Historic Nantucket, Spring 2009, Vol. 59, No. 1

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Historic Nantucket A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

350th Anniversary of Nantucket’s Early Settlers Nantucket’s Native

Foodways Nantucket’s “ImmemorialHighways”

Nantucket RealEstate: 1659

Indian Placenames

Spring 2009 Volume 59, No. 1

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NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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Historic Nantucket A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

Board of Trustees

Spring 2009

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Vol. 59, No. 1

E. Geoffrey Verney, PRESIDENT Janet L. Sherlund, 1ST VICE PRESIDENT

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Kenneth L. Beaugrand, 2ND VICE PRESIDENT Thomas J. Anathan, TREASURER

Nantucket’s Native Foodways DEBRA MCMANIS

Melissa C. Philbrick, CLERK

Nature’s gifts provide tasty fare and foreshadow the great Nantucket clambake.

C. Marshall Beale Robert H. Brust Nancy A. Chase Constance Cigarran William R. Congdon

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Nancy A. Geschke FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE

Nantucket’s “Immemorial Highways”

Georgia Gosnell, TRUSTEE EMERITA Nina S. Hellman

FRANCES KARTTUNEN

Hampton S. Lynch Jr.

Indian trails and cowpaths were given names that remain on maps today.

Mary D. Malavase Sarah B. Newton Anne S. Obrecht Elizabeth T. Peek

10 Nantucket Real Estate: 1659

Christopher C. Quick David Ross

MARK AVERY

FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE

A semiseptcentennial [350th] note on Nantucket’s early European settlement.

Melanie R. Sabelhaus Nancy M. Soderberg Bette M. Spriggs Isabel C. Stewart Jay M. Wilson

15 Book Review:

William J. Tramposch executive director

FRANCES KARTTUNEN

editorial committee

Native American Placenames of the United States, by William Bright

Mary H. Beman Thomas B. Congdon Jr. † Richard L. Duncan Peter J. Greenhalgh Amy Jenness Cecil Barron Jensen

COVER:

Robert F. Mooney

Helianthus tuberosus (Jerusalem artichoke)

Elizabeth Oldham

From the Executive Director WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH

3 21

Nathaniel Philbrick

Winterthur Exhibition Preview

Bette M. Spriggs

BEN SIMONS

James Sulzer

Greater Light Restoration Update 20

Ben Simons

NHA News

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Editor Elizabeth Oldham

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.

Copy Editor

©2009 by the Nantucket Historical Association

Eileen Powers/Javatime Design Design & Art Direction † deceased

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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 25% recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks.

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FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Nantucket’s Arrivals

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his year, Nantucket celebrates the 350th anniversary of the arrival of its first European settlers, those intrepid English families who came to the island in the fall of 1659 with names that have resonated down through history— Coffin, Folger, Starbuck, Macy, Swain, Hussey, Gardner, Bunker, and their fellows. Before the English appeared, Nantucket’s other, earlier settlers, the “ancient proprietors,” or Wampanoag Indians, welcomed the newcomers and shared the island’s secrets with them. It was a remarkable early example of the way that the island has been hospitable to all newcomers, and opened its arms to “arrivals” from near and far. The theme of arrivals will be a guiding principle for our 350th anniversary programming, as it is one that resonates well beyond Nantucket’s shores, and is a symbol of the larger American experience.

This issue of Historic Nantucket celebrates both the Wampanoag community and the early English settlement. Debra McManis, the NHA’s 2007 Verney fellow, offers a glimpse into native foodways, giving a sense of the incredible variety of foods and preparations that were part of survival in old Nantucket. Mark Avery, NHA manager of historic properties, takes us on a tour of the early English settlement, and debuts his map of early Sherburne, an updated revision of Henry Barnard Worth’s map. Dr. Frances Karttunen, who has pioneered the study of Nantucket’s diverse populations, discusses early

“Pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome...[and] to their very chairs and tables, small clams will sometimes be found adhering,as to the backs of sea turtles.”

—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick BILL TRAMPOSCH

Native roads and paths, and also explores the history of Nantucket’s Native placenames.

We at the NHA are pleased to offer a wide range of events and programs relating to the 350th anniversary. During Preservation Month in May, we will host a full schedule of lectures about the early settlement, walking tours of Old Sherburne and town, and other special programming. We have dedicated this special issue of Historic Nantucket to the anniversary, and are parterning with other island organizations, including Nantucket Preservation Trust, in our offerings. We also expect to welcome hundreds of descendants of Nantucket’s mighty clans in the Whaling Museum and the NHA Research Library.

We are also proud to host our first major traveling exhibition, Winterthur Museum & Country Estate’s Harbor & Home: The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1850. This summer’s major exhibition will offer an illustration of Crèvecoeur’s observation that virtually all Nantucketers were ex-

perts at fashioning and carving wood.

The Winterthur exhibition places new light on a largely unstudied region of New England furniture—the area falling between Boston and Providence, which includes the Cape and islands. It will feature thirteen pieces from the NHA collection, including gifts of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association and the Max and Heidi Berry Acquisition Fund. These beautiful examples of the Nantucket decorative arts should be seen in the light of Melville’s comical description of Nantucket, where wood was so scarce, and the ocean so near, that “pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome. . . [and] to their very chairs and tables, small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles.”

William J. Tramposch Executive Director Spring 2009

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N a n t u c k e t ’ s N AT I V E

FOODWAYS B Y D EBRA M C M ANIS

“RICH IN DIVERSITY BUT SCANT IN WHAT WENT INTO A POT AT ONE TIME” WOULD SIMPLY,YET APTLY, DESCRIBE THE CULINARY PRACTICES OF THE WAMPANOAG PEOPLES LIVING ON NANTUCKET AT THE TIME OF ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN 1659.YET, THE INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE INVOLVED IN ACQUIRING AND PROCESSING WHAT WENT INTO THAT POT WAS HARDLY SIMPLE.IN NEW ENGLAND, THERE WERE MORE THAN A HUNDRED VARIETIES OF HERBACEOUS PLANTS, FRUITS, AND NUTS IN COMMON USE BY THE WAMPANOAG, AS WELL AS THE CULTIVATED CROPS OF MAIZE, BEANS, SQUASH, PUMPKINS, ROOTS, AND MELONS—AND EVEN A VARIETY OF CULTIVATED WILDFLOWERS.ALL OF THESE NATURAL PRODUCTS WERE UTILIZED FOR FOOD, MEDICINE, AND TRADITIONAL ARTS BY THE

WAMPANOAG TRIBES LIVING NEAR THE SHORES OF SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND. A GIFT FROM ALICE AND JAMES BREED IN HONOR OF ALICE ROGOFF RUBENSTEIN SUPPORTS THE PUBLICATION OF THIS ARTICLE ON WAMPANOAG CULTURE.

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Fish,fowl,and game supplemented by roots, nuts, fruits, berries, and other natural foods formed the diet of Nantucket’s ancient proprietors. On island, the menu frequently tended toward fish, mollusks, eels, and the occasional seal or whale, with probably more than one type of each served during a single family meal. Deer and wild game, whether hunted on-island or traded for on the mainland, offered the menu some variety and valuable protein, but by the time of English settlement, the native population density was reaching its peak, and wild game—such as the deer, raccoon, rabbit, and shrew—were increasingly difficult to come by. More numerous were the various water fowl that took flight over and around the island during seasonal migrations. Cranes, loons, quail, geese, ducks, and the passenger pigeon (now extinct) were some of the many birds that rotated seasonally throughout the native Nantucket diet.

In 1662, Mary Starbuck in her “Account Book with the Indians” recorded “fish and feathers” as commodities exchanged for payment by the Indians for such items as ammunition, flints, nails, iron pots, molasses, and cloth. Fish and down (the English made beds with the feathers) served as currency for at least fifty years until those things bargained for and desired by the Wampanoags began to cost significantly more, and, consequently, the bargaining power or weight of those “feathers and fish” no longer satisfied the exchange. The price exacted would soon require heavier stakes in whale shares, which the Wampanoag successfully exchanged for English commodities upon their return home from whaling voyages.

In pursuit of food commodities, Indian dogs were useful during island hunting expeditions and helped to flush out migratory flocks, particularly in wetland areas or dense thickets. But beyond their hunting skills, the English observed “great affections” displayed by the natives for their “small dogs.” Not surprisingly, the family dogs received scraps during mealtime much as dogs do today. Although the practice of consuming dog meat was by no means customary, as a last resort family pets were at times sacrificed during a village food crisis.

“As the fowl decreases the fish increases,” observed an Englishman recounting the hunting and fishing ways of the Wampanoag.

Native fishing “followed the spring, summer and the fall of the leaf . . . for lobsters, clams, flouke, lumps [limpets], or plaise [plaice] and alewives, afterwards for bass, cod, rock, bluefish, salmon, lampreys, and such.” The men and older boys fished along the shore and in the ponds while the women and children collected shellfish, crabs, and snails by the sea and turtles near ponds.

During spring and summer, the Wampanoag diet was enriched with the addition of fresh greens, such as the tender shoots of marsh marigold, fiddle fern, cattail, milkweed, and rose hips growing near ponds throughout

the island. Wild leeks enhanced fish preparation, and perhaps wild garlic, although direct evidence of that is found only on Cape Cod. Early corn, prized for its milky quality, was available in limited quantities in July. The corn harvest peaked during the “Ripe Corn Moon” in September. Roger Williams observed that corn porridge, or “samp,” was the most common ground-maize dish among the natives and considered it the “wholesomest diet they have.” In season, “pumpions” and squash were often mixed in the samp and other cornbreads. Indian bread “pone” (similar to johnnycake) was the most popular corn dish and was prepared by “pounding corn fine, sifting it, adding water . . . cover with leaves and bake it in hot ashes.” This cake, or pone, could sustain a male Wampanoag all day and was usually carried in a small sack hung around his neck or waist. Although popular history often repeats a handful of well-known corn recipes prepared

by American Indian tribes, the impressive volume of culinary variations applied to corn might have gone unnoticed by the English. Many recipes have certainly been lost today; however, a woman of the western Iroquois tribe is on record as having “detailed to an inquiring anthropologist a hundred and fifty recipes of various kinds without exhausting her mental cookbook of maize dishes.”

Traditionally, maize was considered the sustaining “mother” crop for all the farming tribes in North America, thanks to the abundance of its carbohydrates. Yet, the two bean plants, considered by the English as “properie,” or native to New England because they grew with such proliferation, were the common green bean—which includes many varieties such as the kidney, pinto, and white bean and has edible leaves— and the scarlet runner bean. Bean plants were literally just a step removed from the “Maize Mother” plant: bean seeds were planted next to the corn after the stalks had begun to grow so that the bean tendrils could attach to them; and the bean’s overall nutritional value, whether eaten as green pods or as fresh or dried legumes, was of equal importance to early tribes as the carbohydrates found in corn. Cultivation of these crops was carried out by the women, and, according to early observer William Wood, “wherein they exceed our English husbandmen, keeping it so clear with their clamshell hoes, as if it were a garden rather than a cornfield, not suffering a choking weed to advance his audacious head above their infant Opposite (clockwise from top left): Jerusalem artichoke, rose hips, mixing bowl, wild strawberry, gathering basket, ground nuts.

At left: Vitis labrusca (fox grape); above: Fragaria virginiana (wild strawberry), watercolor illustrations by M. J. Levy Dickson from Nantucket Wildflowers (2001), Nantucket Garden Club, (2001).

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foodways

corn or an undermining worm to spoil his spurns (roots).” The relationship between maize and beans extended into the cooking pot when they were prepared together as “succotash,” because the combination added variety and produced even more protein when cooked together.

Squash seeds were planted with restraint by the native women because the vines tended to take over the entire garden. Strategically positioned between the corn mounds, they kept the weeds down and the soil hydrated. The varieties considered proper to New England were the Boston Marrow and the Autumn Turban, although there were said to have been many types grown. The squash meat was often cut into small pieces and added to chowders, breads, or consumed green when “immediately put on the fire without any further trouble.” Wild groundnuts “as big as hen’s eggs” grew in swampy areas near ’Sconset, and their seeds, similar to a pea, were “very delicable.” Roots, growing in the marshes, were higher in minerals than plants grown upland because minerals seep down into the subterranean swamplands (this healthy source of naturally occurring minerals is lost in most upland farming techniques today). The edible roots of the water lily were also gathered, perhaps even cultivated in some areas of New England, and the English likened them to the taste of sheep liver.

The Jerusalem artichoke (a relative of the sunflower) was also gathered, although it is actually a root and not an artichoke. It was favored by the Wampanoag because it stored much better than the potato. On Martha’s Vineyard, the Jerusalem artichoke, sunflower, and watermelon were grown in “Indian gardens,” and this could have also been the case on Nantucket. Surprisingly, wild mushrooms to do not seem to appear anywhere in the traditional Wampanoag diet.

According to Nantucket’s preeminent archaeologist Elizabeth Little, a comparison of the foodways of all American Indians living during the late woodland period registers the Nantucket Wampanoag about midway along a spectrum, with purely fish- and mammal-eating tribes (like the Inuit) at one end, and committed maize-eating tribes (like the Aztecs) at the other. The healthy bones and teeth of Nantucket’s Wampanoag testify to a diversified diet consisting of roughly equal parts meat and vegetation—fish, mollusks, and sea mammals being the primary food source, followed by water fowl and wild game, then supplemented by crops of maize, beans, and squash. Fruits, nuts, roots, and greens were Homarus americanus (American lobster) 

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added to the diet in all their many variations. Crop cultivation and the gathering of roots, fruits, and plants were necessary to supplement the nutritional needs of the densely populated villages of Nantucket.

The cyclical relationship between the Wampanoag’s day-today diet and their highly concentrated efforts in gathering, hunting, and harvesting seasonal food resources is at the root of appreciating all native foodways. If a particular berry, seed, root, plant, or meat was in season, it was by all accounts eaten, either consumed fresh or dried for later use. Fortunately, most of the fruits that supplied Nantucket natives grew wild and abundantly. Evidence suggests that wild vines were often manicured to encourage growth by the squaw. Strawberries, red and white, were highly esteemed (as reflected in the naming of the Wampanoag “Strawberry Moon”) and “is the wonder of all the fruits growing naturally in those parts.” An Englishmen observed, “The Indians bruise them in a mortar, and mix them with meal and make strawberry bread.” When strawberry season was over, the children went on to pick blackberries and blueberries, followed by fox grapes, beach plums, and other fruits, until finally it was the season for cranberries, the last wild berry to ripen. The succession of ripening periods for all the wild fruits and berries determined not only the bread-of-theday but also the task at hand: fruit drying for later use. The berries were preserved by placing whole fruits or mashed pulp “with as much juice as the mass would hold” on bark slabs or stones. The native women took great care in removing “interfering shrubbery” to ensure consistent dehydration. Apparently, fresh grapes were also processed into juice by many Wampanoag tribes, even though the English likened New England’s indigenous grape “to a taste of gunpowder.”

Another fruit recipe favored among the Wampanoag was the high-energy food, often described as “[Indian] emergency food,” called cranberry pemmican. Preparation consisted of pounding roasted deer meat into a powder, adding equal parts deer fat (including bone marrow), and mixing the entire batch with some dried cranberry powder. Nuts were also shelled and sun-dried, often ground by mortar and pestle into meal or flour, to be stored in “underground cupboards” along with all the other baskets and sacks of preserved food. The grinding of corn was an on-going event for the women of the village.

Fish and wild game were also dried for wintertime use. The English observed that “[The natives] in this manner they dry basses and other fish without salt, cutting them very thin to dry suddenly . . . and having special care to hang them in their smoky houses. When lobsters be in their plenty they were dried . . . erecting scaffolds in the hot sunshine, making fires likewise underneath them, by whose fire the flies are expelled, till the substance remain hard and dry.” Clams and oysters were also strung, sundried and smoked, either eaten by the family or used as a commodity during trade.

Flavor enhancers, such as processed salt and sugar, were not

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used by southern New England tribes until after English contact.

Although salt occurs naturally in the liver and fat of wild game, in sea plants, and in the juice of shellfish, it was not used as a processed additive, and there is no word for salt in the Algonquian language.

Sugar was also absent in the ancient Nantucket diet (the processing of maple sap Phaseolus coccineus (scarlet runner bean) into sugar was traditionally a custom of northern New England tribes living among maple trees). Even so, natural sugar was consumed by all maize-eating tribes through the process of roasting corn, which turns cornstarch into sugar.

Additional additives, such as oils and greases, were obtained from whale blubber, fish liver, the fat and bone marrow of wild game and fowl, and from nuts, such as the white-oak acorn, which renders a butter when processed.

“The crystalle drink,” or water, stored in leak-resistant gourds and consumed fresh or heated over a fire, was the chief source of hydration. The water might have been infused with flora, fruit, bark, or herb, which was customary for many native tribes. However, any fish, meat, or vegetable juices that remained after food preparation were used either as a broth in the next meal or consumed as a warm snack. For the most part, milk and butter were never appreciated nor embraced with the same fervor exhibited by the English, even when made readily available through barter. Instead, early corn in the milky green stage provided a delicious substitute for making a creamier chowder or extra-moist bread (the Spaniards actually mixed chocolate with their milky green corn).

Traditionally, native children gathered wild-bird and turtle eggs, which their mothers dried and used as a thickening agent in soups and chowders.

On Nantucket, steaming and roasting were the observed methods of cooking food.

The English noted that Nantucket natives did not know how to boil. Perhaps not, but steaming and roasting might have been intentional as cooking methods because they require less fuel than boiling, and with few trees growing on-island, fuel efficiency would have been a concern for the Nantucket natives. In Abram’s Eyes, Nathaniel Philbrick cites Peter Gow’s mention of the roasting/steaming method’s fuel efficiency, which he compares to the tandoori cooking methods of India, where firewood is also extremely scarce. Whether the Wampanoag on Nantucket con-

sciously chose steaming and roasting over boiling because of the dearth of firewood is uncertain, but their cooking methods were congruent with their natural environment.

Today, the Wampanoag’s original feast, now known as the Nantucket clambake, continues to bear witness to the island’s ancient foodways. In Samuel Jenks’s 1827 article “Legend of Mudturtle,” he describes how the “[Nantucket Indians] excavated the ground to the depth of about three or four feet . . . within this subterranean oven they kindled a fire and heaped on fuel until the stones became duly [hot]…they threw in promiscuously their respective contributions, gathered from the sea, the [beach], the ponds, and the [soil]; overlaid the whole with a thick lid of seaweed. When this medley was thus sufficiently seethed, the covering withdrawn, and the feast ensued.” Hence, the Nantucket clambake.

In the beginning, the Wampanoag foodways might have appeared simple by English standards and customs, so much so that the early arrivals took for granted that they would be able to maintain a livelihood in the same perceived manner as the natives—that is, “with small labor and great pleasure.” It did not take long for the English to realize that they lacked what it took to survive in those conditions: an intimate understanding of their new environment and the ecological awareness required to harness the “profits and fruits which are naturally on this lland.” Because New England’s famed “strawberry time,” or “time of plenty,” did not last year-round, there was a lot to learn and to profit from the ancient foodways and traditions of the Wampanoag, the island’s original settlers.

DEBRA MCMANIS is an independent writer and researcher and the recipient of the NHA’s 2007 E. Geoffrey and Elizabeth ThayerVerney fellowship. She is currently writing a book about the history of Nantucket farms and rural life.

Select Sources Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.

Gookin, Daniel. Historical Collections of the Indians of New England.

Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Series 1, 1674.

Hedrick, U. P. A History of Horticulture in America to 1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950.

Little, Elizabeth A. Nantucket Algonquian Studies. Nantucket: Nantucket Historical Association, 1976–86.

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Abram’s Eyes. Nantucket: Mill Hill Press, 1998.

The Plymouth Archeological Rediscovery Project (PARP), n.d.

Russell, Howard S. Indian New England before the Mayflower.

Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1983.

Schneider, Paul. The Enduring Shore: A History of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.

Worth, Henry B. “The First Whaling Merchant of Nantucket, as Shown by the Starbuck Account Book.” Nantucket: Proceedings of the Nantucket Historical Association, 1915.

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NANTUCKET’S “Immemorial Highways”

BY FRANCES KARTTUNEN

Excerpted from a report written

THE ENGLISH SETTLERS who came to Nantucket in the

for the Town of Nantucket’s Roads and Rights of Way Committee, 2008

second half of the 1600s brought with them an antipathy to authority that had been fostered in the highly legalistic Massachusetts Bay Colony from which they had decamped to the island. Many in the first generation of settlers rejected organized religion, identifying themselves—if pressed—as “electarians,” namely, people who elected not to belong to any church at all. A faction of them also rejected the authority of Tristram Coffin in his role as Nantucket’s Chief Magistrate, and town meetings were stormy affairs. Peter Folger spent some cold and miserable time one winter imprisoned for insubordination in a makeshift jail. Taxes, moreover, were unpopular with islanders from day one. Thus it is not surprising that Nantucketers did not bother to formally lay out their streets, roads, and highways.

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During the presidency of John Adams, all the towns of the young United States of America were required to submit to the federal government a list of the streets in each town.

Here, there was little enthusiasm for the task. According to a visitor to Nantucket, “Such is the simplicity of this primitive place, and so small the resort of strangers, that the streets which have branched out had never any names given to them, until the assessment for the direct tax under President Adams.” In 1799, Isaac Coffin, Nantucket’s assessor, belatedly submitted a list of exactly one hundred streets in the Town of Nantucket. In the process, he had to invent names for some hitherto nameless streets. Most of the 1799 streets still exist and their 1799 names have survived with them.

A

copy of Isaac Coffin’s list was placed in the Nantucket Registry of Deeds in 1818 and was available when a lawsuit was brought in 1837 that had the almost inadvertent effect of finally establishing the town’s streets as public ways within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Benjamin Worth had come upon seventeen sheep loose in the streets with no one looking after them; in his capacity as field driver, he rounded them up and impounded them.

The owner of the sheep, Walter Folger, brought suit against Worth. Folger’s position was that the entire island, with the exception of lots that had been set aside to individuals, was common, undivided land belonging to the Proprietors.

Since the streets had never been set off to any individual, the Proprietors owned them, and Worth had no right to impound sheep roaming loose in the streets.

The Supreme Court of Massachusetts saw it otherwise.

Field drivers in Massachusetts were authorized to impound livestock, including sheep, “going at large on public highways.” The question was whether there were public highways on Nantucket. While acknowledging that there was “no record of laying out of any highway in Nantucket,” yet highways did exist “established by long continued use and enjoyment.” In fact, the opinion continued, “the streets of the town have been used as highways, from time immemorial.” Hence, the Proprietors’ ownership of streets and highways was subject to perpetual easement for the public.

Although there was no longer any doubt that the 1799 streets were public ways, a difficult question remained, namely, “which and how many of the various tracks, which traverse the island, have been so much, so long, and so uninterruptedly used, as to show them to be highways.”

On the nearby mainland there still exist some trails that date from before the arrival of the Mayflower Pilgrims.

These are known as “ancient ways.” One of them was used by the Mashpee Wampanoag and is said to be “still discernible among the maze of contemporary housing developments.” Points along these ancient ways were marked with prominent stones, upon which passersby piled more stones or small branches.

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If there were such marked trails on Nantucket, they have been lost, along with Nantucket’s Wampanoag population, which fell victim to a lethal epidemic in the mid-1700s. With no one left to maintain them, any markers that may once have existed were obliterated by weather, trampling by domestic animals, and clearance for agriculture.

A few Nantucket Indian deeds from the 1600s mention paths, but they also mention cart tracks and even a “highway” in Quaise. The wheeled vehicles of the English settlers probably followed earlier Indian footpaths.

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n NHA Bulletin 4 (1906), Nantucket attorney and historian Henry Barnard Worth concurred: “Quite likely the old Indian trails were adopted as roads.” He went on to state that “Many streets were opened by owners and adopted by the public by actual use. The unfenced tracts on the island were crossed by travelers at will, and roads to outlying points were changing from year to year.”

Which brings up the vexed issue of the Proprietors’ Roads.

These were laid out in 1821 to guarantee livestock unrestricted access to grazing land and fresh water. In addition to roads from the town to outlying places, the Proprietors’ Roads included strips of land along the shores and around the island’s ponds and swamps. Though designated for public use, the Proprietors’ Roads were not public ways; they were private roads owned by the Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Land. Over many years, efforts to turn them over to the Town of Nantucket were rebuffed because acceptance of them would have made the town responsible for their maintenance. In 1911, Worth wrote, “How extensive a burden this could be can be appreciated by estimating the circumference of these ponds and the lengths of adjacent shore lines, when it would become apparent how many miles more of roads the town of Nantucket would be obliged to maintain, than at present.”

Now, nearly a century later, it seems next to impossible to retrieve the Proprietors’ Roads, however attractive they would be for public access to the island’s beaches and ponds. frances karttunen, a twelfth-generation Nantucketer, is a retired professor of linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and author of many articles and several books, including The Other Islanders: PeopleWho Pulled Nantucket’s Oars, New Bedford: Spinner Publications, (2005).

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Nantucket Real Estate: 1659 A Semiseptcentennial [350th] Edition

BY MARK AVERY

As the bow of their heavily laden boat hauled up

on the beach at Madaket, an overwhelming sense of relief must have embraced the travel-weary landing party. Safe deliverance from the sea and the comfort of arrival in a home port are universally understood sensations, and were no doubt experienced at this journey’s end, but here in this distant haven, “home” was yet to be secured.

The crossing, according to tradition, was not entirely calm, which, owing to the lateness of the fall season, seems plausible. (The journey and arrival were romanticized in John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem The Exiles.) Their vessel was most likely an open, utilitarian type of craft called a shallop. About twenty to thirty feet in length, shallow-draft, and having both a sail and oars, it was common transport in coastal New England throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The shallop was designed primarily for use in protected inlets, bays, and rivers, not the famously rough Atlantic waters beyond.

Stepping gratefully onto Nantucket sand that day, now 350 years ago, were Thomas Macy (51 years of age); his wife Sarah (47); their five children (ages 4 through 13); Thomas’s partner in this endeavor, Edward Starbuck (55); Isaac Coleman (aged 12); and by some accounts, James Coffin (18), the son of Tristram Coffin, as well. The voyage began at Salisbury on the Merrimack River—then part of the northern reaches of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—through Cape Cod Bay and around the Cape over Nantucket Sound to Martha’s Vineyard, where they were joined by another passenger, a Vineyard man

And yet that isle remaineth A refuge of the free, As when true-hearted Macy Beheld it from the sea. 

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named Daggett, who agreed to guide them across the treacherous shoals. Finally, they headed east to Nantucket Island, arriving sometime around the end of October.

Standing on Nantucket after that ordeal, the travelers must have taken pause, to survey the mostly barren, mildly rolling landscape just beyond the curved ribbon of white sand beach.

The view was not much different from what we see today in the area now known as Warren’s Landing—a few clusters of diminutive trees scattered about to the north; a large wet meadow just to the south; to the east, endless hummocks covered in golden grasses and green underbrush. A necklace of dark-blue ponds, running north to south, occupied many of the low points in the undulating terrain. For their intended purposes, Macy and Starbuck must have hoped this distant land would be perfect. They had come to settle, to build a new community, to farm, raise livestock, to fish, and make an entirely new life for themselves and their families, a scene repeated countless times throughout the seventeenth century all along the coasts of New England. As in most instances, the location chosen for this new settlement was not entirely unoccupied, and when they arrived, Nantucket was already peopled by more than a thousand native inhabitants.

Indeed, the English settlers and their families had been through a similar course before, some twenty-four years earlier, as part of the “Great Migration” to America. Departing in 1635 from Chilmark, part of Wiltshire County in southwest England, Thomas Macy became one of the first settlers of Newbury, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a few years

Free as the winds that winnow Her shrubless hills of sand, Free as the waves that batter Along her yielding land.

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later, one of the founders of Salisbury just to the north, across the Merrimack River. Starbuck originally came from Leicestershire in the West Midlands. He immigrated to America in the same year as Macy, settling about twenty miles farther north, in Dover, on the true frontier of the colony. Dover is now part of southern New Hampshire, on a branch of the Piscataqua River. From early records, both men appear to have been successful and key members of their growing communities.

By the end of 1658, however, it appears that both Macy and Starbuck had come into some conflict with increasingly oppressive Puritan authorities; both had been summoned to appear before the court for unrelated reasons, and both had been fined for what were called “great misdemeanors.” Whether as a result of this friction with local power, a search for better economic opportunities, or simply chafing at the swelling populations of their towns, Thomas Macy, Edward Starbuck, Tristram Coffin, John Swain, and several other friends and relations endeavored to purchase the island of Nantucket from Thomas Mayhew. Mayhew had purchased the islands of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands in 1641 from James Forrett, agent to William, Earl of Sterling, and had moved to Martha’s Vineyard shortly thereafter, founding the town of Edgartown. (He also had to purchase it again from the governor of Maine, Sir Fernando Gorges, after he had made a claim of ownership of the islands, and a third time from most of the local Indian sachems.)

It is unclear how the island of Nantucket became the focus of interest for the Salisbury/Dover group. Thomas Macy was probably related to Mayhew, having described him in a letter a few years later as “my honoured cousin,” and may have heard about his interest to sell. Although fifteen years older than Macy, Mayhew was born in the adjoining Wiltshire hamlet of Tisbury, and documents recently discovered show that at age 27, Thomas Mayhew completed an apprenticeship for a man named Richard Macey, also of Chilmark, England. Richard may have been Thomas Macy’s great uncle.

In the spring of 1659, Tristram Coffin, Edward Starbuck, young Isaac Coleman, and others not named, set out to visit Nantucket and inquire about the possibility of purchase, sailing first to Martha’s Vineyard to meet with Thomas Mayhew.

Terms were negotiated, and the party then sailed to Nantucket, bringing with them Peter Folger, to act as an interpreter and to negotiate an agreement with the local Indian population. Apparently, a survey of the island proved satisfactory, and upon returning to Salisbury in the summer, they held a meeting that resulted in the following agreement: These people after mentioned did buy all right and Interest of the Island of Nantucket that Did belong to Sir Ferdinando George [Gorges] and Mr.James Forrett Steward to Lord Sterling,which was

Than hers, at duty’s summons, No loftier spirit stirs, Nor falls o’er human suffering A readier tear then hers.

by them sold unto Mr.Thomas Mayhew of Martha’sVineyard these after mentioned Did purchas of Mr. Thomas Mayhew these rights; namely the pattent Right belonging to the Gentleman aforesaid & also the piece of Land which Mr. Mayhew did purchass of the Indians at the west End of the Island of Nantucket as by their grant or bill of Sale will largely appear with all the privileges and appurtenances thereof—the aforementioned Purchasers are Tristram Coffin Senr., Thomas Macy, Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin,Christopher Hussey,Stephen Greenleaf,John Swain,William Pile [or Pike], had the whole and Sole Interest Disposal power, and privilege of said Island and appurtenances thereof.

On the same date, the second of July 1659, a deed was granted by Thomas Mayhew, in which the now famous payment sum of “30 pounds sterling and two beaver hats” was agreed. Mayhew also reserved for himself “the neck of land called Masquetuck”(Quaise), “or the Neck of land called Nashayte”(Polpis), and a “twentieth part of all lands and privileges” in the affairs of the island.

On October 10, at just about the same time the Macy clan was making its way to Nantucket, Thomas Mayhew deeded the island of Tuckernuck, a small island just west of Nantucket, to Tristram Coffin Sr., Peter Coffin, Tristram Coffin Jr., and James Coffin, for the sum of five pounds.

At another meeting, held at Salisbury in February of 1660, it was agreed that each of the ten owners should take a partner, and that these ten partners should have all the rights and benefits of the original ten. At that meeting it was voted that: Tristram Coffin Sr. partnered with Nathaniel Starbuck, Christopher Hussey partnered with Robert Pike, Thomas Barnard partnered with Robert Bernard, Stephen Greenleaf partnered with Tristram Coffin Jr., Peter Coffin partnered with James Coffin, Richard Swain partnered with Thomas Coleman, John Swain partnered with John Smith, William Pile [Pike] partnered with Thomas Look, Thomas Mayhew Sr. partnered with Thomas Mayhew Jr., Thomas Macy partnered with Edward Starbuck.

Obviously, some of these men were not present at the meeting; we know of course, that Thomas Macy, Edward Starbuck, and James Coffin were on Nantucket that winter, and the Mayhews were presumably on Martha’s Vineyard.

This arrangement may have been made through discussions the prior summer, but not recorded until February.

English title to Nantucket now assured, a separate deed was sought from the local Nantucket sachems Wanackmamack and Nickanoose. Although negotiations had taken place the previous summer, a deed was granted to Thomas Mayhew by

God bless the sea-beat island!

And grant forevermore, That charity and freedom dwell As now upon her shore!

From The Exiles, John Greenleaf Whittier, 1841 Spring 2009

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real

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1659

the sachems, and a separate deed for the twenty proprietors was obtained on May 10, 1660, at a meeting on Nantucket. In it, the sachems agreed to sell to the English the portion of the island described as follows: All yeWest end of ye afores’d Island unto ye Pond commonly called Waquitttaquay, and from ye Head of that Pond to ye North Side of ye Island Manamoy; Bounded by a Path from ye Head of ye aforesaid Pond to Manamoy: as also a Neck at ye East End of ye Island called Poquomock.

Today, this would be described as all land west of Hummock Pond (Waquittaquay), and all land north of a line, from Head of Hummock Pond to Nantucket Harbor, at the Creeks in Monomoy, and the Pocomo Neck, at the east end of Nantucket Harbor. Also included in the deed was the right to graze, hunt, and gather from the rest of the island in the nonplanting seasons.

It is clear that at the time that document was written, many more English were present on the island. The original group of arrivals from the previous fall had apparently fared well over the winter, due in part to the assistance and cooperation of local Indians. Shortly after landing, they set about constructing shelters for themselves, possibly making use of existing dwellings built by the Indians or by Vineyard men who had been sojourning on Nantucket intermittently for a number of years to preach, trade, hunt, and graze livestock.

Thomas Macy installed his family just to the south of their landing point, where he had found a good spring. Starbuck located some distance away, perhaps sharing accommodation with James Coffin and Daggett, who stayed the winter to hunt game, which was plentiful. References were made in later town records to “the cellar built by Edward Starbuck,” which indicates that his early abode may have been a partial dugout with a peaked wooden or thatched roof above. This type of dwelling was quite common in the early years of the Massachusetts Colony, usually a temporary structure until lumber could be obtained and a proper English timberframed house could be erected. (In Boston, at about the same time, and only thirty years after its founding, records suggest that the many abandoned early abodes and dugouts dotting the town presented problems that needed urgent attention.) Just as the first settlements of New England borrowed place-names from their hometowns, the houses the pioneers would build for themselves were based entirely on designs and construction methods that they brought with them, slowly evolving variations in their techniques, adjusting to different materials and climatic conditions. Still, even in the mid-eighteenth century, a hundred years later, house construction in the colonies had changed very little.

Edward Starbuck left Nantucket in the spring of 1660, traveling back to Salisbury and Dover to report on conditions on the island, and returning to Nantucket with his family and at least ten other families, before the May 10 meeting with the sachems.

Among others present were Tristram Coffin and family, with Thomas Mayhew and Peter Folger having come from the 

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Vineyard. It appears that Daggett had returned to Martha’s Vineyard by then, and James Coffin left for Dover shortly after his father and other family members had settled on the island, though he returned to Nantucket several years later.

After that first winter, it became obvious that Madaket was not suitable for a permanent settlement, and the families began to relocate at a more hospitable location on the north shore at Capaum.

The growing need for homes and services was addressed by the new group of proprietors, who engaged Peter Folger, Tristram Coffin Sr., Thomas Macy, and Edward Starbuck to measure and lay out all of the land, and ordered that new owners choose their house lots within the limits of the plantation, other than those already chosen. Each of the lots was to be sixty square rods in size (22.5 acres), and the areas that were best left as common land were to be determined. Land held in “common” ownership was popular in New England as a way of allowing all owners equal access to the land area, mainly for grazing animals but used in some cases for growing crops, cutting timber, access to ponds, etc.

It was also decided that the proprietors would sell ”halfshares” in the interests of the island to needed tradespeople and other laborers (or mechanics, as they were called) required by the community, such as carpenters, fishermen, millers, weavers, and so forth. The first of these was granted in 1662, to William Worth, a sailor. Over the next few years another fourteen of the half-shares were granted, including those to Peter Folger, Captain John Gardner, and his brother Richard Gardner. These men and their families were required to reside on Nantucket for three year as part of the contract. In due course, many fairness issues arose from this arrangement of power and financial sharing, and tensions did threaten the harmony of the island, quite famously in the mid-1670s.

Early relations with the Indian population, however, were generally cordial and respectful. Some of the community’s leading individuals—Edward Starbuck, Thomas Macy, Tristram Coffin Sr., John Gardner, and especially Peter Folger— were very well thought of by the sachems and their people. In the early years of the English settlement, cooperation between the two groups is well documented. Over the next few years, some of the original twenty purchasers passed on their interests to relations or sold them on Nantucket, and some never relocated to the island. Within a decade, about a hundred and fifty English called Nantucket home, and the new community was fairly well established and continued to grow.

The new town, named Sherburne, was incorporated in 1671.

It would remain part of New York until 1692, when at the request of the proprietors it was formally made a part of Massachusetts by an act of Parliament.

Beginning around 1700, what had been an open harbor at Capaum Pond, began to silt up and the settlers set their course eastward for the shores of the Great Harbor, where Nantucket Town would be founded, and so named in 1795. mark avery is the NHA’s manager of historic properties. He has practiced architecture and preservation on Nantucket for over two decades, and served on the Historic District Commission for twelve years.

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AN ENDOWMENT GRANT FROM THE JOYCE AND SEWARD JOHNSON FOUNDATION SUPPORTS PERIODIC ARTICLES IN HISTORIC NANTUCKET ON TOPICS OF DIVERSITY.

TheWheres

Wherefores &Whences of INDIAN PLACENAMES

BY FRANCES KARTTUNEN

Native American Placenames of the United States.

By William Bright.

(Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004).

[Note that for the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of America and for Bright, there is no space or hyphen in “placenames.”

This usage is followed in this article—Ed.]

A

while ago, a query was sent to the Nantucket Historical Association about the word Naumkeg, which the inquirer thought to be a Nantucket Indian placename. I was able to tell him that Naumkeg (or Naumkeag) was, in fact, the Abenaki name for the area where Salem was founded. Further research revealed that the word, said to mean “a peaceful place,” had been appropriated for a house and gardens in the Berkshires, an inn in Nashville, Indiana, and as the street address of a wildflower retreat in Atlantic Mine, Michigan. Naumkeg, as some might say, has legs. [Note

that, below, Green and Sachse use the form “Abnaki,” which is an acceptable alternative spelling.—Ed.]

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Queries about Indian placenames are almost always about locality (where is it or where was it?) or meaning. Somewhat more rarely the question is “What was the language it came from?” Here on Nantucket, the placenames are of Eastern Algonquian origin. William Bright, in his reference book, uses the abbreviation “SNEng. Algonquian” as a cover term for the regional varieties of this indigenous language of Southern New England.

The language specific to the Cape and islands has been variously called Massachusett, Natick, and Wampanoag. It is recognizably the same language as that of the Bible translation by John Eliot that was printed in Harvard Yard and published in 1663. Writing a century later, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur mentioned the presence of copies of this Bible on Nantucket and, indeed, the Congregational Society Library in Boston holds an Eliot Bible from Nantucket with considerable annotation in the language written into the margins.

Not only are the Indian placenames on Nantucket uniformly from this language, the number of them surviving to the present is unprecedented even in New England. Writing in Historic Nantucket in 1997, Dr. Elizabeth A. Little remarked that “Eighty-six recorded Indian placenames on an island of one hundred and thirty square kilometers is a density of 0.7 names per square kilometer. By contrast, the whole of Connecticut has a density of 0.04 recorded Indian

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Historical Map of Nantucket, by the Rev. Ferdinand C. Ewer, D. D., 1869.

placenames per square kilometer.” Clearly, Nantucket offers plenty of names for inquiry.

Available from the Nantucket Historical Association are a number of resources for pursuing such inquiries, ranging from the placenames mentioned incidentally by Zaccheus Macy in his late-eighteenth-century “Account of the names of the old sachems” (reproduced for ready reference in #7 of the NHA’s Nantucket Algonquian Studies series); to Ferdinand C. Ewer’s 1869 map of the island; to an unalphabetized list of names sent to the Inquirer and Mirror by Myron S. Dudley and printed on August 11, 1894; to a list in Henry Barnard Worth’s Nantucket Lands and Land Owners, published in 1901 (reprinted in 1992); to a 1914 list extracted from R. A. DouglasLithgow’s Dictionary of the American-Indian Place and Proper Names in New England; to Dr. Little’s publications in the 1980s and 1990s. What is more, in 1996 the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce offered the public a list of twenty-seven items (three sachems’ names, twenty-three placenames, and a phrase) “compiled from a variety of sources from the Nantucket Historical Association’s Research Library.”

In addition to these homegrown sources, the NHA Research Library has two published books about placenames

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The language specific to the Cape and Islands has been variously called Massachusett

,

Natick, and Wampanoag

not restricted to the island. One is Names of the Land: Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’sVineyard, and the Elizabeth Islands,

by Eugene Green and William Sachse (Chester, Connecticut: The Globe Pequot Press, 1983), and the other is Native American Placenames of the United States by William Bright (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004).

These various resources offer different things. The Ewer map of 1874 (NHARL MS 1000) situates the placenames but provides no meanings (or glosses, as a lexicographer might say, enclosing them between single quotation marks). On the other hand, even though it was not his primary purpose, in describing the limits of various sachems’ authority on the island Zaccheus Macy did provide meanings for some of the placenames he mentions—notably, for Miacomet (“meeting place”), Tuckernuck (“loaf of bread”), Wesco (“white stone”), and Weweeder (“pair of horns”). A childhood bilingual who spent his whole life in close contact with Wampanoags, Macy speaks to us from firsthand knowledge. His placenames and the meanings he attached to them have been passed down through a great many generations of English-speaking Nantucketers as accepted wisdom.

Dudley sent his list of seventy-nine names (a mix of placenames and personal names) to the newspaper hoping that others might offer meanings beyond those eight he knew (which were handed down from Zaccheus Macy more than a century earlier).

Worth offered an eight-page list of seventy placenames, providing glosses for some, but by no means all of them. He included Macy’s glosses, but offered expansions and corrections. In the case of Miacomet, he changed the gloss from “meeting place” to “Meeting House,” making reference to the historical existence of a Christian meetinghouse used for worship by the Wampanoag residents of the village of Miacomet in the eighteenth century. Macy had offered the name “Water-

comet” with the gloss “pond field” (which certainly fits the chain of ponds from the North Shore to the North Head of the Hummock), but Worth corrects this to Wannacomet with the gloss “fine or beautiful field.” In addition, he mentions that Madaket is said to mean “bad land,” but expresses some skepticism by remarking “but why this should be applied here is not clear.”

Soon, Douglas-Lithgow weighed in with an alphabetical list of ninety-one Nantucket placenames, many with multiple spellings. For the most part he concurs on meanings with Worth and with Macy before him, repeating Madaket as “bad land,” but backing off to “meeting place” for Miacomet and apparently compromising between Macy and Worth by glossing Wannacomet as “beautiful water or rock.”

Green and Sachse’s little book is obviously for popular consumption, with little drawings and anecdotes scattered among the entries. Some of what they purvey as fact is far from it. At the beginning of the Nantucket section, in their entry for Abram’s Point, for instance, they state that Abram Quary’s father killed two men in 1769 and died on the gallows by Nantucket’s Newtown Gate. This is fiction derived from Joseph C. Hart’s nineteenth-century novel Miriam Coffin, or The Whale-Fishermen.

Given such an inauspicious beginning to their alphabetical list of Nantucket placenames, it comes as a surprise that for the twenty-eight Nantucket Indian placenames they offer not just glosses but Algonquian etymologies.

Some go astray, such as deriving Hummock Pond from tètoukèmah “possibly related to Abnaki teteba ‘level’ + kamighe ‘place’” when, in fact, the pond was named for the minor sachem Wannanahumma, whose name was shortened to Nanahuma (as in Nanahuma’s Neck, the land that divides the two arms of the pond) and then again to

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Humma, which was used by the sachem’s descendants as a surname in the seventeenth century.

Another howler is their explanation that the Poot Ponds were named for “hornpouts that local fishermen catch.”

Their take on Madaket is completely different from Worth’s.

They derive it from mat’uhtugh ‘without wood’ + auke ‘land.’ For Wesco they offer the following explanation of the reference to a rock: “The shores of the village were rocky, especially close to the moorings of what is now Straight Wharf.” (This is news to me, since rocks had to be imported from the mainland to build the wharves and cobble the streets of sandy Nantucket.)

This book by Green and Sachse is a fount of misinformation, yet many of their glosses, complete with etymologies, do agree with Macy, Worth, and Douglas-Lithgow before them. Despite its misleading ways, the book is rather interesting for what it ambitiously attempted.

Elizabeth Little put together a list of seventy-seven Nantucket placenames for the 1983 Algonquian Conference.

In 1997, she expanded it to eighty-four entries and provided two maps. The intellectual polar opposite of Green and Sachse, Little was scrupulous to the point of eliminating from her lists a number of names that are clearly of indigenous origin but for which she could not account to her own satisfaction. She also refrained from providing glosses she was unable to vouch for. This makes both her conference article and her 1997 Historic Nantucket article frustrating for someone who just wants to know what a particular placename means. Little, who provides in exquisite detail the variant spellings of Nantucket placenames and their early documentation, would insist that there are no easy answers.

The late William Bright, professor emeritus of linguistics and anthropology at UCLA, was more sympathetic to people who want to know what a placename means and why a place came to be called that. For years he was in charge of the “placename department” of the newsletter of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, providing explanations that are succinct, linguistically well informed, and engaging. In 2004, the University of Oklahoma Press published his Native American Placenames of the United States. As a longtime fan of his SSILA columns, I was delighted by the publication of this book, and as a Nantucketer, I was attracted by the University of Oklahoma Press’s advertisement in which the word Madequecham was part of the design.

In the End the dust jacket for the book does not feature Madequecham, but Madaket occupies the upper left corner of the back cover. Inside, Bright offers for Madaket a derivation from matahquadt “cloudy, overcast.”

For Siasconset, which has previously been glossed as “at the place of the large bone,” he suggests instead a derivation that adds up to “at the place of many small bones.” An intriguing suggestion by Bright is that Miacomet, as a meeting place, does not refer to the Christian meetinghouse

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once located there, but is derived from an Algonquian construction meaning “where we meet to fish.” For sure, people have been fishing off the beach at the end of Miacomet Pond for much longer (before and since) than the interlude when a meetinghouse was located in the vicinity.

Like Little, Bright doesn’t reach to provide an etymology or a gloss if there is scant or questionable evidence for one. Despite our tradition of Nantucket as “far-away island, land far out at sea,” he will only commit himself to “of obscure origin, perhaps meaning ‘in the midst of waters.’” There is considerable, and to my mind healthy, use of “possibly” and “perhaps” in this book.

Bright’s main authorities for what he writes about Nantucket placenames are John Charles Huden’s Indian Place Names of New England, published in 1962, and Elizabeth Little’s article as it appeared in the 1984 Papers of the Fifteenth Algonquian Conference, edited by William Cowan of Carleton University. Bright only learned about her Historic Nantucket article with its documentation of seven additional Nantucket placenames after his book had gone to press. It is a little frustrating to find that a half dozen or so common Nantucket placenames are missing from his book, although Bright’s omissions do not exactly correspond to the additions to Little’s 1997 list.

While the Nantucket-generated placename lists are strictly local, and Green and Sachse don’t look beyond the Cape and islands, Bright’s book provides national coverage and puts our local placenames in a larger context. In using this book, the inquirer trades some kinds of information for other kinds, such as the migration of placenames from their original locations to faraway places. Naumkeg could have been a case in point. I would have thought that had Bright’s book been at hand when I received the query about Naumkeg, I would have been able to look it up and instantly trace it to its Abenaki source. To my surprise, however, Naumkeg/Naumkeag does not appear in Native American Placenames of the United States.

Multitudes of other fascinating names with locations, meanings, and sources do appear within the pages of Native American Placenames of the United States, however, and I hope that the big red book in the reference section of the NHA Research Library finds many readers. frances karttunen, a twelfth-generation Nantucketer, is a retired professor of linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and author of many articles and several books, including The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars, New Bedford: Spinner Publications, (2005).

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Ben Simons

Winterthur Museum & Country Estate Traveling Exhibition

Harbor & Home: The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1850

I

n July 2009, the Nantucket Historical Association will host its first major traveling exhibition, Harbor & Home: The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1850, on loan from Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. The Winterthur exhibition focuses on a largely unstudied region of New England furniture—the area between Boston and Providence, which includes the unique seafaring communities of the Cape and islands.

Nantucket furniture, influenced by the restraint and elegant craftsmanship of the island’s Quaker community, is extremely rare, and has never been studied with the scholarly intensity that Winterthur curator Brock Jobe and his colleagues have dedicated to produce the exhibition and the accompanying catalog. Remarkably, of the seventy-plus artifacts included in Winterthur’s exhibition, thirteen are from the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association, including gifts of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association and the Max and Heidi Berry Acquisition Fund. The Nantucket appearance of the exhibition is sponsored in part by Wilmington Trust FSB of Massachusetts. Major additional support has been provided by Amos and Barbara Hostetter, Jay and StephanieWilson, and Hampton and Helen Lynch.

The NHA collections featured in Harbor & Home will include the astronomical tall-case clock made by island geniusWalter Folger Jr.; examples of the classic NantucketWindsor chair form, including the 1799 brace-back arm chair made by Nantucketer Frederick Slade (1777– 1800); an outstanding inlaid tilt-top candlestand and a cylinder-fall inlaid Federal desk made by Nantucketer Heman Ellis (1770–1816); and a 4-slat ladderback Quaker Monthly Meeting side chair—to mention a few examples.

One iconic Nantucket creation in the exhibition deserves special mention:Walter Folger Jr.’s astronomical tall-case clock. DanielWebster described this unusual individual during a visit to Nantucket with

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “On the Island of Nantucket met with a philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer in Walter Folger, worthy to be ranked among the great discoverers in science.

He preferred to live quietly in his home town among his old friends.” Folger was one of Nantucket’s most gifted scholars and inventors—a true Renaissance man. Self-taught in the disciplines of navigation, mathematics, astronomy, surveying, and French, Folger pursued his studies while working as a maker and repairer of clocks and watches. His island acquaintances were less polite, describing him as being “as odd as huckleberry chowder.”

The extremely precocious Folger started work on his astronomical clock in 1788, using a standard Boston-style brass movement. He worked two years on the clock, setting it in operation on July 4, 1790. The eight-day, weight-powered, brass-movement clock not only tells the time but indicates the year, month, and day; tracks the motion of the sun and its “house,” or Zodiac; the motion and phases of the moon; and gives a regular reading of the high tide at ’Sconset. Folger may have engraved the dial or had it engraved by local silversmith Benjamin Bunker. A document in the NHA collection testifies that the mahogany case was made by cabinetmaker Cornelius Allen (1767–1835), who was working on Nantucket at the time. This remarkable invention, more of an intellectual puzzle than a functional household item, has frequently been cited as one of the most important American clocks to have been made during the days of the early republic.

HARBOR & HOME EVENTS Wednesday, July 1

Thursday, July 2

Friday, July 3

Gary R.Sullivan,“Early Clock Making in Southeastern Massachusetts.”

Members Preview Party Harbor & Home: The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts,1710–1850

Exhibition Opens to Public

Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum 5:30–7:00 P.M.

Tuesday, July 28

Friends of the NHA Lecture Brock Jobe, Professor of American Decorative Arts, Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, will present Harbor & Home: The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1850.

Whaling Museum 13 Broad Street, 6 p.m.

Reception immediately following Spring 2009

Photos: Jeffrey Allen Photography

Antique furniture and clock specialist Gary R. Sullivan, coauthor of the exhibition catalog Harbor & Home: The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1850, will discuss examples of antique clocks in Winterthur’s traveling exhibition, including the tall-case clock made by Nantucket geniusWalter Folger Jr. Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street 7–8 p.m., Free for NHA members $15 general public, $8 Children

Harbor & Home: The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1850 Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum

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NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

RESTORATION UNDER WAY

AT

GREATER LIGHT

The NHA must raise $210,000 to complete project by 2011 Restoration of the NHA’s historic property, Greater Light, is now under way.

The NHA is grateful for the generous support already provided for the project by gifts and grants from individuals, foundations, and the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee and from Toscana Corporation, which supplied its services at a reduced cost. Fund-raising efforts are now focused on the remaining $210,000 needed to reach the $1.2million goal to complete the restoration project by spring 2011.

To allow time to complete the fund-raising needed for the final interior finish work, the NHA made the decision earlier this year to divide the Greater Light restoration project into three phases.

Following approval by the Historic District Commission of the architectural plans developed by Steven Blashfield, director of design at Chip Webster and Associates, the NHA selected Twig Perkins Inc. as general contractor. The company has worked on many historic restorations on island, including the NHA’s Oldest House after it was struck by lightning in 1988.

Exterior work began at the 8 Howard Street site in March 2009 when Toscana Corporation lifted the building and excavated the existing foundation. Since then, contractors have been restoring and rebuilding portions of the foundation, replacing timbers, and strengthening the building’s structural frame. By early summer, this first part of the project will be completed, and Greater Light will have a secure foundation and a weather-tight shell, including new shingles and a new roof. In deference to the neighbors, no construction will occur in July and August.

Work will resume in the fall and continue through spring 2010 on the

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second part of the restoration—the interior rough work, which includes installation of all plumbing pipes, conduit, and utility wires and cables in the open-framed walls. Although now scheduled for fall 2010 to spring 2011, the interior finish work will commence when the NHA has completed fund-raising for the final part of restoration.

The Greater Light property was bequeathed to the NHA in the 1970s

by Hanna Monaghan, who, with her sister Gertrude, bought the property in the early 1930s and converted the eighteenth-century barn into an eclectic summer home and art studio. The Quaker sisters were part of a group of artists who found inspiration on Nantucket and began establishing an art colony here in the 1920s. For a number of years, the NHA operated the property as a house museum, but the need for extensive repairs necessitated its closure. The charming garden, however, has been generously maintained by a benefactor and kept open for appreciative visitors.

At completion of the restoration, the NHA will seek the remaining $600,000 of funding needed to interpret Greater Light and develop programs that bring to life Nantucket’s emergence as an art colony and resort. Much as it was enjoyed by the Monaghan sisters and their friends, Greater Light will become a venue for lifelong learning in the arts and small gatherings that extol the arts and culture.

For more information about supporting the restoration and interpretation of Greater Light,including naming opportunities,please contact JudithWodynski,director of external relations,at (508) 228 1894, ext.111,or jwodynski@nha.org.

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News Notes & Highlights NHA 2009 Exhibition Highlights March 14–June 7

Keeping Time in Sag Harbor: Photographs by Stephen Longmire A fascinating photographic portrait of Sag Harbor, the early whaling port on Long Island, by writer, photographer, and historic preservationist Stephen Longmire.

Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum

May 23–December 31

Views from the South Tower: Unitarian Church,1809–2009 The exhibition celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Unitarian Church on Orange Street through artwork, posters, historic photographs, pamphlets, and other artifacts, including a scale model of the historic structure. Opening Reception, May 23, 4:00 P.M. Whitney Gallery in the NHA Research Library, 7 Fair Street Exhibition is open during Library hours.

May 31–August 31

Landmarks of Nantucket!

A student-curated photography exhibition. Thirty Nantucket schoolchildren photograph what they consider their favorite “island landmarks.” Funding provided by the Nantucket Golf Club Foundation.

Hadwen & Barney Candle Factory, Whaling Museum 13 Broad Street

July 2 to November 2

Harbor & Home:The Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts,1710–1850 Winterthur Museum & Country Estate Traveling Exhibition; see exhibition preview on page 19.

Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum September 4–November 8

Camera’s Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England The Whaling Museum will host Historic New England’s traveling exhibition of classic views of New England maritime communities, including Nantucket, based on the book of the same title by William H. Bunting.

Hadwen & Barney Candle Factory Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street

May Is Preservation Month In recognition of Preservation Month, and in celebration of the 350th anniversary of English settlement on Nantucket, Mark Avery, NHA manager of historic properties, will lead a series of three walking tours exploring the origins of Nantucket’s first

English settlement and its architectural styles.

On May 7 and May 21, Avery will present a two-hour walking tour, “A Walking Tour of Old Sherburne,” leading visitors through the early English settlement on Nantucket’s north

shore known as “Sherburne,” the location of the original settlers’ first village. The two tours will depart from Tupancy Links parking lot on Cliff Road at 1:30 P.M. On May 15, Avery will lead an additional one-hour “in town” walking tour, “A Walking Tour of Nantucket’s Earliest Houses,”

through historic downtown Nantucket, to explore the collection of early houses moved from Old Sherburne that predate the town around them. This tour will depart at 1:30 P.M. from the Whaling Museum at 13 Broad Street. Tickets are $10 for adults, $4 children (ages 6–17), free for NHA members.

Spring 2009

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News Notes & Highlights 32nd Annual

August Antiques Show Show moves to Bartlett’s Farm for 2009

Kerry Hallam’s artwork for the 2009 Nantucket Wine Festival

Nantucket Wine Festival The NantucketWine FestivalWine Auction Dinner will take place Saturday, May 16, 2009. “This dinner auction is an important one, because all of the proceeds benefit the Nantucket Historical Association,” said NWF president and founder Denis Toner. “This year we are presenting by far the greatest combination of food and wine in the history of the NWF. We are fortunate to have guest chef Daniel Bruce of Meritage—at the Boston Harbor Hotel—who is celebrating his twentieth year of presenting food and wine pairing dinners at the Boston Wine Festival, and has achieved national recognition for his skill in this difficult culinary art form.

“The auction will feature the best selection of wines ever showcased—including a rare and exceptional bottle of 1870 Chateau Lafite that is in impeccable condition and referred to by Robert Parker as the greatest pre-phylloxera Bordeaux he has ever tasted. All in all, this promises to be an evening that will rock the tent rafters at the White Elephant and do a lot of good for the NHA. Don’t miss it; seating is limited.”

You may still purchase tickets to the May 16 Wine Auction Dinner directly from the NHA. If you plan to attend the Wine Auction Dinner and would like to reserve your space early, please contact Stacey Stuart at (508) 228 1894, ext. 130. 

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The 32nd annual August Antiques Show will begin on July 31 and run through August 2. The committee is delighted to announce that a new location has been chosen to showcase the event’s outstanding dealers: the show and preview party will be held under a magnificent white tent at Bartlett’s Farm, 33 Bartlett Farm Road. As in past years, the prestigious Antiques Council will manage the August Antiques Show.

The major fund-raising event for the NHA’s preservation and education programs, this year’s show is chaired by Olivia Charney, and will be dedicated to the memory of Heidi L. Berry, a member of the NHA board of trustees from 2003 to 2007, past president of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association, and chair of the Olivia Charney Friends lecture series.

Antiques Show week will begin on Tuesday, July 28, at 6:00 P.M., with a lecture by Brock Jobe, Professor of American Decorative Arts, Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. Sponsored by the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association, the lecture will be held at the Whaling Museum with a reception immediately following.

For the sixth consecutive year, the August Antiques Show Preview Party is being sponsored

by Eaton Vance Investment Counsel, and will be held Thursday, July 30, 6–9 P.M. The August Antiques Show hours are Friday and Saturday, 10 A.M.–5 P.M. and Sunday, 10 A.M.– 4 P.M., Bartlett’s Farm, 33 Bartlett Farm Rd. To learn more about the 32nd August Antiques Show or to reserve tickets, please call Stacey Stuart at the Nantucket Historical Association (508) 228 1894, ext. 130, or visit www.nha.org.

Early American Arts and Crafts Classes at 1800 House Art inspired by history The educational programs at the 1800 House are dedicated to celebrating and reviving Nantucket’s rich tradition in historic decorative arts and crafts. Two-thousand and nine marks the fifth successful season for the Early American Arts and Crafts classes at the NHA’s historic 1800 House, 4 Mill Street.

Beginning on May 26 and running through mid-October, over fifty courses are being offered in centuries-old techniques taught by artisans from Nantucket and throughout New England. Some of the classes include: Sailors Valentines, Carved Whirligigs on a Whale, Découpage Under Glass, Bentwood Willow Chair, and Theorem Painting. This year, the 1800 House is offering a number of new courses and instructors, as well as one-day and holiday workshops.

Class size is limited in some instances and reservations and prepayment must be made in advance. Discounts to NHA members; course fee includes all class materials.

Please go to www.nha.org/1800house for full course listing and registration information.

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Weekly Tours of the Oldest House Kitchen Garden Hour-long tours begin May 23 Offered every Friday from 1 to 2 P.M., informative garden tours will be offered May 23 through September 4 at the Oldest House, 16 Sunset Hill Lane.

During the hour-long tour, guests will learn about the herbs and plants and their uses in this replicated 1700s kitchen garden. In addition to the garden, guests will enjoy viewing a small apple orchard appropriate to the period. The Oldest House and Kitchen Garden will be open for the season May 23–June 26, Monday–Sunday, noon–4 P.M.; and then daily through September 6, Monday–Sunday, noon–4 P.M. From September 7 to October 12, the house and garden will be open Thursday– Monday, noon–4 P.M. The garden tour is free for NHA members, $6 general public.

NHA Membership Reminder The NHA relies on membership to provide the vital core support for our curatorial, research, preservation, and educational activities. We receive no state, local, or federal operating funds. If you know of someone interested in becoming a member, or need additional information for your own membership, please call (508) 228 1894, ask for Beth at ext. 116. Important benefits at every level are: unlimited admission to our Whaling Museum and historic properties, a subscription to Historic Nantucket, the NHA Calendar of Events, discounts at the Museum Shop, and the use of the NHA Research Library – to name just a few!

IN MEMORIAM Oldest House Kitchen Garden Tour 2008

Photo: Beverly Hall

The editorial committee of Historic Nantucket lost a longtime, devoted member with the passing of book editor Tom Congdon on December 23, 2008. A graduate of St. George’s School in Newport, R.I., andYale, he received his master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism after serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the battleships USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin.

During a distinguished career that started with the Saturday Evening Post and included many top publishing companies, Congdon began his own publishing firm in 1978. He worked with such notable authors as Peter Benchley, Russell Baker, David Halberstam, TennesseeWilliams, and others, in a literary career spanning more than four decades. A devoted husband, father, and grandfather, his wit, knowledge, and gentlemanly manner are greatly missed.

Exceptional events begin with unforgettable venues…

Celebrate your historic milestones surrounded by Nantucket treasures. The Nantucket Historical Association properties are wonderful locations for weddings, welcome parties, rehearsal dinners, receptions, cocktail parties, and corporate events. Surround your guests with elegant art and important objects that bring the story of Nantucket’s past to life at our world-class museum. Located in the heart of Nantucket Town, the museum can accommodate both small and large gatherings—a perfect mix of state-ofthe-art and old-world design. Your guests will also enjoy breathtaking views of Nantucket harbor, town, and beyond from the rooftop observation deck.

Please call Susan Beaumont at (508) 228 1894, ext. 131, for details about hosting a memorable party in the Whaling Museum or other NHA properties.

Survivors The solitary dooryard oak Still holds from summer’s deep green cloak A scattering of leaves. Now dry And dull, they hang against the sky.

These leaves, outlasting all the rest, Refuse to fall, endure to test The winter.To wind-whipped twigs they cling With withered stems—until the spring Erupts again in green, gives birth To seeing, brash new growth And, lacking room for both, Crowds tattered, life-worn leaves to earth.

Tom Congdon, 1958 Spring 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 only in 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 burdened later by the substantial taxes associated with inheriting an IRA. Making a gift to the NHA during your lifetime lets you see the results of your philanthropy.Gifts may be directed to the permanent endowment,the Annual Fund,or to a specific area of interest,such as Greater Light,theWhaling Museum,the Research Library, 1800 House,or educational programs.

For further information, consult your financial professional or contact Judith Wodynski.

508 228 1894, ext. 111 email: jwodynski@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