Historic Nantucket
Orange Street—1900 Looking north with the South Tower on the west side. The pavement is of cobbles now covered with tar.
January, 1978 Published Quarterly by Nantucket Historical Association Nantucket, Massachusetts
NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OFFICERS
President, Leroy H. True Vice-Presidents, Albert G. Brock, George W. Jones, Alcon Chadwick, Albert F. Egan, Jr., Walter Beinecke, Jr. Honorary Vice-President, Henry B. Coleman Secretary, Richard C. Austin Treasurer, John N. Welch Councillors, Leroy H. True, Chairman Mrs. R. A. Orleans, Robert Tonkin, terms expire 1978; Robert D. Congdon, Harold W. Lindley, terms expire 1979; Mrs. James F. Merriman, Miss Barbara Melendy, terms expire 1980; Donald Terry, Mrs. H. Crowell Freeman, terms expire 1981. Registrar, Miss Dorothy Gardner Historian, Edouard A. Stack pole Editor, "Historic Nantucket", Edouard A; Stackpole; Assistant Editor, Mrs. Merle Turner Orleans. STAFF Oldest House: Curator, Mrs. Kenneth S. Baird Receptionists: Mrs. Margaret Crowell, Miss Adeline Cravott Hadwen House-Satler Memorial: Curator, Mrs. Phoebe P. Swain Receptionists: Mrs. Irving A. Soverino, Mrs. Harold Arnold, Miss Helen Levins, Miss Barbara Nathan 1800 House: Curator, Mrs. Clare Macgregor Receptionists: Mrs. Richard Strong, Mrs. Edouard A. Stackpole Old Gaol: Curator, Albert G. Brock Whaling Museum: Curator, Hugh R. Chace Receptionists: Frank Pattison, Manager; James Watts, Patricia Searle, Rose Stanshigh, Alice Collins, Clarence Swift, Mary Lou Campbell Peter Foulger Museum: Curator and Director, Edouard A. Stackpole Receptionists: Mrs. Clara Block, Everett Finlay, E. Louise Sweet, Mary Barrett Librarian: Mrs. Louise Hussey Nathaniel Macy House: Curator, Mrs. John A. Baldwin Receptionists: Miss Dorothy Hiller, Mrs. Henry C. Petzel Archaeology Department: Curator, Mrs. Roger Young Old Town Office: Curator, Hugh R. Chace Old Mill: Curator, John Gilbert Miller: John Stackpole Folger-Franklin Seat & Memorial Boulder: Curator, Francis Sylvia Friends Meeting House-Fair Street Museum: Curator, Albert F. Egan, Jr. Lightship "Nantucket": Curator, Benjamin S. Richmond Ship Keeper: Richard Swain; Buel Wrenne, David Branscombe Greater Light - Receptionist: Dr. Selina T. Johnson
HISTORIC NANTUCKET Published quarterly and devoted to the preservation of Nantucket's antiquity, its famed heritage and its illustrious past as a whaling port.
Volume 25
January, 1978
No. 3
Nantucket Historical Association Officers and Staff
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Editorial
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Augusta Bunker: Pioneer Schoolteacher and Rancher by Andre Aubuchon
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The Hicksite Separation on Nantucket by Robert J. Leach
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Sankaty Light Sighted at Sea by Capt. J. S. Gillooly, U.S. N.
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The Path Along the Bluff by Mrs. Abbie Ransom
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A Night in the Ice Fields on Board Steamer "Nantucket" by Edouard A. Stackpole
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Historic Nantucket Is published quarterly at Nantucket, Massachusetts, by the Nantucket Historical Association. It is sent to Association Members. Extra copies $.50 each. Membership dues are—Annual-Active $7.50; Sustaining $25.00; Life—one payment $100.00 Second-class postage paid at Nantucket, Massachusetts Communications pertaining to the Publication should be addressed to the Editor, Historic Nantucket, Nantucket Historical Association, Nantucket, Massachusetts 02554.
Nantucket History — A Study of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
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THE WORLD, THE nation and Nantucket have undergone some drastic changes since the advent of World War II, and while the most spectacular have been concerned with wars, politics and the economy there have been marked cultural changes as well. All of this has brought about an awareness that the true significance of what has altered our lives has to be studied, evaluated and made a part of our historical record. Now, it has become a vital fact that the study of community life has a key role. We have a variety of ways to preserve the memory of Nantucket life in all its elements, and the Nantucket Historical Association has contributed to such means—photography, film strips, taped recordings, microfilms, television. Realizing the dramatic potentials in the full story, the Association supports all efforts to enhance the presentation. Steadily over the past decade there has been a marked increase in the historical study of the story of Nantucket—past, present and future. Through the efforts of the Nantucket Historical Trust there have been several professional studies of our Island, notably the detailed ar chitectural programs conducted by the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) teams. This led to the establishment of the Nantucket Preservation Institute, which, during the past three years, has become a summer fixture under the direction of Prof. Blair Reeves, with graduate students in architecture from all over the nation participating. Now a prospectus has been presented the School Committee which will involve Nantucket students in their own history. From the elementary level, the curriculum would be worked into the social studies classes; thence to the junior high and on to the high school. The program will follow the historical development of the settlement to the rise of the leading whaling port in the Western World; the great depression, and the development of the new economy—summer business to the present day. As the proponent declared: "Nantucket is an architectural miracle as well as a fragile Island environment. Our children should be prepared to become the interpreters of its history and culture." The School Committee voted $1500 as a show of faith in the proposal. The young teacher who has advanced the idea is planning to seek support from the National Trust For Historical Preservation, as well as from the Nantucket Historical Association, the Coffin School, Con servation Foundation, and other Island organizations. The preservation of an historical community begins at home—especially with the young people. Edouard A. Stackpole
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Augusta Bunker Pioneer Schoolteacher and Rancher by Andre Aubuchon
IF, AS MONTESQUIEU believed, climate shapes character and in stitutions, how much stronger the force of geography and history. The influences of these forces can be observed in no better an environment than that of Nantucket, which had to turn to whaling for its survival. For a century, Nantucket was one of the leading whaling ports of the world, and it was Nantucketers who prosecuted the most difficult and demand ing aspects of the industry: Pacific whaling and the pursuit of the sperm whale. The whale fishery in turn required courage. Skilled tradesmen, able seamen, keen businessmen, and proficient masters were all necessary for the success of the enterprise, but without courage whaling was bound to fail. Stories of Nantucket captains keeping mutinous crews at bay with armed pistols, of unbearded Nantucket youths meeting after surviving massacres in the South Pacific, of Nantucket vessels resisting pirates, privateers, and enraged "natives" are common and for good reason: without this courage Nantucket could never have led the world in whaling. If geography encouraged Nantucketers to turn to whaling, it also required Nantucketers to emigrate. The food supply and economic resources of the island have at best always been limited, and, un fortunately, insufficient to maintain an ever-increasing population. Sons and daughters of each successive generation of Nantucketers have been forced to leave the island. Not all have, like some hardy adventurers, established themselves as merchants and mariners in such far flung corners as Hawaii, Australia, or the western ports of South America. Neither have most emigrating Nantucketers shared in the adventure of serving as whaling "colonists" in Nova Scotia in the 1760's and 1780's, Hudson, New York, in the 1780's, Milford Haven, Wales, in the same period, and Dunkirk, France, on the eve of the Revolution of 1789. The experience of most Nantucket emigrants has been a bit more prosaic: solid citizens, they found their way to the offices and counting houses of mercantile Boston and New York, the factories of Providence and New Bedford, the farms of the South and Midwest, and the mines of California. If emigration has not attracted the attention it has deserved from Nantucket's historians, this is especially true of one particular species of
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emigrant: the female schoolteachti. Most islanders have thought of emigration as a phenomenon confined to adventurous young men, as in the case of the Forty-Niners, or to families, as in the case of the whaling "colonies" or the removal to New Garden, North Carolina, in the 1770's. Little has been written of the lives of hundreds of Nantucket women, often educated in the island's once-renowned High School, who went forth from the island to serve as teachers in elementary and high schools throughout the country. It was said humorously, though not without a grain of truth, that the principal export of Maine was "character", and in the same sense, it might be said that the principal export of Nantucket, at least after the end of whaling, was schoolteachers. From the founding of Nantucket High School in 1839 to 1870, more than one hundred Nantucket women left the island to become schoolteachers, and in the intervening century a conservative estimate would place the number of Nantucket women teachers at well over twice that number. Of the lives - of these schoolteachers almost nothing is known, and in many cases all trace of them was lost to Nantucket after they went around Brant Point.
Augusta Bunker, Schoolteacher
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Given the paucity of material on this important aspect of Nantucket's history, it is indeed fortunate that the "Bunker and West Family Papers" which have recently come into the possession of the Nantucket Historical Association reveal the story of Augusta Bunker, a Nantucket-born woman who was a pioneer schoolteacher and rancher. Her story is in many ways unique, and it is impossible to extend generalizations to that larger number of schoolteachers about which so little is known. Never theless, the story of Augusta Bunker, as revealed by the more than fifty letters she wrote to her family and the letters members of her family wrote to each other, is in itself not lacking in interest, and it is not impossible that many of the conflicts and obstacles encountered by this young woman were also faced by some of her colleagues among emigrant Nantucket schoolteachers. Augusta Bunker was born in Nantucket in 1855, and lived on Gay Street until her father moved to New Bedford a few years later. Her father, James Madison Bunker, was a prominent, though not prosperous, lawyer who frequently served as moderator of town meetings. His decision to move to New Bedford may have been the result of the death of Augusta's mother, Sarah West Bunker, in 1858 and his second marriage a year later. He may simply have moved to assume the position of Judge of Probate and Insolvency which offered a steady income and a position of influence. If a demonstration of the courage, resourcefulness, and business ability which accounted for Nantucket's success in the whale fishery were required, it would be necessary to look no further than Augusta's an cestors. Her maternal ancestors were whaling masters who went back four generations. Her earliest Nantucket ancestor came to the island to teach Nantucketers the art of on-shore whaling, and her great-great grandfather, Captain Paul West, had lived in the "Oldest House" on Sunset Hill. Her grandfather's older brother Captain Stephen West, made several successful whaling voyages, and his youngest brother, Captain Silas West, was one of few Nantucketers to have been killed by a whale. Paul West, Augusta's grandfather, showed the kind of courage, wanderlust, and love of adventure which was evident in his descendant. Born in Nantucket, he made his way to Dunkirk, where he shipped as first mate on the Cyrus. When the Cyrus was taken by a British privateer, West became the Captain. In 1804, he left London on the Cyrus bound for the South Pacific by way of Cape Horn. He made three successful voyages to that region between 1804 and 1812, and family legend has it that West made his fortune not only in whale oil, but as captain of a vessel
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given a letter of marque. Fearing the outbreak of war between England and the United States, West returned to Nantucket in late 1812 after an absence of more than a decade. With him was his bride, Phebe Hussey, daughter of Captain Benjamin Hussey, leader of the Nantucket whalers in Dunkirk. In his career as a whaling master, or as a privateer, as the case may be, Paul West accumulated over $60,000, a princely fortune for those days. He bought a large house, still standing, at Seven Liberty Street, where he was close to the Pacific Bank of which he was a large stockholder and a director. A man of energy as well as of wealth, he invested not only ingrowing Boston banks and railroads but in Nantucket enterprises. For many years, he served as treasurer of Straight Wharf in which he held an interest which was second only to that of the Rotch Family. Captain West's older daughter, Sarah, married James Madison Bunker in 1835. His father, Captain Reuben Bunker, served successfully as captain of a packet boat which had not only plied the waterways of New England, but had made a trip to the Baltic. Compared with that of Paul West, Reuben Bunker's fortune was modest, though he was able to give James Madison Bunker a house on Gay Street where Augusta spent her first years. The details of Augusta's childhood and youth are unknown, as only fragments of correspondence survive. It is known that she grew up in New Bedford and that she attended college before obtaining a position teaching Mathematics at Stetson High School in Randolph. Like many young women from Nantucket and Southeastern Massachusetts and like her older sister, Phebe, she may have attended Bridgewater Normal School, which had been founded to educate teachers and influenced by the educational leaders, Horace Mann and Cyrus Peirce. Phebe Bunker had been one of the early students at Vassar in the 1860's, and Augusta, who was sixteen years younger than Phebe, may have taken advantage of one of the new women's colleges like Vassar or Smith. It is known, however, that she was well-educated and qualified as a teacher. Just why she left Randolph is open to speculation, and even members of her immediate family were puzzled as to why a young woman should leave such a good position to go to what could only seem like the ends of the earth. Her brothers, Paul and Alfred (later the Headmaster of Roxbury Latin School), and her sister, Phebe, regarded Augusta, who was more than a decade younger than they, with fond indulgence, though her brother Madison, only two years older than she, was always more critical. Madison suggested in a letter that Augusta may have been im-
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pelled to leave by an unhappy "love affair". Whether he meant to imply that a suitor had jilted her, or that she had rejected a suitor cannot be determined, though it must be noted that Madison's suggestion is worthy of consideration. Of Augusta's siblings, he knew his sister from the closest perspective. It must also be kept in mind, however, that Madison's at titudes were "unenlightened" by contemporary standards, and that most men would explain any unexplainable aspect of the behavior of a female by reference to a female's relation to males. Perhaps it is unnecessary to look further than the historical and hereditary influences on Augusta Bunker. Any young woman whose maternal grandfather had made three voyages from London to the Pacific whaling grounds, or whose paternal grandfather had sailed in European waters, was not likely to regard a transcontinental journey as a fearful undertaking. If Augusta's brothers and sister could not understand her motives for heading for the Pacific Northwest, Augusta could not un derstand their puzzlement. Perhaps she was a bit disdainful of kin who had not seen fit to leave New England.
Phebe West Bunker, Elder Sister
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The first letter from Augusta to Phebe was written from Merced, California, 152 miles from San Francisco. It was dated March 23, 1882, a little less than three weeks after her twenty-seventh birthday. In that letter she described her travels on the transcontinental railroad in company with Mr. Felch who was to escort her to Cheyney, Washington Territory, where she had been engaged to teach at the local academy. In the letter she commiserated with travelers forced to cross the Arizona Desert in the summer, and noted that even in March, "The sand and dust were terrible and I do feel so dirty that I shall be only too glad to leave the train at San Francisco and have a room wh(ere) to make myself comfortable." Nevertheless, the mountains and valleys, the fertile farm land, and the mild climate of California were sufficiently impressive after winter's cold and desert's heat to make California seem like "Paradise on Earth". Los Angeles, then an unspoiled and clean town, was especially beautiful as the Spring flowers were in full bloom. There was little time for taking in the scenery, and less time for writing East, and the next letter to Phebe was dated July 19. Augusta had already made her way to Cheyney, and had left for Spokane Falls, the largest town in Eastern Washington. By that date, she had become an accomplished horsewoman and the week before, she had taken four ten mile rides. September 4th, the opening of Cheyney Academy found her boarding with the widow of a minister. Life in a small house next to the general store was different from what Augusta had known back East, but she was beginning to make the acquaintance of the little more than one hundred inhabitants of the town. "Miss Bunker," Augusta wrote to Phebe, "is a lonesome title when no other is used," but she was happy to report that her landlady had taken to calling her "Augusta". School and community presented problems to the moralistic newcomer from New England. While there were thirty-nine desks, there were more than sixty students, and many of these were older, less apt, and more likely to misbehave than the docile children she had taught. In several letters, Augusta made known her pointed opposition to serving as a missionary, and she "positively declined" to take a Sunday School class. Her background inclined her to decry the eight saloons in Cheyney, and to wish that the Principal, Mr. Felch, would wash more frequently and more thoroughly. Nevertheless, she seemed to be adjusting though she could not help but observe to Phebe that Cheyney Academy was "a kind of school that no money would have persuaded me to teach (in the) East." Cheyney was undeniably a pioneer town with unfinished houses and even rougher characters, and Augusta was by temperament and deter mination a pioneer. The letters to her New England family talked of
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extreme temperatures—110 degrees in tne summer and forty below in tne winter—but they also tell of her transformation. In the Fall of 1882, her letters were filled with details of homesteading: she had bought 160 acres five miles from town, and in five years she would obtain clear title to the land and cabin. Her letters were so filled with plans and diagrams of houses and land to make her brother Madison complain to Phebe. It could not be doubted that Augusta was capable of handling her homestead and her class of over-age roughnecks, and that a more en thusiastic young woman could be found anywhere west of the Rockies. Before Augusta had been in school for a month, her landlady had un wittingly prophesied that she would not remain a schoolteacher, "but that ranching will be more profitable in money and health..." The ensuing year and a half in Cheyney passed quickly, and if the town was quiet, there was no lack of work at school and on the farm. Augusta's only complaints were of numerous colds and sore throats, and of chronic over-work at Cheyney Academy where three teachers did work which required twice their number. In April, 1883, Augusta wrote of teaching an extra class, and of having to give up the strenuous work of playing the organ and singing in the local church. At times, she worked too hard and in January, 1884, she complained in a letter to Phebe that hoodlums in her class were smoking and using profanity. In the next letter, she remarked that she was "almost an inveterate coffee drinker now", surely not an easy confession for a young lady with a proper New England background. If Eastern Washington Territory provided little by way of amusement and intellectual pursuits, it developed in Augusta Bunker a love for farming and the land. During the winter she boarded with respectable women in Cheyney. but at the end of school she headed for her 160 acre homestead, horseback riding and vegetable farming. Letters to New England in the Spring and Summer of 1883 delight in details and drawings of plans of the homestead and cottage. Vacations offered Augusta the opportunity for attendance at teachers' institutes at Spokane and Walla Walla, though Cheyney offered some social life to an eligible young lady. She "saw" several young business men and professional men in addition to the male teachers and clergymen at Cheyney Academy. A spirited young lady, Augusta was not above deflating a conceited young lawyer from Massachusetts: it seemed that this gentleman assumed that no "Westerner" was good enough for a lady who had beheld Boston. This life of arduous schoolwork, church and social activities, and farming was brought to an unexpected halt in March, 1884, when the authorities at Cheyney Academy failed to rehire her for the Spring Term.
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There was no question of misconduct or of incompetence, as all of her superiors offered to write recommendations and two of the trustees wrote of their regret at her dismissal. That the situation surrounding her dismissal was suspicious cannot be denied: she was not informed by letter of the decision and it was not until she returned from a visit to Spokane that she was told—by her landlady!—that she had not been rehired. It is unfortunate that the only explanation of Augusta's dismissal has come from her own hand. She explained in a letter to Phebe that the sister-in-law of a trustee had been appointed in her place, but it is not certain that nepotism was the only cause of her dismissal. The official letter, written after the dismissal, referred to Augusta's ill health, and extended wishes for a speedy recovery. It might be said in criticism of Augusta that she may well have been a difficult and fractious colleague: in her letter to Phebe, she constantly criticized almost all of the authorities and teachers at the school, and she spoke most disparagingly of Cheyney, its school, teachers, and pupils. It may have been that the "Easterner's" criticism was not sufficiently disguised. The six months following Augusta's dismissal were completely lack ing in the hope and high spirits so evident in her first two years in Washington Territory. The letters show a dark side to her character: Augusta gloated that the woman who had been brought from the East as her replacement broke down after a day and a half in the classroom. Moving between Cheyney and Spokane, Augusta was unable to obtain several situations which had interested her. By June, 1884, the young woman who had almost never mentioned her family and home "back East" suffered from an acute case of homesickness. Either Augusta was so overcome by defeat and depression, that she was unable to write, or what letters she had written have not survived, but there are no letters between June 14 and September 5. The months of the Autumn of 1884 proved to be the test of Augusta's courage and resolution, and she survived a wiser, if not unscathed, young lady. In her letter of September 5, Augusta observed that "to come from Boston is no recommendation here." She had been unable to find a position, and wrote now of coming home. To leave Washington would be to admit defeat, and though it is certain that her aunt Phebe Ann West in Nantucket had ample resources to fund a return to New England, Augusta decided to stay. A month later, she wrote again of returning East and, as a compromise, suggested she might spend the winter with friends in Minneapolis. Leaving Washington would involve Augusta's relinquishing her homestead, so she settled instead for a visit to a Mrs. Fee, the sister-in-law of one of her landladies.
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By November 4, Augusta's life had taken what could only be described as an abrupt change for the better. In her visit to the Fees in Lewiston, Idaho Territory, Augusta had met, fell in love with, and become engaged to marry Walter Fee, the son of her host and a rancher in Nez Perce County. Together with his brother-in-law, Walter Fee owned a ranch which produced wheat, feed, and beef cattle. Augusta was decidely taken with Walter and with the life of a rancher. She noted approvingly that Walter was a good Christian—and parenthetically, that his father was a Christian minister—and that he had "character", which was especially necessary in the rough-and-tumble, rugged West. By way of explanation to kin "back East", she added that Walter's brother-in-law was a "Maine man", no doubt a high recommendation to her New England family. Augusta's first year on a ranch located several miles outside of Waha, Idaho, provided more excitement than had the several years in Cheynev. In this period, she learned how to be a rancher's wife, and perhaps even a rancher herself. The usual diagrams were sent to Phebe and her brothers and the letters were filled with descriptions of rescuing cattle from floods, bringing cattle to town, haying, and harvesting the wheat. The traditional wifely duties of cooking and keeping house were not neglected, especially not in harvest time when Augusta and her sister-in-law had to cook for "from fourteen to eighteen (ranch-hands) for three days... For these men we have to seek one end, that is to give them enough to eat." In the summer, Augusta picked and canned green gooseberries, currents and red raspberries. There were jam and jellies to put up for the winter, and in that season there was sausage to be made—140 lbs. to be exact! Augusta's menus show that she learned to cook in a New England kitchen, and such Nantucket staples as baked beans and indian pudding were frequently on the table. With only three other people on an isolated ranch, life was lonely but informal dinner parties with neighboring ranchers and occasional visits to Walter's parents in Lewiston, the nearest large town, provided diversions from the harsh realities of life on the frontier. There were newspapers and magazines from the East for amusement on winter evenings, and Augusta's letters indicate that she not only subscribed to the Inquirer and Mirror, but that it was read carefully. Waha, Idaho, was not New England, however, and when Augusta was occasionally left alone on the ranch, she had a rifle and dog to protect her against the desperados who roamed the countryside. Law and order was constantly threatened, but it surprised even long-time residents of Nez Perce County when two neigh bors, both successful ranchers and respectable men, killed each other in a quarrel.
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Augusta seemed to love Idaho for its-flaws and failures as well as for its strengths. Her feelings about the territory and her ranch were to some degree strengthened by her devotion to her husband. Comments Augusta made to Phebe suggest that Walter Fee was not a handsome man: "The artist (i.e. photographer) is not a good one, and his pictures all have a hard look." Earlier she described him as bald and fair-complexioned, and in another letter she suggested that Walter was not as stern as his photograph had made him seem. What made Walter attractive to Augusta was his sobriety, con sideration, and Christian piety. Of the last, Augusta wrote on several occasions: "... how I thank God that my husband is a Christian and that I'm not deprived of human sympathy in my own ways of thinking." For Walter's abstinence from alcoholic beverages Augusta was especially thankful, as she was aware of the severity and frequency of drunkenness in the West. Not only Walter, but his sister and brother-in-law were teetotalers even to the extent of not sharing Augusta's "vice" of coffee drinking. Of Walter's consideration, one incident bore effective testimony: when Augusta and Georgia Dyer were in Lewiston, their husbands kept the house immaculate. It could only have been with great joy and keen anticipation that in the late summer or early autumn of 1885, Walter and Augusta looked forward to the birth of their first child. Despite occasional colds and sore throats, Augusta had enjoyed good health since going West. Nothing indicated that she would have any trouble bearing a child, and the oc casional complaints of pain and illness found in her letters to Phebe throughout the fall of 1885 were not unusual in healthy women. By December 3, she could comment to her sister that: "I am beginning to show my size... I will tell you before long that you may speak of my condition." If Walter and Augusta had doubts about the desirability of her "condition", they were probably reassured by news that Georgia Dyer had given birth to a nine-pound son. Their delight in the birth of a nephew and interest in his growth was evident in Augusta's letters. The Fee Family was cautious, and arrangements were made for Augusta to stay with Walter's parents in Lewiston, where physicians were within reach. On April 18, 1886, Augusta, still at the ranch, felt that the time was near and with a cake in the oven, penned a note to Phebe noting "All are well and busy." In the next several days, complications developed, and Augusta was moved to Lewiston where she was attended by two physicians and nursed
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by her mother-in-law. By April 19, it had become apparent that Augusta's infant had died, and it was necessary for physicians to perform surgery to remove the fetus. After an illness of several days, Augusta died peacefully in her sleep. Her last words were spoken to console her husband, and she gently remarked to her mother-in-law: "I can't un dertake worship." She observed: "The Lord is very near to me," and fell into a sleep from which she did not awaken. Augusta's death did not sever the ties between the family of her husband and her relatives in New England. Walter and his mother kept up a correspondence with Phebe West Bunker in Bradford, Massachusetts, and with Augusta's aunt, Phebe Ann West of Liberty Street, Nantucket. In October, 1889, Walter Fee visited Phebe Ann West in Nantucket, and in a subsequent letter remarked that he would like to visit Nantucket again. What an Idaho rancher in his mid-thirties and a Nantucket spinster of advanced years discussed cannot be known with certainty, but the conversation most likely turned to Augusta Bunker Fee. Each had known "Gusta" in a different season of her life: Aunt Phebe Ann had known her as an infant in Nantucket, and Walter as a pretty and strong-minded schoolteacher and pioneer in the West. The three years intervening between Augusta's death and Walter's Nantucket visit had undoubtedly assuaged the loss, and it may have been that he was able to understand from the conversation of the daughter of that adventurous whaling master, Paul West,what had motivated Augusta to leave her family and home in New England. Phebe West Bunker received many letters of sympathy from relatives and friends. Perhaps the most fitting eulogy of Augusta Bunker Fee was written by her in 1882, the year in which she went West: "Yet death is inevitable and one after another passes on, and yet the world moves on." Captains Paul West and Reuben Bunker would have understood their granddaughter.
Dr. Andre Aubuchon is the Archivist working at the Peter Foulger Museum, where he is cataloguing the Manuscript Collections of the Nantucket Historical Association.
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The Hicksite Separation on Nantucket by Robert J. Leach THE TRAGEDY OF the Great Schism of 1827-1828 had its small repercussion on the Island of Nantucket, almost alone of meetings in New England Yearly Meeting. Fortunately for us one of the main par ticipants, Obed Macy, was not only a sensitive Quaker elder, but a historian. His "History of Nantucket" is generally welcomed as the best of pre-twentieth century accounts. During the Hicksite controversy, Friend Obed kept his own running commentary contemporaneously to the events beginning in the Autumn of 1827 and finishing in the Autumn of 1835. This account, labelled "A Compendium, or abstract history, or a narrative of the Monthly Meeting on Nantucket toward their members— commenced in the tenth month 1827", indicates by its inception that Obed Macy was aware that troubles were brewing for Quakerism on the far away island. Macy was no ordinary member. He had been monthly meeting clerk of the original Nantucket Monthly Meeting, thirty years back, when forty years old. He had served actively in every phase of monthly meeting appointment. His portrait reveals an open sensitive countenance framed in appropriate Quaker simplicity. The great separation did not come unknown and unexpected upon the Island Quaker establishment. They had welcomed Hannah (Jenkins) Barnard, the woman minister from Hudson Monthly Meeting, New York (in itself almost a colony of Nantucket) shortly before she went on the fateful trip to the British Isles, which involved her in the so-called "White" Quaker separation in Ireland, and her subsequent disownment. This upsetting event came in 1798, just after Nantucket Monthly Meeting had set off its Northern portion as Nantucket Monthly Meeting for the Northern District—in 1794. A new Meetinghouse had been built on Broad Street in 1792 (56' x 38'), while later that year the old meetinghouse, which stood by the burial ground, was reconstructed at Main and Pleasant Streets. This was presumably a larger structure than the North Meeting House, as the membership of the two monthly meetings stood approximately at 500 and 800 in 1794. Parenthetically it is interesting to note that in the year 1800 the Methodists built their first meetinghouse on pair Street, having won many converts away from the Congregationalists (who were, before that, the only rivals to Friends on the Island). Then in 1809 the State Church divided in an orderly manner, as had Friends, to build the South Church as opposed to the original, now North Church. In 1823 the Methodists followed suit, building the present church on Main Street Square. In 1825 a Universalist church was built on
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HISTORIC NANTUCKET
the site of the present Atheneum. There were tnen five churches and two Friends Meetings on the Island. Rivalry between and among these religious bodies was evident, even to traditional Quaker elders. Meanwhile the growth of Unitarianism struck at the privileged position of the State Church of Massachusetts. In 1805 Harvard College had gone radical, followed by twenty of the original twenty-five Puritan churches near Boston. The State Church was dis-established in 1818, at exactly the moment that liberal ideas became manifest in the New Bedford and Lynn Quaker Meetings. It is not by accident that these two meetings were affected. The incidence of the American Revolution had deprived Newport Meeting (Rhode Island Monthly Meeting) of the preeminence that body had exercised in New England Quakerism for a century. It looked for a moment as though Nantucket Monthly Meeting might become the new centre of leadership. Resistance against this was strong in Providence Monthly Meeting (where Moses Brown was active). His only real rival, William Rotch, emigrated first to Dunkirk in France and then to New Bedford in 1795. New Bedford took on monthly meeting status in 1792, and soon came to constitute the successor to Newport as the outstanding New England Quaker Centre. It is true that the yearly meeting Boarding School was settled in Providence, but New Bedford founded its own Secondary Friends Academy. William Rotch Jr. became Yearly Meeting Clerk as New Bedford established itself as successor to Nantucket as the new centre of the whaling industry. Boston, Lynn and Salem constituted Salem Monthly Meeting, where old Friends Meetings began to be affected by the flowering of New England, coincident with the rise of Unitarianism — which was strong incidentally both in Providence and in New Bedford as well. Lynn was the centre of a growing mercantile industrialism, to which a number of Nantucketers had been drawn. The so-called New Light Schism in New Bedford and Lynn from 1818 to 1828 pre-empted the effect of the Hicksites in those two places. A number of leading New Bedford and Lynn Quakers were disowned for responding to an Emerson-like transcendentalism — including some of the Rotch family. The effect of the new lights was to crystalise out, particularly in Philadelphia, a new evangelical orthodoxy, which was responsive to a similar tendency developing among certain well to do British Quaker circles. A new emphasis was put upon the infallibility of scripture and the central place of Christ's divine mission. All intellectual questioning regarding these two basic assumptions was equated with antiChristian activity. Many friends felt instinctively that the new orthodoxy had more in common with evangelical protestantism than it did with the early Friends
THE HICKSITE SEPARATION
19
insistence that personal group experience was the touchstone of reality. Often the advocates of the new orthodoxy seemed to be less aware of the social injustices which wealth brought. And they were often the richest city Quakers. More traditional Friends, such as Elias Hicks, followed in the economic understanding put forward by John Woolman regarding the fruits of oppression. At the same time, Hicks had read some interesting books on Church history, which allowed him to think critically about church doctrine, including scripture, its role, and Jesus Christ, His role. Thus those who responded to Elias Hicks struck at the foundation of both the financial and theological framework of the new orthodoxy. When the orthodox leaders tried to stop Elias Hicks and those who felt as he did from speaking at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the Hicksites withdrew to reorganize their own Yearly Meeting. In fact they proved the majority, except in the city meetings of Philadelphia itself. The famous formula H20 is well to bear in mind for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In New York Yearly Meeting (of which Elias Hicks was a respected leader) the orthodox withdrew — but claimed to be the original body, and sued for all the property — and lost. In Baltimore Yearly Meeting the orthodox were so few they only withdrew — disowned no one, nor sued for property. In Ohio Yearly Meeting a near riot occurred — the orthodox winning the day, complete with their law case. In Indiana Yearly Meeting the Hicksite party withdrew peacefully. North Carolina, Virginia and New England Yearly Meetings, led by London and Ireland Yearly Meetings, stood firm with the orthodox party. In Philadelphia Yearly Meeting the orthodox sued for all the property in New Jersey and lost their suit. In Pennsylvania, the orthodox were content to hold only the four city properties and the Yearly Meeting Boarding School, which those meetings controlled. At least 40 percent of American Quakerism had been pushed out by the orthodox party in a paroxism of self-righteous zeal, which revealed how far they had evolved from the thinking and feeling of early Friends. It happened that the largest migration of Nantucket Friends had been to New York State, where most of the membership remained a part of what came to be known as the Hicksite Yearly Meeting. About a fifth of the membership, urged on by the Philadelphia orthodox, set about disowning four fifths of the membership, as they did the one third of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In New York the orthodox had to build new meetinghouses everywhere, if they could. There they clearly ap peared to be the innovators — while the Hicksites continued to operate as the old body, before the division had come. Lucretia (Coffin) Mott, perhaps the ablest of Nantucketers, was in 1827 a member of the Western District Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia, from which she with-
20
HISTORIC NANTUCKET
drew to join Greene Street Monthly Meeting. Her previous meeting thereupon disowned her. On Nantucket, a good many solid Friends, especially in the North Meeting, had cousins like Lucretia Mott, who were for the most part members of the New York Yearly Meeting. (Hicksite) but technically disowned by a minority in unity with New England Yearly Meeting. On Nantucket, in 1824, the South Congregational Church declared itself to be Unitarian. Was there not a danger that the North Friends Meeting would so go over to the larger body of New York Yearly Meeting Quakers? This would seem to be the fear which beset Sandwich Quarterly Meeting in the summer of 1827, just after the separation started in Philadelphia and New York Yearly Meetings. In any case, perhaps with the participation of New Bedford Friends, who had thrown out the New Lights only four years before, a quarterly meeting committee was named to advise Nantucket on its two monthly meetings and their future. Without giving any reasons, this committee recommended the merging of the two monthly meetings. They were careful not to recommend the laying down of the North Meeting nor to state that Nantucket Monthly Meeting for the Northern District should be laid down. A second committee which was named in the autumn of 1827 had the mandate from Quarterly Meeting to ask that the merger take place. Obed Macy began to keep his contemporary secret record on the 27th of the eleventh month 1827 when the South Meeting (the original Nantucket M.M.) gathered to discuss the mandate handed to them just a month before. Macy reported only one Friend spoke in favour of the merger. He was Cromwell Barnard. Others hesitated. Obed finally suggested a joint committee with the North Meeting — and in any case to wait upon their decision. A month later the South Meeting went ahead with the merger plan — but the North Meeting sat for more than four hours without coming to unity. Some there openly opposed the Quarterly Meeting mandate — and with good reason — normally all monthly meeting changes originate in participant monthly meetings. In the South Meeting only one Friend objected, but he would not hold things up. A group of fifteen or twenty North District Friends then drew up a counter appeal addressed to Yearly Meeting. One reason for objecting was the fact that monthly meeting in the future was envisaged to be held only on first, fourth, seventh and tenth months at the North House. And in credibly, the two preparative meetings were to be merged as well, not to act separately as they had done from 1792 to 1794. In twelfth month it was clear two-thirds of the North Meeting opposed fusion.
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22
HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Notwithstanding, Sandwich Quarterly Meeting in the spring ordered the union to take place in fifth month, which it almost did, but only a dozen or fifteen men Friends from the North Meeting went to the first proposed joint session. It may be presumed that thirty or so regular attenders of the men's meeting stayed at home. There may have been 250 members of the North Meeting at that time. Between emigration and disownment, probably the membership of each meeting had halved in thirty-five years. If this was so, the reunited Nantucket Monthly Meeting then stood at 650 members. Meetings for worship would continue at both meeting houses for another four and a half years. On the face of it there was no really pressing reason to lay down the Northern District Preparative and Monthly Meetings — except as reasoning from presumed doctrinal circumstances might dictate — not a Quaker way to go about things in any case. The Northern District Monthly Meeting not only met on its own in fifth month but also in sixth month, with Barnabas Bunker, a Minister from New York Yearly Meeting, Hicksite — one-time Nantucketer — present. This was too much for some members of that meeting who in dicated that someone was present who by advice of New England Yearly Meeting had no right to be there. Bunker stood up and said he was the person alluded to, but proposed to stay unless the majority asked him to go or that it could be proved he was in "breach of good order". The result was confusion, some urging him to go, others to stay. The meeting got very excited and was adjourned to the afternoon, when Barnabas Bunker absented himself. Possibly his friends did too. In any case, the monthly meeting then agreed to the merger, only if the Preparative Meeting would gather in the North House on Fifth Days — which meant that once a month the South Meeting would miss out its mid-week meeting. Ap parently this was agreed to, and the Northern District Monthly Meeting continued to meet into 1829, when its affairs had time to be wound down. A month after Barnabas Bunker had appeared on Nantucket, the Orthodox arranged for Thomas Shillitoe, George Jones and Ann Jones and Elizabeth Pittsfield to descend upon the Island. The first three had come from Great Britain to strengthen the hands of the Orthodox party, particularly in Philadelphia. The fourth was one of the Philadelphia establishment. With them came a good many New England Yearly Meeting worthies. Obed Macy noted that they held an especially large appointed meeting for sailors — who were annoyed that they had nothing special to say to them. Obviously the four worthies had, should we say, "other fish to fry". The lid tightly clamped on — to change the metaphor — Nantucket Quakerism remained quiet for two more years. Then in sixth
THE HICKSITE SEPARATION
23
month 1830 the Island was host to three Baltimore Yearly Meeting Friends: Hannah Wilson, Minister, Clerk to the women's Yearly Meeting; Ann Brown and Ruth Scott. Now all were active Hicksites, but unlike all others in America — not formally disowned. Was their visit planned with this fact in mind? Who invited them? On these points Friend Obed is quiet. The visitors put up with Mark and Judith Coffin. A deputation from the elders of Nantucket Monthly Meeting appeared to tell the visitors not to sit on the high seats nor to speak. Hannah Wilson replied she was glad to sit anywhere. And they sat in the body of the South Meeting that day. But after half an hour of silence, Hannah stood up and spoke for twenty minutes. No one said anything to them or about this. In the af ternoon they were quiet at the North House. This was obviously a First Day — the date being the 16th of Sixth Month. The visitors were refused either meeting house for an appointed meeting, so they managed to procure the Methodist Church on Main Street. It was a large meeting which gathered, some hundreds went, including from 50 to 100 Friends. This was on Second Day evening. On Fifth Day two visitors from Nine Partners Monthly Meeting (Hicksite) put in, both Ministers, both disowned by the local orthodox. All five visitors attended Monthly Meeting on Sixth Day, at which time Hannah Wilson gave a brief sermon. Still there was no objection forth coming. The women had an appointed meeting at the Insane Asylum at Quaise that afternoon, and on the morrow they left on the steamer. So far so good. But on First Day, the 23rd, the storm broke. There was a large company at the South Meeting House. Benjamin Mitchell and William Clark sat toward the back of the men's side downstairs. A visiting Or thodox Friend Mary Allen spoke at length. Toward the end of the hour, William Clark got up and started to speak. Samuel Macy, up front, asked him to sit down. Mary Allen whispered something to the elder opposite. They shook hands and the people generally got up and started out — William Clark was still standing, but saying nothing. When all but about twenty people had left, Clark resumed his message. Meanwhile Benjamin Mitchell (who was no doubt the same man who had years before been prominent in the North Meeting) also spoke up, saying "the Service of the Meeting was not quite over". But he did not advise the people to stay — most in fact left. Benjamin preached after William, and then they shook hands. In the afternoon the two Nine Partners men both preached at the North Meeting at length, where no effort Was made to stop them what soever. On the morrow or the day after the two visitors also withdrew.
24
HISTORIC NANTUCKET
The summer quarterly meeting was held on Nantucket without any problems and as usual. But at Monthly Meeting held in the North House at the end of Seventh Month, Gilbert Coffin, one of the elders, was complained against for staying to the end of Benjamin Mitchell's Meeting, as the rump session at the South House was now called. Gilbert, ob viously annoyed, "made some observations on the subject" and then with drew. Peleg Macy, Prince Gardner and Charles Stubbs the Clerk, were asked to visit Gilbert Coffin — and if not satisfied, to recommend his losing the status of elder.
Friends' Meeting-house, Nantucket.
Interior of the Last Quaker Meeting House on Nantucket. Preserved by the Nantucket Historical Association.
A week later, Silvanus Macy, a one time very active overseer and exclerk of the South Meeting, was visited by two overseers for the same reason. Four days later on the 10th of Eighth Month, it was the turn of Obed Macy. Now normally two, or at most four overseers were asked to meet with presumed "culprits". In this case Macy found eight overseers, that is "sixteen eyes" as he described them, waiting for him. Obviously Friend Obed was well known for his quick wits. Cromwell Barnard, Charles Stubbs, Monthly Meeting clerk, and Prince Gardner were among them. In some ways Prince Gardner Jr. was the protagonist. He was then aged 48, twenty years younger than was Obed Macy. Prince was
THE HICKSITE SEPARATION
25
grandson of Robert Gardner, whose role had been as great as that of Obed's grandfather, Richard Macy, the great wharf builder. But Prince would come forth in the Ministry, while Obed remained faithfully quiet. And Obed had served on Prince's marriage committee in 1803. The overseers tried to get it across that it was "breach of good order" to stay behind when meeting was broken, especially to listen to a disowned person; that Obed should recognise the "wrong" he and others had done to himself and the Society of Friends in staying behind. The Society of Friends from 1760 onwards had become more and more sensitive lest any reproach should be brought upon it by any member violating any of its rules. At first hesitantly, and then with well oiled and expeditious machinery, the Monthly Meetings systematically "disowned" in dependently minded Friends. To marry out was the really red flag to wave at the bull-headed elders. But to travel on armed ships, to join the Free Masons, or to neglect meetings for worship, all brought forth the misplaced zeal of the "visitors". Obed Macy knew very well that one mis-step brought into train an inevitable shove down the exit chute. Of course, one could appeal in theory to Quarterly and Yearly Meeting, but perhaps only half a dozen times had any appeal changed a verdict in the experience of New England Monthly Meeting. The only way to beat the rap was to prove the evidence to be flimsy — and this led inevitably to legalistic juggling — which was supposedly to be avoided in Monthly Meeting arbitration. So Obed quickly asked why there had been no objection made to Hannah Wilson's preaching. And why particularly, he asked, had several of the overseers sat through Benjamin Mitchell's preaching on First Day afternoon, if it was he they objected to. Obed felt, in the light of these foregoing facts that Friends were at liberty to go or to stay on that First Day morning. Further he suggested "that there was great danger in over-acting". There was indeed. In fact over a hundred Friends were disowned on this one issue, almost one-sixth of the Meeting already weakened by over-zealous cutting off. [To be concluded.] Robert J. Leach has been engaged in research on the Society of Friends history and activities on Nantucket during the 18th and 19th centuries. He has written several articles for the Proceedings and Historic Nan tucket, and more recently has prepared a series of tapes concerned with his study of the Nantucket Quakers. Some of these are already on file in the Library of the Peter Foulger Museum. Mr. Leach has been a teacher at the International School in Geneva, Switzerland, for more than a quarter century. He is planning to spend another summer research trip on Nantucket this year.
26
Sankaty Light Sighted at Sea Forty-seven Miles Away
WHILE IN COMMAND of the U.S.S. Wasp, the great aircraft carrier, Captain J. S. Gillooly, U. S. N., sighted Sankaty Light while over 47 miles at sea, when approaching the coast on a homeward passage. A letter received from him several weeks ago further explains the situation, and reads as follows:
"In September of 1970, my wife and I visited friends living on Nantucket Island and went through your Museum. While there, I noticed a sign that indicated some ship at sea had seen the Sankaty head light at some distance. "I was then the Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Wasp and we had, earlier in the month of Sep tember, passed Sankaty head light and had identified her at a considerable greater distance than you had recorded. When we returned to the ship, I instructed my navigator to examine his log and to prepare the enclosed memorandum. "As will happen, I never got around to sending this to you. In keeping with the saying'Better late than never', please use this memorandum as you see fit. Sincerely, J.F. Gillooly Captain, US Navy (Retired)"
SANKATY LIGHT SIGHTED AT SEA
27
MEMORANDUM FROM: Navigator
USS WASP DATE: 1 October 1970
TO: Commanding Officer Subj: Sighting of Sankkaty Head Light, Nantucket Isl. 1. Following is the data concerning sighting of Sankaty Head Light on 7-8 September 1970: a. At 072300Q loom of light held bearing 356° T while WASP was 45.5 miles away. b. At 080236Q loom of light held bearing 048° T while WASP was 47.5 miles away. c. Computed range for sighting (horizon effect): Lighthouse 158' = WASP bridge 85' = Predicted range =
14.5 mile range 10,6 mile range 25.1 miles
d. Misc. data: Sankaty Head Light is rated at 3,200,000 candlepower, with a nominal visual range of 29 miles (clear air, unlimited height of eye). The sighting of the loom of the light at 45-47 miles is a function of the light strength, the visibility, and the height of eye of the observer. All of these conditions were in our favor on 7-8 Sept., thus the long range sighting. e. Diagram of sightings:
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28
The Path Along the Bluff SOME EIGHTY YEARS ago, Mrs. Abbie Ransom, of Nantucket, wrote a tribute to that unique "Path Along The Bluff," which runs from the village of'Sconset to the lighthouse at Sankaty Head, in the form of a poem which reads as follows: Have you followed the path along the bluff When the sky is gray and the sea is rough, When, shoreward thickening, the fog drifts down 'Till homes are the wraiths of a phantom town? Have your feet marked time with the martial surge, Your gaze been fixed where the rider winds urge Their swift horses on, unfettered and free, Whipping the rack from the crest of the sea? Do you know the path when the moon roams high Her wonder course in a fathomless sky, And her silver sheen on the sea is spread Like lilies of love o'er the wave-tombed dead? Or again when the moorlands stretch away, In the golden glow of an August day, When the very air is a rhapsody Of the Past, the Now, and the Yet-to-be? I have followed the path to Sankaty Light When the moors were brown and the frost was white, With the sun a ball on the ocean's rim, Where the Indian summer breathed with him. From the north to the south a circle swept, On the far horizon a soft haze slept; To the west the moorlands; above, the sky; In all the vast silence, just God and I.
A Night in the Ice Fields on Board Steamer Nantucket IN THE PRESENT era of marine transportation whenever a "freezeup" has prevented the motor vessels leaving or entering the harbor there is the excellent alternative of travel by airplane. But, early in this century such was not the case — the steamboat was the only link with the mainland when heavy ice prevented the use of other craft. Many unusual happenings occurred during the winter months of embargo by ice fields, and one of these took place in February, 1905, when passengers hoping to leave the island had an unique experience. The last days of January were cold and breezy, and the ice had formed to a thickness keeping the boat in port. Monday, Jan. 31 brought some hope of a break-out as a snow-storm in the early morning was succeeded by rain and a southeasterly wind, and the ice fields outside the jetties moved out into the Sound. But a change developed during the afternoon and evening, with the wind backing into the northwest and the temperature dropping rapidly. Feb. 1 found the ice embargo again in place, and the next day was a duplicate weather-wise. Thursday, Feb. 3, came in with a mild trend, with the wind again settling in the southeast and some snow and rain falling. Seams appearing in the ice between Brant Point and the jetties promised further hope, and Captain Furber decided to attempt to break out of theTiarbor on the following morning, Feb. 4, and shortly after daybreak the sidewheel steamer Nantucket got under way from the wharf. At this time there were only five passengers who had to decided to brave the trip—Cromwell G. Macy, of New York, James Phillips of Providence, a Mr. Brush, of Boston, and two young men whose names have not been ascertained. Captain Furber knew that on the other side of the Sound there were Nantucketers anxious to get home and a week's collection of mail, newspapers, and provisions—ready to be loaded. The troubles began for the steamer as she approached Brant Point. After two hours of bucking the heavy ice the Nantucket managed to round the Point but then began to encounter even thicker ice, piled up by the tides. The hours passed, with only a few feet of progress. Between 3 o'clock that afternoon, and 5 o'clock the steamer managed to reach the passage between the two jetties, where she at last reached an impassable stretch and was held fast.
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A NIGHT IN THE ICE FIELDS
31
After a few hours of watching the steamer edge her way through the ice the passengers passed the time as best they could. All manner of means were used to amuse themselves. Several kinds of games were played; cards were at first enjoyed and then finally abandoned; stories of their experiences provided a few hours of entertainment; accounts of books, plays, sports and festivals became a last resort. One of the passengers, Cromwell G. Macy, wrote of his experience: "Some time after the sun had gone down behind Tuckernuck, Captain Furber, in whom the company maintained unquestioning confidence, apportioned the short supply of staterooms among his involuntary guests, and all hands prepared for a night just beyond the harbor lights. The restless vigilance of the captain, however, soon discovered that the ice was parting and that the boat was about to sail to some unseen land. The steamer's officers thereupon put her in gala trim, with her electric lamps lighted, and the search-light cast over the ice to the jetty end to the surprise of the belated coot and the circling gull. In excursion apparel the officers by tireless efforts, way towards morning, succeeded in main taining a favorable berth until the sun, looking over Sankaty Head, found our little community snugly locked in the drift ice just within the western jetty." All through that night the N a n t u c k e t remained in the grip of the ice fields, being carried to and fro just off the jetties, unable to free herself, entirely controlled by the tidal flow of the heavy ice. In this perilous situation Captain Furber spent a sleepless night, with regular con sultation with his officers and chief engineer. At daybreak, a seam in the ice enabled Captain Furber to make a turn, and an hour later he was headed for the channel leading back into the harbor. Slowly but surely the Nantucket forced her way toward Brant Point, to reenter the inner harbor and regain her berth at Steamboat Wharf at 1:30 o'clock Saturday afternoon, February 5. Captain Furber received the highest praise for his judgment by both passengers and crew. He had previously stated that if he did not attempt the break-out it would be a long time before the Nantucket would make her way to Woods Hole. Captain Furber's observation proved only too true. During the next three weeks the steamer remained at her berth, and the ice embargo continued until February 25, when the Nantucket finally was able to make a trip across the Sound. In the interim, the Revenue Cutter Mackinac steamed around to the east end of the island, landing passengers, mail and provisions at Quidnet, at last breaking one of the longest freeze-ups on record. „jr \ §
Coasting Schooner and Cat Boat at Steamboat Wharf—1893
