Historic Nantucket, Fall 2000, Vol. 49 No. 4

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES Arie L. Kopelman President

Peter W. Nash

Barbara Hajim

Bruce D. Miller

First Vice President

Patricia M. Bridier

Second Vice President

Treasurer

Clerk

Sarah Baker Rebecca M. Bartlett Laurie Champion Prudence S. Crozier John H. Davis Alice F. Emerson Mary F. Espy

Thomas C. Gosnell Virginia S. Heard Julius Jensen III L. Dennis Kozlowski Jane Lamb Carolyn MacKenzie Albert L. Manning Jr. Steven M. Rales

Arthur I. Reade Jr. Alfred Sanford John M. Sweeney Richard F. Tucker Marcia Welch David H. Wood Robert A. Young

Frank D. Milligan Executive Director

ADVISORY BOARD Walter Beinecke Jr. Joan Brecker Patricia Butler Helen Winslow Chase Michael deLeo Lyndon Dupuis Martha Groetzinger Dorrit D. P. Gutterson

Nina Hellman Elizabeth Husted Elizabeth Jacobsen Francis D. Lethbridge Reginald Levine Katherine S. Lodge Sharon Lorenzo Patricia Loring

William B. Macomber Paul Madden Robert F. Mooney Jane C. Richmond Nancy J. Sevrens Scott M. Stearns Jr. JohnS. Winter Mary-Elizabeth Young

RESEARCH FELLOWS Dr. Elizabeth Little

Nathaniel Philbrick

Patty Jo S. Rice

Renny A. Stackpole

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Mary H. Beman Susan F. Beegel Richard L. Brecker

Thomas B. Congdon Jr. Charlotte Louisa Maison Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham

Nathaniel Philbrick Sally Seidman David H. Wood

PROPERTIES OF THE NHA Oldest House Hadwen House Macy-Christian House Robert Wyer House Thomas Macy House 1800 House Greater Light Old Mill Old Gaol

Old Town Building Thomas Macy Warehouse Fire Hose Cart House Quaker Meeting House Nantucket Whaling Museum Fair Street Museum Peter Foulger Museum Museum Shop

Bartholomew Gosnold Center and Annex Folger-Franklin Memorial Fountain, Boulder, and Bench Settlers Burial Ground Tristram Coffin Homestead Monument Little Gallery Eleanor Ham Pony Field Mill Hill

Cecil Barron Jensen

Helen Winslow Chase

Elizabeth Oldham

Claire O'Keeffe

EDITOR

HISTORIAN

COPY EDITOR

ART DIRECTOR

Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research, first-hand accounts, reminiscences of island experiences, historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers.

Copyright ©2000 by Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association, 2 Whaler's Lane, Nantucket, MA 02554.

Second-class postage paid at South Yarmouth, MA and additional entry offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket Box 1016 • Nantucket, MA 02554-1016 • (508) 228-1894; fax: (508) 228-5618 • nhainfo@nha.org For a map of our walking tour and historic sites: www.nha.org

NANTUCKET VOLUME 49, NO.4

FALL2000

4 From the Executive Director

by Frank D. Milligan

11 (~ genuine relic of old Nantucket)) -

5

Eliza Ann McCleave's Museu1

Love, Marriage, and Family in the Nineteenth-Century Whaling Communities

by Aimee E. Newell

by Lisa Norling

15 Researching the Diary of Martha Fish:

'-1 ~DE v {j~t·T.u.,,~

Writing a Woman)s Life

18

by Christina Gessler 4 .c\Wi•.,

Historic Nantucket Book Section

~ .J(),\.S UKt"•;TT /1

She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea Reviewed by Susan Beegel

20 NHANews

On the cover:

'

TOR!C

NANTUCKET

Dance card with wnst nbbon cam'ed at Coffin Reunion Bal4 August 18, 1881.

Photograph by JeffreyS. Allen.

FALL

20

F R 0 M

THE

EXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR

Marketing the NHA TUDENTS OF MARKETING KNOW THAT AS

S

hospital marketing first came of age in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s it was occasionally met with raised eyebrows.

In the year 2000, you would be hard pressed to find a hospital in which marketing is not woven into every planning and community-relations program. Today, museums face somewhat the same issues as hospitals faced twenty years ago. While neither is a typical business regarding the bottom line, trustees and senior managers in both museums and hospitals have for decades made balanced budgets institutional priorities.

Museums and historical associations may not be profit oriented but they are certainly service oriented. And in that regard museums should rdy on rock-solid marketing- a plan that efficiently ties together planning, education and programming, collection devdopment, and public rdations.

Though admittedly a "washashore" with less than a year on island under my bdt, it is nonethdess apparent to me that the Nantucket Historical Association needs to be a marketing leader. We need to determine what our various publics (year-round residents, seasonal residents, and day trippers) perceive as their needs, identify how we can reach those needs, and then develop our programming in creative and entertaining ways.

Most people think of marketing as synonymous with sdling and promotion. Rather, it is a carefully formulated process that has more to do with needs assessment, research, product development, pricing, and distribution - terms readily understood within any of the country's corporate boardrooms and administrative offices.

Museum marketing is also a social process where every effort is made to understand the needs of a community, or in Nantucket's case perhaps a "community of communities," as someone recently described the island. Seen in this light, marketing is necessarily interwoven into the fabric of our museums - our raison d'etre- to foster learning and understanding. In his book Learning in the Museum, George Hein of Cambridge's Lesley College has confronted the unsettling fact that museum visits tend to be brief, infrequent events that typically require less time and effort than most other educational activities. He then illustrates how research in visitor studies and the philosophy of education can be applied "to facilitate a meaningful educational experience in museums." Lastly, Hein ties

4

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

marketing to the science of visitor studies and the museum mission. It is a modd that begs to be adopted.

Our Historical Association is coming off a remarkably successful season with attendance at our historic properties, museums, and expanded walking tours showing healthy growth. Undoubtedly, the heavier than usual rainfall and our wonderful exhibition, The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which drew many readers of Nat Philbrick's best-sdling book, helped our numbers. But as we look ahead to reinvigorating our historic properties with a variety of family-oriented programs and designing and constructing our new museum facility, we need to build on a firm foundation anchored in established marketing practices.

To this end, we intend to find out what our "communities" need from their historical association and then ensure that our products and services meet those needs.

Only then will we begin to lengthen our visitor stays in our galleries; only then will visitation patterns show increased repeat usage; and only then will the NHA be assured of the financial stability that is so critical to our preservation and educational mission. We are maintaining our many historic properties, developing programming, and designing and constructing a multimillion-dollar central museum for one reason to provide Nantucket residents and visitors with meaningful educational experiences. Simply put, we want everyone to know and appreciate that "Nantucket Starts Here" in the wonderful properties of the Nantucket Historical Association.

- Frank D. Milligan

Postscript: The NHA Faces the Nantucket Housing Crisis s is the case with most Nantucket employers, the NHA faces a huge challenge in helping to provide housing solutions for many of our thirty seasonal and twenty permanent staff. In order to effectively recruit and retain talented staff, the NHA increasingly needs to offer housing as part of the employment package. While the association is exploring a number of long-range options, we do need shon-term assistance. Please call me at (508) 228-1894, ext. 21, or e-mail me at fmilligan@nha.org if you feel you could assist us in any way. Thanks.

A

FALL

2000

Love, Marriage, and Family in the Nineteenth-Century Whaling Communities Chapter 5: EXCERPT (pages 175-182) from

Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Used by permission of the publisher.

c

OURTSHIP WAS THE PROCESS BY WHICH

individuals paired up- formed that all-important, exclusive, intimate relationship - and separated themselves off from others in constructing a new family unit. As it had in the previous century, the performance of courtship rituals and activities continued to occur within a communal context of peers and community-based activities. But in the nineteenth century parents and other community elders exercised considerably less direct influence over courtship and marriage choice, and young women and men exercised considerably more individual freedom.

When Jane Russell of Nantucket wrote her twin brother Roland in 1838 about her indecision over a prospect of marriage, she reported that she had "Friends to Advise me some one thing and some other but after all tell me too suit myself."

Jane was anticipating the return of her whalemansuitor from the Pacific: "they have been absent 39 months and probably will not stay many more," she thought. She told Roland that she had been "very much tried and perplexed in my own mind," and felt deeply the lack of "a Father's Counsel and a Mother's advice" (both their parents had died several years earlier).

Roland agreed with Jane on the "importance of weighing well every argument for or against the single & the Married life" because "upon this depends in a great measure your Happiness or Misery during life." Jane declared, "I am half Inclined to live an Old Maid [but] from the acquaintance I formed with Mr. Thomas S. HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Andrews I seemed to think that If I were to make a by Choice of a Companion it might possibly be him." One Lisar of her reservations seemed to be his family, which, she wrote, "is not just what I should like." (It is not clear what about Andrews's family bothered Jane; perhaps it was his oldest sister's bearing of a child out of wedlock some fourteen years before.) Roland advised Jane that "it would be gratifying to be connected with a person of respectable parentage & who are in good standing in society" but added that, given Mr. Andrews's own evident virtues, "friends or fortune" were "of minor consequence." Jane had only asked for her twin brother's "good advice," but Roland concluded somewhat pompously, "if ... you have well considered the dutys and responsibilities of the married life & the disadvantages and perplexities of a life of celibacy I should cheerfully give my consent to your union with the man of your choice." Jane did so choose; she married Thomas shortly after his return in 1839. Their son, whom they named Roland, was born the following year.

The historian Ellen Rothman, in her history of courtship in America, describes how in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, "girls and boys met on the lanes and commons of the village and in the houses of their neighbors and kinfolk; Yew f nyfand< they encountered each other in church, schoolroom, and shop .... They went andthe l;JÂŁa/ej berrying, riding, picnicking; they sang and danced together at parties and balls." Well into the antebellum period, as in the previ17!0-/d ous century, "male-female socializing did not depend on special occasions but was f:isa \nrl. integrated into the routine of everyday life." Furthermore, "young people had the

CAPT_

All}

HAC

WIF FALL

autonomy and privacy to develop relationships that were sexually and emotionally intimate, and they did."

In an 1850 letter to James Sowle, Ruth Grinnell described in some detail the activities by which she and James courted, which, judging by the research of Rothman and other historians, seem quite typical of their period, region, and socioeconomic setting: "James do you remember our visit to N.B. [New Bedford], and our walk to look up the horse and carraige, . . . our strolls about the meadows after wildflowers, and the time we went to meeting to the schoolhouse, and the numerous walks to the Point rock, and one time I hid your knife in the sand, and you said 'Oh blast you' have you forgotten all these. And oh James the last Sabbath you were here when you came down .... And the morning you sailed."

A remarkable set of sources allows us to compare the expectations and attitudes of Ruth and James with those of other maritime courting couples and to assess their typicality: a mailbag of dead letters dating from the 1840s and 1850s, preserved among the papers of a midcentury postmaster in the New Bedford area. It appears that Ruth and James were not unusual in their courtship, either in their activities or in their reliance on prescription. Constant reference to ideals of romantic love and companionship was the most important means by which many whalemen and their sweethearts pledged themselves to each other, distinguished themselves from their communities as separate couples, I and sustained their ties over such extremes of time and distance.

Signing herself his "affectionant girl," Susan Hathaway wrote to George Anderson, then at sea on the bark Governor Carver, a letter much shorter and not so neatly written as Ruth's, but which hit many of the same romantic notes. Susan told George, "I received your letter ... and was very much pleased to here from you and here you were well and injoying your self so well try and injoy your self has well as you can untill you get home and then we will bouth in joy our self together in Ma's front room." "Dear George," she confided, "I dream of you every night . . . but when I awake in the morning I find it is but a dream .... you wrote that there was never was a homesicker man then you all for me but if you fell worse then I do I pity you for I felt very bad[.] I could not go in the frount room for a long time I miss you so." She promised, "George it is you I love no toung tell and Dear George I will not decive NANTUCKET

you I will be true to you while you are fare fare away from me[.] do not be afraid of it for I will keep my word there is no one that can take your place for you was the first that I can say that ever I love." She closed with just one ending (but with a bit of doggerel that Ruth might have appreciated): "you must escuse all mistakes and bad writting for my pen is porr[,] my ink is pale[,] my love shall never fale."

New Bedford spinster Lydia Davenport, whose two sisters both married whalemen, noted the exclusivity implied by romantic love and its paradoxical quality in the maritime setting. She recorded (rather pettily or maybe drearily) in her diary, "I rode [in the carriage] under rather peculiar circumstances, I felt that I was the 'third person' of the party; it was my dear Sister, and the One she loves best on earth, and who seems to love her with all the fervor of devotion; but" she pointed out, "he is soon to leave her for a long voyage." Lydia ended on a pious and perhaps conciliatory note: "May the rich blessings of Heaven, be shed around their different paths while separated, and may they be reunited and spend many years of happiness, in this world and be prepared, to spend a never ending Eternity in praising God for his goodness toward them."

Shared moments of intimacy might be snatched at the Point rocks, in Ma's front room, during a carriage ride despite a sister's presence--or even on a ship in port, as Jared Gardner renlinisced to his wife Harriet, in "that burth where once we wer lock in each others armes." Jared remembered "the libertis that I took be fore we wer married," apparently with guilt-free pleasure, since he added, "I have no doubt but that you will forgive me for that. Men are too much alike in that respect but we will not dwell too long on that. I can truely say that the three months that we wer togather was the hapyest time that ever I spent ... with the one who is dearer than all."

Jared Gardner, who had married Harriet just three weeks before he left Nantucket in the whaleship Washington on 14 May 1840, would be gone for three years. Measuring time at home in the weeks and the time at sea in years was typical, especially for the men who rounded Cape Horn and whaled the lucrative grounds of the Pacific Ocean. Elijah Chase asked his mother to give his sweetheart, "Lucritia," "my love in full .... Tell her that she must cheer up, for it is only 40 months more before we shall put away for home."

Jane Russell sent news about one of her brothers to FALL

2000

another in 1837: "Reuben is going out Master of the Ship Susan ... he has been at home 3 months nowquite a visit for a Cape homer." With the intermittent and prolonged absences of nineteenth-century whaling voyages, intimate relationships had to develop in short, intense periods of only weeks, interspersed with difficult multiyear separations.

The staccato rhythms of maritime courtship created insecurities on shore and at sea that only repeated reiteration of prescription could allay. Sarah Pierce wrote her sweetheart, Captain Elijah Chisole, "I saw by your first [letter] that you thought I had either forgotten you or forgotten my promise I felt very sorry to think that you thought so for I have taken great paines to write you every chance their has been ... I have written you 13 letters since you sailed." (He had left New Bedford on 29 June 1852; her letter was dated December 24.)

Sarah insisted, "it is almost impossible for me to forget one that I thinks loves me as you do .. . I think of you both day and night." In fact, she felt so strongly that she declared, "I want you dearest before you come home to HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

make your mind up that you will never leave me again to go to sea for I never could be happy with you at sea and I at home far from you that I love."

Separation, especially during courtship, raised all sorts of fears as well as unhappiness. Women like Ruth Grinnell and Sylvia Tucker expressed concern about deception before their marriages. Ruth worried, "have I centered my all in a false deceiving man?" Sylvia Tucker, writing in 1852 to accept John Leonard's proposal of marriage, explained, "I think I should have answered sooner if I had not heard so much and been warned so many times to beware of deceitfulness (but now I trust in you)" and she signed her letter, "One not deceitful, Sylvia."

It is not always clear what Ruth, Sylvia, and other women feared when they referred generally to "deception." Other than the threatening possibility that he had stopped caring for her, the only specific sin that Ruth warned James against was profanity: "I sincerely hope my own dear James does not take Gods name in vain ... James I do not want you to deceive me by

Popping Com ca. 1856,

by

Benjamin Russell.

Courtesy of Old Dartmouth Histoncal SocietyNew Bedford Whaling Museum.

FALL

2000

~¡ swearing when you are out of my presence." Her appeal echoed those of other maritime women, such as Joan Waterman, who had written a quarter of a century earlier, in mild suggestion to her husband, "I hope you will try to keep your temper and not use no profane language." Words were what comprised their relationships during separation and words, at least those words known to be common to the seafaring subculture, were in part what some women tried to control.

8

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Certainly they had plenty to feel insecure about: they stayed home while the whalemen roamed the world.

Susan Cromwell informed her husband that "John Enos got married at St. Catharines brought his wife home in the Ship & Cynthia feels verry bad to think he serv' d Eliza such a mean trick ... I realy pity her she is disappointd & mortified." Perhaps the fears of Ruth, Sylvia, and the others were justified. But the absent men felt insecurities, too. Charles B. Babcock told his brother Henry, who was serving as mate of the bark LeBaron out of Newport, Rhode Island, "I called on Sarah at Mr Hammond store where she is clerken and invited her to go a sailing with us but she was so engaged she could not go . .. dear Harry I am affraid that she has proved herself unworth of you and in my opinion the best of girles would not remain true in the absence of 2 years of a lover, mark my word they are faithless things unless you are with them every day."

Apparently a certain Sallee Brown in Westport proved so, as William Davol informed his brother Edward, then somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

"In your letter to George you requested him to acknowledge to Sallee Brown When he read it he said he should do no such thing ... I should consider you as insane indeed if you were to marry a girl that was not virtuous ... it can be proved to a demonstration that a certain chap in Westport did stay with Sallee the night before he sailed and she having the flowers [i.e., was menstruating] did paint the map of the world on his shirt tail, and when he went a board he gave it to davy Jones [i.e., # threw it overboard]. She has turned off her beau and some think that you will marry her yet [but] I consider you as having stood on the verge of an awful precipice and crawled back just in time to save your neck &c."

It may have been Sallee's lack of discrimination rather than the act itself that was at issue. Rothman found that what young women and men actually did when courting in the antebellum period demonstrates that "sexual boundaries between unmarried women and men were still loosely drawn and crossed with relative ease .... Coquetry and seduction were condemned, but flirtation and sexual playfulness remained common feaFALL

2000

tures of male-female social life." Rothman suggests that in the nineteenth century, as it had been in the eighteenth, such behavior was tolerated (though not necessarily condoned) in the close-knit local communities where other family members could assure marriage if pregnancy resulted.

WhalemanJared Gardner certainly admitted with pleasurable memory but no self-consciousness that he "took liberties" before he and Harriet married, and "D." Allen wrote her seafaring brother matter-of-factly, "Little Edmand goes to see Beck Petty and stays till morning. I expect nothing else but they will be married in a few weeks."

The flexible attitudes about premarital intimacy demonstrate that the modem notion that all aspects of marriage from sex to cohabitation begin with the wedding ceremony itself was not yet firmly in place. Rather, the evidence from the whaling communities indicates the persistence of an older custom by which the multifaceted transition from single to married status occurred over several weeks and culminated not with the wedding but with the new couple independently "setting up housekeeping." The achievement of married status could be even more complicated in the maritime setting because the transition frequently continued for the first several years after marriage. In a very common practice, new wives simply remained in their parents' homes when their husbands shipped out again. Their familiar identity as daughter, evolving over years, sometimes overwhelmed their newly acquired, still uncertain sense of themselves as wife when their husbands were gone.

Just twenty-five days after they were married, Susan Gifford's husband John shipped out on a Pacific whaling voyage. He would be gone for three and a half years, while Susan continued to live with her parents in the small village of Mattapoisett some miles east of New Bedford. Susan began her diary the day John left, 15 November 1859, with the simple entry: "The Ship Milo HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Sailed to day my Husband sailed Mate."

For the first few days, Susan's entries addressed John directly; she still felt his presence that immediately. "I felt very bad after you had gone. I did not know what to do with myself[.] I went up stairs and cried till my Head ached and I felt most sick.

Mother came up said I must not give way to my feelings so if I did I should be sick so I went down stairs but every thing seemed so lonesome and dreary that I felt as though I did not care whether I did any thing or not. ... It is dark and cloudy out to night and I expect you feel rather lonesome[.] I judge by myself[.] I have such a sense of loneliness come over me once in a while that I dont know what to do[.] You was all the World to me and now you are gone."

But, with her husband absent, Susan's life gradually began to reassume its pre-wedding rhythms in work and relationships. "It is a beautifull day, I think it must be pleasant where you are I wish I was there, I have been sewing for Mother this forenoon and shall sew a little more this afternoon[.] I did think some of going out ... but have given it up[.] If you was here we would go and make some calls[.] Mother has got the work ready and I must stop for the present."

The entries filled with intense longing were continued for just about a month. Then, Susan's emotions began to calm and her sense of being someone's wife slip away: December 31 was the last time she addressed John directly in her diary. In the new year, her entries became considerably abbreviated and generally nonreflective, becoming largely lists of weather conditions and local events. For the entire year of 1860, John was mentioned only twenty-two times, and always in the third person. On May 15, Susan simply recorded, "Went to Uncle George and helped them move and sewed on carpet[.] did not go to Meeting felt two [sic] tired[.] six Month since John went away." Their first wedding anniversary passed without remark; Susan was busy, anyway, assisting at the birth of her sister-in-law's baby.

FA

As with Ruth Grinnell and her letter, all we have of Susan Gifford is her diary. We do not know the ending of Susan's story. In the back of the volume are a few lists and notations that indicate that John returned, they resumed married life, and she went with him to Brooklyn where he may have been stationed for a few years. (He appears to have been associated with the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the Civil War.) But we do not know how (or if) her identity as wife survived during their separation, what reunion felt like, or how she negotiated her second transition from daughter to wife when he returned in 1863. The slim volume records that she did write letters to John, nine of them by the time the diary ends in December 1860. Perhaps it was in her correspondence that she expressed the feelings toward and concerns about her husband appropriate to a young wife. They were not in her diary.

Lisa Norling is an associate professor of history at the University a/Minnesota and is coeditor of Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920. For more in/ormation about Captain Ahab Had a Wife, please call the

Manuscripts

Charles B. Babcock to Henry Babcock, 28 September 1845, Alexander Cory Dead Letter Collection, Mss. 80, Subgroup 3, Series K, Subseries 1, Old Dartmouth Historical Society-New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass. (hereafter ODHS).

Elijah Chase to "mother," 10 Dec 1842, quoted in the Kendall Whaling Museum KWM Newsletter 8:1 (Spring 1990).

Susan Cromwell to Peter Cromwell, 26 July 1854, Peter Cromwell Papers, Box 96B, Martha's Vineyard Historical Society, Edgartown, Mass.

"D. A." to [brother] George G. A. Allen,31July 1844, Alexander Cory Dead Letter Collection, Mss. 80, Subgroup 3, Series K, Subseries 1, ODHS. Lydia G. Davenport Diary, 17 October 1855, Mss. 64, Series D, Subseries 4, ODHS.

publisher at (800) 848-6224.

Sources

Jared M. Gardner to Harriet M. Gardner, 3 June 1840, Gardner Family Papers, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.

Printed Works

Matters: A History a/Sexuality in America.

New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Karen V. Hansen, A Very Soda! Time: Crafting

Community in Antebellum New England.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Karen Lystra, Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Jane C. Nylander, Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

Ellen K. Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America. New York: Basic Books, 1984; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Mzdwi/e's Tale: The Life

a/Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

HISTORIC

New York: Penguin, 1972.

William Davol to Edward Davol, 14 May 1847, Alexander Cory Dead Letter Collection, Mss. 80, Subgroup 3, Series K, Subseries 1, ODHS.

John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate

10

The Penguin Dictionary a/Historical Slang.

NANTUCKET

Susan Snow Gifford diary, 15 Nov 1859, private collection, on deposit at ODHS. Ruth Grinnell to James Sowle, 3 February 1850, Mss. 56, Series S, Subseries 24, ODHS. Susan H. Hathaway to George A. Anderson, 15 November 1850, Alexander Cory Dead Letter Collection, Mss. 80, Subgroup 3, Series K, Subseries 1, ODHS. Sarah A. C. Pierce to Elijah H. Chisole, 24 December 1852, Alexander Cory Dead Letter Collection, Mss. 80, Subgroup 3, Series K, Subseries 1, ODHS. Jane Russell to Roland Russell, Nantucket, 21 October 1838, Mss. 172, Folder 5, Nantucket Historical Association, Edouard A. Stackpole Research Library.

Sylvia Tucker to John Leonard, 12 July 1852, Leonard Family Papers, private collection, New Bedford, Mass.

Joan Waterman to Martin Waterman, 13 April1828, Coli. 141, Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Conn.

FALL

2000

('A genuine relic of old Nantucket)):

Eliza Ann McOeave's Museum

A

MEMOIR BY FELLOW NANTUCKETER

Deborah Coffin (Hussey) Adams (1848-1936) remembers Mrs. Eliza Ann McCleave (1811-95) as a "stout handsome woman" who "gathered together ... the curios brought by [her husband] from foreign lands and charged a small admission for exhibiting them. To hear her explain them and the way in which they were collected was a treat not to be missed." Although Eliza Ann McCleave's life did not overlap significantly with the Nantucket Historical Association, the success of her museum must have inspired many of the association's founders.

Eliza Ann Chase was born on July 12, 1811, along with her twin sister, Phebe Ann (1811-80), to Job and Ruth (Macy) Chase. Eliza Ann and Phebe Ann were the youngest in a family of six daughters, so Eliza Ann was introduced to Nantucket's tradition of female independence at an early age. The business opportunities afforded Nantucket women due to the dominance of the island's whaling industry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, compared to their mainland counterparts, are well documented. As early as 1780, one Nantucket visitor remarked on the unusual status of island women, "As the sea excursions are often very long, [the whalemen's] wives in their absence are necessarily obliged to transact business, to settle accounts, and in short, to rule and provide for their families.

These circumstances being often repeated, give women the abilities as well as a taste for that kind of superintendency, to which, by their prudence and good management, they seem to be in general very equal."

By the mid-nineteenth century so many Centre Street shops were owned and run by Nantucket women that one section of the street was called "Petticoat Row." Other women worked as schoolteachers to support themselves and their families while husbands and fathers went whaling. In keeping with HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

island tradition, Eliza Ann McCleave found a unique by way to earn some extra money: she converted a room Aimee E. Newell of her home at 109 Main Street into a musewn, complete with benches and a daily "lecture," during which she described many of the artifacts in her collection, often in verse.

Unfortunately, little documentation exists to assert when McCleave first opened her museum, or why she decided to take on such a public role. What is known is that her collection of artifacts, many brought home from the islands of the South Pacific by her husband, and supplemented with natural specimens and Nantucket knick-knacks given to her by friends and visitors, began to grow during the 1840s.

Eliza Ann married Robert McCleave (1809-78) , the son of Joseph and Sally (Chase) McCleave, in 1829.

A portrait of Robert was the fourth of eight siblings, with two sisters Robert and and five brothers, several of whom also pursued whaling careers. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, Robert sailed Eliw Ann McCleave, on his first whaling voyage, aboard the ship Loper attnbuted to under the command of Captain Obed Starbuck, to the James Hathaway Pacific Ocean. After a subsequent voyage on board the c. 1845. san1e ship from 1827 to 1829, McCleave made his first step up the ladder of the whaling hierarchy.

Gift a/Mrs. Wood.

In 1829, after marrying Eliza Ann, Robert signed onto the ship Rambler as third mate. Over the next eighteen years he would serve on five voyages of this ship, eventually rising through the ranks to become captain of the vessel in 1835. Not surprisingly, these dates coincide with the beginning of Eliza Ann's collecting activities. The earliest date in Eliza Ann's handwritten 1869 inventory of her collection reads, "A nest of Baskets of five, in one, made from the Straw which grew at St. Catharin's S.M. and were made by the FALL

2000

11

Inmates of the Nunnery at that place in 1838. Capt.

Robert McCleave Donor." Captain McCleave had returned home in 1838 at the conclusion of his first voyage in command of the ship Rambler.

After two more voyages as captain of the Rambler, McCleave signed off from that ship in 1847 and returned to whaling as captain of the ship Richard Mitchell in 1848. McCleave's log for that voyage is now in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association and tracks a difficult but successful trip to the Azores, New Zealand, Rarotonga, and Hawaii.

Although McCleave returned to port with over 1,700 barrels of sperm oil, he lost six men and his dog Rover along the way, as well as weathering an attempted desertion by part of the crew.

In addition to chronicling the hardships of life at sea, McCleave's log indicates the happiness of his marriage and how the strength of his feelings for his wife helped keep him going. McCleave wrote some poetry in the back of his log, and one poem, titled "Lone on the Waters," describes these feelings: Tis lone on the waters when ever mournful bell Tend forth to the sunset a note offarewell When borne with the shadow and winds as they sweep There comes a fond memory of home; o'er the deep When the wings of the sea bird is turned to her nest And the heart of the sailor; to her he loves best, Tis lone in the waters that hour hath a spell To bnng back sweet voices and sounds offarewell.

Napkin rings caroed by a crewman on the ship

Oliver Crocker (1854-58).

Donated by Helen Hussey Ludolph Photograph by Jeffrey S. Allen

12

H I S T 0 R I C

The final voyage of McCleave's career was aboard the New Bedford ship Oliver Crocker, as captain, from 1854 to 1858. One set of souvenirs from this voyage is visible in the only known photograph of Mrs. McCleave's museum: several carved-ivory napkin rings, which are on a table in the center of the photograph.

Although many of the delicate natural-history specimens exhibited in the McCleave Museum disintegrated, the NHA was fortunate in 1956 to be given these napkin rings by a McCleave descendant. Carved from whale ivory, the napkin rings show lovely motifs, including flowers, a house, and a whaling scene. The history behind the napkin rings appears in Mrs. McCleave's 1869 inventory and illustrates her flair for telling a good story: N A N T U C K E T

I

This carving was done by a youth of 18 years of age that went on the whaling voyage with my Husband in 1854 On Board Ship Oliver Crocker of N Bedford.

He was a remarkable youth a natural carver, ingenious every way, and highly educated. He did this carving at intervals, when it was his watch below had to use such tools as he could get and what my Husband had with him, he was uncommon smart, my Husband was fond of him. He did not follow the Seas after this one voy¡ age. He was in youth, the reason he took a fancy to go a whaling voyage, only one failing in habits some intemperate when in Port, a perfect little Gentleman on board of the ship. No doubt he is all right now he belonged to one of the first of families near Boston, Mass. My Husband took a fancy to him he was so smart in every way. He shipped under a fictitious name. I think he has been at my Museum ... I think he likes to keep his history in youth a secret. I don't tell his name he went by on board ship ...

Robert McCleave achieved financial success as a whaler, as his obituary explained, "He was in affluent circumstances all his life, leaving intact a comfortable fortune to his widow and only son." Records from McCleave's many voyages attest to his success, with over 5,000 barrels of sperm oil unloaded upon the return of the ships he captained.

Given this success, it seems likely that Eliza Ann McCleave first started her museum as a leisure pursuit.

However, with her husband away for years at a time, paid only upon his return to port, the proceeds from the museum would have been helpful, supplementing the family's income while Robert was halfway around the world hunting whales.

The couple's one surviving child, Henry P. McCleave, was born in 1829, and eventually settled in California, having sailed there on the Henry Astor during the height of the gold rush in 1849, when financial opportunities on Nantucket were bleak.

Exactly when Eliza Ann first opened the doors of her home to the public is unclear. She compiled "A Catalogue of the articles in my Museum" in 1869 and several items are documented as gifts from her husband upon his return from whaling voyages in the 1830s and 1840s. The couple's home at 109 Main Street provided a convenient destination for the summer visitors that began to vacation on Nantucket's shores during the 1860s and 1870s.

FALL

2000

McCleave's 1869 inventory, in the collection of the NHA's Research Library, suggests an arrangement similar to many early American museums, a classic "cabinet of curiosity," where unrelated objects were collected and arranged for their oddity or interest.

Although Nantucket often seems isolated today, for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the island was the sophisticated center of the American whaling industry. Nantucket whalemen traveled the world returning home with stories of alien cultures and souvenirs, many of which made their way into Mrs. McCleave's museum.

Visiting this museum was a way for curious islanders to learn more about where their family and friends went when they left Nantucket's shores. The 1869 inventory shows that Eliza Ann collected a wide array of natural specimens and artifacts reflecting many world cultures as well as commemorating the island's history. Entries in her list are diverse, ranging from "Straw cord ... made by one of the Natives of the Feege [Fiji] Islands" to "A Silk pincushion made from the Silk which was manufactured from the silk worm itself while [the Nantucket] Silk works were in operation."

While Mrs. McCleave's museum may have been an island novelty, it was not the only way to experience natural curiosities and local history on Nantucket.

Island newspapers contain many notices and advertisements about traveling exhibitions, circuses, and lecturers that visited Nantucket throughout the nineteenth century. Certainly, Charles Willson Peale's museum of natural history in Philadelphia would have been known on the island. With the nation's centennial approaching, an interest in American history, local genealogy, and natural history were popular topics for study and discussion.

Against this backdrop of national trends, it is not surprising that Eliza Ann McCleave became a local legend, of sorts. Several island guidebooks from the late nineteenth century highlight the McCleave museum, which was deemed "worthy of a visit for the curiosities it contains, but more especially for their graphic description by the proprietress."

One Nantucket guide, published in 1916, several years after Eliza Ann McCleave's death, described Mrs. McCleave as "one of the most interesting characters of the last generation." While these accounts suggest the popularity of Mrs. McCleave's Museum with HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

off-island visitors, one author noted the excitement of a visit for local islanders as well: Lizy Ann knew every Nantucketer, of course, and when one of them accompanied her off-island visitors, her personal observations were apt to be amusing and sometimes rather embarrassing. On one occasion a fair daughter of the island brought a young man from Boston. In the midst of the lecture, Lizy Ann suddenly inquired: "Is this young fellow a beau of yours, Caroline?" "Oh, no, no; " replied the lady. "Is he going to be?" was the next question.

Both published and unpublished reminiscences of Eliza Ann McCleave cherish her theatrical poetic lectures, as she described her collection of curiosities. An 1871 letter written by Georgianna Hayward to her father confirms the pleasure that a visit to the museum provided: We went to see Mrs. McCleave's Museum. You ought to have gone there, when you were here, + never set foot on the island again without going there. She shows her curiosities + then when she gets half way, she recites some poetry that she made up when she was sweeping + they are very funny .. .I forgot to say that I think Mrs. McCleave pretty cool. She said right out to mother, "How nice + clean your teeth are, for your own teeth. It is so seldom you see people with their own teeth nowadays."

One of the most popular items in the museum was a shell comb owned by Eliza Ann's twin sister Phebe Ann. A verse about the comb, which is attributed to Mrs. McCleave in several guidebooks describing her museum, reads, "This old shell comb, though not as old as Noah, I Yet, when fifteen, my sister Phebe wore; I She worked very hard to gratify her passion, I And when the cost was earned, 'twas out of fashion."

McCleave's 1869 inventory confirms the anecdote told in this verse, and offers a moral to the story: We are Twin Sisters and our Mother gave us four Dollars each to buy a Shell Comb as such were in fashion in those days; [Phebe Ann] not satisfied with her lot wanted a larger one, and accordingly she had one made in Boston . . . she never enjoyed the comb but I did mine and used it up and am enjoying hers also; It shews us it is best to be satisfied with our lot ...

Obviously a forthright, if somewhat intimidating, guide, Eliza Ann McCleave was also known for her soft heart. As her obituary described, "Mrs. McCleave was a woman of sterling qualities - one of those people whose left hand never knows what the right hand FALL

2 000

13

Eliza Ann McCleave lived at 109 Main Street (top) where she entertained visitors interested in history.

She con be seen in the above photo surrounded by her objects.

I

doeth, and her benevolence has been widespread in substantial form in this community, and her loss will be widely felt." After her death in 1895 , Mrs .

McCleave's collection was auctioned off in August 1896. A handbill (in the NHA's Research Library collection) advertising the auction expresses the interest that many Nantucketers had in Mrs. McCleave and her collection, "This is without a doubt the opportunity of a lifetime to obtain a genuine relic of old Nantucket from a Museum that is known the world over. " The recently formed Nantucket Historical Association was able to purchase a few items at the auction such as silk and cocoons from Florence Massachusetts, a piece of redwood from California: and a list of Methodist preachers stationed at Nantucket from 1799 to 1886. Also, Eliza Ann's son, Henry P. McCleave, was a generous contributor of artifacts to the association's collection, giving many additional items from the museum and the family's collection including five embroidered infants' caps made by Eliza Ann McCleave and portraits of his father, Robert McCleave; his uncles , Captain Paul Chase and Captain Henry Paddack; and his aunt, Mrs. Paul Chase (Mary Chase). As the NHA's curator, Susan E. Brock, wrote in her 1903 report to the membership, "It has been well said that a historical society should be something more than a 'strongbox' to hold collections. It must be a living institution .. . ."

Eliza Ann McCleave understood this well.

Sources: William F. Macy and Roland B. Hussey, compilers, The Nantucket Scrap Basket, Nantucket: The Inquirer and Mirror Press, 1916.

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters /rom an American Farmer, New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1951.

William T. Alderson, ed., Mermaids, Mummies, and

Mastodons: The Emergence of the American Museum, Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1992.

HenryS. Wyer, compiler, Sea-Girt Nantucket, Nantucket: HenryS. Wyer, 1902.

Jane G . Austin, Nantucket Scraps , Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892.

Nantucket and Its Highways and By-ways, Nantucket: Inquirer and Mirror Press, 1890.

Lisa Norling, "Ahab's Wife: Women and the American Whaling Industry, 1820-1870," in Iron Men, Wooden

Women: Gender and Seafarz·ng in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920, edited by Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Nantucket Historical Association Research Library Collections: • Collection 29 -Eliza Ann McCleave Books • Collection 335- Edouard A. Stackpole Collection • Log 307, Ship Richard Mitchell, kept by Robert McCleave

• Eliza Starbuck Barney Genealogical Record • Collection 138- Hussey Family Papers • Collection 382- Manuscript Vertical Files

Aimee E. Newell is curator of collections at the Nantucket Historical Association and a frequent contrzbutor to Historic Nantucket. Her article, "That pride in our Island's history": The Nantucket Historical Association

appeared in the Winter 2000 issue.

14

HISTORIC

NANTU C KET

'

FA L L

2000

Researching the Diary of Martha Fish: Writing a Woman)s Life

I

DO NOT KNOW WHY MARTHA BURGESS FISH

(1844-) decided to keep a diary. She had two small children and her husband Abner to look after, and a farm to help run. She had neighbors to visit and food to prepare. There was laundry, sewing, and housekeeping. There were coats to make to earn extra income for her family, and Martha often went to help out at her sister's.

She was, it is fair to say, a busy woman. And yet, each night, she recorded bits of information. She wrote about her day on Cherry Grove Farm and about her neighbors. She noted births and deaths, calls paid and received, items bought and sold. She wrote about the hired help on her farm, and when the help quit. She tracked events at the school and in the town, the weather, and the state of the harvest. She wrote all this in brief, often unpunctuated entries in small diaries, and then copied them into the large, heavy ledger books (11 3/4 inches high x 7 inches wide x 2 inches deep) given by Martha's descendant, Martha Hussey Bouton, that are now in the manuscript collection at the Nantucket Historical Association.

The books suffer from some mold damage, the bindings are loose in places, and the pages crumble a bit at the corners. They have that dusty smell old books proudly bear. These markers of their age and testament to their survival help give them a life independent of the words Martha recorded on their pages. Their weight and their scent create a presence, which has outlasted the meals Martha cooked, the coats she sold, the life she led. Without them, there would be little to know about Martha, a woman whose death was not recorded in the newspaper, and whose gravestone is in an unknown location in one of the island's cemeteries.

Perhaps without intending to, Martha's diaries create her biography and that of those who entered her farmhouse, for their comings and goings are marked in the pages of these large books.

The diaries span several volumes, covering the last HISTORIC

NANTU C KET

quarter of the nineteenth century. Martha's entries record the names and events of Nantucketers after the great whaling era, and before tourism had fully revived the economy. From Martha 's diary it is possible to reconstruct the story of a woman's life, and the story of a small community of families trying to earn a living on sandy, windswept soil.

Among entries about tending hens , baking, and sewing are Martha's notations about the Gibbs fan1ily.

Mary Burgess Gibbs was Martha's sister. Over the course of many pages, woven in small pieces , is the story of Mary becoming so ill that her family took her to the town asylum. They brought Mary home again, the diary reveals, before she died of consumption.

Mary's husband Thomas never remarried , and his daughter Lillian remained by hin1 throughout her life.

There is seldom an entry in Martha 's diary , after Mary's passing, that mentions Thomas without mentioning Lillian. Even when Lillian married her cousin and had two little children, she remained devoted to Thomas. When she died of consumption in 1891 , she was the second child Thomas had lost to the disease, in addition to his wife.

M a rtha was seldom introspective in her diaries, so it is difficult to record her own reactions to these circumstances. As was typical of diaries left by nineteenth -century New England farm women, Martha's diary reads more like our modern date books than what we think of today as diaries.

While middle- and upper-class urban women in the nineteenth century wrote of their religious concerns and recorded key political events such as the Civil War in their diaries, rural women tended to write sparse entries about farm work and farm life.

Deaths, even those of close friends or family, often occupied only as much space on a page as a notation about finishing the wash. Yet markings

by Christina Gessler

Photograph of Martha Burgess Fish

by M W. Boyer, 1909.

Courtesy of Martha Hussey Bouton.

F ALL

2 000

15

' t'1 t

/

It

/-"~t

(

(

t

~l~l

~

tJ '

ef

I

/â&#x20AC;˘

t.l<.

''<.f-C.

"II

t' 'I f J..'

t.-i,

.t.

I

Martha Fish's diary is a tattered but fascinating window into the dazly lz/e of nineteenth-century Nantucketers.

16

HISTORIC

I on nineteenth-century gravestones, and copies of old sermon tracts indicate that death was dreaded and loved ones were greatly mourned.

Martha's diary seldom dwelt on one person or one event. Because of this, we can also find the story of her two brothers, David and Richard Burgess, who ran a meat market, D.W. and R. E. Burgess and Sons first on South Water Street, then on Main Street. David's wives - first Susan, then Eliza, and finally Marietta - also show up in the pages of Martha's diaries. Unlike Thomas, who remained a widower after Mary died, David was never single for long. David and Richard surface on the pages of Martha's diary because they often NANTUCKET

'r

purchased livestock from Martha and Abner's farm.

Some people who appear in Martha's diary cannot be identified. There are many references to "Henry."

Martha had a nephew named Henry, and her husband had a hired man named Henry. The Henry in Martha's diary has no last name, and disappears and reappears in her entries, often after long absences. The mysterious Henty illuminates how not all stories that emerge in a diary can be completely unraveled. Reading such a diary is often confusing, because most people are mentioned only by their first names. "Nelly" is sporadically mentioned in Martha's diary. Unlike Henry, who was human, Nelly turned out to be a horse. Who exactly Martha is talking about can be further confused by the variety of spellings and misspellings for people's names, and by the occasional use of abbreviations. Martha knew who she was talking about and she did not need to be more specific.

Even when the people can be identified as immediate family members, mysteries remain. For example, Martha had two children. Her daughter, legally named Martha like her mother, was always called Mattie. Even her death records at the town clerk's office list her under this name. Mattie spent a large portion of her childhood at her maternal grandparents' house, grew up to marry Oliver Hussey, and eventually moved into her parents' farmhouse, now located at 32 Hummock Pond Road, to run the farm after they moved away to run the Town [Poor] Farm in Quaise. (also referred to as the Quaise Farm).

FALL

2000

The story of Martha's other child is more difficult to unravel. Although Freddie Fish is identified in many records, no birth record exists for him on Nantucket, and his legal records list him as a full year older than Martha's diary records indicate. Why? Was Freddie born off-island? Was he adopted? The records do not answer these questions.

While Mattie had children and lived on Cherry Grove Farm, Freddie married Marie, a woman later declared insane. Exactly one month after Marie entered Taunton State Hospital, Freddie took his own life in an arsenic overdose. His death record, dated October 19, 1930, indicates that he was an alcoholic.

Martha's diaries spanning Freddie's early life give no indication of what his fate would be. Indeed, diaries are fascinating resources because of the stories they introduce and yet cannot finish. Martha's writings cannot tell us that Marie continued to live at Taunton years after Martha passed away, and they cannot tell us where Martha herself is buried.

In an age of "The Antiques Road Show," it is easy to think that old objects have worth only if they are deemed rare or pristine. There is no doubt that Martha Fish's diaries look worn and well used; her entries are misspelled and sometimes illegible. The people she mentions are not famous; some of them are entirely unidentifiable to modern researchers. The stories she tells unravel themselves, at best, slowly, and sometimes not at all.

Indeed, her life was ordinary, and her death did not affect those outside her circle of family and friends .

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Martha is a woman who passed through life and into death and the history books never noticed her. But her diaries have value far beyond what their covers would indicate. Indeed, for the stories introduced here and the others too numerous or complicated to tell, her diaries are invaluable. Her diaries record not only the untold events of one woman's life, but of an entire family, a neighborhood, a community, and an island.

Above left: Tina Gessler pores over Martha Fish's diary in the NHA Library.

Photo by Nicole Hamishfeger, courtesy of the Inquirer and Mirror.

Christina Gessler is currently working on her Ph.D. at the American University in Washington, D.C. Her dissertation is entitled "Harvest of the Heart: Themes From the Diaries a/Nineteenth-Century New England Farm Women." Gessler was the Nantucket Historical Association Visiting Research Scholar in 2000 and is continuing her research on Nantucket and New England with a C.A.S. Dissertation Grant /rom the American University.

Right.

The farmhouse at Cherry Grove Fann, today at 32 Hummock Pond Road.

Photo by Eliwbeth Oldham.

Sources Martha Fish diaries

Eliza Starbuck Barney Genealogical Record Probate Records Town Clerk's office for birth and death records Obituaries from the Vertical Files in the Nantucket Atheneum Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Mzdwi/e's Tale: The Lz/e a/Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

FALL

2000

17

Historic Nantucket Book Section Review by Susan Beegel

She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea

By Joan Druett.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Hardcover $26.00.

T

HE HISTORY OF SEAFARING WOMEN DURING

the age of sail still remains relatively unexplored and unwritten, although no one has done more to rectify this problem than maritime historian Joan Druett. Her two award-winning books on women in whaling, ((She Was a Sister

Sailor": The Whaling Journals of Mary Brewster, 1845-1851 and Petticoat Whalers: Whaling Wives at Sea, 1820-1920 belong on all Nantucket shelves. In her recent offering, Hen Frigates, Druett moved out of the realm of whaling to contemplate the lives of women married to merchant captains.

Now, in She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea, Druett tackles a group of women rarer by far than those who went to sea as helpmeets, "she captains," women distinguished for "bold enterprise" in the history of the sea. Canvassing the age of sail from the classic civilizations of Greece and Rome to the late nineteenth century, She Captains offers an engagingly written collection of historic sketches. Druett begins with warrior queens of the ancient world such as Queen Artemisia, who led a fleet of Persian triremes against the Greeks, and Cleopatra, who commanded a squadron of sixty ships at the Battle of Actium. Also celebrated are the barbarian heroines of the Viking sagas, longship captains with "the bodies of women and the souls of men."

Chapters follow on women involved with piracy, a practice winked at in the sixteenth century, when government officials invested in pirate voyages and shared the proceeds, while port admirals helped conceal and market the loot.

Druett features shipowner Agnes Cowrie, <Ye,.01¡lles and H.e~l'l: '" o"<'" who lost her vessel Grace of God and three sons ~~ of the Seo. 4::~ in a pirate action. Cowtie's protest not only .JOAN DRUETT resulted in the capture and hanging of several A '"''"(Hn "''"'' '" '-successful pirates, but implicated a vice admiral, and rocked the Elizabethan court. For contrast,

18

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Druett offers Grace O'Malley, an Irish pirate commanding three ships and 200 fighting men, able to clamber out of childbed with a blunderbuss in each hand to turn the tide of a battle. Other women pirates treated include the eighteenth century's notorious Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

Other chapters consider women whose involvement with the sea was neither triumphant nor swashbuckling.

"Captured by Corsairs" recounts the fate of thousands of women captured by seventeenth-century English rovers operating off the Barbary coast, the Mediterranean shore of North Africa. Female victims of ships captured or villages ransacked were sold in a lucrative slave market or imprisoned and held for ransom. "Fatal Shores" discusses the hellish voyages undergone by women convicts transported to Australia.

Predictably, She Captains also contains many stories of women who dressed as men and shipped before the mast either to be near their lovers or, more commonly, to earn money. One sketch involves a cross-dressing prostitute, Ann Johnson, who in 1848 shipped as a seaman on the Nantucket whaler Christopher Mitchell and eventually received her whaleman's lay or share of the profits.

Readers of Patrick O'Brian's novels about life in Nelson's navy would never suspect how common it was for officers to have their wives and families on board.

Druett tells the stories of many such women, who not only attended glittering dinner parties in exotic ports but carried gunpowder, cared for the wounded, and occasionally even gave birth during battle. One lusty infant so born was affectionately nicknamed "Thunder Dick" by the crew, presumably for his ability to outroar I the guns. Admiral Horatio Nelson's tawdry love affair with Emma Hamilton is also retold in She Captains; unfortunately no book about women and the sea complete without it.

I appears During the nineteenth century, both the United States and Europe launched scientific "voyages of discovery" to chart and lay claim to the natural resources of polar seas. Rose de Freycinet dressed as a boy to join her captain husband on board the French government vessel L'Uranie and kept an enchanting diary of her FALL

2000

experiences, while Abby Jane Morrell of Connecticut published an important narrative of her husband's voyage to the Antarctic Ocean. Lady Jane Franklin mounted an Arctic expedition of her own to try and locate her husband, who had disappeared without a trace on an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Other "ice queens" covered include Jo Peary, who explored the Arctic alongside her husband Robert E. Peary, the first man to reach the North Pole, and Louise Arner Boyd, a San Francisco heiress who led seven expeditions to the Arctic to record its flora, fauna, and topography.

Druett also tells the stories of famous and not-sofamous women lifesavers and lighthouse keepers. Grace Darling's rescue of nine survivors from the wreck of the steam packet For/arshire made her an advertising icon for Life Buoy soap. Kate Walker's rescue of fifty people and a Scottie dog wrecked on Robbins Reef remains largely unsung, as does Abbie Burgess's efforts to keep the light burning in Maine's Matinicus Rock lighthouse during a gale that razed her home to its foundations.

Not all of the history told in She Captains involves swashbuckling women. Druett looks briefly at the ordinary women who stayed ashore and involved themselves in maritime businesses including prostitution, nursing, boarding house ownership, and shopkeeping, as well as investment in shipyards, ship ownership, and individual voyages. Nantucketers will be especially interested in Mary Tunstall Smith, a seventeenthcentury American entrepreneur of shore whaling, and

Mary Hayley Jeffrey, who carried on an affair with the island's Francis Rotch, and whose whaling and sealing vessel United States helped to open the China trade.

Druett notes that investing in ships was by far the most common maritime activity of women during the age of sail.

Her final chapter, "Woman at the Helm," looks at the vast fortunes amassed by women like Maria Tibbetts and Jennie Rodbird Morse, who skillfully manipulated their portfolios into substantial ownership of shipping empires.

Although well researched, this book's amalgan1ation of stories drawn from across time and across cultures offers no comprehensive picture of women's involvement with the sea. Druett tends to focus on the extraordinary and sensational (queens, pirates, cross-dressing, huge wealth) to the almost complete exclusion of the everyday lives ashore that are the actual meat-and-potatoes of women's maritime history. She Captains is, however, a fine historic entertainment, the perfect book for a bedside table, beach bag, or long ferry trip. The historic sketches can be read singly or together with equal enjoyment, and collectively they provide an impressive array of evidence that the sea has always been part of the feminine sphere.

Susan Beegel is editor a/The Hen1ingway Review, a professor at the Williams College at Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program, and a member of the NHA's editorial committee.

Brotherhood Restaurant Documents

L

AST SEPTEMBER, A COMPLETE LETTER AND A COLLEC-

tion of letter fragments dating back to 1847 were found at the Brotherhood Restaurant during renovation work following the April1999 fire. The letters appear to be of interest to researchers because of their date and content.

The letter that was found is written from one Nantucketer to another, in 1847. Both men were working off-island at the time.

The letter fragments could not be unfolded because of their moldy and damp condition, but also appear to have been written by Nantucketers.

In July of2000, library director Betsy Lowenstein sent the letters to the New England Document Conservation Center, an

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

organization that specializes in conservation of paper items. The center provided a treatment plan fo r the materials and an estimate of the cost of conservation. The items will be cleaned, deacidified, mended, flattened, and encapsulated. Conservation is estimated to cost between $1 ,700 and $1,845.

Once the letters are cleaned their contents can finally, after many years, be read. The letters may reveal new information about the lives of Nantucketers, on and off the island, circa 1847 -one year after the Great Fire.

The library has a small budget for paper conservation, but donations would be greatly appreciated. Please call Betsy Lowenstein at 228-1894 for further information.

FALL

2000

19

N H A

Above left: NHA executive

N E W S

August Antiques Show

director Frank Mzlligan,

As I look back on the spring and summer, I am astounded by the generosity of the many people who made the twenty-third annual August Antiques Show Susan Rolando, board such a success. I am so pleased to have had this president Arie Kopelman, opportunity to pay homage to the preservationists who Chase Private Bank's have gone before me. They dedicated themselves to colU. S. Markets executive lecting Nantucket's past- objects, images, documents, John A. Straus and and memories - to be preserved through time in the managing director James M. collections of the NHA. Their work is enhanced today by those who feel equally strongly about the associaPawlik, and Jean Pawlik. tion's mission and work to make it thrive. The Antiques Right: Sheila Sullivan Show is the means by which so many come together to and Franees Scarcille; make a profound difference for the NHA. It was delightful to see how the association's mission Mr. and Mrs. Jay Bauer of of education and interpretation was threaded throughTria non Seaman Schepps; out the week. Traditionally, the Friends of the Lynn and Susan Rolando. Nantucket Historical Association opens the Show with Below, left to right: a guest speaker. This year, Friends president Carolyn Peggy Silverstein flanked MacKenzie invited Earl A. Powell, director of the National Gallery, to speak to nearly two hundred guests by scrimshaw reproductions; hosted by Thomas and Georgia Gosnell with assisSally Stevens with honorary tance from Christie's.

Chase Manhattan Global Bank, title sponsor of chair Nancy Chase; the event, hosted the Preview Party, chaired by Mellie Cooper hard at work; Vanessa Diserio, to open another beautiful show.

Lois Horgan, Sally Stevens, A magnificent dinner followed at the Old Mill hosted Anne Gn'eves, Mellie Cooper,

by Trianon Seaman Schepps, and coordin~ted by Lynne Steinfurth and Ellen Foley. The next night, and Vanessa Diseno. ~~-----Linda and Joe DiMartino hosted a gatherantiques show chair

20

1-1 I S T 0 R I C

N A N T U C K E T

ing in their Siasconset home for supporters whose advance gifts made the Antiques Show a successful fund-raising event. Marybeth Keene gave of her time to make important connections linking businesses that care about Nantucket and the Historical Association with the show.

Show days, August 6, 7, and 8, proved to be the only three consecutive beach days in the month but the tremendous crowd that attended the Preview Party more than made up for the shortfall in overall attendance. Victor W einblatt, liaison and chair of the Antiques Council, pronounced the show an extraordinary success - the most important of all the shows sponsored by the council. Behind the screens Nancee Erickson and Melanie Sabelhaus organized a welcoming dinner for participating dealers at Dorothy Slover's house and then continued to set out daily donations of goodies from local bakeries.

The committee of nearly one hundred volunteers, marshaled by Barbara Griffin, Maggie Benedict, and Louise Connell, worked with me to fashion this year's show. 'The volunteers were a source of inspiration, energy, creativity, and excitement. No task was too small or too large. Our volunteers worked many hours from helping Nancy Peacock stuff gift bags to manning the front desk to cleaning up in the end. I thank them all.

It all began when the advisory committee met and unanimously decided that scrimshaw should be the theme of the 2000 Show. Peggy Silverstein had a vision of how we could reproduce objects from the association's considerable collection, and with the leadership of Lois Horgan a veritable army of volunteers drew, colored, and painted the decorations that set the tone for the show. Chief curator and museum director Niles Parker and curator of collections Aimee Newell assembled two cases at the entrance of the show to illus-

FALL

2000

N H A trate the breadth and depth of the association's scrimshaw collection.

A local highlight of the show was the highly successful New Collectors Booth. Sheila Sullivan and Frances Scarcille assembled and artfully arranged a fascinating array of antiques, thanks to an outpouring of donations from island collectors and dealers. Revenue from this and the ever-popular raffle co-chaired by Jane King Karlson and Anne Obrecht set new records for the show. Publicity chair Nancy Forster worked with staff to broaden public awareness with an advertising and publicity campaign. Jenny Paradis and Cecil Barron Jensen worked to invite New Collectors to a brunch and tour of the show with interpretation provided by Parker, Newell, and library director Betsy Lowenstein.

The proceeds of the show supplied much needed operating revenue for the NHA's educational programs , which run the gambit from the Children 's Living History program to the daily interpretation of the association's many sites and historical walking tours. I am most grateful for the generous support of so many contributors and underwriters who will again b e acknowledged in a formal way in the NHA's Annual Report.

- Susan F. Rotando, Antiques Show Chair

Annual Meeting Report The Nantucket Historical Association held its 106th annual meeting on Friday, July 7, in the garden at Hadwen House. The speaker was Dr. Harold Skramstad, former president and CEO of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. His topic was Making a Place /or the Past in the Twenty-first Century.

Dr. Skramstad, with over thirty years' experience in institutional leadership and program development, was a compelling speaker with practical tips for keeping museums vibrant in today's environment.

Also at the annual meeting, the members officially elected several new trustees, and a proposed slate of officers was confirmed and voted on by the trustees following the meeting.

Elected to the class of 2004 were Rebecca M. Bartlett, John H. Davis, Mary B. Espy, Peter W. Nash, John M. Sweeney, and Marcia P. Welch.

Bartlett, Espy, and Sweeney are new to the board of trustees; the others were elected to their second four-year terms. Elected for a one-year term were Carolyn B. MacKenzie, president of the Friends of the NHA, and Prudence S. Crozier, also a representative : l the Friends.

The new officers on the board are Arie L. Kopelman, president; Peter W. Nash, first vicepresident; Barbara Hajim, second vice-president; HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

N E W S

Bruce D. Miller, treasurer; and Patricia M. Bridier, clerk.

Rotating off the board are Dorothy Slover, president since 1995; Alan F. Atwood, treasurer since 1996; Professor William A. Hance; and Aileen M. Newquist.

Following the meeting, members gathered under the two tents erected in the period garden. Everyone agreed that it was a marvelous setting for a productive meeting. Thanks to former president Kim Corkran and new trustee Polly Espy for organizing the decorations and refreshments.

New trustee

Campaign News

Polly Espy and

A year ago in this magazine, we announced the kick-off event held for A Campaign /or the Island of Nantucket: Starting with History; Starting Now at the Siasconset Casino. At the time there was a great deal of excitement and optimism as campaign chair Peter Nash announced that advanced gifts had taken the campaign to $9.7million.

We are happy to say that the enthusiasm for the campaign has continued over the past year. Through the spring and summer board members met with friends and neighbors, and the resulting gifts have taken the campaign to $12 .6 million. The Research Library project is nearing completion and an official opening and dedication is planned for Daffodil Weekend 2001 (April28 and 29) . We are also reviewing conceptual ideas for the new museum center from several architectural firms.

If you have any questions about the campaign and the building process, please call the NHA administrative office at 508-228-1894. We would be pleased to hear your comments or suggestions.

fo rmer NHA preszdent Kim Corkran in the Hadwen House garden.

Library Update By late summer the interior wall supports, electrical wiring, mechanical systems, and elevator shaft had been completed in the new research library on Fair Street. Then the crew from J. K. Scanlan Company turned its attention to the installation of dry wall, a new roof, skylight, and windows; this work was completed by mid-September. Now the focus, and final push, is on completing the interior.

For the staff and trustees, this is an exciting time.

"By the end of August the look and feel of the future research library really began to take shape," said library director Betsy Lowenstein, who will start packing up the Peter Foulger facility for a move by Berkhardt Bros. Inc. in mid-November. The library in the Peter Foulger Museum will be closed for the month of November.

F A LL

2000

21

N H A

N E W S

Currently the interior design elements are being completed. "Stephen Swift Furniture is making desks and chairs for the new research library, thanks to the gift of Elizabeth Sanford," said Lowenstein.

Nantucket House Antiques and Interior Design has donated design expertise and assisted in choosing carpeting and interior paint. Look for the new research library to be open on Fair Street by early December.

Library Publication Wms Award

Clockwise /rom top: Fijian gzmstock or lipped club.

Photograph by JeffreyS. Allen.

New finance manager Johanna Lanza.

The NHA !tbrary's new digs on Fair Street take shape.

22

HIS T 0 RIC

The NHA was a recipient of a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History for the publication entitled Guide to Historical Records and Genealogical Resources of Nantucket, Massachusetts. The guide, published by the NHA in 1999, was compiled by library director Betsy Lowenstein and researcher Dual Macintyre. Claire O'Keeffe of communicationDESIGN was the designer.

The AASLH Annual Awards Program, now in its fifty-fifth year, honors achievement in the field of local, state, and regional history. The awards program was established to encourage standards of excellence in the collection, preservation, and interpretation of local history throughout American.

The Guide to Historical Records and Genealogical Resources of Nantucket, Massachusetts was created in order to improve access to the island's historical records and to promote their use. In addition, the guide serves to educate the public as to the use and value of historical records- the materials comprise a community's cultural heritage. Funding for the guide was provided in part by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.

NANTUCKET

To purchase a copy of the guide ($5.00), please call Betsy Lowenstein at (508) 228-1894.

Ongoing Study of the South Seas Artifacts During the past several months, the curatorial department has been studying the NHA's holdings of South Sea artifacts. With valuable assistance from Norman Hurst, a consultant and appraiser from Cambridge, Mass., and Rhys Richards, a historian and expert on whaling and the Pacific from New Zealand, we have been able to better identify objects that previously had little or no information attached to them. Research into some specific pieces has uncovered important details relating to the people who brought these items back to Nantucket from the South Seas throughout the nineteenth century. Nantucket whalemen led the way into the South Pacific in their relentless quest for the sperm whale. In doing so, they not only came into contact with the leviathan, but with many indigenous cultures of the vast area as well. Their interaction with these peoples and their material culture were recorded in their journals and in the numerous artifacts they collected. In early October we will reopen the small gallery in the Whaling Museum dedicated to the South Seas collection and will feature a reorganization of the objects with the new information we have learned.

New Staff Johanna Lanza was hired in September to replace Yvonne Pimental as Finance Manager.

Pimental is moving back to Rhode Island to be closer to her children and grandchildren.

Lanza moved to Nantucket four years ago after finishing her B.A. in accounting at the University of Hartford. Firmly believing that she was only going to be here for the summer, she is delighted to find herself still living on the island and pleased that she has found several interesting professional experiences over the years. Most recently she was office manager for the Cashmere Group, located on Federal Street, where her responsibilities included overseeing the Group's wholesale business. At the NHA, Lanza will be responsible for the finance and human resources office.

FALL

2000

N H A

N E W S

Bikes or Ballots?

One of the great things about living in a small town is that you're always running into people you know, and every now and then you make an interesting connection.

Each day on my way to work, I walk past the boat basin on Easy Street to see the harbor, then round the comer to a local coffee shop for my morning cup and on up Broad Street to the NHA office. Along the way, I usually see Harvey Young in front of his shop. We say a quick hello and share a few friendly words.

It was a pleasant surprise, then, for me to run across the photograph below, a recent acquisition, that shows a group of N ANTvCK£1'5 EL£CT1c:N HALL HAS BEEN CONDEMNED SO 11-lE

men standing in Young's Bicycle Shop. I knew it was Young's because of the coun ter, and because Harvey looks so much like his dad Roger, standing second from right. But little else would indicate it was Young's, or a bicycle shop at all, for that matter- there's only one bike in the picture, at far left. I found it puzzling but I knew Harvey would get a kick out of it, so I dropped off a copy for him.

That afternoon Harvey rushed into my office, beaming. He explained that the photograph put together the pieces of an interesting puzzle. In his office, Harvey had a framed copy of the cartoon (b elow) by

NANRlCKET IS SAIPlO HPIJE tJICRE B IC'<C.LE51FI'IN PEoPLE.

TOWN 8.-E:CTION WILL BE HELD IN A I31C'{CL£ SHOP. ("""""<>1)

Boston Herald cartoonist Francis Dahl.

He figured that there was some truth to the spoof, but never had any evidence.

Now he could say, unequivocally, that Young's Bicycle Shop had been used as a polling station.

After sharing the news with me he went over to the Town Building and with help from the Town Clerk's office was able to identify the men in the photograph and the date of the election. Sure enough, voters marked their ballots at Young's for the state primary, September 13, 1960. In the photograph are Robert F. Mooney, who ran for Representative in the General Court and lost to Arthur Desrocher; Edward Scully (in back); Hartwell Thurston in plaid; Herb Wood (obscured); and longtimeTown Clerk Charles Clark Coffin.

-Peter Schmid, NHA Photo Archivist

NfWTuCI<ET Wl t.L <%T ITS VOTE

IN B"FORE ~NT li..I'\SHINGToN CR HF\I<T'S LOCATION .

A"T TI-lE l'tll-LS VOTERS CAN GET THEIR SPOKE:S TiGt-ITEN E D, COASTER BRAKES }'ID';)USTE:D, NEW LINKS pUT IN.1J.lE CHAIN,

HANDLE &.RSI..O\AIEI<EP 1'\t-!D A U1'1'LE Mol.A9>ES I'UT IN THE. TIRES•

. §'.

~t) ~ ~

I

MOLASSES ISfW OLD ~TUCKET RI<'MED'{ Fcf< SLOW UAKS . _

Save These Holiday Dates

K

ICK OFF THE WINTER HOLIDAY SEASON WITll THE

Festival of Wreaths and Silent Auction and the Festival of Trees starting on November 24.

The Festival of Wreaths and Silent Auction opens Friday, November 24, and runs through Sunday, November 26, at the Preservation Institute:Nantucket's Sherburne Hall, 11 Centre Street. For the second year, visitors will come to view the many wreaths created by local designers and artisans. All of the wreaths are included in the Silent Auction and bidding closes on Sunday at 2 P.M. A Preview Party is planned for Tuesday, November 21.

HI S T O R IC

NANTUCKET

The seventh annual Festival of Trees is open daily from Friday, December 1, to Monday, December 4, at the Whaling Museum. Businesses, artists, and other members of the community donate their time and creative energies to decorate more than forty trees. A Preview Party is planned for Thursday evening, November 30, with a Holiday Dinner for Benefactors to follow in the Peter Foulger Museum.

Peggy Kaufman is returning for the second year to chair the events and, for the sixth year, Nantucket Bank is the lead underwriter. For more information about the festivals please call Jean Grimmer at 508-228-1894.

FALL

2 000

23

Two Nantucket Classics

W:::

Nantucket Historical Association is proud to present our exclusive "Lightship Basket" silk scarf. An assortment of baskets adorns this ivorycolored scarf with a beautiful red and black floral border.

Priced at $65 (including a gift box).

Picturing Nantucket; An Art History of the Island with Paintings /rom the Collection of the Nantucket Picturing Nantucket Histoncal Association Nantucket's rich artistic legacy comes alive in this beautifully illustrated and most comprehensive study of island paintings. With more than 300 full-color and black-and-white reproductions, Picturing Nantucket is an essential reference work for anyone who treasures Nantucket.

Priced at $65 or $100 for a limited slipcased edition.

11 Broad Street ¡ (508) 228-1894 ¡

FAX:

(508) 325-7046