Cleavelands on the Islands

28

by Theodore C. Wyman AS I HAVE written before, any genealogy seems to be made up of bits and pieces gathered from here and there. And so it has been with the genealogies of various branches of my family. I had put to-gether a genealogy of my grandmother's family, the Cleavelands, and then while on a visit to Nantucket in 1972 I was able to put to-gether what I called Cleavelands On The Islands from records at the Whaling Museum and from records at The New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston. 11

During the ten years before the war when I worked for the steamship company on Nantucket I had known, in a general way, that some of my grandmother's family, the Cleavelands, had lived on the Vineyard. And then as I worked on a history of the Cleaveland family I found that a very large number of her family had lived on the Vineyard and on Nantucket. Not only had they lived on Nantucket, but several of them had been Captains of whaling ships and they had descended from the same Moses Cleaveland from whom I had descended.

It was on that visit to Nantucket in 1972 that I was able to find the grave of Capt. Henry Cleaveland (1798-1875) who was Captain of the whale ship Richard Mitchell. The inscription on his gravestone was: Capt. Henry Cleveland 1798-1875 Rebecca, wife of Henry Cleveland 1809-1878

From records in the whaling museum there is:

1835 — Ship Richard Mitchell — 385 tons Captain Henry C. Cleveland Managing owner or agent — P. Mitchell & Sons Whaling ground — Pacific Ocean Date of sailing — July 20 Arrival — Dec. 27, 1838 Result of voyage — Sperm-oil-1172 bbls Whale-oil-937 bbls

CLEAVELANDS ON THE ISLANDS 29

Now we come to more information about Captain Henry Cleaveland in the publication SEA HISTORY, Fall, 1979. The information is in The Niantic: Participant in Creating a New California by James P. Delgado. On April 28, 1978, workers excavating for a new 19-story office building in San Francisco, uncovered the remains of an old wooden ship at the corner of Clay and Sansome Streets. The timbers uncovered have been identified as the bottom section of the famous Gold Rush ship

Niantic.

There is the story of her early history and voyages to the Orient, and then her first whaling voyage in the Pacific. And then there is something of especial interest to me about when Captain Henry Cleaveland took command of her. And so, from information in the story of the Niantic by James P. Delgado:

The Niantic had been sold off as a whaling ship in 1844, and then sold again to the whaling firm of Burr and Smith of Rhode Island. And Captain Henry Cleaveland of West Tisbury, Massachusetts took command of her with his three sons as first, second and third mates. What had started out to be another whaling voyage ended when, after rounding Cape Horn and arriving at Payte, Peru, Captain Cleaveland learned of the discovery of gold in California. And a message from Burr and Smith ordered him to abandon whaling temporarily and sail for Panama where thousands of gold seekers awaited passage to San Francisco.

After arriving at Panama on April 7, 1849, Captain Cleaveland signed on 249 passengers and on May 2, 1849 the Niantic set sail for San Francisco. The arrival there was July 5, 1849, and then the crew began to melt away. The log breaks off on the 12th of July — Captain Cleaveland and his sons are ashore with no crew to take the Niantic out of San Francisco.

The story continues with how, in fast-growing San Francisco, labor and building materials were in short supply and very expensive. And of how the Niantic was hauled ashore at high tide, her masts taken out, her rigging and some of her ballast removed, and she was used as a storeship. The Niantic was used to store merchandise, private luggage, and was also in use as a hotel and offices.

Eventually, the filled up space that surrounded her was built upon for some distance and new streets ran between her and the sea. Then the entire waterfront in San Francisco was destroyed on May 2, 1851, when fire swept the hills of San Francisco clean. All but the bottom of the

30 HISTORIC NANTUCKET

Niantic burned, and the bottom made good foundations for further building.

So there is one more of the bits and pieces that add to the history of my grandmother's family, and to the history of San Francisco. Nantucket and San Francisco are of especial interest to me because of the years I lived on the island, and because of the time I lived in San Francisco. I stepped ashore there in November of 1930 while the Depression was well underway, and eventually found work with the Coast and Geodetic Survey doing hydrography along the coast. Then later other surveys taking observations of the stars below San Francisco and in the desert to determine the latitude and longitude of benchmarks used in surveys of the country.

All through the years when I worked on the genealogy of my family, I have come to realize that, in a way, I have been surrounded by family history. There were the years I had worked in Woburn, after the war, where some of my ancestors had settled in 1640. Then Boston, where many of them had lived and worked, and Nantucket. And during the years at sea I had made voyages to South America and other parts of the world where they had been. Now there is San Francisco and the chances are that I walked past the old Niantic many times without realizing she was there.