The Last Nantucket "Daily"

E B EN E Z E R P O RT E R MA SO N 19

Mason's craving to make more and more telescopic observations. Then, in the last year of his life he undertook the arduous task of joining a survey expedition, August 24 to October 29,1840, to determine the exact boundary between the state of Maine and Canada. On his return to New Kaven, in mid-November then, in seriously failing health, he finished his treatise, "Introduction to Practical Astronomy, Designed as a Supplement to Olmsted's Astronomy". One authority described this as "superior to anything of the kind in any language."

On December 1 Mason started on his long final journey home to Richmond where he arrived in Mid-December. In his last letter, written December 19 to Olmsted, he regrets that he could not write a preface to the treatise, but still optimistic that he might do so in four or five days, but "If I fail upon it, why, you can write one, or the treatise can go without." He died a week later, December 26,1840, age 21 years 19 days.

Dr. Hoffleit was for a number of years Director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Vestal Street, and lived in the cottage next door.

THE LAST DAILY paper published on Nantucket was "The 'Sconset Visitor", issued from the Journal office during the summer of 1889. The previous season "The 'Sconset Pump" had been issued as a daily from The Inquirer and Mirror office, but neither was a paying investment, and each was a diminutive affair.

In 1873 S. Heath Rich issued an amateur journal from a small hand press, it being a four-page sheet, 8¥2 x 12 inches, called "The Magnet", two columns to a page, six inches long. Later in the 70's Fred V. Fuller, Albert G. Brock and other young men of that day published a little paper called "The Sherburne News", which flourished for a brief period. For an amateur journal this was a very creditable production.

Logbook of the E d wa rd Cary of Nantucket