Historic Nantucket, Fall 2021, Vol. 71 No. 4 by Nantucket Historical Association

FALL 2021 | VOLUME 71, NO. 4

FALL 2021 | VOLUME 71, NO.4

Table of Contents: From the Board President and Interim Gosnell Executive Director | pg. 1 Member Story: Nantucket Lightship Basket Lore: Pat Perry by Karen T. Butler | pg. 5 Oceans Unheard: Nantucket’s Nineteenth-Century Deaf Children by R. A. R. Edwards and Amanda Keenan | pg. 6 William Owen: Holokahiki by Frances Ruley Karttunen with Cameron Texter | pg. 16 The Second Voyage of Charles Ramsdell by Amy Hartman | pg. 26 News, Notes & Highlights | pg. 34

Correction to Historic Nantucket, vol. 71, no. 3: The following supporters made tribute gifts in memory of Robert E. Tonkin: Roberta & Gary Hamblin Mr. & Mrs. Bill Humphries S. Jarvin Levison Mr. & Mrs. Allan G. Mathis, Jr. Suzanne Morrissey Nancy & Bob Puff Bill Stevens Susan J. Texeira Kelby Hammett & Ben Walkuski

Cover: The lower jawbones of a 65-foot blue whale were installed outside of the Whaling Museum on November 9, 2021. The whale died at sea and washed up on Nantucket’s north shore in July 1948. The jaw was donated in 1976 by the estate of George H. “Bunt” Mackay, who had claimed salvage rights to the whale’s body and had kept the jaw. Prior to 1972 it was legal to keep whale bones found on the beach, but the Marine Mammal Protection Act now prohibits people from keeping such things without applying for a federal permit.

Board of Trustees 2021–22 Chip Carver, President Susan Blount, Vice President David Worth, Vice President John Flannery, Treasurer Sarah Alger, Clerk Nancy Abbey Patricia Anathan Lucinda Ballard Olivia Charney Wylie Collins Amanda Cross Annabelle Fowlkes Cam Gammill Graham Goldsmith Ashley Gosnell Mody Robert Greenspon Wendy Hudson Carl Jelleme Kathryn Ketelsen, Friends Representative Carla McDonald Britt Newhouse Valerie Paley Marla Sanford Denise Saul, Friends Representative Janet Sherlund, Trustee Emerita Carter Stewart Melinda Sullivan Jason Tilroe Finn Wentworth Kelly Williams Alisa A. Wood Ex Officio Johanna Richard, Interim Gosnell Executive Director HISTORIC NANTUCKET (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554–1016; (508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228–5618, info@nha.org. For information visit www.nha.org. ©2021 by the Nantucket Historical Association. Editors: Michael Harrison and Amelia Holmes Designer: Amanda Quintin Design all photos by nha staff unless otherwise noted.

FROM THE BOARD PRESIDENT AND INTERIM GOSNELL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Reflections With the trees magnificently lit in the museum and the year coming to an end, we find ourselves reflecting on 2021. As you read through the many events and accomplishments detailed below, we are sure you will be as impressed as we are. With year-round residents receiving free admission to the Whaling Museum and Hadwen House, we welcomed more than 70,000 visitors, what we would expect in a normal year. The Oldest House and Old Mill were free to all during the summer. Despite another year of unpredictability, the NHA continued to host programs, both online and in person. Virtual lectures took place in the spring, focusing on topics related to Black history and archaeology, and this fall, we reintroduced in-person programming, including the beloved Whale Hunt and Essex Gam in Gosnell Hall. The NHA’s affiliation with the Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum came to fruition in March, and the association is excited to provide a larger platform to promote the story of Nantucket lightship baskets. In the Education Department, over 360 youth and adults participated in decorative arts classes this year. The high school internship program continued with a mix of in-person and virtual sessions, and four Nantucket High School graduates were awarded NHA Scholarships. Over 10,000 children visited the Discovery Center, and 400 youths engaged in Hands on History crafts during the summer. Nantucket By Design was a huge success, with Nate Berkus as the signature keynote speaker. The Baskets & Bubbly auction was a hit. During the Thanksgiving holiday, the walls in McCausland Gallery once again were filled with over 80 wreaths waiting to be handed to the highest bidders. In the Research Library, staff responded to more than 800 research inquiries from around the world. The NHA’s collection of logbooks have been fully digitized, and volunteers transcribed more than 6,000 pages, allowing for more in-depth and comprehensive research.

We presented eleven new and refreshing exhibitions including the spectacular Anne Ramsdell Congdon’s Nantucket Renaissance, the Spirits Within Us holographic experience, an updated Road from Abolition to Suffrage, and Weaving Nantucket’s Past into Its Future, our inaugural collaboration with the Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum. Our properties received some refurbishments this year. We completed the Thomas Macy Warehouse renovation and re-opened the building this summer with a timely exhibition by ReMain Nantucket about coastal resiliency. A new HVAC/climate control system has been installed in the collections center, and the Hadwen House now has a lift to the first floor for accessibility. We thank the staff for their incredible dedication and talent in making 2021 a success. We look forward to next year, when we will see a new executive director taking the reins. As we plan for 2022, we hope to reinvigorate the signature daily programs and learning opportunities in the museum, present new and exceptional exhibitions, continue to host unique programming virtually and in-person, provide robust and engaging educational offerings, and cater to our numerous communities. Many thanks to our supporters, who ensure that the NHA continues to do amazing work as a vital year-round contributor to the island. If you have not given a gift to the Annual Fund, please consider supporting the NHA. We look forward to seeing you at Festival of Trees and in our halls next year. Sincerely,

Chip Carver President, Board of Trustees

Johanna Richard Interim Gosnell Executive Director

We preserve and interpret the history We preserve and interpret the history of Nantucket through our programs, of Nantucket through our programs, collections, and properties, in order to collections, and properties, in order to promote the island’s significance and promote the island’s significance and foster an appreciation of it foster an appreciation of it among all audiences. among all audiences.

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The NHA celebrates community with programs, exhibits, events, and scholarly lectures aimed to entertain and foster the many groups it serves. Gifts to the Annual Fund support every aspect of the NHA and allow the organization to fulfill its mission through outreach and collaborations.

Support the NHA with a gift to the Annual Fund today. Support the NHA with a gift to the Annual Fund today. Visit NHA.ORG Visit NHA.ORG or call (508) 228-1894 or call (508) 228-1894

Photograph by Katie Kaiser Photograph by Katie Kaiser

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1894 Founders Society Through this Society, the Board of Trustees recognizes the cumulative giving by individuals who assist with the NHA’s annual operating needs. 1894 Founders Society members contribute $3,000 and up toward the annual fund, membership, and fundraising events, as well as to exhibitions and collections, plus scholarship and educational programs. Their generous support is greatly appreciated and welcomed by the community. $50,000 and above President’s Circle Anne Delaney & Chip Carver Connie & Tom Cigarran Amanda Cross Franci Neely Diane & Britt Newhouse Melinda & Paul Sullivan Kim & Finn Wentworth $25,000 to $49,999 Susan Blount & Rick Bard Ritchie Battle Maureen & Edward Bousa Kelly Williams & Andrew Forsyth Carol† & Richard Lowry Laura & Bob Reynolds Kathy Salmanowitz Helen & Chuck Schwab Jason Tilroe $10,000 to $24,999 Anonymous (2) Nancy & Doug Abbey Patricia Nilles & Hunter Boll Anne Marie & Doug Bratton Christy & Bill Camp Mary Jane & Glenn Creamer John DeCiccio Deborah & Bruce Duncan Tracy & John Flannery Annabelle & Gregory Fowlkes Nancy & Chuck Geschke Shelley & Graham Goldsmith Mark Gottwald Susan Zises Green Susanne & Zenas Hutcheson Carl Jelleme Diane Pitt & Mitch Karlin

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Adrienne & S. Dillard Kirby Helen & Will Little Sharon & Frank Lorenzo Helen Lynch Bonnie & Peter McCausland Victoria McManus & John McDermott Ashley Gosnell Mody Nancy & John Nichols Carter & Chris Norton Mary & Al Novissimo Liz & Jeff Peek Ella Prichard Candy & William Raveis Susan & Ken Richardson Margaret & John Ruttenberg Denise & Andrew Saul Janet & Rick Sherlund Mary Farland & Don Shockey Georgia Snell Kathleen & Bob Stansky Harriet & Warren Stephens Merrielou & Ned Symes Ann & Peter Taylor Phoebe & Bobby Tudor Louise Turner Liz & Geoff Verney Kirsten & Peter Zaffino $5,000 to $9,999 Susan Akers Patricia & Thomas Anathan Mary Randolph Ballinger Pamela & Max Berry Susan & Bill Boardman Richard Bressler Laura & Bill Buck Donald Burns

Drs. James Burruss & Mary Fontaine Laurie & Bob Champion Jenny & Wylie Collins Marvin Davidson Robyn & John Davis Lisa & Porter Dawson Elizabeth Miller & James Dinan Jennifer & Stephen Dolente Ana & Michael Ericksen Elizabeth & Michael Galvin Andrea & Ted Giletti Barbara & Ed Hajim Kaaren & Charles Hale Amy & Brett Harsch Gloria & Jeffrey Holtman Barbara & Amos Hostetter Wendy Hubbell Jill & Stephen Karp Diane & Art Kelly Anne & Todd Knutson Coco & Arie Kopelman Jean Doyen de Montaillou & Michael Kovner Paula & Bruce Lilly Debra & Vincent Maffeo Holly & Mark Maisto Carla & Jack McDonald Ronay & Richard Menschel Sarah & Jeff Newton Trisha Passaro Nancy Pfund & Phillip Polakoff Gary McBournie & William Richards Crystal & Rich Richardson

Sharon & Francis Robinson Linda Saligman Deirdre & Joseph Smialowski Garrett Thornburg Alisa & Alastair Wood Leslie Forbes & David Worth Carlyn & Jon Zehner $3,000 to $4,999 Gale Arnold Janet & Sam Bailey Linda Holliday & Bill Belichick Olivia & Felix Charney Marcia Weber & James Flaws Kathy & H. Crowell† Freeman Karyn Frist Ann & John Johnson Mary Ann & Paul Judy Kathryn Ketelsen Martha Dippell & Daniel Korengold Diane & David Lilly Alice & J. Thomas Macy Ann McCollum Judy & Stephan Newhouse Candace Platt Janet Robinson Nancy Romankiewicz Bonnie Sacerdote Nancy & Joe Serafini Melanie & Eric Silverman Kate Lubin & Glendon Sutton This list represents donations from January–December 2020. † deceased

To learn more or become a member of the Society, call (508) 228-1894 ext. 122 or email giving@nha.org

MEMBER STORY

Nantucket Lightship Basket Lore: Pat Perry By Karen T. Butler

I truly love all the lightship baskets I have ever woven, albeit always with a teacher’s guidance. I even have to admit I selfishly savor my baskets. I am most definitely an amateur at this. They are not “perfect baskets” by a long shot. Yet my fantasy is that someday my children and grandchildren will clamor to have my baskets with all their flaws that are unique to my baskets alone as precious heirlooms. Obviously, that is pure fantasy, but nonetheless a fun daydream that brings a quiet smile to my face. Now on the other hand, my good friend Pat Perry has truly, truly created an heirloom Nantucket lightship basket of professional, even museum, quality. Her basket is almost longer than she is tall. It is a beautiful, uniquely creative work of art. Above and beyond that, without a doubt, her basket’s most profound quality is that this basket is woven from her heart. It has soul. Long before her first grandchild came into this world, she was inspired by a book she read that urged everyone to “create something beautiful in life.” That line prompted her to create a cradle for future grandchildren that might someday arrive. As she watched a video on how to make this huge project, a line from the video stayed with her: “this basket will take a long time.” The video repeated that line several times. Pat said it did take a long time. It took well over nine months to make this one-of-a-kind heirloom. She added jokingly that it felt like giving birth to a baby, and what a beautiful baby she created. Over time, Pat has had five grandchildren, and all have slept in this exquisite cradle. On the side of this treasure, she has embedded five quarter boards, one for each grandchild, with scrimshaw designs that she thought uniquely reflect each child individually. Thinking about it, this is such a joyful thing to leave for her family to use and have for generations to come. Pat has acknowledged with love each new member of her family as they arrived. Also, this will always be for them a reminder of Pat, and in addition, a beautiful expression of her love for her family. Listening to Pat describe the process made me realize that no matter what level of expertise one has in creating a Nantuck-

et lightship basket, they are all historic heirlooms, each one unique unto itself. No two baskets are exactly the same. Most significantly, they show our love for the craft of weaving lightship baskets and love for those whom we see as ultimately receiving them and treasuring them.

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The American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, now the American School for the Deaf. Lithograph by H. P. Arms Jr., 1881. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

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Oceans Unheard: Nantucket’s Nineteenth-Century Deaf Children By R. A. R. Edwards and Amanda Keenan

n 1822, the Nantucket Inquirer newspaper reprinted an editorial from the Charleston Courier entitled “The Deaf and Dumb.” It asserted the widespread contemporary belief that people who were born unable to hear or speak were “shut out of life”—they stood as “a sad and silent monument amid the joys of others.” The editorial asked readers to imagine “carrying within your bosom the buried seeds of happiness which is to never grow, of intellect which is never to burst forth, of usefulness which is never to germinate . . . .” The article ended optimistically, as if somehow someone could open intelligence through God’s love and the deaf could find true joy. The author did not have any suggestions for how to achieve this result, but, thankfully, a philanthropic group in Hartford, Connecticut, did. In 1815, they funded a trip to England, Scotland, and France for Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet to learn how to educate deaf and hard-ofhearing people. He returned with Laurent Clerc, a deaf Frenchman who was already a trained and talented teacher of the deaf. Together, the two men opened what is now called the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817. Welcoming deaf students from across the country, the school pioneered education for deaf people in the United States. It served both as the birthplace of a new language, American Sign Language (ASL), and of a new community, a Deaf community, that was transformational for deaf people. Armed with an education and fluency in two languages, ASL and English, members of this fledgling Deaf community fought the wistfully sad description that Nantucketers read in their newspaper, that deaf people were to be pitied and should passively accept their fate.1

1 “The Deaf and Dumb,” Nantucket Inquirer, Jun. 25, 1822, 4; R. A. R. Edwards, Words Made Flesh (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 3, 16.

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It is rare, indeed, to glimpse in the historical record hearing people being brought into the social circle of the Deaf community and even learning aspects of signed communication in the process.

q The original building of the Nantucket Atheneum, built as the First Universalist Church in 1825 and converted to a library in 1834. Woodcut from J. W. Barber’s 1839 book Historical Collections . . . of Every Town in Massachusetts. P16011

Deaf Nantucketers were among the earliest students at the American School, which from 1820 to 1895 was known as the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. Nantucket in the early nineteenth century did not have a large deaf population, although the neighboring island of Martha’s Vineyard did. In her landmark study Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard, anthropologist Nora Ellen Groce explored how a recessive gene that caused deafness spread widely in the closely clustered communities of the Vineyard. Although Nantucket’s English settlers came from some of the same families that populated Martha’s Vineyard, the population turnover brought by the whaling economy resulted in fewer partners who carried this gene intermarrying on Nantucket. Nevertheless, Nantucketers were not immune to the genetics, physical accidents, and diseases that caused hearing loss, and a number of early deaf Nantucketers are known.

What’sin inaaName? Name kj jk What’s When it opened in 1817, the school now known as the American School for the Deaf was named the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons. The school’s reach soon transcended Connecticut as several states in New England and beyond began sending their deaf students to be educated there. As well, the federal government supported the fledgling school in 1819 with a land grant of 23,000 acres in Alabama, the proceeds from the sale of which funded operating expenses and the construction of a campus in Hartford. To recognize this overall expansion, the trustees petitioned to change the school’s name, which became the American Asylum, at Hartford, for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb in 1819. Over the following decades, the term “asylum” grew increasingly inappropriate and undesirable as a name for the school, as it was widely used for residential hospitals for the mentally ill. A group of alumni began working in 1892 to have the word removed, and their activism led the Connecticut legislature to change the name to the American School, at Hartford, for the Deaf in 1895.

8 Historic Nantucket | Fall 2021

OCEANS UNHEARD

jk Lucretia Barnard kj Three of the eight children of Benjamin and Anna (Folger) Barnard are among the first recorded deaf people on Nantucket as well as the first siblings sent to the school at Hartford from Nantucket. Lucretia (1814–1902), Anna (1820–1847), and Albert (1823–1875) were all born deaf. The family traced its roots to Martha’s Vineyard, and it seems likely that the children’s deafness was part of the heritage of genetic deafness common to the Vineyard. Lucretia, the eldest, attended the school from 1826 to 1831. Albert arrived in Hartford in 1832, and Anna quickly followed in 1833; the younger siblings attended the school until 1839. The school published Lucretia’s own account of traveling between Hartford and Nantucket in 1830. While the journey that Lucretia describes was arduous, it was facilitated by the school’s location in a city on a major waterway. Lucretia boarded a boat (probably the sloop Osterville) outside Hartford and sailed down the Connecticut River to Middletown. “On Monday morning, we again sailed in the vessel for Saybrook, and in the afternoon, we arrived at it. I was much pleased to see the town of Saybrook. About 4 o’clock in the morning, some people and myself continued to sail in the vessel for Nantucket, the whole day and all night. On Wednesday morning, I was very much enjoyed to arrive at Nantucket in safety. I discovered my same father and uncle, who were standing on a board of the vessel, because they were happy to talk with Capt. [Lot] Phinney. Then my uncle came to the cabin, and I shook him by the hands. I was very glad to see him. A little while, my father entered the cabin. I embraced him, and he wept. I was very glad to see him. I was happy to talk with him by my small slate. Then I rode in the chaise with my father. We arrived at home. I entered the room of the house. My mother was very much delighted to embrace me, and my sisters also kissed me. I was tired. My neighbors heard that I arrived at home. They came home, and they seemed to be very happy to shake me by the

hands. I was much delighted to stay at home four weeks. I often visited my relations who were happy to converse with me by my small slate every day.” Lucretia’s experience here highlights the educated Deaf community’s tendency to adopt useful personal communication technologies. Note that her hearing family talked with her in English, using her small slate. It also suggests her bilingualism, as she would have communicated with teachers and fellow students at school in ASL.2 Lucretia’s brother, Albert, attended the American Asylum with a young deaf woman from Westport, Massachusetts, named Lydia Macomber. As Lydia’s surviving letters indicate, Lucretia “often thought of writing to me though she has never seen me and she said she frequently thought to make an attempt to go over to New Bedford to visit her cousins sometimes next summer and then she should be happy to come to Westport to see me. I should like to have her to come here and make me a good visit.” The two young women began corresponding and visiting with one another. But Lydia made a stunning aside to another friend in an 1837 letter: “Last seventh month L. Barnard said she left Hartford and went to Nantucket and she has been at the Athenaeum and [seen] Maria as she wanted L.B. to go and see her. She talked with her by fingers and she was surprised to see that she could spell. She told her that I have taught her how to spell the letter.”3 The Nantucket Atheneum was still in its infancy when Lucretia visited it, and its librarian was the young Maria Mitchell. Much to Lucretia Barnard’s surprise, Lydia Macomber had apparently taught Maria Mitchell fingerspelling. It is rare, indeed, to glimpse in the his2 [Lucretia Barnard], “About My Voyage Home,” Fourteenth Report of the Directors of the American Asylum at Hartford . . . May 8, 1830 (Hartford: Hudson and Skinner, 1830), 32–33; the authors thank ASD archivist Jean Lindemann for sharing this story with them. 3 Lydia Macomber to unnamed correspondent, Dec. 5, 1837, in the Lydia Macomber Letter Book, Westport Historical Society.

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torical record hearing people being brought into the social circle of the Deaf community and even learning aspects of signed communication in the process. The Macomber family were Quakers, and their faith brought them into contact with Quakers from other communities. Lydia sometimes accompanied family members to Nantucket to attend Friends quarterly meetings, and they stayed with the Mitchells, as Lydia relates in a number of her letters. In an 1838 letter, Lydia talked about just such a trip to Nantucket, describing how “my brother Leonard and myself went on board a sloop for Nantucket to attend Quarterly Meeting. We put up with William Mitchell’s for four days and had a very agreeable visit. We went with the Mitchell girls to Lucretia Barnard’s mother’s to call on her, but I was sorry that Lucretia was not at home. She left Hartford for Nantucket and spent several weeks with her mother some days after I left Nantucket. Then we went to the Atheneum which is opposite to Lucretia’s house to see it and I was filled with great wonder.”4 Though the Barnard family, which had several deaf members, lived across the street from the Atheneum, it proved to be Maria’s friendship with off-islander Lydia that prompted Maria to learn fingerspelling, which in turn allowed her to chat directly with Lucretia, much to Lucretia’s surprise. And then Lucretia, who had not actually known Lydia at school, was moved to reach out to her. Lydia’s surviving correspondence indicates she regularly wrote letters to Maria Mitchell, Anne Mitchell, and Lucretia Barnard. Lydia mentioned in an 1838 letter to Lucretia that “I have received three letters from the Mitchell girls six days after I had a letter from thee from the hand of their friends who left Nantucket for New Bedford and attended the Quarterly Meeting.” Lydia went on to remark in her letter that Maria had told her that “she talked fingers with thee a great deal.” These webs of 4 Macomber to Rebecca Eastman, Jan. 1, 1838, Lydia Macomber Letter Book.

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Lucretia Barnard Kent (right) and Anna Kent (left), Amherst, Mass. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Amherst, New Hampshire

connection bound the Quaker world of her birth family to her chosen family of the larger Deaf community.5 This friendship of two deaf women, Lydia Macomber and Lucretia Barnard, allows us to begin to see the complexity of deaf women’s lives. In a March 1838 letter to Lucretia, Lydia wrote, “Last seventh month my brother Leonard and myself went to Nantucket to attend Quarterly meeting. We went with the Mitchell girls to thy mother’s house to see thee. Thy mother told me that thee was not at home and lived with T. H. Gallaudet. I was much pleased to talk with her about thee a little while by writing.” The following August Lucretia visited Lydia in Westport and brought news of others she knew in the Deaf community: “Lucretia Barnard told me,” Lydia wrote another friend, “that Paulina

5 Macomber to Lucretia Barnard, Mar. 16, 1838, Lydia Macomber Letter Book.

OCEANS UNHEARD

Bowdish is at Albany to teach a deaf and dumb man who is about thirty years old and another. Jonathan Marsh frequently went from city of N. York to Albany to see her. I expect he is going to marry her.” This is a fascinating detail. Paulina Bowdish of Douglass, Massachusetts, attended the American Asylum from 1831 to 1836; Jonathan Marsh of Winchester, Connecticut, attended 1827–33, briefly overlapping with Paulina. That Lucretia had news of these people to pass to Lydia reveals that each woman had her own network within the Deaf community, which combined allowed each of them to be aware of the comings and goings of a greater number of deaf people. Additionally, Paulina Bowdish had created a job for herself as a private tutor and moved to Albany. Too frequently, the only news we have of deaf women in the nineteenth-century is that they married. Their lives between leaving school and marriage are a blank space in the historical record.6 6 Macomber to Barnard, Mar. 16, 1838; Macomber to Eastman, Sept. 16, 1838, both in Lydia Macomber Letter Book.

In 1844, Lucretia Barnard married New Hampshire native George Kent (ASD 1825–30). The couple settled in Amherst, New Hampshire, where they lived for the rest of their lives. George Kent died in 1883. In 1901, their hearing daughter Anna hired a nurse to help care for her now single and ailing mother. Anna worried about the complexities of a hearing nurse caring for an elderly deaf woman. Like many CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults), Anna could sign. But as she explained to her cousin, “I felt that no nurse could really help me very much because it would be so difficult for Mother to make herself understood . . . but as soon as the nurse came I set her to learning the language and it was wonderful to see how quickly she could make herself useful. Mother likes her very much and continuely [sic] tells me what good care she has.”7 Lucretia Barnard Kent died in 1902. 7 Anna [Kent] Carruth to Mary Mason [Kent] Ellis, Dec. 6, 1901, Amos Kent Family Papers, Mss. 199, 724, 1101, 2296, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, La. Thank you to Bill Veillette of the Amherst Historical Society.

jk Albert Barnard kj

Anna Barnard, the middle of the deaf Barnard children, died of consumption in 1847 at age 25. Albert F. Barnard, the youngest deaf child, refused to be “a sad and silent monument” as described in the Nantucket newspaper. Shortly after his father’s death, nine-yearold Albert traveled with his older sister to attend the American Asylum from 1832 to 1839.8 In 1849, at age 26, Albert joined hundreds of other Nantucket men in the rush to California in search of gold. Like thousands of eager thrill-seeking Americans, Albert did not strike it rich, but he did make business connections.9

8 The Twenty-Eighth Report of the Directors of the American Asylum at Hartford . . . (Hartford: Tiffany and Burnham, 1844), 22. 6 Macomber to Barnard, Mar. 16, 1838; Macomber to Eastman, Sept. 16, 1838, in Lydia Letter the Book. 9 both Albert’s nameMacomber appears among gold seekers in “The California Emigrants,” Inquirer, Dec. 24, 1849, 2. 7 Anna [Kent] Carruth to Mary Mason [Kent] Ellis, Dec. 6, 1901, Amos Kent Family Papers, Mss. 199, 724, 1101, 2296, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, La. Thank you to Bill Veillette of the Amherst Historical Society.

Albert returned to the East Coast by the summer of 1850 where the census recorded him living in New Hampshire and working as a sash and blind manufacturer. On May 1, 1851, he married fellow Hartford student Rhoda A. M. Edson at his sister and brother-inlaw’s house in Amherst, New Hampshire. The small ceremony attracted national attention, and their nuptials were reported in papers in Nantucket; Columbus, Ohio; Milwaukee; New Orleans; and other places. All these reports highlighted the fact that both the bride and groom were deaf and that Rhoda was the daughter of the famous sideshow performer Calvin Edson. Known more broadly as the “Living Skeleton,” Rhoda’s father traveled North America and Europe after 8 The Twenty-Eighth Report of the Directors of the American Asylum at Hartford . . . (Hartford: Tiffany and Burnham, 1844), 22. 9 Albert’s name appears among the gold seekers in “The California Emigrants,” Inquirer, Dec. 24, 1849, 2.

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Deaf Nantucketers . . . pushed the boundaries of interracial public education.

contracting a tape worm during the War of 1812 that left him able to eat food without retaining weight. By the time of his death in 1833, his 5-foot, 2-inch frame weighed only forty-five pounds. His body was purchased from the family to be preserved and studied at the Albany Medical College.10 By 1860, Albert Barnard worked sawing clapboards in Charlestown, Massachusetts. By 1864, he had returned to San Francisco, where a local directory lists him as a box maker. There was a familiar face in the city, his hearing sister Phoebe. She and her husband, cooper Henry Coffin, had moved their family from Nantucket to San Francisco during the 1850s.11 By 1868, Albert Barnard was back in the blind-making trade with his family in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and at the time of the 1870 census he was employed as a house carpenter. Albert’s career brought him across

10 U.S. Federal Census for 1850, Ancestry.com, accessed Apr. 17, 2021; “Married,” Farmers’ Cabinet (Amherst, N.H.), May 8, 1851, 3; Carl Johnson, “The Living Skeleton,” Hoxsie! Jan. 28, 2014, https://hoxsie.org /2014/01/28/ the_living_skeleton/.

the United States and back again. Whether he was successful or struggling to support his family is not clear from surviving records. What we can see is that Albert Barnard’s education enabled him to travel the country and find employment wherever he went. The school at Hartford taught deaf boys carpentry, and Albert was clearly able to put those skills to use. As historian Mary Eyring points out, “The carpentry classes taught skills of basic woodworking, which were of obvious value to employers in the nation’s centers of shipbuilding in New York and Massachusetts . . . .” He created a life for himself, supporting a wife and four children. He died in October 1875 of heart disease at age 52. Of note, Albert and Rhoda’s daughter Lucretia was deaf. She lived briefly on Nantucket, perhaps in a desperate attempt for the ocean air to improve her health, before passing away from tuberculosis in 1880.12 12 “Albert F. Barnard,” Deaths Registered in the Town of Quincy 1875, Ancestry. com, accessed Aug. 27, 2021; “Lucretia Barnard,” Deaths Registered in the Town of Nantucket 1880, Ancestry.com, accessed Aug. 27, 2021; Mary Eyring, “The Benevolent Education of Maritime Laborers at America's First Schools for the Deaf,” Legacy 30, no. 1 (2013), 26.

jk Charles Hiller kj

11 U.S. Federal Census for 1860, Ancestry.com, accessed Apr. 17, 2021.

Deaf Nantucketers traveling to Hartford not only helped shape deaf education and expectations about deaf people in the United States, they also pushed the boundaries of interracial public education. Charles Hiller (1810–1887), whose name was sometimes spelled Hillar, was the first student of African-American descent to attend public school in Connecticut and the third in the country. Born deaf on Nantucket on January 3, 1810, to George Hiller and Betsey (Gardner) Hiller, he attended the American Asylum at Hartford from 1825 to 1829. His school registration record says, “He had a mixture of African blood.” The American School for the Deaf is today on the Con-

.necticut Freedom Trail because of his enrollment. At the time, however, there was widespread resistance in America to Black education. In 1833, white townspeople in Canterbury, Connecticut, attacked Prudence Crandall’s school when she dared to include Black students. The mob showed their hatred by trying to burn down the school with the faculty and students inside and poisoning the school well with manure. Meanwhile, Nantucketers heatedly debated race and education, as Barbara White discusses in her book, A Line in the Sand: The Battle to Integrate the Nantucket Public Schools 1825–1847. Perhaps because the school at Hartford was designed for students with disabilities,

12 “Albert F. Barnard,” Deaths Registered in the Town of Quincy 1875, Ancestry. com, accessed Aug. 27, 2021; “Lucretia Barnard,” Deaths Registered in the Town of Nantucket 1880, Ancestry.com, accessed Aug. 27, 2021; Mary Eyring, “The Benevolent Education of Maritime Laborers at America's First Schools for the Deaf,” Legacy 30, no. 1 (2013), 26.

11 U.S. Federal Census for 1860, Ancestry.com, accessed Apr. 17, 2021.

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or because it admitted its first Black student without fanfare, it did not provoke the same ire.13 As much as Charles Hiller’s enrollment was an achievement, life was not easy for him, and the details of his troubled existence are still being uncovered. Charles did not leave any personal writings to give us insight on his life. What we understand about him comes through government documents, prison records, recollections of his teachers, and comments in newspapers. He is listed in Eliza Starbuck Barney’s Nantucket genealogical record books, compiled in the late nineteenth century and held by the NHA. This is at first a surprise, because Eliza Barney generally omitted island people of color from her record, but, if we look closer, Charles’s brief and incomplete record in Barney suggests the possibility that, although his mother was white, his father may have been mixed race or African-American. Barney recorded that Charles’s mother already had one daughter out of wedlock before he was born, and, after his father died in 1813, his mother remarried three more times. As his mother built new families, she abandoned tenyear-old Charles at the island poor house in Quaise in 1820.14 Charles lived at this remote area of the island with no family nor any contact with other deaf people until he was fifteen years old and the Board of Selectmen sent him to school in Hartford. In Hartford, Charles found like-minded peers and learned to read, write, and communicate using ASL. After he graduated in 1829, he never returned to the island. Instead, he moved to Hooksett, New Hampshire, and lived with the Head family, whose son Thomas had also enrolled at the American Asylum in 1825. The Heads provided Charles room and board and employ13 “Charles Hiller,” List of Admissions 1817–1927, 1:16, American School for the Deaf Archives; “Elizabeth (Betsey) Gardner,” Barney Genealogical Record, https://genealogy.nha.org/; Edwards, Words Made Flesh, 65–67; Matthew Warshauer, Connecticut in the American Civil War: Slavery, Sacrifice, & Survival (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), 20–22. 14 1800 and 1830 Census with Vital Statistics on the Asylum at Quaise, Nantucket County, Mass., 183 [online database], Ancestry.com, accessed Oct. 8, 2021.

ment through their several businesses, which included a tavern. For the next five years, Charles lived with them and worked as a laborer until the horrifying events of March 23, 1834.15 At four o’clock in the afternoon, the sun dipped low on the horizon as milliner Elizabeth Vaughan walked the mile of heavily wooded road from Head’s Tavern to the center of Hooksett. Along this road, she encountered Charles, who, according to newspaper reports, lay in wait for her. She was “seized by the throat and dragged into the woods, and most inhumanly insulted and abused; her clothes were rent to pieces, her comb broken to flitters, and her life but hardly spared.” What, if anything, triggered Charles to commit this monstruous act or how he planned to escape justice is not known. Vaughan swiftly ran to the authorities, and they apprehended and incarcerated Charles without difficulty.16 Charles Hiller was quickly caught, but the legal system stalled as lawyers worked to understand how to give a deaf man a fair trial. Lawyer John Harris of Concord questioned the depths of deaf people’s moral instruction and sought ways to acquire a translator in a letter to Principal Lewis Weld at the American Asylum. American Sign Language had barely existed for eighteen years, and here it was being requested in court. In his reply, Weld insisted that all students at the school were taught “the nature and consequences of crimes” in addition to moral law and obedience to parents, magistrates, and the law. Weld did not know Charles, so he consulted Gallaudet and other teachers. From what they told him, Weld formed a less than favorable impression and described Hiller as “not unexceptionable, that he was a lad of low propensities and that in his general deportment he gave the officers of the Asylum more than usual trouble.

15 “Charles Hiller,” List of Admissions 1817–1927. 16 “Horrid Transaction,” New-Hampshire Sentinel (Keene, N.H.), Apr. 3, 1834, 3.

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OCEANS UNHEARD

His talents and capacity as a pupil of the school were moderate. He was not a hard student, was not anxious to excel, and that he fast left the Institution, falling far below mediocrity in his attainments.” Gallaudet had too many engagements to attend the trial, but Weld promised that someone from the school would travel to Concord and translate the proceedings.17 Newspaper editors published the crime’s disturbing details throughout March and April 1834 and called for Charles’s execution. Charles was spared mob justice and pled guilty to rape after Vaughan and other witnesses testified at the New Hampshire Court of Common Pleas. The court records do not describe his race, but they also do not mention that he was deaf. Only in a close reading can we see that Charles was deaf. Twice the records say that he “read the said complaint[;] wrote that he was guilty,” from which we can extrapolate that using written communication with a defendant was the only way to convey information to him.18 The court sentenced him to life in prison, where he was documented as 5-foot, 11-inches tall, black eyes, black hair, and a dark complexion.19 Principal Lewis Weld visited Charles in June 1849 and again in June 1852. Both times Weld wrote that Charles was “in the state prison in Concord, N.H.” and that he “behaves well.”20 Based on this behavior or perhaps the overabundance of prisoners serving life sentences, Governor Noah Martin pardoned Hiller in 1853. Perhaps surprisingly, Charles elected to

stay in the Concord area, where he found work as a general laborer.21 Charles Hiller remained connected to his deaf classmates throughout his life. He appears in an 1857 list of members of the New England Gallaudet Association of the Deaf (NEGA), the first organization in the United States founded by and for the Deaf community. His membership demonstrates that NEGA was open to both Black and white deaf people, suggesting that the nineteenth-century Deaf community was interracial.22 George Kent and Thomas Head were also members of NEGA. They were close friends, as they started at the American Asylum in the same year and were both born on April 12, 1813. Newspapers in the 1870s reported annually on their joint birthday celebrations as the festivities were heavily attended by deaf friends from across New England. In 1875, Charles Hiller attended their party and gave a heartfelt speech honoring his classmates.23 After serving almost twenty years in jail and then living respectably for another twenty years, Charles was welcomed by the Deaf world as a fully reformed member of their community. Charles lived with Samuel Head, Thomas Head’s son, until a sudden fall on March 15, 1887, resulted in his death by “supposed injuries to the head.” Charles left his estate to Marietta Head, Thomas’s widow, directing that a plain white stone be erected at his grave and that his clothes and personal effects be given to the poor.24

17 Lewis Weld to John Harris, “Book of Letters 1835-1837,” ASD Archives, West Hartford, Conn. 18 Records for the court case are in the New Hampshire State Archives, Concord, N.H.; see “Charles G. Hull alias Hiller,” [Feb. 1835], Court of Common Pleas, Merrimack, N.H, including “No. 2, Copy of Judgements”; “No. 3, Copy of Recognizance of Witnesses”; “No. 4, Copies of Bill of Costs”; and John S. Hadley to Rufus Daw,“Mittimus 437 Pardon Charles G. Hiller,” January 6, 1853. 19 “Charles Hiller,” Register of Convicts, 1812–1912, New Hampshire Department of State, Concord, N.H., in New Hampshire, Prison Records, 1812-1968 [online database], Ancestry.com, accessed Aug. 27, 2021. 20 Lewis Weld, “191. Hiller, Charles,” in “American School for the Deaf Alumni,” 1, ASD Archives.

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21 1870 U.S. Federal Census, Merrimack County, N.H., population schedule, Ward 7 Concord, n.p., dwelling 210, family 225, Charles Prentiss and Charles G. Hiller, Ancestry.com, accessed Apr. 17, 2021. 22 R.A.R. Edwards, Words Made Flesh (New York: New York University Press, 2012) 136. 23 “The Suncook Journal,” The Farmers’ Cabinet, Apr. 28, 1875, 2. 24 “Hooksett,” Concord Evening Monitor, Mar. 15, 1887; “Charles Hiller,” New Hampshire Death and Disinterment Records, 1754–1947, Ancestry.com, accessed Apr. 17, 2021.

jk Phebe Allen kj Phebe Allen of Nantucket enrolled at the American Asylum in 1830 at the age of twenty-one. Her mother was Betsey Allen, but her father’s identity is unknown. Similar to Charles Hiller, she was not being cared for by her mother at the time of her enrollment in Hartford; instead, she lived with her aunt and uncle, Rachel and Nicholas Meader, and had grown up among cousins who were between three and nineteen years older than she. All of this comes from the exceptional details in her ASD record. The record also documents a series of names and signs: “Nicholas Meader – shave, Rachel – pipe, George – shake hands, Thomas – bald, Nathan – whiskers, Samuel – cooper, Reuben – gathered sleeves, John – smooth hands, Mrs. Ana Hussey – earring, Mrs. Mary Colesworthy – foretooth out.” This is one of the few surviving records of early nineteenth-century name signs to be found in the ASD archives. Phebe’s extensive list of name signs suggests the ways in which schooling acculturated Phebe and her peers into the distinctive cultural practices of the Deaf community. Name signs are a cultural practice with deep historic roots in the American Deaf community. “Although most Deaf people have a name printed on their birth certificate,” Samuel J. Supalla notes, “they need another [non-vocal] form to express their name sign in daily life. A name sign is most effective in serving as a symbol for the identity of a Deaf person, and it has helped to make socialization within the Deaf community possible.”25 There are two different systems of name signs in the United States, descriptive name signs (DNS) and arbitrary name signs (ANS). A descriptive name sign is based on a personal characteristic, while an arbitrary name sign does not indicate any personal characteristic or physical aspect. Arbitrary name signs form the most popular naming system in the American Deaf community today, and 25 Samuel J. Supalla, The Book of Name Signs: Naming in American Sign Language (San Diego: DawnSignPress, 1992), xiii–iv.

some scholars posit that they have historically constituted the dominant system. We can see that Phebe’s name signs, however, are all of the descriptive sort. Surviving historical records indicate that both naming systems were in use among deaf people in the United States during the antebellum period. Laurent Clerc himself had both an arbitrary name sign (a /C/ handshape in neutral space) and a descriptive name sign (depicting the scar on his cheek), and he seems to have brought the naming system practice to the United States. It developed at the American Asylum for the Deaf and spread to other schools. Clerc’s brief time as principal of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in 1821 coincided with the introduction of arbitrary names signs there.26 The country’s first schools for the deaf exposed all students to similar curricula, a common signed language, and a uniquely Deaf naming system. The Barnard children, Phebe Allen, and Charles Hiller journeyed away from their island home to gain a better education and marketable skills. What they found in addition was their own language and community, together with a new sense of purpose and possibilities for what living a Deaf life could mean. Historian Mary Eyring argues forcefully that it was deaf education itself, during this period, that forged a sense of unity among deaf people. Equipped with vocational training and a shared culture, graduates of America’s first residential schools for the deaf were not constricted by the contemporary views of hearing people that deaf people were to be pitied and left to their lonely existences. It is thanks to these graduates that hearing people, like Maria and Anne Mitchell, were introduced to the Deaf world. Intrepid Deaf Nantucketers helped create a community that is just as vibrant today as it was in the nineteenth century.

26 Supalla, Book of Name Signs, 33.

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WILLIAM OWEN

William Owen, with the spyglass, stands on Front Street,’Sconset, with other residents. Left to right: Charles W. Lawrence, Etta Holmes, unknown boy, Philip L. Holmes, Josephine Holmes; Caroline Holmes, William Owen, Frederick Barnard, Charles Paddock (seated), Joseph Sheffield, Walter Coggeshall. This 1869 stereograph is the only photo in which Owen is positively identified, although he may appear in the other ’Sconset photos reproduced here. Photograph by Kilburn Brothers, Littleton, N.H., SG14281.

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William Owen: Holokahiki By Frances Ruley Karttunen with Cameron Texter

A holokahiki is a Hawaiian mariner who has journeyed to distant lands. William Owen was one of many Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders who came in ships to Nantucket in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Most were transient seamen who departed after only a brief stay. A number died on Nantucket. The very few who stayed long-term typically found housing in the island’s New Guinea neighborhood, where Nantucket’s Black community largely lived. William Owen was the exception. Born on the island of Hawai’i in 1828, he was unique among the Pacific Islanders who came to Nantucket in that he settled, took an Irish-born wife, raised a large family, and, throughout his adult life, functioned in many capacities within the village community of Siasconset. He and his family are among the few individuals not of English descent included in Eliza Starbuck Barney’s Genealogical Record of Nantucketers. His life on Nantucket demonstrates the fluidity of racial classification as well as its consequences.1 1 Owen’s place the and year of birth are reported in theof 1850 Federal Census for Nantucket and later in the marriage register held in the Nantucket Town Clerk’s office. InWilliam autumn 1819, whaleships Balaena New Bedford Christianity back to their home islands. When a writer The November 1861 marriage register lists his parents as John and Mary Owen. The Eliza Starbuck Barney Genealogical Record is accessible at genealogy.nha.org. and Equator of Nantucket arrived in Hawaiian waters. in an off-island newspaper suggested that young PacifAfter taking a whale in Kealakekua Bay along the coast ic Island men were enacting “frantick orgies” of pagan of Hawai’i, the two ships sailed to Maui where they worship in the streets of Nantucket and that the town took on two Native Hawaiian men they called Joe Bal needed a seamen’s bethel to curb such practices, one and Jack Ena. These men traveled to New Bedford and Nantucketer wrote to the Inquirer to say such accusathen shipped out again back to Maui. Upon their return tions were fantasies and to wonder “why so much pains home, they were replaced aboard ship by four other should be taken” to represent Nantucket as “a nest of Native Hawaiian men who went by the names of Henry people involved in heathen darkness and suffering for Harmony, George Germaine, John Jovel, and Sam How. the want of missionaries.” Readers should let “all naSo began long-distance contact between the two major tions walk in their own ways.”3 New England whaling ports and what were known to Over the coming decades, the island continued to be the whalemen as the Sandwich Islands.2 a destination for Pacific Islanders. For many, the visit In the 1820s, Pacific Islanders became a common sight unfortunately proved fatal. The surviving evidence sugon the streets of Nantucket. Some received sabbath gests that infectious disease was the leading cause of school training with the intent that they might carry death among Pacific Islanders who came to Nantucket. 2 Susan Lebo, “Native Hawaiian Whalers in Nantucket, 1820–60,” Historic Nantucket 1 William and year John of birth are reported in the 1850 56, no. 1Owen’s (Winterplace 2007), 14–16; E. Lacouture, “Lahaina: TheFederal WhalingCensus Capital for Nantucket laterNantucket in the marriage in 16–22. the Nantucket of the Pacific,”and Historic 29, no.register 4 (Aprilheld 1982), The NewTown Bedford Clerk’s office. The November 1861 marriage register lists his parents as John Whaling Museum holds the log of the Balaena (ODHS log no. 1139A). and Mary Owen. The Eliza Starbuck Barney Genealogical Record is accessible at genealogy.nha.org.

2 Susan Lebo, Ruley “Native HawaiianThe Whalers Nantucket, 1820–60,” HistoricNantucket’s Nantucket 3 Frances Karttunen, OtherinIslanders: People Who Pulled 56, no. 1 (Winter 2007), 14–16; John E. Lacouture, “Lahaina: The Whaling Capital Oars (New Bedford: Spinner Publications, 2005), 100–104; Nantucket Inquirer, of the Pacific,” Historic no. 42.(April 1982), 16–22. The New Bedford Apr. 18, 2; Apr. 25, 1;Nantucket and May 29, 9, 1822, Whaling Museum holds the log of the Balaena (ODHS log no. 1139A). 3 Frances Ruley Karttunen, The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars (New Bedford: Spinner Publications, 2005), 100–104; Nantucket Inquirer, Apr. 18, 2; Apr. 25, 1; and May 9, 1822, 2.

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Between 1832 and 1848, at least thirteen Pacific Islander deaths were recorded on Nantucket. Records identify most of the deceased as “Sandwich Island Canakers.” Some succumbed to “consumption” or “lung fever,” which generally meant tuberculosis. One died of typhus. Five arrived suffering from smallpox and died within days in quarantine at Nantucket’s pest house. In February 1832, one unfortunate Pacific Islander who “came on a whaleship from around Cape Horn” and had been living in Nantucket’s inland New Guinea neighborhood walked several miles to a barn on a bluff overlooking Nantucket Sound and was later found frozen there. Almost the same story repeated itself in 1837: “A Sandwich Island Indian or Canacker, came here in one of our Whaling Ships from Round Cape Horn” was found dead on February 27.4 The 1850 Federal Census returns for Nantucket include a list of nearly six hundred seamen aboard Nantucket vessels. The list contains the names of sixty-five Pacific Islanders of whom forty-five were from the Hawaiian Islands. The census taker classified ten of the forty-five, all with English surnames, as “white,” while he classified thirty-five as “black.” Some of these men used Kanaka, the Hawaiian word for “man,” as their surname, while others had island names such as “Oahu” and “Mowee” (Maui). The youngest of the Native Hawaiians was fourteen-year-old Peter Mowee, who was one of six men using this same surname. Others of the “black” Pacific Islanders used English surnames. Among them were two Owens, twenty-year-old Joe and twenty-three-yearold William. There were five teenagers including Peter Mowee among the transient Pacific Islanders, but most, like the Owens, were young men in their twenties. The expanding southern edge of the town of Nantucket was known as Newtown. It was never a strictly segregated neighborhood, but since the late 1700s a locus within it had been known by multiple names: Negro Hill, Negro Village, and New Guinea. Enslaved Africans had been brought to Nantucket in the late 1600s and the first half of the 1700s. Once the last instances of slav4 Vital Records of Nantucket Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1928), 5:625; handwritten note in NHA Ms. 335, folder 51; Nantucket Inquirer, Oct. 10, 1840, 2, and Oct. 21, 1840, 2.

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ery on Nantucket came to an end in 1775, the freedmen and other free Blacks on the island actively consolidated land within Newtown in the vicinity of several windmills to create a neighborhood of homes, churches, workshops, and boarding houses for transient seamen. Upon arrival in Nantucket, Pacific Islanders were likely to be directed to the Canacka Boarding House.5 According to family lore, William Owen first went to sea around 1841 at age thirteen to begin his career on whaling vessels. By 1850, he was a seasoned whaleman and may have had a younger sibling, Joe Owen, in tow. As “black” men, the Owens would have put up in New Guinea. Joe Owen does not appear again in Nantucket records, but William Owen set down roots on the island. In 1853, he purchased approximately two acres of land in Siasconset. This was accomplished through an intermediary, Robert Pitman. Pitman purchased the property from Alexander Swain on November 15, 1853, for sixty dollars, and two days later he sold it to William Owen for the same amount. At some point, William Owen acquired a house “under Mill Hill” that had formerly been the home of Jared Tracy and moved it seven miles to this property. Having secured his real estate, William Owen executed a power of attorney to “my friend Robert Pitman” and sailed from New Bedford as second mate on the bark Marcella bound for the Pacific Ocean. The Marcella and its crew returned home three years later.6 On November 12, 1861, William Owen, mariner, now 33 years old, marred Julia Leonard. She was born in Dublin, Ireland, to Michael and Rose Leonard. The 1850 Federal Census lists her living in the household of Samuel B. and Ann (Folger) Swain. Although working in the Swain household, she had attended school within the year. The Swains’ primary residence was in the 5 Karttunen, Other Islanders, 58–95, 101. 6 Deeds of Sale: Nantucket Registry of Deeds, Book 51, 146, and Book 58, 549–50; Henry Chandlee Forman, ed. Underhill’s The Old Houses on ’Sconset Bank: The First History of Siasconset, Nantucket Island, America’s Most Unique Village (Nantucket: Myacomet Press, 1961), 32; Roland B. Hussey, The Evolution of Siasconset (Nantucket: Inquirer and Mirror Press, 1912), 33. Power of attorney: Nantucket Registry of Deeds, Book 55, 463–64. Whalemen’s Shipping List, Jan. 17, 1854, 361.

WILLIAM OWEN

“Fishermen of Siasconset,” detail of a stereograph, ca. 1869. Photograph by Kilburn Brothers, Littleton, N.H., SG6478

center of town, but, like many Nantucket families, they also maintained a summer cottage in Siasconset, which may be where she and William Owen met. Of note, town clerk William Cobb classified the groom in the town marriage register as “white,” and gave the bride’s family name as “Linnett,” a mishearing of Leonard that also appears in the census, the local newspaper, and the Barney Genealogical Record.7 The couple settled into married life in ’Sconset, but, six months after their wedding, William took to the sea again, this time as first mate of the bark R. L. Barstow, which “cleared this port for a whaling voyage in the Atlantic Ocean.” Before his departure, he executed a new power of attorney, this time committing his affairs to his wife Julia. A whaling voyage in the Atlantic was generally of shorter duration than a voyage to the Pacific. Nonetheless the R. L. Barstow was gone for nearly three years, just as the Marcella had been. William rejoined Julia on land in 1865.8

7 Town of Nantucket Marriage Register; Nantucket Weekly Mirror, Nov. 20, 1861, 3. 8 Nantucket Weekly Mirror, May 3, 1862, 2; Nantucket Registry of Deeds, Book 56, 535–36.

Whaling from Nantucket was in steep decline by the 1860s. The R. L. Barstow sailed again in November 1865, but William Owen was not aboard. He had joined fellow ’Sconseters in codfishing by dory. Codfishing off Nantucket’s shores was not new, but doing it from dories was a recent innovation. Credit is given to Asa Jones of ’Sconset for initiating it in 1856.9 Like William Owen’s friend Robert Pitman, Jones was a core member of the year-round group of ’Sconset fishermen that subsequently included William Owen in all its activities. The Owens had married relatively late and then been separated by a whaling voyage. They finally welcomed their first child, a daughter, on June 24, 1866. They named her Ann Swain Owen after Ann Swain in whose household Julia had lived and worked as a young girl. “Annie” was the first of seven daughters born to William and Julia over a dozen years between 1866 and 1878. Days after their second daughter, Carolina Louise “Carrie” Owen, was born on October 17, 1868, William Owen 9 Nantucket Weekly Mirror, Oct. 25, 1856, 2; Inquirer and Mirror, Dec. 27, 1924, 3; Oct. 16, 1937, 2.

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participated in the rescue of a fellow doryman in an autumn storm. The October 24, 1868, issue of the Inquirer and Mirror reported that a sudden gale had swept through on the previous Saturday. Vessels out on Nantucket Sound had dragged anchor and sustained damage while watchers from the town’s South Tower could do no more than relay what they could make out to those in the street below. The newspaper went on to describe the rescue of Captain Obed Bunker, whose dory was farthest out to sea off the eastern shore when the storm broke and was being swept toward the maelstrom of Pochick Rip. A crew of his fellow ’Sconseters, William Owen among them, launched a lifeboat. They managed to take him safely from his dory into the lifeboat, but they were unable to make headway back to shore. The fishing schooner Mary Potter of Noank, Connecticut, was in the vicinity. Seeing Bunker’s empty dory awash in the heavy seas, the schooner’s master, Captain Potter, went to give aid. Through skillful handling, he brought his vessel alongside the lifeboat, transferred all the men from it into the Mary Potter, and towed the lifeboat into calmer waters from where the Nantucketers could make their way home. In a card of thanks published in the same issue of the Inquirer and Mirror, William and seven other ’Sconset men, including Captain Bunker, thanked Captain Potter and his crew for rendering them assistance from their “perilous situation off the east end of our island during the gale of Saturday last.”10

Dated December 1888, this portrait may show Elizabeth Owen, another of William’s daughters. GPN349

The 1870 Federal Census lists William Owen, “mulatto seaman,” and his wife Julia, born in Ireland, together with their two “white” Massachusetts-born daughters. Their third daughter, Elizabeth Pitman Owen, was born in December 1870, after the census had been taken. The Owens celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary in November 1871. Forty well-wishers gathered in ’Sconset to congratulate them and present them with gifts. A fiddler was engaged for the party, and the Inquirer and Mirror reported, “Our ’Sconset friends know how to get up, and how to enjoy, a right good social gathering.”11 The following August, William Owen was again part of a ’Sconset crew that went out to render assistance. The fishing schooner Rebecca Bartlett of Gloucester went aground on Bass Rip four miles from shore. Eight ’Sconset men, including Owen, launched a lifeboat, rowed out, and boarded the schooner to help the crew kedge the vessel free. At five that afternoon, the ’Sconseters left the schooner afloat off Sankaty Head and rowed home.12 10 Inquirer and Mirror, Oct. 24, 1868, 2. 11 Inquirer and Mirror, Nov. 18, 1871, 2. 12 Inquirer and Mirror, Aug. 31, 1872, 2.

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Studio portrait of William Owen’s twin daughters, Priscilla and Winnifred, probably taken at the time of their graduation from Nantucket’s Coffin School in 1897. The twins’ elaborate fitted dresses with great puffed sleeves and ribbon trim belie the designation of their late father as a “laborer” on his 1889 death certificate. GPN296

WILLIAM OWEN

The Owens’ fourth daughter, Martha Shiverick Owen, was born on November 3, 1872. To support his growing family, William continued fishing for cod off the ’Sconset shore. The local newspapers frequently reported that he had caught the earliest cod of the season or a great number of cod in one day or a remarkably large cod. He was well known to the point of being a local celebrity.13 Dory fishing was as perilous as whaling, arguably more so, and in December 1874 William Owen had an unprecedented and potentially fatal experience. As he was rowing in at the end of the day, he was struck from behind and temporarily knocked senseless into the bottom of his dory. When he recovered, he found feathers embedded in his neck and a sea duck with a

The 1880 Federal Census classifies William and all seven children as “mulatto.” It also contains faulty information, reporting William Owen’s birthplace as Fayal in the Azores, and Julia’s birthplace as England rather than Ireland. In the years since William Owen had acquired his ’Sconset property in 1853, the character of the village had changed. Previously, Nantucket families such as the Swains moved out to the village during the summer. With time, the village’s seasonal residents came to include increasing numbers of off-island visitors. Some were accommodated in hotels, such as the Ocean View House, opened in 1873 and expanded in 1876, but most rented cottages, a plethora of which were built on the edges of the old fishing village. Codfish Park, as the

“When only the villagers were at ’Sconset . . . everybody knew where every other body lived, and it was enough to say, ‘Gone to Capt. Pitman’s, or Uncle Alfred’s, or William Owen’s.’” broken neck dead in the boat with him. Apparently the bird had flown blind directly into him with tremendous force. The story was reported in the local newspapers, then versified by Dr. Arthur E. Jenks and included in a book of sea ballads published by the Cape Ann Advertiser. It is hardly any wonder that the Owen girls were said to stand weeping on the shore as their father set off to fish in the mornings.14 Another daughter, Charlotte Pitman Owen, was born to William and Julia on November 4, 1875. The couple undoubtedly hoped for a son during Julia’s next pregnancy, but instead, on February 26, 1878, forty-two-year-old Julia gave birth to twins Priscilla Almy Owen and Winnifred Coffin Owen, completing their family of seven daughters.

beach in front of the village was called, was still dotted with fish houses and codfish flakes, but, with the health benefits of ocean bathing being vigorously advertised on the mainland, by the 1880s ’Sconset was developing into a bustling summer resort. It acquired two grocery stores, a post office with a postmistress, an “ice cream saloon,” telephone and telegraph services, street lighting, and, beginning in 1884, train service from town. The Rev. Phebe Coffin Hanaford, ’Sconset’s notable daughter, wrote of the village’s growth, “When only the villagers were at ’Sconset, there was no need of anything to mark the places of residence, for everybody knew where every other body lived, and it was enough to say, ‘Gone to Capt. Pitman’s, or Uncle Alfred’s, or William Owen’s, or to the pump, or his boat-house,’ and at once the inquirer would know how to proceed to find the man he sought.”15

13 Island Review, May 21, 1877, 2; Inquirer and Mirror, Nov. 10, 1877, 2; Inquirer and Mirror, Oct. 15, 1887, 3; Inquirer and Mirror, Apr. 14, 1888, 2. 14 Inquirer and Mirror, Dec. 5, 1874, 2, and Dec. 12, 1874, 2; Island Review, Dec. 19, 1874, 2.

15 Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, The Heart of Sconset (New Haven: Hoggson & Robinson, 1890), 40.

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For a number of years, the town of Nantucket made payments to William Owen “for lighting and care of ’Sconset lanterns.” His pay for this service rose from $24 for the year 1884 to $62 for 1889. In spring 1884, Owen also took on the position of assistant foreman in the newly organized ’Sconset volunteer fire company. At almost the same time William Owen was appointed a special policeman for duty in ’Sconset. According to the Inquirer and Mirror, “The appointment is a good one, and it is also a fact that such an officer is needed there quite frequently.” He continued to serve as special policeman for several years.16

through to the North Street.” The house was moved to a lot “west of the chapel” in a single day in October.17 The amount of William Owen’s compensation for the land he gave up for Chapel Street is not entirely clear, but in 1886 he paid tax on one property of between one and two acres in size and a three-acre mowing lot. His relocated house was valued at $200, in addition to which he had a barn and outbuildings valued at $50.18

The village’s growth affected the Owen family in other ways. In 1882, the Nantucket county commissioners laid out a thoroughfare, Chapel Street, through several properties in ’Sconset, including William Owen’s, to connect Main Street to New Street. One newspaper explained that “This road will obviate the necessity of making long detours getting around the village and will be appreciated by the residents in that section.” To accomplish the plan, the Owens’ house had to be cleared from the path of the new street “opposite the Ocean View House

Having come in off the water at the end of the day, cleaned up, and dined, the men of ’Sconset had little to do on winter evenings. They began planning a men’s social club, and William Owen was one of seventeen charter members of the ’Sconset Club Association formed in February 1887. The members were all core ’Sconseters: three Coffins, three Pitmans, two Folgers, one Bunker, one Cathcart, one Gardner, one Jones, one Morris, one Raymond, one Rogers, one Sylvester, and William Owen. The men chipped in ninety dollars and built a small clubhouse and reading room in the center of the village on the Shell Street property of Asa Jones. It was furnished with a long table, twenty chairs, and a lamp. In winter, with stores and the village post office

16 Financial Statements of the Town and Country of Nantucket, for the year ending February 1, 1885, 4; year ending 1889, 18; year ending Jan. 1, 1890, 19; Nantucket Journal, May 29, 1884, 2; Inquirer and Mirror, May 15, 1886, 2.

17 Inquirer and Mirror, Sept. 7, 1882, 2, Sept. 16, 1882, 2, Oct. 14, 1882, 2, Nov. 4, 1882, 2, Nov. 11, 1882, 2, and Nov. 3, 1883, 2; Nantucket Journal, Sept. 14, 1882, 2, Sept. 21, 1882, 2, Oct. 12, 1882, 2, Nov. 16, 1882, 2, Nov. 23, 1882, 2. 18 See the valuation and tax list in the 1886 Nantucket Town Report.

Center Street, ’Sconset, ca. 1870. Photograph by Josiah Freeman, GPN558

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WILLIAM OWEN

closed, mail and newspapers from town were left on the clubhouse table for pickup. “As the season changes the members begin to resort thither to enjoy the papers and other literary matters that are being contributed by the friends of the association.” In the clubhouse, men smoked their pipes, chewed tobacco, commented on world affairs, and spun yarns. Members were said to stay out at the clubhouse until ten or eleven in the evening, to the disapproval of their wives.19 Prentice Mulford, a journalist from New York, visited the club and recounted that William Owen had suggested that the ocean bathers who were now flocking to ’Sconset in the summers should “employ kanaka surfboards in bathing, not only as a measure of safety but to add to the pleasure of buffeting the billows. Not only learners, but skillful swimmers take to them kindly, for the boards have sufficient buoyant power to sustain them longer in the water without tiring. Bathers rest on them either on their breasts or backs, throw them aside and take to them again, ride with them over the wave crests, sit astride of them and indulge in various antics in sporting in the water.” According to Mulford, Owen’s fellow club member George W. Rogers had already made a number of surfboards and was receiving orders for more.20 In 1887, William Owen sold a portion of his land along Chapel Street to his now-married daughter Carrie Winslow. Eleven years later, Carrie sold it to Selma Rogers, wife of George W. Rogers, William Owen’s fellow social club member and fabricator of the “kanaka surfboards.”21 Willliam Owen died on September 22, 1889, of “quick consumption.” He was approaching 61 and still actively fishing as well as carrying out his other village functions. Consumption generally meant tuberculosis, but “quick consumption” may indicate pneumonia. His death certificate listed him as a “laborer” and as “co19 Roland Bunker Hussey, “Flotsom and Jetsam,” Proceedings of the Nantucket Historical Association, July 28, 1920, 33–40; Inquirer and Mirror, Feb. 5, 1887, 2; Nantucket Journal, Sept. 15, 1887, 3; ’Sconset Directory, July 10–25, 1888. 20 Nantucket Journal, Aug. 4, 1887, 3. 21 Michael May, ’Sconset House by House (Nantucket: Nantucket Preservation Trust, 2018), 129; Nantucket Registry of Deeds, Book 80, 565–66.

loured,” but he was not interred in Nantucket’s Historic Coloured Cemetery. Instead, he was buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery, where he was later joined by other family members. On his death certificate the lines for place of birth, parents’ names, and parents’ birthplaces were all left blank. Is there more to be learned about Owen’s parents, John and Mary Owen? Owen descendant Cameron Texter surmises from their English names that there may have been a missionary connection on the island of Hawai’i in the 1820s that led to their conversion and taking of new names. He also suggests that the surname “Owen” might derive from the middle name of missionary Horton Owen Knapp. William Owen’s daughter Priscilla, in the words of Cameron Texter, “insisted until her death that William had some connection to Hawaiian royalty, and she and her family would have gotten land if she and her siblings or descendants returned to the island and made a claim.”22 This is similar to the story of Humehume of Kaua’i, born about 1799, who, in 1804, was entrusted by his chiefly ali’i nui father to an American captain to be delivered to New England for education and then returned to Kaua’i. Things did not go well, and fifteen years passed before Humehume, known as “George Prince,” returned home aboard the brig Thaddeus in the company of the members of the first Christian mission to the Sandwich Islands. Things went even less well for him as he sought to reintegrate himself into ali’i society, to assume the mediating role the missionaries expected of him, and eventually to attempt to take on his deceased father’s chiefly status. All ended in tragedy.23 The descendants of William Owen also believe that in the 1880s visitors from Hawai’i came to see William Owen in ’Sconset, but such a visit would hardly have passed unremarked by the Nantucket newspapers, especially in view of how often William Owen himself 22 Cameron Texter to Frances Karttunen, personal communication. 23 Nancy J. Morris and Robert Benedetto, Nā Kau: Portraits of Native Hawaiian Pastors at Home and Abroad, 1820–1900 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), 37–40; Warne Douglas, Humehume of Kaua’i: A Boy’s Journey to America, an Ali’i’s Return Home (Honolulu: Kamehameha Publishing, 2008).

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WILLIAM OWEN

appeared in their pages. It is perhaps significant that in 1887 Hawai’i’s Queen Kapi’olani and Princess Lili’uokalani visited Boston, a visit widely reported in the newspapers, including Nantucket’s Inquirer and Mirror.24 Unlike many Pacific Islanders who came to Nantucket, William Owen did not contract any of the crowd diseases that stalked them aboard ship, and he survived beyond the age of sixty. Also unlike them—and although variously classified as black, mulatto, and colored to the end of his life—he seems to have evaded the hindrances of racism, except, possibly, for needing an intermediary for his 1853 land purchase. Unlike the federal censuses, the local newspapers never described William Owen in racial terms. Only the reference to kanaka surfboards alluded to his birthplace. Compare his career on Nantucket to those of two fellow Polynesians. Forty-six-year-old John Swain’s April 1865 death notice in the Inquirer and Mirror identifies him as a native of Lahaina on the island of Maui. As a “black” man he was interred in Nantucket’s Historic Coloured Cemetery. Author Frank Morral identifies him with the John Swain whose name was the last to be inscribed on Nantucket’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in 1874. The Hawaiian John Swain who died in 1865 did so, however, “in this town” and of heart disease, not on a battlefield or in a military hospital. There is no service record for him, but several others among the war dead whose names are inscribed on the monument also lack service records. If the Hawaiian John Swain did serve in the Civil War, then he is the only person classified as “black” honored on the monument.25 A generation older than William Owen, William Whippy was born in New Zealand in 1801, perhaps the son of a Nantucket member of the Whippey family and a Maori mother. William Whippy made his way to Nantucket, married a woman from an African family in New Guinea, and became an entrepreneur. With his wife, Maria, William Whippy operated the Canacka 24 Inquirer and Mirror, May 21, 1887, 2. 25 Inquirer and Mirror, Apr. 29, 1865; Frank Morral and Barbara Ann White, Hidden History of Nantucket (Charleston, S.C.: History Press, 2015), 58–61.

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Boarding House. The couple had three children, all of whom died in childhood. Whippy himself succumbed to tuberculosis at age 45. Although he does not have a headstone, he was undoubtedly buried in the Coloured Cemetery with his children.26 Whippy married an African-American wife and ran a business serving transient seamen of color. Unlike William Owen but like John Swain, he never held a paid town-appointed job. Swain’s and Whippy’s racial classification, and perhaps their own self-identification, as “black” and their residence in New Guinea defined them and their possibilities. Being part of the New Guinea community dictated whom they married, how they were employed, and where they were buried. Ultimately it also extinguished their family lines. Today there are no descendants of any of the families of New Guinea living on Nantucket.27 William Owen, on the other hand, may have resided in New Guinea when he first arrived in Nantucket, but he bought property as far from New Guinea as possible. He married an Irish woman and established himself and his family in ’Sconset. He seems to have been enthusiastically integrated into the ’Sconset community: a man among equals on the water and a public servant on land. Yet he was not passing as “white.” The Owen daughters were raised aware of their Polynesian heritage, and there was the matter of the surfboards of ’Sconset. The Owen daughters’ heritage did not impair their marriage prospects. They found husbands from Nantucket’s oldest English families. The couples are listed in Eliza Barney’s Genealogical Record, which typically omitted all people of color, and all of them were civically engaged, as were their offspring. The descendants of William Owen are the only individuals of Native Hawaiian heritage with known Nantucket connections. One of them, Helen Winslow Chase, granddaughter of Carrie Owen Winslow, was a distinguished local historian who traveled to Hawaii, New Zealand, 26 According to the 1850 federal census, William Whippy’s father-in-law, James Ross Sr., was born in Africa. The inconsistency in spelling Whippy/Whippey is common. 27 Vital Records of Nantucket, 4:501 and 5:603; Karttunen, Other Islanders, 64–65, 95, 101, 236–40.

A fish cart headed to the beach, 'Sconset. From Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast by Samuel Adams Drake, 1875.

and a number of Pacific Islands to research Nantucket’s whaling history. Her aunt, Bessie Winslow Cartwright, Carrie’s daughter, was married to Archibald Cartwright, famous as the last Nantucket man to go on a whaling voyage, in 1902, and who was later custodian of the Nantucket Historical Association’s Whaling Museum. Although five of the seven Owen daughters had children, today there are surviving descendants of just three, Caroline L. Winslow, Martha S. Folger, and Priscilla Russell. Cameron Texter, Priscilla’s great-grandson, has exhaustively researched his family and made available the information he has gathered. Other descendants of Pris-

cilla reside on Nantucket today, while additional Owen descendants are scattered across the United States and the United Kingdom. They have had their Polynesian heritage confirmed by genetic testing and are pleased to acknowledge it.28 William Owen’s life on Nantucket as a holokahiki, a Hawaiian mariner who journeyed to lands far from home, was unique. Perhaps the year-round ’Sconset community of the nineteenth century, in its unconditional acceptance of him and his family, was unique as well. 28 Cameron Texter to Frances Karttunen, personal communication

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The Second Voyage of Charles Ramsdell By Amy Hartman

Charles Ramsdell is remembered in Nantucket history as one of the eight survivors of the 1820 whaleship Essex disaster. What happens to a man who lives through the horrors of such an ordeal? A fresh look at the writings of men and women who met Ramsdell after the disaster provides new insight into his mental state and significantly revises our understanding of what he elected to do next in his life. For the last forty years, since the rediscovery of accounts and letters written by fellow survivor Thomas Nickerson, historians have believed that Charles Ramsdell and Nickerson, after arriving home in June 1821, turned right around five months later and sailed away again with Captain George Pollard on the whaleship Two Brothers—a voyage that also ended in disaster. But Ramsdell actually stayed behind, and sailed a year later on a completely different voyage. Charles Ramsdell was born on Nantucket January 7, 1804, and grew into a 5-foot, 6-inch–tall teenager with brown hair. He was the middle son of John Ramsdell Jr. and Phebe (Marshall) Ramsdell. His father, a cabinetmaker, died when Charles was twelve, and, instead of following his father’s profession, Charles went to sea. The whaleship Essex, fitting out at the wharf in the summer of 1819, was called a lucky ship, and it was Ramsdell’s chance. Along with three teenage friends who were also fatherless—Thomas Nickerson, Barzillai Ray, and Owen Coffin—he signed on and set off toward the South Pacific on August 12. A little over a year later, while the men hunted whales in the remote equatorial Pacific, a massive sperm whale almost the length of the Essex rammed the ship twice with chilling fury and vengeance. The Essex was wrecked, and the crew divided up into three small whaleboats for what became a gruesome and horrific journey back to land. Ramsdell was in Captain George Pollard Jr.’s boat with Barzillai Ray, Owen Coffin, and

others, and the friends eventually lost sight of Thomas Nickerson in first mate Owen Chase’s boat. After three months of empty horizons and one brief stop at a desolate island, only eight of the twenty starving crewmen remained to be rescued. Some of the dead had become food for the others. Ramsdell and Nickerson lived because others had died. According to Nickerson years later, it was Ramsdell who proposed in Captain Pollard’s boat that the men draw lots. Owen Coffin drew the lot to die and be eaten; Ramsdell drew the lot to kill him. Then, five days later, Barzillai Ray died, and Pollard and Ramsdell ate him, too. In the end, just Ramsdell and Pollard remained in their boat when picked up by the ship Dauphin and taken to Valparaiso, Chile, where they were reunited with Nickerson, Chase, and Benjamin Lawrence, rescued from the one other surviving boat. In 1980, Ann Finch of Hamden, Connecticut, discovered some manuscripts and letters by Thomas Nickerson that her husband had inherited. They included a sensational account of the Essex disaster, as well as another story titled “Loss of the Ship Two Brothers of Nantucket.” In this story and an accompanying poem, Nickerson recounted the remarkable story of the next chapter in Captain Pollard life: “The Ship Two Brothers was placed in command of Capt. George Pollard on his arrival at Nantucket after the loss of the Essex. This ship was Subsequently lost on a reef of Rocks to the Southwest [sic] of the Sandwich Islands. . . . The fol-

Crew list for the ship Thames of New Haven, 1822 (detail). NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

THE SECOND VOYAGE

lowing lines were Sketched and thrown into verse upon the voyage during which the writer formed one of his crew.” The poem then begins, Scarce had this worthy Captain Reached the Strand, When once again appointed to Command. He joins his Ship, and with a Seaman’s eye, Scans every part, around, beneath, on high. And thus he mused, whilst pacing to and fro, I’ll see those Lads, perchance they’ll with me go. And then Should fortune Smile, and Skill prevail, We’ll out once more to Sea in Search of whale. Against the words, “I’ll see those Lads,” Nickerson added a footnote: “The writer and Charles Ramsdell of the crew of the Essex.” This footnote appears to suggest that both Nickerson and Ramsdell signed on with Pollard in the Two Brothers—a truly remarkable vote of confidence after such a disaster—and historians since the rediscovery of Nickerson’s manuscripts have taken it to mean exactly that. But Nickerson’s next stanza, heavy with the metaphor of drawing lots, suggests an alternative reading: Mine was the lot, to plough with him [Pollard] the main, To Sail o’er raging Seas, with him again. His was the care, but mine the common lot, To Strive once more to gain, and find it not. What if Pollard asked both Ramsdell and Nickerson to accompany him, but only Nickerson took up the offer? “Mine was the lot” suggests this interpretation, and this, in fact, is exactly what happened. Remarkably, we have more than just the interpretation of this poem to prove it. We know Ramsdell was not aboard the Two Brothers because a year later, on November 19, 1822, he was instead aboard the ship Thames as it departed New Haven, Connecticut, bound for the Pacific. Clearly written in the crew list preserved in the U.S. Custom Service records at the National Archives is the name Charles Ramsdell of Nantucket, “Boat Steerer,” 18 years of age (but then overwritten to say 19), 5-foot, 6-inches tall, light complexion, and brown hair. The only other Nantucket man aboard was the captain, Reuben Clasby.

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Shared trauma creates an especially strong bond, and after a year of torment and confusion ashore, did Ramsdell come to realize that he not only missed the sea but wanted to catch up with his close friend Nickerson? While Nickerson was cruising under Captain Pollard in the Pacific in the Two Brothers, Ramsdell, promoted to boatsteerer, was at Tomlinson’s Wharf in New Haven, waiting for, of all things, missionaries to cut short the hymn Blest by the Tie that Binds and board. The Thames, 101 feet long and 350 tons, was a former packet ship that had recently been fitted out by the New Haven Whaling Company for a voyage to the Pacific. Cleared to sail in early October 1822, the ship was delayed many weeks by the illness of the first mate, who was finally replaced by a different man in November. During this time, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, a Protestant missionary society, was seeking a ship to carry missionaries from New England to Honolulu. The American Board’s agent discovered the Thames and secured passage on the ship for its missionaries. Aboard the Thames, Captain Reuben Clasby declared that swearing was forbidden, and in its place the sound of hymns was heard floating up from deck to rigging as the missionaries practiced for their monthly shipboard concert. Having given up everything to convert the Native people of the Pacific to Christianity, the determined missionaries decided that working on the sailors would be a good start, as we know from their surviving journals. Missionary Levi Chamberlain was in charge of secular affairs such as business and missionary records and his accounts are accurate and detailed. He wrote about many of the crew, and their names and positions exactly match the Thames crew list. Through Chamberlain, we learn that on December 22 the sighting of sperm whales “was the occasion of much excitement,” but the pursuit was abandoned when they proved to be finback whales. Later in the day the crew caught and tried out the blubber of two blackfish. On Monday, December 30, we see Ramsdell pull a harpoon from a thrashing shark

Sketch of the whale attacking the Essex, by Thomas Nickerson. Gift of Ann W. and James M. Finch. MS106-3

on deck. Chamberlain wrote, “A shark was caught this afternoon. . . . Mr. Manter [third mate] & Mr. Ramsdell stood on the spars which were extended over the stern with each a harpoon his hand . . . when [the shark] was decoyed up a second time they lodged them both in him. . . . The sailors took the skin from the tail part & prepared the flesh for their supper.” Young missionary teacher Betsey Stockton, a formerly enslaved Black woman who had educated herself from the books in her former master’s library, was not given a berth like the other missionaries but had a makeshift bed above the windows at the rear of the ship. From this vantage point she wrote that she “was much interested in witnessing the harpooning of a large shark. It was taken at the stern of the ship, about 6 yards from the cabin window, from which I had a clear view of it. It was struck by two harpoons at the same time. The fish . . . was so angry that he endeavoured to bite the men after he was on deck.” Chamberlain writes on January 23, “Several whales were seen but as the wind blew fresh & it was late in the day the captain though it best not to pursue them.”

Reverend Charles Samuel Stewart was tall, fit, charismatic, and in love with God and his pregnant wife, Harriet, whom he referred to as H— in his Journal of a Residence in the Sandwich Islands. He mentions a sailor R—, and with no other crewman aboard the ship with that initial save the Black cook we may reasonably guess he is writing about Ramsdell. On January 25, 1823, Reverend Stewart wrote, “In the dusk of the evening, while leaning, alone, against the railing of the quarter-deck . . . my arm was gently touched by someone, on the spars behind: it was R—, one of the hardiest of our crew. Perceiving me alone, he had stolen from his station forward, to say that his spirit, like the troubled sea, could find no rest. . . . His words were few, but his look, while he trembled under his guilt as a sinner . . . spoke volumes. . . . [H]e had scarcely eaten or slept during the whole week.” Scarcely eaten. It nearly the second anniversary of Owen Coffin’s murder in Captain Pollard’s boat. Pollard is said to have locked himself in his room to fast in honor of his lost crewmen on this anniversary later in his life.

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THE SECOND VOYAGE

On Wednesday, February 5, Levi Chamberlain wrote, “Held a short conversation with Charles Ramsdell, found him disposed to hear religious conversation, & ready to admit the importance of religion.” Not a week later, on February 11, Thomas Nickerson was about 6,900 nautical miles away in a small whaleboat in the northwest of the Hawaiian Islands chain, the Two Brothers having wrecked on a coral reef. Nickerson wrote that “Surrounded with breakers apparently mountains high . . . Captain Pollard seemed to stand amazed at the scene before him.” Deep lost in thought, his reasoning powers had flown, He cared for others’ Safety, not his own. And when the boats prepared, he lingered yet, And Seemed his own Salvation, to forget. In a footnote, Nickerson stressed, “The Capt. when called upon, could scarcely be prevailed on to embark.” In opportunity’s last second, first mate Eben Gardner pulled the captain into a whaleboat before they rowed away from the sinking ship. He and Pollard were once again in a boat on the open ocean with no food or water: Tis Past, the dangers of the night are o’er, And we’ve escaped the raging breakers roar. But here again, new terrors on us seize. We have no food, our hunger to appease, And thirst steals o’er our parched lips in vain, Pale Death’s Stern visage threatens now again. But their terror faded by daybreak; having spent a dismal night rowing around the reef and breakers, Pollard, Nickerson, and all their shipmates shouted as their companion ship Martha came into sight and rescued them. Meanwhile, Ramsdell and the Thames passed Cape Horn with its many potential dangers. Levi Chamberlain wrote, “Wednesday Feby 12th. W. Ramsdell begins to be serious, reads his Bible & other religious books.” The Thames spent three weeks rounding the southern tip of South America. “Not one of the officers or crew

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have had dry clothes during the whole of the time,” wrote Reverend Stewart on March 1. A few days later, he wrote, “My interviews with R—, since the gale off the Rio de la Plata, have been frequent. He continues greatly interested for his own salvation. On two nights, recently, I have spent a part of his watch on deck with him, and at both times, by the sight of a waning moon, have seen tears roll in torrents down his hardy cheeks, while he has spoken of the things that relate to his eternal peace. To some of his shipmates he has become an object of ridicule, while others seem to be like-minded with himself.” On March 6, Stewart, with whom Ramsdell now had a friendly rapport, wrote, “A short time since, R— was in great despondency, and said to me, ‘I know not what to do! I have read my Bible, and have prayed; I have tried for weeks, and for months, to be religious, but I cannot; I have no true repentance, no real faith, and God will not hear my prayers; what can I do? I feel that my soul will live for ever; and without the grace of God, I know it must eternally perish.’ But to-night I met him, with his Bible in his hand, and his very heart in his face, and his first words were, ‘O Mr. S—, I have found the right way to believe; it was the righteousness of Jesus Christ I needed. Now the whole Bible is not against me, as it used to be, but every word is for me, because I see and feel how God can be just, and yet justify an ungodly sinner.’ ” Ramsdell was struggling. The next day Chamberlain wrote, “Conversed with Charles Ramsdell about his soul. Religion, he thinks to be a good thing; but when urged to attend to it, says he finds in himself an unwillingness to renounce his companions, who are opposed to religion.” Give up your companions? Friends were everything. Like Owen Coffin and Barzillai Ray, who had died that he might live. On March 11, Chamberlain spoke again with Ramsdell and noted that “He says he has fully resolved to attend to religion and possess it, if it is attainable.” Stewart, more than two weeks later, reported, “R— is one of the happiest of creatures. All he says, is worth twice its real value, from the manner in which it is communi-

Crew list for the ship Thames of New Haven, 1822. National Archives, RG 36.

cated. . . . [He said,] ‘I did not know what faith was, or how to obtain it; but I know now what it is, and believe I possess it. But I do not know that I can tell you what it is, or how to get it. I can tell you what it is not: it is not knocking off swearing, and drinking, and such like; and it is not reading the Bible, nor praying, nor being good; it is none of these; for, even if they would answer for the time to come, there is the old score still, and how are you to get clear of that? It is not anything you have done or can do; it is only believing, and trusting to what Christ has done; it is forsaking your sins, and looking for their pardon and the salvation of your soul, because he died and shed his blood for sin; and it is nothing else.’ ” Ramsdell seems to have found a new outlook on life. Levi Chamberlain, March 30: “At sunrise sperm whales were descried some distance off the windward. We were then going pretty much before the wind. As soon

as the captain was informed of it, he gave orders to put about ship and to pursue them. After a chase of two hours, finding that the effort to come up with them was vain the pursuit was given over and orders given by the captain to put about again and square the yards.” Stewart, on April 8: “Often during the evening I saw tears of joy glistening in the bright eye of R—.” Chamberlain, on April 13: “Conversed with Ramsdell in the evening—he appears well.” Twenty-nine-year-old missionary Clarissa Lyman Richards’s letters home described things of interest as they unfolded, and by April Ramsdell’s survival of the Essex disaster and the progress of his soul was something to write home about. The missionaries’ full knowledge of the grisly details is reflected in her misspelling of “Ramsdale,” matching the way it appears in Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of

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“A Moment of Decision,” illustration by Michael Ramus, from Life magazine, November 10, 1952

the Whale-ship Essex of Nantucket, written by first mate Owen Chase and published in 1821, a year before the Thames sailed. On April 20, Richards wrote, “There has been considerable opposition among a few of the seamen to the good work, and they have employed all the arts of which they were capable, to defeat the benevolent designs of those who would save their souls. The Boatswain, of whom I have before spoken, appears to stand firm and immovable in the midst of the scoffs and jeers of his associates. Ramsdale, another interesting character, appears to be a sincere enquirer. You may possibly have heard the fate of the ship Essex, which was stove by a whale two or three years since. He was one of the few that were almost miraculously preserved.” According to psychiatrist Dr. Dominic Maxwell, the survivors of the Essex almost certainly had significant post-traumatic stress and likely complex survivor guilt as well. The conversations with Ramsdell that the missionaries describe in their journals were essentially talk therapy, a mode of healing that psychiatrists use today. In 1822, there was far less understanding of psychological conditions and symptoms, but Charles Ramsdell experienced an uncommon opportunity to talk about his mental struggles. He had a rare chance to reach a sense of relief and healing.

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Owen Chase suffered terrible headaches and nightmares and hoarded food before he died insane in 1869. Pollard reportedly hung a net of food above his bed so that any time he awoke, he could reach out and take something to eat. In 1879, the Kalamazoo Gazette printed that “Captain Nickerson does not like to talk of this fearful passage in his life, and the horrors of it have left a permanent impression on his mind.” Perhaps for Ramsdell hope was rising. In about a month the Thames would reach the Hawaiian Islands, where he would hear news of his fellow islanders on the Two Brothers. Levi Chamberlain: “157th [day at sea]. Sabbath April 27th. At 12 o’clock before morning Woahoo was in full view by moonlight.” The Thames had raised Oahu. At daylight, “we bore away & stood in for the harbor. . . . The ship was very soon visited by the officers of several whaling ships . . . .” In Two Years Before The Mast, Richard Henry Dana wrote how impatient his crewmates were to go ashore, but they had to wait for the captain’s permission. Ramsdell was still aboard the Thames when the officers of other whaling ships came aboard to exchange greetings and news. “How long from New Haven, Clasby?” “How many barrels of oil?” “Did you hear of the wreck of the Two Brothers of Nantucket?” At that news Ramsdell could only have been stunned, then horrified. And then to his great relief: All crew are here on shore. The

THE SECOND VOYAGE

Martha had delivered Pollard, Nickerson, and the rest to Oahu on February 29, almost two months before Ramsdell arrived. “We arrived Safely at the Island of Wahoo,” Nickerson wrote, “after a Somewhat Stormy passage and all the crew of the Two Brothers were Safely landed and as the whaling fleet were at the time in that Port, each took their own course and joined separate Ships as Chances offered.” What ship did Nickerson join to take his own course home? We do not know. Captain Pollard left Hawaii aboard the Pearl on March 21. Was Nickerson still in Honolulu when Ramsdell arrived? Probably. According to the May 31 report of John Coffin Jones Jr., U.S. agent for commerce and seamen in Honolulu, “The harbour is now filled with whale ships, not less than eighteen, provisions consequently scarce and dear, we have also here on shore all the crews of two whale ships lately wrecked the Lion and the Two Brothers of Nantucket.” The Thames left Honolulu on May 12, so Ramsdell had plenty of time to find Nickerson first. As reported in the Connecticut Herald, the Thames arrived back in New Haven November 4, 1825, then shortly afterward sailed for New York to sell its cargo of 1,900 barrels of whale oil. After a successful voyage as boatsteerer, Ramsdell returned to Nantucket the kind of man a pretty girl might say yes to; four months later, he married Mercy Fisher on Nantucket on March 11, 1826. They went on to have four children. The cabinetmaker’s son rose to command the ship Lydia of Salem on two successful voyages from 1835 to 1840. Widowed twenty years later, he married Eliza Lamb in 1846, and they brought two more children into the world. He died in 1866.

Sources New Haven Crew Lists, Records of the U.S. Custom Service, RG36, National Archives and Records Administration. Hawaiian Mission Houses Digital Archive, https://hmha.missionhouses.org/ Levi Chamberlain Journals, vol. 1 (Nov. 11, 1822–Aug. 4, 1823) Sandwich Island Mission Journal (1819–1825) Clarissa Lyman Richards Journal (1822–23) Thomas E. French. The Missionary Whaleship. New York: Vantage Press, 1961. Richard A. Greer. Along the Old Honolulu Waterfront. Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1998. Kalamazoo Gazette, Oct. 24, 1879, 2. James Montgomery, ed. Journals of Voyages and Travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq. London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, 1831. Samuel Eliot Morison. Boston Traders in Hawaiian Islands, 1789–1823. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1920. Thomas Nickerson Manuscripts, NHA Ms. 106. Nathaniel Philbrick. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. New York: Viking, 2000. Charles S. Stewart. Journal of a Residence in the Sandwich Islands. London: H. Fisher, Son, and Jackson, 1828. Dominic Maxwell, MD, Medical Director and Consulting Psychiatrist, Fairwinds Counseling Center, Nantucket, Mass.

The fate of the Essex could have crippled and haunted Charles Ramsdell for the rest of his life, but Providence guided him back to the Pacific on a ship filled with missionaries, who helped him find a way to pick his life back up again. A new start, a second chance, and goodness and mercy sailed on the second voyage of Charles Ramsdell. Right: An archaeologist mapping the location of a trypot at the Two Brothers shipwreck site, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Hawaii. NOAA photograph by Tane Casserley

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Recent Acquisitions

Nantucket Lightship Baskets The NHA and the Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum recently received a donation of three nineteenth-century lightship baskets from Frank and Terry C. Sylvia. The baskets came attributed to Josiah Folger, a weaver not otherwise known to be represented in the NHA or NLBM collections. Two Josiah Folgers lived on Nantucket in the nineteenth century. One moved away and died at New Orleans in 1872; the other was an island businessman. This second Josiah Folger is probably our basket maker. Born in 1828, he apprenticed to a tailor in his youth, but soon changed to clerical work. He was employed for a time at the Inquirer newspaper, serving as its temporary editor in 1850 when publisher Edward W. Cobb was in Boston serving in the state legislature. That same year, Folger joined the coal, grain, and lumber business of Edward W. Perry. Sixteen years later, Perry made Folger a partner, and the firm was renamed E. W. Perry & Company. Folger remained with Perry until the two sold the business and their extensive wharfside properties to Captain John Killen in 1891. Folger’s obituary notes that he was “never in rugged health” and records that as a young man he made a voyage to England with Captain Hezediah Coffin to try to improve his health. “Mr. Folger was of a retiring nature,” the obituary continues, “never entering society. He was a man of literary tastes, and took much comfort in a splendid library he had accumulated. He never married, but looked after the comfort of his mother, residing with her at the homestead on Pleasant Street until her death a few years ago.” Folger served two decades as treasurer of the Nantucket Atheneum and was a member of the Pacific Club. No records have yet been found of him making baskets or of entering baskets at any of the annual Nantucket Agricultural Fairs. He died in 1902 and is buried in the Friends Burial Ground on Upper Main Street.

On View 2022

ASIAN TREASURES FROM THE BILLINGS COLLECTION Whaling Museum, McCausland Gallery, Memorial Day weekend through November 1, 2022 Sampling seven thousand years of art history in Asia, the exhibition will draw from the world-class collection of island resident David Billings to present more than two hundred examples of fine ceramics, bronzes, textiles, and other artifacts from China, Japan, Korea, India, and Tibet. It will be a rare opportunity to see such items on Nantucket. Chunar stone figure of the Buddha India, Sarnath, Gupta Period, ca. 475 Height: 44 1/2 inches (113 cm) David Billings Asian Art Collection

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programs, exhibits, events, and sch lectures aimed to entertain and foster t groups it serves.

Gifts to the Annual Fund support every aspect of and allow the organization to fulfill its mission throu and collaborations.

Support the NHA with a gift to the Annual Fund Support the NHA with a gift to the Annual Fund t Josiah Folger baskets, 2021.21.1–.3. Photography by Jeff Allen.

THANK YOU! Thank you to the volunteer docents and weavers who kept the Nantucket lightship basket legacy alive this summer. We welcomed more than 6,000 visitors at Hadwen House and could not have done it without you!

Support the NHA with a gift to the Annual Fund today!

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association NHA-philan-21-2.indd 3

Program

Unveiling of USS Nantucket Crest The NHA hosted the formal unveiling ceremony of the offical crest of the new U.S. Navy littoral combat vessel USS Nantucket on Monday, September 20, to a full capacity audience. The USS Nantucket Commissioning Committee and the ship’s future commanding officer presented the ship’s crest and explained how the elements in the crest symbolized aspects of Nantucket history and navy tradition. The chairman of the Commissioning Committee, Robert Gerosa, commander, USN (Ret.), a former commanding officer of USS Constitution, was the host. He introduced the ship’s sponsor, Nantucket summer resident Polly Spencer, whose husband, Richard V. Spencer, was Secretary of the U.S. Navy from 2017 to 2019. Also in attendance were the USS Constitution Color Guard; Captain David Miller, USN, the commodore of Littoral Combat Ship Squadron Two; and Commander Kari Yakubisin, USN, who will serve as commanding officer of USS Nantucket when the ship is commissioned in 2023.

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Fulfilling the NHA’s mission —the preservation and interpretation of the island’s long, complex history— is no small undertaking. Above: Sailors assigned to USS Constitution perform a Color Guard for the crest unveiling of the Freedom-class littoral combat ship USS Nantucket (LCS 27)

NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Program

WAMPANOAG AND NANTUCKET AS ONE Fulfilling the NHA’s mission—the preservation and interpretation of the island’s long, complex history—is no small undertaking. The association’s renewed focus on the first people to call Nantucket home, the Wampanoag tribe and their ancestors, has become a critical initiative that helps meet this ambitious goal. Coming a week after Indigenous People’s Day, the NHA welcomed Darius Coombs to island. Coombs, the Cultural and Outreach Coordinator for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, has worked closely with the NHA since 2019. His program this year, Wampanoag and Nantucket as One, gave island residents a chance to hear from one of the region's foremost educators on tribal history and cultural traditions.

Darius Coombs with mishoon in the Whaling Museum’s Gosnell Hall

Over the course of a weekend, Coombs visited the Nantucket public schools, spending time with students K–12 and culminating in an hour-long session with the third-grade class. Coombs finished his island visit with a free public lecture at the Whaling Museum, which can be seen on the NHA’s YouTube channel. Coombs arrived on Nantucket with a mishoon, or dugout canoe, in tow, which he had recently constructed. According to Coombs, mishoon were used in Nantucket waters for millenia; bringing one to the island reignites the tradition of these watercraft here, albeit after a several-hundred-year hiatus. The mishoon will remain with the NHA, helping in our quest to interpret and exhibit the Native history of Nantucket more fully and accurately.

Program

PROGRAMS ON THE ROAD The NHA continues to deepen its commitment to the Nantucket community. Beginning this November, skilled interpreters from the NHA will take signature Whaling Museum programs and presentations “on the road” to different Nantucket elder services’ groups and residences, including the Salt Marsh Senior Center and Sherburne Commons. Residents will engage with the NHA’s collections and interact with staff in these informal and informative presentations. Interpreters will introduce a variety of historical topics ranging from scrimshaw, medicine aboard whaling ships, and whale ecology to Wampanoag history and the extraordinary women of Nantucket. Artifacts from the NHA collection will provide a hands-on experience for participants. Programs on the Road presentations will also include the spirited storytelling of long-time Whaling Museum favorites the Essex Gam and the Whale Hunt presentation. In addition to being entertaining, these experiences will provide a format for discussion; the sharing of information and stories will allow our interpreters to learn from Nantucket community members and be inspired by them, incorporating their information and remembrances in new and creative ways. Programs on the Road brings a new dynamic to the NHA’s mission, as we take these creative steps to further open up access to our collections, exhibits, programs and stories, and history for this important segment of the island community. NHA interpreter Bob Kucharavy shows scrimshaw to participants at the Salt Marsh Senior Center

NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Grant

By Karl Wietzel, NHA Collections Specialist

Unpacking a Nantucket Excavation: THE MARSHALL SITE COLLECTION For the last year, the NHA has been engaged in a project to rehouse and catalog the association’s several-thousand-piece archaeology collection, funded by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. This fall, our team has focused on one of the most exciting parts of this collection, the 1966 Marshall Site Excavation. Rich in physical material and research value, the artifacts uncovered from this site reveal new avenues for study and interpretation. In the summer of 1966, the Marshall Site was one of seven locations tested by students of the UMASS Field School under the direction of Professor William Harrison. Working near Abrams Point, these up-and-coming archaeologists broke the site into seven sections, worked in pairs to conduct sample excavations, and produced field notes, analyses, catalog records, and over 1,500 artifact bags, some containing more than one hundred individual artifacts or artifact fragments. Today, the entirety of the collection is now in the care of the NHA. The contents of these bags include prehistoric stone tools, celts, projectile points, iron parts, ceramic and steatite vessels, charcoal, and samples of flora, fauna, and soil. The Marshall Site was used and occupied for thousands of years. Research suggests that, beginning around ten thousand years ago, the Marshall Site began to be used periodically for hunting, refuse, and possibly tool production. There is some evidence that during the Woodland Period, 3,000– 450 years ago, there was settlement on the site. More convincing evidence of settlement was found dating to the Contact Period beginning in the mid-seventeenth century. The Marshall excavation materials, like many other twentieth century archaeological assemblages held by the NHA, did not arrive to the museum ideally stored for preservation. Archaeologists often used what they had on hand to take artifacts from the field. Paper seed bags, old cigar boxes, and plastic bags were common storage solutions for field work on a deadline. In 1988, a new generation of archaeologists under the direction of Dr. Dena F. Dincauze took on the research and upkeep of the Marshall Collection. First, each artifact was unpacked, reanalyzed, and reconnected with its 1966 record. Before the assemblage was rehoused and made its way back on to the shelf, Dr. Dincauze’s group conducted research on a variety of topics including the origins of the excavated kaolin pipes, analysis on the many hundreds of pottery fragments, and the composition of the site itself.

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Iron Lock. Excavated from Contact Period household or refuse pit at the Marshall Site. Shimmo, Nantucket. Kaolin Pipes. Excavated from Contact Period household or refuse pit at the Marshall Site. Shimmo, Nanutucket.

In Progress

DIGITIZATION UPDATE

Their work, painstaking and precise, helped stabilize the collection for decades and provided potential avenues for research. Each box, neatly separated by location, datum, depth, and material, contains fascinating artifacts stored similarly to how they were originally uncovered in 1966. These kaolin pipes and a lock were found just a few inches below the ground, and were part of a post-contact household or debris pit at the site. While it is unclear exactly who was living at this location in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, research conducted by Harrison, Dincauze, and their teams suggests that these were European goods that belonged to a Wampanoag household. These are some of the earliest Contact Period pieces in the NHA’s collection, and they help us better understand the lifeways of Nantucketers during the Colonial Period. There was almost no European settlement at this location on Nantucket in the seventeenth century, and the Contact Period depths at the site contain a mixture of Native and non-Native artifacts. Dr. Elizabeth Little, having studied the deed and probate records of the period, identified sixty Wampanoag households that bore some characteristics of a European structure. With artifacts like iron nails excavated at the same depths as traditional pottery forms, there is evidence that the Marshall site was once such a home. The management of every archaeological assemblage is different. Some require new containers, others better connections with the records created for them. In the case of the Marshall Site, the most important task is to make the artifacts and their associated research available to archaeologists and historians. The digitization of catalog records, field notebooks, thousands of handwritten journals, and correspondence help to continue a long history of preservation and research on this fascinating Nantucket site.

Researchers have gained access to two newly digitized collections of NHA material, with a third collection in progress. In 2021, library staff digitized more than 200 ships’ journals and logs, wrapping up the project in mid-July. The collection spans more than a century of Nantucket whaling history but also documents voyages departing from New Bedford as well as merchant and sealing voyages. The digitized volumes are now available through the NHA’s collections catalog. The complete back catalog of Historic Nantucket and its predecessor, Annual Proceedings of the NHA, is also now available online through the NHA’s website. Starting with the first annual meeting in 1895, the publications span more than 300 issues of Nantucket and NHA history. This fall, digitization has begun on the ships’ papers collection, which includes crew lists, correspondence, receipts, and more, all documenting the maritime history of Nantucket. The materials found in this collection provide a critical supplement to the logbook collection and are often an important window into how the whaling economy operated and who participated in it. Digitization and transcription of the NHA’s collection is made possible thanks to a visionary gift from Connie and Tom Cigarran.

ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ADVENTURE? Follow along on whaling voyages from the comfort of your own home! The NHA is looking for volunteers to help transcribe the whaling journals in its collection. If you are interested in volunteering, please email Ashley Miller, Assistant Archivist, at amiller@nha.org.

This project is made possible by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, MA-246065-OMS-20. NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Giving

The Heritage Society PLANNING TODAY FOR THE NHA’S TOMORROW The NHA’s Whaling Museum, historic properties, and programs bring to life Nantucket history, inspiring us and awakening our curiosity about other times and other people. For more than a century, planned gifts have helped the NHA carry out its mission—from adding significant artifacts to the collections to building the endowment to ensuring the perpetual care of our iconic properties. We invite you to become a member of the NHA’s Heritage Society with your planned gift. Such gifts can help you to meet your charitable giving goals as well as your personal financial goals—with bequests of cash, artifacts, and real estate; gifts of life insurance policies, appreciated securities, and other estate planning methods. Through your vision and generosity, the NHA will continue to tell the inspiring stories of Nantucket through its collections, programs, and properties. To learn more about the Heritage Society, please contact the Development Office at (508) 228-1894 or plannedgiving@nha.org.

Host your event in a historic setting with an unforgettable outdoor backdrop at one of our downtown properties Contact Rentals@NHA.org for more information Event photo courtesy of Zofia & Co. Photography.

The Museum Shop Is Open! Members receive 10% off every purchase, and shop online at NantucketMuseumShop.org

Suzanne Dietsch Sailor’s Valentine Kit, Style 101

Nantucket Island Chowder Mug

Nantucket Lightship Basket Hydrangea Ornament

Large Sperm Whale with Base

NHA Publication Scrimshaw on Nantucket By: Stuart Frank Scrimshaw on Nantucket: The Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association features more than 800 scrimshaw artifacts from the NHA’s world-class collection, newly photographed in stunning detail by island photographer Jeff Allen.

P.O. BOX 1016, NANTUCKET, MA 02554–1016

PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT NANTUCKET, MA AND ADDITIONAL ENTRY OFFICES

FESTIVAL TREES OF

Trees on display through December 31 throughout the Whaling Museum.

The Festival of Trees is the NHA’s highly anticipated holiday tradition that transforms the Whaling Museum into a festive winter wonderland for the entire month of December! This event features community-crafted trees designed by local merchants, nonprofit organizations, artists, and children. The NHA is extremely grateful for the involvement and support of the many individuals and organizations that contribute to the success of the Festival of Trees. Your creativity and talent make it all possible. FREE for NHA Members and Island Residents Thanks to Festival of Trees lead sponsor