Macy Warehouse retains much of its original appearance, evoking a time when Nantucket was known worldwide as a vital working port.

Phoenix-like, the MacyWarehouse rose from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1846, built strongly out of brick as a signal of Nantucket’s planned rebirth. As authorWilliam O. Stevens noted in a 1945 article in the Inquirer and Mirror, “The massive construction shows the aim of the builders to take every precaution against another fire. The walls are seventeen inches thick. The windows were fitted with heavy iron shutters, and the original door would have done credit to a castle.” That it, like the Atheneum and the businesses along Main Street, was completed so quickly points to the determination of islanders to reclaim their status as an economic power,

THE WAREHOUSE WAS THREATENED BY CATASTROPHE TWICE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. IN SEPTEMBER OF 1944, A HURRICANE BLEW OFF A GREAT PART OF THE PLANK AND SLATE ROOF.

and their resolve to move forward after the devastating calamity that destroyed over three hundred buildings—one-third of the town— including all the original warehouses on the wharves.

“In a few hours, the fruits of the industry of generations were destroyed,” the 1847 NewYear’s editorial in the Inquirer lamented, “a large part of the business of the place prostrated, and hundreds, including many of the widowed, the aged, and the infirm, utterly ruined. The blow for a time was stunning.”

Nantucket may have been knocked to the canvas, but it quickly regrouped. “Before a week had passed,” the same editorial noted, “the people hopefully were laying plans for rebuilding and beautifying the town—the past had been swallowed up in the future.”

Within a year, industrious Nantucketers did their best to put the past behind them. In retrospect, their productivity was remarkable. The Inquirer editorial of July 14, 1847, published a year to the day after the devastating fire, noted: “(M)uch has been done in the way of building— more, probably, than any one dreamed of a year ago—of stores, shops, dwelling houses, &c., &c., &c., not far from two hundred have been finished, or are going up. The stores are many of them, fine, substantial brick buildings, superior, in all respects, to their predecessors.”

Built near the rubble of the once majestic StraightWharf, the Macy Warehouse was an outward sign that Nantucket was back in business.

In the years to come, the utilitarian warehouse would be central to Nantucket’s new identity as a summer haven and artists colony.

When it was new, in 1847, the MacyWarehouse was conceived as one of the first steps in Nantucket’s resurrection. Like the boatyards and ropewalks necessary to the whaling and fishing trades, the warehouse was a step toward restoring the island’s sense that business as usual would continue. It would not only serve as a place for storing materials crucial to sailing and shipping, but would also be used as a ship chandlery and sail loft.

Thomas Macy (1787–1864) built the warehouse on land bought from Captain Levi Starbuck. Thomas was a successful and aggressive businessman—a Nantucketer on the make. His marriage to Eunice Coffin in 1824 had enabled him to take up residence at 99 Main Street, and later to assume control of a share of her father Zenas Coffin’s vast whaling empire and fortune upon his death in 1828. Zenas was one of Nantucket’s, and, indeed, Massachusetts’s, richest men. His empire included ownership of a fleet of seven whaleships. Thomas himself was the son of Nantucket’s first historian, Obed Macy, and was trained as a blacksmith.With the settlement of Zenas’s estate, Thomas became a major player in Nantucket’s whaling scene. He also was an active purchaser of land on Nantucket, with thirty-five separate transactions undertaken from 1813 to 1847. In the following years, he turned it over to a distant cousin, Joseph B. Macy, who oversaw operations for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Joseph was a grocer, and also ran significant fishing operations, as well as being part owner of numerous whaling vessels. As Robert Frazier noted in a 2001 article for Nantucket Magazine: “… since Joseph utilized it for nearly forty years, it was common to refer to the building as the MacyWarehouse, in deference to both early proprietors.”

The industrial-strength Greek Revival-style warehouse, however, like

so many Nantucket buildings, had its own quirks. A survey of the building done for the NHA in 1984 notes: “Your structure is unusual in that hoisting was actually done internally, through holes in the intermediate floors: this may reflect the value of the goods, which were quickly brought indoors and then hoisted at leisure . . . . The warehouse character of the building was consciously expressed on the front façade, in spite of the unusual interior hoist, by providing the fake second-floor hoistway door.” The building can be seen as a sisterbuilding to the Hadwen & Barney Candle House built at the same time on SteamboatWharf (see article by Mark Foster on page 4). Passersby today can still spy this “fake” door above the wide entrance doors at street level. Inside, the sturdy beams and wide wood flooring remain as testaments to the building’s staying power.

The warehouse was threatened by catastrophe twice in the twentieth century. In September of 1944, a hurricane blew off a great part of the plank and slate roof during reconstruction efforts by the recently formed Nantucket Foundation, the new owner of the property that had purchased the warehouse that year. In the spring of 1975 the adjacent Straight Wharf Theatre, constructed of wood, burned to the ground. The Macy Warehouse was unharmed in the conflagration and, ironically, prevented the fire from spreading through the wharf areas. As Edouard Stackpole noted in an article written for Nantucket Holiday: “It was a reminder of the efforts of the Nantucketers . . . to build a warehouse to protect against the menace of fire.”

In its several incarnations, the most notable chapter of the Macy Warehouse is perhaps its years as the Kenneth Taylor Gallery, the original outpost of the Artists Association of Nantucket.When the Nantucket Foundation bought the warehouse in 1944, the island was in the midst of an artistic renaissance. Notable painters had discovered the island and soon hatched plans to begin a true summer artists colony, with many studios springing up on the nearby wharves.With a bequest from Kenneth Taylor, the Nantucket Foundation’s original secretary and treasurer, the MacyWarehouse was purchased and converted into Nantucket’s first art gallery. Fortunately, the characteristics of the old warehouse were maintained in the building’s restoration.

The Artists Association flourished at the Kenneth Taylor Galleries for over forty years, sponsoring scores of important exhibitions and introducing many important artists to Nantucket. A small shed to the west, the former shop of machinist Elmer F. Baker, was given new life as the “Little Gallery,” an important adjunct of the Artists Association.

The NHA acquired the MacyWarehouse in 1984, and, through a major exhibition, reintroduced the old building as an essential element in Nantucket’s architectural heritage. The exhibition focused on the changes wrought by the Great Fire, complete with a scale model of the old town, pre- and post-fire.

Today, the MacyWarehouse endures. Built to last, the old brick building serves as a symbol of Nantucket’s continuing ties to the sea.

STEVE SHEPPARD, former editor of Nantucket Magazine, is a free-lance writer and musician who has lived on Nantucket since 1980.

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BOOK REVIEW

G L E N N M . G R A S S O, PH . D.

Nantucket’s Natives and Settlers from Different Lands The Other Islanders, by Frances Ruley Karttunen Spinner Publications, Inc., 2005. $30.00

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ountless Nantucketers lived in the shadow of the more celebrated whaling captains, Quakers, and other “descended Nantucketers.” The Other Islanders: PeopleWho Pulled Nantucket’s Oars is Frances Ruley Karttunen’s attempt to give their many contributions to island life proper due. Beginning with the Wampanoags and first African Americans on Nantucket, she follows the evolution of the island from a center of whaling and fishing, through economic depression, through to the island’s tourism industry.

Each change in the economy brought different ethnic groups to Nantucket, with some, as she says, “coming to work, staying to live.”

She focuses most of her attention on these people.

At its best, the book presents a solid local history of nearly everyone who has ever trod upon Nantucket’s soil without an original settler’s surname. Genealogists will revel in the stories Karttunen has uncovered and the connections she makes between Nantucket’s first families and the “other islanders.” In so doing, she reminds readers that much like a ship, an island is a tiny place with everyone in the same proverbial boat—whether or not they chose to recognize it at the time. Charming connections abound, such as stories that tie Azorean Ferdinand Sylvaro and Filipino José Reyes to one of Nantucket’s most ubiquitous symbols: lightship baskets. At other times, Karttunen unflinchingly explores slavery on Nantucket, the contribution of African Americans to both Nantucket whaling and island cultural life, and contradictory Quaker messages of abolition side-by-side with vestiges of prejudice.

Nantucketers, both year-round and summer residents, will be familiar with the place names throughout the book, but, clearly, readers lacking inside local knowledge will be at a disadvantage. For the sake of off-island “coofs,” a single, comprehensive map at the beginning of the book labeling island neighborhoods and landmarks would have been helpful. This is a perplexing omission considering that the book is richly illustrated with paintings, photographs, and detail maps.

Family stories form the backbone for much of the book, and many players are referenced by their relationship to Sarah P. Bunker, the subject of the opening vignette. Throughout, Karttunen uses the phrase “Sarah P. Bunker’s great-granddaughter” to convey the eyewitness accounts of her mother (or possibly her aunt) regarding their family histories. While these family connections offer readers intimacy with the subject matter, the associated phrase alternately reads as either a charming piece of personalization or a detectivestory distraction. After multiple readings, one almost needs to create a family tree to sort through the many genealogical clues Karttunen

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offers throughout the text regarding Sarah Bunker’s descendants.

Some of the book’s high points are its assessment of immigrant participation in the lifesaving service and two centuries of Nantucket’s commercial fishing industry, which popular memory often ignores in favor of the island’s more celebrated whaling past.

A particularly compelling story is the fishing fleet’s assistance in the rescue of the steamer Islander in 1927 when the vessel’s steering gear failed. Discussing Finns, Swedes, and Norwegians employed in the life-saving service, Karttunen utilizes her family stories to their fullest, and in contrast to some of the book, these sections are the most comprehensive. Details range from heirloom “doll-sized miniature thimbles” to tales of Russian troops garrisoned in Vasa, Finland, during the nineteenth century. In this section, Karttunen’s professional training as a linguist particularly shines when she discusses the subtle linguistic differences that create distinct ethnic identities between Finns and Swedes.

Of particular importance is Karttunen’s exploration of the similarities and differences between other island cultures and Nantucket. She ties Azorean, Cape Verdean, Hawaiian, South Pacific islanders, Jamaican, Filipino, and, to a lesser degree, Irish and English island peoples together by comparing their home experience with experiences once they arrived on Nantucket. Trading one island for another was easier for some (Azorean, Irish) than others (Jamaican, Hawaiian), but ultimately, prior island life helped the new arrivals adjust. The same can be said of other seafaring peoples, such as Danes and Norwegians, whose experiences she details as well. Immigrants from non-seafaring societies also settled and found success on Nantucket, including people from China, India, Thailand, Japan, Armenia, Syria, Greece, and the many venues of the Jewish Diaspora.

Moreover, immigrants from continental Europe, Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and Russia all make appearances. Karttunen’s book is encompassing and inclusive; she documents nearly every person who ever arrived on-island and left a record. In the case of late-nineteenthand early-twentieth-century African-Americans arriving as seasonal

domestic help, she documents many people who left no written records at all.

While inclusiveness is a lofty and laudable goal, it is troublesome at times. For example, Theresa (Szabo) Anderson was “for much of her adult life the sole Hungarian among Nantucket’s year-round foreignborn population.” Szabo married a Norwegian fisherman and generally lived “as part of Nantucket’s predominantly Norwegian community of fishing families.” In other words, Szabo, though born in Budapest, Hungary, largely identified with the Norwegian community during her tenure on-island. In Karttunen’s zeal to include every single “other islander,” she ignores a basic principle of ethnic identity—self-identification. No good reason is ever given as to why it was important to identify Szabo’s nationality as Hungarian (as she was the only one until the 1950s) other than to include a section on “Hungarians” in the book.

This leads to some concerns with the work. While it is exhaustively inclusive, it seldom offers rationale as to why some of the long sections on people, their relatives, living quarters, or progeny were important.

In Parts Two and Three, the endless parade of names and relations can become overwhelming. Certainly, there are some important elements throughout, such as detailing the jobs in which various groups were employed, religious preferences, struggles for access to public education, overt and latent prejudices, and the nature of change— both demographic and otherwise—on Nantucket. However, much of the information presented from census records, city directories, and newspaper accounts seems, at times, to present information for the sake of presenting it rather than digging into deeper analysis.

Another area of concern is that the paucity of secondary sources leads to an over-reliance on single sources, or to errors of fact or analysis. She cites W. Jeffrey Bolster by name when discussing variations in African-American skin tones, but much of her general discussion of black seamen owes him a debt as well. She blasts Herman Melville’s 1856 essay “The ’Gees” as deeply racist, yet in an important 1975 article (American Quarterly 27, n. 4), Carolyn Karcher compares the language of nineteenth-century “scientific” racist tracts with that of “The ’Gees” and concludes that Melville mimicked the words of the scientific racists in order to satirize the ridiculousness of their arguments. Karcher proceeds to cite many other examples in Melville’s works that point to his abolitionist leanings and progressive racial attitudes. When discussing English Loyalist emigration from the rebellious colonies, Karttunen asserts that Nova Scotia took most of these “United Empire Loyalists.” While partly true, she ignores the fact that a great many Loyalists settled north of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie in western Quebec and Ontario, where place names such as Kingston, London, Sudbury, and Brantford bear this out. Moreover, her statement “As a result of eighteenth-century politics and war, Quebec today is French-speaking with a minority of English speakers, while Canada’s Atlantic Provinces are English-speaking with a minority of French speakers” is a gross oversimplification of Canadian history for reasons too numerous to list here. Also, when discussing mutual benefit organizations among Portuguese and Azoreans, Karttunen implies that these were unique to the island’s immigrants. Instead, immigrant communities throughout the United States relied on ethnic mutual aid societies to provide social services and death benefits. These areas are part of this reviewer’s formal training, but as missteps, they raise questions about the analysis on other, less familiar, topics.

By contrast, Karttunen’s work regarding introduced species and technologies and early environmental degradation in Part One is rigorously solid. Her expertise in the linguistic connections and

separations of various Native American and immigrant groups was particularly helpful in distinguishing differences between cultures that most Americans perceive as homogeneous.

Other areas of concern are the constant use of passive voice, continually asking rhetorical questions throughout the text, and moments of speculation or value judgments. She freely speculates about the feelings of Wampanoags needing to ask the English for permission to buy horses, about the potential for gossip around ’Sconset mulatto Venus Peters’s attire, and of Cape Verdean Michael Douglass’s emotional response to famine back home, but she is strangely reluctant to offer up the “conflicting interpretations” of Cape Verdean Augusto Ramos’s resignation from the Nantucket Board of Selectmen shortly after his 1989 election. Further, she sums up the collector’s trade in José Reyes’s baskets with the phrase “and the rest is history” (153) with no accommodation for readers unfamiliar with this inside story. It is curious what Karttunen decides to describe in depth and what she does not. In many instances, this reader wanted to know more.

Divided into four parts, Parts Two and Three, as mentioned above, exhaustively list almost every “other islander.” By contrast, Parts One and Four are superior concerning scholarship and analysis. The background hue of these pages sets them apart as well. In these sections, Karttunen explores the largest group of “other islanders”: people of color. Concerning the Wampanoag “ancient proprietors” and African-American Nantucketers, these sections offer evidence of the significant contributions people of color have made to Nantucket’s social fabric. Almost everyone, since 1949, who has enjoyed Willie House’s Chicken Box will agree. Whether eighteenth-century whalers or twentieth-century domestics and restaurateurs, Nantucket’s African Americans provided a barometer for the island’s acceptance or rejection of diversity. Therefore, it is fitting that she ends the book with a celebration of the African Meeting House’s rebirth because the building represents Nantucket’s continuity with its diverse past.

Karttunen’s book will appeal to anyone familiar with the island, its people, culture, and geography. Those with inside island knowledge will find a walk down memory lane, even if, despite the familiar backdrop, there are some “new” memories. It is tempting to review the book that one wishes an author wrote, and given the richness of the material, this reviewer would have liked to read some of the broader implications of Nantucket’s historic diversity for the country as a whole. Deeper historical analysis and endnotes would have made the book more valuable, though an annotated version is available online.

However, that is not the book’s intent. Ultimately a genealogical chronicle of island demographics, Karttunen succeeds in challenging the monolithic picture of Nantucket so many people often glean from the island’s popular image as either a Yankee seafaring community or a retreat for the wealthy and privileged. She raises questions about everything from how Quaker abolitionists could maintain “we versus thee” dichotomies to how a community that prided itself on progressive racial attitudes in the nineteenth century tolerated minstrel shows in blackface into the 1950s. By engaging in a spirited challenge to the established social order, Karttunen succeeds in giving faces to the faceless while prodding contemporary Nantucketers to reassess their local history. She looks optimistically toward the day when every Nantucketer will have a place in the island’s collective memory.

GLENN M. GRASSO received his Ph.D. from the University of New

Hampshire in 2009 and is a Lecturer in History for the Department of Humanities at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT. Fall 2009

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BOOK REVIEW

S T E V E S H E P PA R D

Neighborhoods, Colorful Characters, and Hangings Nantucket Places & People, Vols. 1 and 2, and Law and Disorder in Old Nantucket

by Frances Ruley Karttunen Self-Published, 2009—$14.95 and$16.95 A ramble through the streets of old Nantucket is a walk through time, where the island’s storied heritage survives outwardly in its historic architecture. If only our old houses and public buildings could talk.

Well, thanks to Frances Ruley Karttunen, they can.

Nantucket’s nuanced history is given fresh perspective and clear voice in two new works by the linguist, historian, and author. Nantucket Places & People, volumes 1 and 2, are delightful books that offer discoveries and insights into an island we thought we knew so well.

Recently published, and compiled to commemorate the island’s 350th birthday (which came and went this year), the vignettes included in each volume are like treasures found in an old attic or cellar. History may be all around us, but through these books the island’s past becomes vivid and accessible as Karttunen leads us to specific places where house histories are revealed and the denizens of another age come to life.

Consider these two books guides to old Nantucket. Intended to be used on a self-led walking tour, each informative chapter can easily be read as you stand before the landmarks Karttunen describes.

Follow her as she leads us in volume one through town and westward up Main Street, while in volume two we journey south of Main Street toward mid-island and the area called Newtown. Included on the back of each volume is a handy map, detailing the locations and proximities of the buildings on the tour.

There are the well-known landmarks, of course—the Atheneum, the Pacific Bank, the Pacific Club—and Karttunen mines fresh information about all of them, but there are also the lesser known places that are given new life through her investigations.

We learn, for example, in Main Street to the North Shore, about the stately Sea Cliff Inn—the hotel that gave Cliff Road its name—and the former baseball diamond nearby, a once open pasture that is now overgrown and unrecognizable as the place where Nantucketers enjoyed the national pastime. We discover, too, that Monument Square was the center of town at one time, and that the Academy Hill School was not the first, but the second school built on the site.

In South of Main Street, we discover the science and reasoning behind the town’s meridian markers (approved by town meeting voters “for no more than $75”), the origin of

Chicken Hill, the story of Alfonso Hall, about the place called New Guinea, and the vagaries and evolution of the island’s public schools (including a former schoolhouse on Bear Street). Like its companion volume, South of Main Street has its own collection of noteworthy characters, including Elisha Pope Fearing Gardner, the “Peanut Man of Poet’s Corner,” the inimitable educators Cyrus Peirce and Anna Gardner; Eunice Ross, who challenged the island’s school segregation laws in the mid-1800s; Lucretia Coffin Mott; and, of course, Nantucket’s famed astronomer Maria Mitchell.

South of Main Street also highlights Nantucket’s heritage as a melting pot, where people of African, Azorean, Cape Verdean, and Irish descent settled in the “New Town” area of the island.

We learn about the differently designed mills on Mill Hill, why one of them was intentionally blown up and how “school was let out for the day so children could join their parents in the crowd that turned out to watch.”

There’s more, of course. All told in an easy conversational style. Who knows what history lurks behind the old shingles and clapboards of town?

Why, Fran Karttunen. And now, so do we.

Another enjoyable book worth revisiting, is Karttunen’s Law and Disorder in Old Nantucket, published in 2007. Hangings, whippings, robberies, and brandings comprised the island’s genial atmosphere in its early days. (Yes, branding. As Karttunen notes, “Habitual criminals found guilty of breaking and entering were sentenced to being branded with the letter ‘B’ on their foreheads. Between 1713 and 1729 seven men were so branded….”). There were even two prison lockups, the surviving Old Gaol off Vestal Street and the Nantucket County and Town House of Correction next door.

There were bordellos, to be sure, some riots, and rumrunning too.

And they say it used to be nicer on Nantucket!

Taken as a whole, or separately, these inviting little books add flavor to the island’s historic record, and prove that the stories behind the stories are sometimes the most fascinating of all. All three are available at the island’s bookstores and can also be found on the shelves of the NHA’s research library.

HARBOR & HOME EVENTS

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Historic Nantucket

STEVE SHEPPARD, former editor of Nantucket Magazine, is a free-lance writer and musician who has lived on Nantucket since 1980.

News Notes & Highlights

NHA Exhibition Highlights

32nd Annual

August Antiques Show Scores home run at Bartlett’s Farm

JULY 3–NOVEMBER 2

Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts,1710–1850 The NHA hosted its first major traveling exhibition, Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1850, organized by Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. Curated by Brock Jobe, Professor of American Decorative Arts at Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, the exhibition explored the largely unstudied region of New England furniture between Boston and Providence, including the seafaring communities of Cape Cod and the islands. Professor Jobe was the featured speaker at the annual lecture of the Friends of the NHA on July 27. Antique clock specialist Gary R. Sullivan lectured on the historic clocks in the exhibition, while furniture makers Daniel Santos and Allan Breed gave demonstrations on technique during the Festival of the Arts and Crafts in July. Two reproduction Nantucket Windsor chairs made by Santos, supported by Wilmington Trust FSB Massachusetts, were auctioned at the August Antiques Show Dinner. Attendance in the exhibition has been extremely strong, with many area historical institutions bringing groups to Nantucket specifically to see Harbor & Home in its only appearance in the region.

Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum

MAY 23–DECEMBER 31

Views from the SouthTower: Unitarian Church,1809–2009 The exhibition celebrates the 200th anniversary of the South Church on Orange Street through artwork, posters, and historic photographs.

Whitney Gallery in the NHA Research Library, 7 Fair St. Exhibition is open during Library hours.

SEPTEMBER 4–NOVEMBER 8

Camera’s Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England This traveling exhibition is a sampling of images from Historic New England’s extensive collection of photographs documenting New England’s rich maritime history, including Nantucket. The exhibition includes photographs of many traditional occupations and subjects—from fishing and shipbuilding to deep-water voyaging, square-riggers, coasting schooners, fishing vessels and fishing ports, small boats and large yachts, summer hotels and fishermen’s shacks, seaweed gatherers, and saltmarsh haymakers. Curated by author and maritime historian William H. Bunting, The Camera’s Coast illustrates life along the New England coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneering photographers represented in the exhibition include Nathaniel L. Stebbins, Henry G. Peabody, Baldwin Coolidge, and Emma L. Coleman.

Hadwen & Barney Candle Factory Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street

“From the moment the dramatic nine-peak tent was erected in the field behind Bartlett’s Farm guests were treated to an antiques show that not only met, but exceeded their expectations,” wrote Antiques and the Arts Weekly.

The August Antiques Show is the major fund-raising event for the NHA’s preservation and education programs, and was chaired by Olivia Charney. This year’s show was held in memory of Heidi L. Berry, honoring her years of dedication, commitment, and long-time support of the Bill Tramposch, Janet Sherlund, and chair Olivia Charney NHA. “The NHA August Antiques Show is one of the most anticipated shows on the East Coast, and this year we were very excited to introduce a new location for the show,” said Charney. “Our move to a large airconditioned tent at Bartlett’s Farm generated a great deal of enthusiasm from both the antiques dealers and our patrons alike.”

The prestigious Antiques Council—an organization dedicated to ensuring the quality of antiques and historical works of art— manages the August Antiques Show. Antiques Council Show liaison Diana Bittel was very pleased with the new location and the overall look of the show. One client enthusiastically remarked that “the Winter Antiques Show has come to Nantucket.”

For the sixth consecutive year, the August Antiques Show Preview Party was sponsored by Eaton Vance Investment Counsel, and for the eleventh year, the dinner was underwritten by Trianon Seaman Schepps.

This year’s show far exceeded our expectations; despite the challenging economic times, the committee met its budget! The numerous contributions by volunteers and the leadership Olivia Charney ensured that the NHA’s mission—“to preserve and interpret the history of Nantucket Island and to foster an appreciation of its historic significance”—will continue to be fulfilled.

We are also pleased to announce that the 2010 show will be chaired

by Barbara Hathaway. She has been a member of the committee since 2004 and has chaired the Dealers Dinner, Preview Party, and Antiques Show Dinner.

Mark your calendars for the 33rd August Antiques Show, to be held again at Bartlett’s Farm. The Preview Party is scheduled for Thursday, August 5, and the dinner will follow on Saturday, August 7. The show will run from Friday, August 6, to Sunday, August 8, 2010.

Fall 2009

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News Notes & Highlights New NHA Research Fellows FESTIVAL of WREATHS

11th Annual Festival of Wreaths Opens Wednesday, November 25 Preview Party Tuesday, Nov. 24 Take a chance and bid on one of the eighty beautifully crafted wreaths in the Peter Foulger Gallery, second floor of the Whaling Museum, during the festival’s preview party on Tuesday, November 24. This year’s festival, chaired by Sheila O’Brien Egan, will be held on Wednesday, November 25, Friday and Saturday, November 27 and 28, 10 A.M.–5 P.M., and on Sunday, November 29, 10 A.M.–2 P.M. Admission is free, and the festival is handicap-accessible.

The museum will be closed on Thanksgiving.

F E ST IVA L o f T RE E S

16th Annual Festival of Trees Opens Friday, December 4 Preview Party Thursday, Dec. 3 Under the creative eye of Rebecca Bartlett and her committee, the Whaling Museum will once again be transformed into a festive winter wonderland. This island tradition will feature nearly eighty brilliantly decorated trees designed by community members, local merchants, nonprofit organizations, artists, artisans, and schoolchildren. This season, the festival will remain open Thursdays–Mondays through December 21, and will reopen Saturday, December 26–28, 1:00– 4:00 P.M., and again January 2–4, 1:00–4:00 P.M. Not only are these important fund-raisers for the NHA and a great giving-back to the community,both festivals are a magical way to kick off the holiday season!

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Historic Nantucket

The NHA has named Betsy Tyler and Barbara White as Research Fellows, a category of scholars and historians who are “honored for their ongoing contributions to research, public lectures, and other mission-related activities.

They will be ambassadors for the NHA in the public eye, and New NHA Research Fellows Betsy Tyler (left) and represent the best interests of Barbara White the organization.”

Betsy Tyler graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina with a B.A. in English literature and earned a master’s degree from UNC in Library Science. She has been librarian at both the NHA and the Atheneum, and in recent years has developed as a free-lance researcher and writer, becoming lead author for the Nantucket Preservation Trust’s house-history program. Among her twenty-eight published volumes are A Walk Down Main Street: The Houses and Their Histories, for NPT, and the comprehensive Greater Light: A House History, for the NHA. She is currently writing about the Nantucket women portrayed in Susan Boardman’s embroidered narratives for a 2010 NHA exhibition of Notable Nantucket Women.

BarbaraWhite, recently retired from a thirty-five-year career in the Nantucket school system, has a master’s degree in African-American Studies from Boston University and a second master’s degree in Educational Administration from the University of Lancaster in England. Boston University’s Afro-American Studies Center published her master’s thesis, The African School on Nantucket and the Integration of Nantucket Public Schools, 1825–47, which has been extensively revised and expanded and reissued by Skinner Publications as A Line in the Sand: The Battle to Integrate Nantucket Public Schools, 1825–1847 (2009). Her current research is on Cyrus Peirce, first principal of Nantucket High School and subsequent founder of the first normal school in America.

Both Ms. Tyler and Ms. White are frequent patrons of the NHA’s Research Library, and they attribute much of their successful research to its extraordinary collection of primary-source materials.

Coopering at the NHA OnWednesday, September 2, islanders and guests alike gathered outside theWhaling Museum to watch Marshall Scheetz, a traditionally trained cooper from ColonialWilliamsburg, demonstrate making wooden buckets and barrels using eighteenth-century technology and methods. Marshall visited the island at the invitation of the NHA. The craft of coopering has existed for over 3,000 years.

Casks were originally used to transport precious cargo Cooper Marshall Scheetz such as whale oil, tobacco, sugar, coffee beans, wine, beer, and tar. Although casks or barrels were used in shipping, simple wooden buckets and tubs have been found in virtually every homestead throughout history.

The large crowd sat transfixed as Marshall trussed and fired a beer firkin, assembled a shooked cask, and pieced together two utilitarian buckets.

NHA’s Food for Thought Lecture Series Returns

NHA Explorations!

Heads to Alaska

The popular Food for Thought Brown Bag lecture series has resumed for the season.

The lectures are Thursdays at noon throughout the fall and winter months in the Whaling Museum. Admission is free, and you may bring your lunch. This year’s theme is “Travel,” with monthly focuses: November, Nantucket Culture; December, Faraway Places; February, Transportation–Planes, Trains, and Whaleships; March, Travel Memories; April, Wanderings. The program is supported by a grant from the M. S. Worthington Foundation.

For additional information, please call (508) 228–1894, ext. 0, or visit www.nha.org to view the full schedule.

From May 27 to June 6,2010, the NHA heads north to the 49th state,with extension to Denali,Fairbanks,and Barrow above the Arctic Circle

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The Dog Days of Summer 2009 Record for Largest Number of Visitors to theWhaling Museum On Thursday, August 13, 1,220 guests toured the Whaling Museum and enjoyed its daily offerings. While this does not beat our alltime record of 1,405 guests on August 6, 2008, it is the highest attendance of the 2009 season to date!

Explore one of the most spectacular destinations imaginable with CRUISE WEST, a family-owned, small-ship cruise line voted among the world’s top lines by readers of Condé Nast Traveler, and consistent award winner for Best Small Ship and Expedition Cruising. The 138-guest Spirit of Yorktown, staffed by experienced naturalists and educators, will be your home for this exciting 11day/10-night adventure.

Boarding in Seattle, the ship follows the route of the original stampeders of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, encountering along the way the culture and whaling heritage of the Northwest Native American tribes. Cruise the pristine waters of the San Juan Islands, visiting the Whale Museum at Friday Harbor, once an important whaling center and now a center for whale research. Continuing on to the Strait of Georgia, the tour will visit Glacier Bay National Park; Frederick Sound, to observe humpback whales; the beautiful town of Sitka; the Norwegian-heritage fishing village of Petersburg; and Skagway, where we revisit the Gold Rush of 1898.

Nina and Bob Hellman of Nantucket will be your hosts on this adventure, throughout which you will enjoy the services of the cruise line’s accommodating staff and Exploration Leaders as well as Park Service Rangers and Native Cultural Interpreters. Pricing starts at $4,998 per person, based on a minimum of sixteen people. Price includes ten breakfasts, nine lunches, and ten dinners. Airfare to Seattle and from Juneau is not included. Single supplements and cabin upgrades are available.

For further adventure, Swain’s Travel is offering a seven-day extension that will include visits to Denali Park; Fairbanks; and Barrow, above the Arctic Circle.

For more information, call Sheila O’Brien Egan at Swain’s Travel (508) 228–3201, or e-mail travel@nantucket.net, or contact Julie Kever at (508) 228–1894, ext. 0, or jlkever@nha.org.

Views near Skagway, Alaska.

Fall 2009

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MAKE THE GIFT OF A LIFETIME in 2009 with a tax-free charitable IRA Join the members of the Nantucket Historical Association who are taking advantage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which allows you to make a tax-free transfer of your excess retirement assets to the NHA before December 31, 2009.

If you are age 70½ or older, you can rollover up to $100,000 from a traditional or Roth IRA directly to the NHA.This amount would be excluded from your income and taxes and count toward your mandatory IRA withdrawals. In addition, your heirs would not be burdenedbythesubstantialtaxesassociatedwithinheritinganIRA. Making a gift to the NHA during your lifetime lets you see the resultsofyourphilanthropy. Giftsmaybedirectedtothepermanent endowment,theAnnualFund,ortoaspecificareaofinterest,suchas Greater Light,theWhaling Museum,the Research Library, 1800 House,or educational programs.

For further information, consult your financial professional or contact the NHA:

508 228 1894, ext. 0 info@nha.org

Historic Nantucket P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554-1016

www.nha.org

Periodical POSTAGE PAID at Nantucket, MA and Additional Entry Offices