Editorial: The Freedom of the Land

The Freedom of the Land

CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief, the first settlers of Nantucket came to this Island not for freedom of religion but for freedom to build homes on land that was free from political control. The Puritan theocracy was the power in the province of Massachusetts Bay; and this power was both religious and political. The Nantucket settlers were determined to escape this control and obtained by purchase the western end of Nantucket, which was then under the jurisdiction of the Colony of New York.

With the settlement they established land control through the creation of a corporation — the Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Land of Nantucket. This guaranteed the ownership of their homestead land or farms to the individual proprietor; the remainder of the land was designated as sheep common land, and each proprietor had a share or shares in this common land.

The story of how this common land was managed for a century and a half, how it was eventually dismembered by a group of selfish men, how the Proprietorship was legally maneuvered into the hands of an individual, and how the State's agency which was supposed to protect the use of land in the Commonwealth failed to carry out its functions — all these facts make a remarkable story of how an original idea was contrived so as to create the present situation.

The inhabitants of Nantucket are now faced with the inescapable fact that drastic steps are necessary to preserve the character of the land. We have an historic island. To keep the open stretches of the heathland — the old sheep common land, the beaches, the swamp thickets, the surroundings of the ponds — is to protect pur heritage. The visitor of the future comes to Nantucket because of the physical aspects of the past which should be preserved and which will serve as a vitally important segment of our American story. The responsibility is ours. Those who seek to avoid the issue are turning their backs on the obvious results of the present trend of using the old land for private rather than public gain.

— Edouard A. Stackpole