Notes on the History of Quakerism on Nantucket

19

THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY of Friends (commonly known as Quakers) was the first and for a long time the largest organized religious group on Nantucket. The earliest meeting for worship began in the house of Nathaniel and Mary Starbuck in old Sherborne, where an organized Friends Meeting (Nantucket Monthly Meeting) was set up in 1708. For a hundred years over half of the population belonged to the several Friends Meetings in Nantucket town, and the island was a regular stopping place for travelling Quaker ministers from England and the mainland. Thomas Chalkley, John Richardson and Thomas Story in the earliest days; John Woolman in 1747; and Elias Hicks and Joseph Gurney in the nineteenth century, visited and preached here, together with many other Friends from New England Yearly Meeting and elsewhere. Nantucket produced her own distinguished Friends as well, including Elihu Coleman, first Quaker publisher of an anti-slavery tract in New England (1733), William Rotch, famous whaler-merchant, and Lucretia Coffin Mott, abolitionist and champion of the rights of women.

In the nineteenth century schisms and disownments weakened the Society on the island, and these, with the emigration consequent upon the decline of whaling on the island, caused a gradual decrease in the number of Friends on Nantucket until they had practically disappeared by 1900.

The Meeting House on Fair Street, one of a number once in use, was built in 1838 as a school for the children of Friends who worshipped in a larger building next door. Later Friends sold their Meeting House and moved into what had been their school. Since 1894 it has been the property of the Nantucket Historical Association.

Since 1939 members of the Religious Society of Friends, here for the summer from off-island, have been granted permission to use the old Meeting House for worship according to the Quaker manner on Sunday mornings during July and August. Although under the oversight of the Friends of New England Yearly Meeting, the group is without formal organization. These Friends are glad to share together and with others the communion of worship.

The Religous Society of Friends is today one of the recognized Christian denominations with about a hundred and twenty thousand members in the United States and about eighty thousand in other parts of the world. Present day Friends feel that the old Quaker principles and manner of worship are applicable also in modern life.