An Unusual Relic

20 HISTORIC NANTUCKET ship Louis Philippe, which had lost her rudder. This was in the year 1847, when the ship was towed first to Edgartown and then to New York, where she was bound.

During the Civil War, the Massachusetts was used around Fortress Monroe by the Federal government, having been named the John W. Pentz. She had served Nantucket well from her maiden voyage in 1842 to 1855, when she was sold to another line.

The silver pitcher was manufactured in Boston by Lincoln and Read, Silversmiths, and brought to Nantucket by a Colonel Hatch who presented it to Captain Phinney on behalf of the parties represented by the engraving.

Another article of interest is a beautifully constructed whalebone and whale-ivory swift, and made on board the ship Warren, of Warren, R. I., in 1834 by Captain Jonathan Mayhew, during a whaling voyage. Upon the ship's return Captain Mayhew presented it to his wife. The box containing the swift was also constructed by Captain Mayhew. Some fifty years later, in 1898, it was a gift to Captain Mayhew's grand-daughter by F. W. Paddack of Nantucket.

As a relic of considerable history, in this same case is a rosewood box which contained a silver chronometer watch. This was presented to Captain David Paterson, a famous fisherman and pilot, for his rescue of the crew of the ship Elwine Frederick in April, 1863, when she was lost on Great Point Rip, while on a voyage to New York from Cardiff, Wales, loaded with coal. The presenter was the King of Prussia.

ONE OF THE smallest pieces of historical interest at the Peter Foulger Museum is a strip of thin boarding, measuring 10 by 3 inches, with a chamfered edge, which was found among some relics at the Fair Street building several years ago. On it was written in ink, the following: "Saturday, March 23, 1895 Horace L. Gibbs and James A. Backus are putting up this ceiling today. W. R. Starbuck, Tax Collector. Please put this in the Museum."

The old office of the Tax Collector was restored in the Old Town Building, on the Washington St. side, when the Nantucket Historical Trust made extensive repairs to the structure in 1969 and then presented the building to the Nantucket Historical Association. The office has been refurbished by the Association and fitted out in the period of the last century.

Collector William R. Starbuck would be delighted to know the slender piece is still being preserved, and we feel sure that the contractors who were making history in their own right would be somewhat amused at the impish initiative of Tax Collector Starbuck in 1895.