Historic Nantucket, Fall 2003, Vol. 52 No. 4 by Nantucket Historical Association

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES Peter W. Nash President

E. Geoffrey Verney

Barbara E. Hajim

Alice F. Emerson

Marcia Welch

John M. Sweeney

Patricia M. Bridier

First Vice President

Second Vice President

Third Vice President

Fourth Vice President

Treasurer

Clerk

Pamela C. Bartlett Rebecca M. Bartlett C. Marshall Beale Robert H. Brust Nancy A. Chase John H. Davis Mary F. Espy Nina Hellman

Julius Jensen Ill Arie L. Kopelman JaneT. Lamb Carolyn B. MacKenzie Bruce D. Miller Bruce A. Percelay Melissa D. Philbrick

Christopher C. Quick Susan F. Rotando Melanie R. Sabelhaus Harvey Saligman Bette M. Spriggs Isabel C. Stewart Jay M. Wilson Robert A. Young

Frank D. Milligan Executive Director

RESEARCH FELLOWS Pauline Maier

Nathaniel Philbrick

Patty Jo S. Rice

Renny A. Stackpole

FRIENDS OF THE NHA Pat & Thomas Anathan Mariano & Mortimer Appley Heidi & Max Berry Christy & William Camp Jr. Laurie & Robert Champion Dottie & Earle Craig Prudence & William M. Crozier Robyn & John Davis Sandra & Nelson Doubleday Nancee &John Erickson Marjorie & Charles Fortgang Nancy & Charles Geschke

Georgia & Thomas Gosnell Silvia Gosnell Barbara & Robert Griffin Barbara & Edmund Hajim GeorgeS. Heyer Jr. Barbara & Harvey Jones Kathryn & James Ketelsen Sara Jo & Arthur Kobacker Coco & Arie Kopelman Sharon & Frank Lorenzo Carolyn & Ian MacKenzie Phyllis & William Macomber Miriam & Seymour Mandell

Ronay & Richard Menschel Aileen & Scott Newquist Charron & Flint Ranney Gleaves & Thomas Rhodes Ellen & Kenneth Roman Marion & Robert Rosenthal Ellen & David Ross Linda & Harvey Saligman Charlotte Smith Genevieve & Richard Tucker Marilyn Whitney Yuriko & Bracebridge Young Jr.

ADVISORY BOARD Walter Beinecke Jr. Joan Brecker Patricia Butler 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. Mary-Elizabeth Young

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Mary H. Beman Margaret Moore Booker Richard L. Brecker Thomas B. Congdon Jr.

Peter J. Greenhalgh Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham

Nathaniel Philbrick Sally Seidman James Sulzer David H. Wood

Cecil Barron Jensen

Elizabeth Oldham

EDITOR

Claire O'Keeffe

COPY EDITOR

ART DIRECTOR

. . Historic ~antucket w~comes ~d~ on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research, first-hand accounts, remuuscences of Island expenences, histone logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers. Copyright© 2003 by Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, 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 information about our historic sites: www.nha.org

NANTUCKET VOLUME 52, NO.4

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4 From "Fire Proof Building" to Museum Center:

A Century of Preservation and Education by Frank D. Milligan

6 "Goodbye Mary Mitchell Hard Lucky Craft"

11 Seizing Agency:

Captain Samuel ]oy)s Journal

Black Nantucket and the Abolitionist Press) 1832-48

by Leslie W. Ottinger

by Justin A. Pariseau

17 The Asylum at Quaise:

Nantucket)s : Antebellum Poor Farm Q ' by Alison A. Gavin

21 Historic Nantucket /',

'E s

Book Section

l -·--r····r·'

"·• •...•

Review by Ben Simons

24 Heritage Society Research Project

Capital Campaign News

by Betsy Tyler

25 NHANews

On the cover:

Job Coleman, a retired whaling captain, was chosen at Town Meeting to serve as an overseer of the Quaise Asylum.

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F R 0 M

THE

EXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR

From "Fireproof Building" to Museum Center: A Century of Preservation and Education

William Fronds Barnard, top, NHA president

/rom 1899 to 1902, and his successor, Alexander Starbuck, who served/rom 1903 to 1922. SOH; F6704

HE OLD NORTH VESTRY WAS ALMOST FULL

on the afternoon of July 21, 1903, when the members of the Nantucket Historical Association gathered for the organization 's annual meeting. While the general feeling was that no "diminution of interest" in the NHA was evident during its nine-year existence, major challenges remained. With its tenth anniversary only months away, the NHA was operating on a shoestring: the bank balance was just $18 .32. Furthermore, its popular president of four years, William Barnard, had died suddenly just months before. The association's first acquired building, the former Quaker meetinghouse, known as the Fair Street Rooms, required extensive repairs. Work had been done the previous year, but the funding came only through the generous donations of two members. On a positive note, donations of artifacts were coming in on a regular basis, and the NHA's curator, Susan Brock, was both popular and effective. But the incoming artifacts could not be properly displayed nor were they accessible for viewing. "In their present form we can only pack them away," Brock reported to the membership, "where, although we are glad to know we possess them, they are quite unavailable for use." Oearly the association required a new building; in fact the echo of the words "Fire Proof Building" had been, in Brock's words, "the war cry for the past ten years." (Recollections of the devastating

HIS T 0 R_I _C__ N_A_ N_T U C K E T

1846 fire still smoldered in the memories of many members, who were determined to safeguard the artifacts.) The incoming president, Alexander Starbuck, undoubtedly contemplated these many challenges as he greeted his members for the first time that hot July afternoon. Within a year, however, there were signs of advancement: $985.69 was now on deposit in the Nantucket Institution for Savings for the "fire proof building," and the new president was authorized to begin paying bills of up to $3,000 for its erection. Confidence in the organization was growing to the point that, on yet another blistering-hot summer day, a large assemblage of NHA supporters gathered on Fair Street to lay the cornerstone for the new museum building. In Starbuck's eyes it would be "a come-at-able repository always accessible instead of a vault formally opened only on special occasions and carefully guarded from the eyes of the profane." "It seems to me," he added , "particularly fitting that our tenth anniversary as an association should be marked by an occasion like this which denotes an important step in our corporate life." Always the visionary, Curator Brock saw the NHA finally embarking on "the beginning of its career with its work spreading out and increasing from year to year and the fact of its educational value continually impressed upon us." That statement is as true today as it was one hundred years ago. This October, the Historical Association FALL

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broke ground on a new educational facility, with artifact-preservation controls, in keeping with the needs of the twenty-first century. And just as the adjoining Quaker Meeting House was renovated in 1904 as an annex of the NHA's new museum building, the NHA 's Peter Foulge r and Whalin g Museums are being restored and renovated to form part of the NHA's newest museum. Specifically, the Whaling Mu eum will have extensive repairs to its roof, masonry, and structural systems; its overall appearance will be restored to look as it appeared in 1847 when it was built, a year after the Great Fire. At long last, our visitors will have the opportunity to observe the workings of the world-dominating oil- and candle-p roduction industry that was once housed in this factory. Between the two existing museums new galleries will be created that will present the stories associated with the people who have inhabited the island for the past 10,000 years. Anchoring this exciting new educational facility will be the "Nantucket leighride Gallety," in which all aspects of the ocean whale hunt will come alive. On display will be the skeleton of the forty-seven-foot sperm whale that washed as hore on Nantucket a few years ago; the NHA's ever-popular whale boat; many whale-hw1ting weapons and clearting tools; an audio-visual center; and a re-creation of "' tween decks " on a whaling vessel, which will be specially designed to replicate the shipboard fac iliti e that were home to hundreds of Nantucket whalers for years at a time. In other galleries, visitors \vill be able to use computer terminals to access the NHA's collection of 55,000 historic photographs, view the NHA's prized collection of scrimshaw and assorted decorative arts, and enjoy hundreds of artifacts that have been stored away for decades. A specially designed "discovery" room will offer fanlliies hands-on activities specifically related to the exhibitions. Within a few months of its 1905 opening, Curator Brock reported to the membership that the NHA's new building, "is proving very satisfactory and all artifacts can be displayed to much better advantage then ever before. " "We feel," she added, "that we are now ready and free to begin our historical labors." In the spring of 2005, when this newest NHA museum opens its doors, II! STORJC

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we, the stewards of the Historical Association's mission, Breaking ground will once again be "ready and free " to continue our his- /or the torical labor of preserving Nantucket's historic Fair Street Museum, ambiance and offering residents and visitors exhibitions and programs that present Nantucket history in creative 1903. and wonderful new ways. Today the NHA once again calls upon all of its members to support the association's preservation and educational activities by contributing to our capital campaign-a campaign that has already paid for our new research library on Fair Street, and will result in an increased permanent endowment, the restored Whaling and Peter Foulger Musewns, and new exciting musewn galleries and educational rooms for our members-and, indeed, all islanders.

-Frank D. Milligan

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"Good Bye Mary Mitchell Hard Lucky Cra&" Captain Samuel Joy)s Journa41835-38 by I try not to but my Anxiety for a voyage to be enabled Leslie w. Ottinger to Quit the Seas and live with my famzly causes me many times to think o that Provzdence would bless me with the same good fortune as some others but the Lords Will be done

I Captain Samuel Joy, ca. 1840. SC357Âˇ2

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N THE VAULT OF THE NEW NHA RESEARCH

Library there is a collection of nearly 400 logs and journals that chronicle the daily events of individual whaling voyages. Logs were official records, maintained for the perusal of the ship's owners at the end of the voyage. Sometimes kept by the captain, more often they are in the hand of the first mate or some other officer. They record each day's events, typically by watches-the eight-hour-long shifts that make up the daily routine of duty aboard ships. They are factual, and seldom does one actually catch a glimpse of the keeper himself. By contrast, journals were intended for the personal interest and future use of the keeper, and not the ship's owners. For the 1835 voyage of the Nantucket whaleship Mary Mitchell, the NHA is fortunate to have both the log, kept by the first mate, Joseph McCleave Jr., and a journal kept by Samuel Joy, the captain. The log is a model of precision and legibility, the work of the officer who succeeded Joy as captain on the next voyage of the Mary Mitchell. There are only a few entries that reflect his interests and impressions. The journal, however, is a much different kind of document. It gives a remarkable picture of the duties and responsibilities of a whaling captain,

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and, as well, Samuel Joy's worries and distress as events unfolded on a voyage that he hoped would be successful enough to free him from the necessity of ever making another whaling cruise. Two weeks into the voyage, on July 28, 1835, Samuel Joy recorded, "my birthday-begins my 41st year." He was the third of the eight children of Reuben Joy, himself a famous Nantucket whaling captain, and Mary Swain Joy. Samuel (1795-1843) had married Betsy Turner (1795-1885), probably in late 1816 or 1817. By 1835, the time of this cruise, they had three children: Samuel Jr., 18, Susan, 12, and Elizabeth, 6. The holdings of the NHA record only a few facts about Captain Samuel Joy. At the age of ten, he is listed as a member of the crew of the whaling ship Atlas; the boy, with a lay of 1/65. The master of the Atlas on this cruise was his father. In 1815 he was a member of the crew of the Ruby, under Captain Albert Clark. In 1817 he sailed as the second mate on the Essex. On this voyage the master was Daniel Russell and the mate George Pollard Jr. Pollard commanded the Essex on her next voyage, the one that ended when she was wrecked and sunk by a large sperm whale in the central Pacific Ocean, but by then Samuel was no longer a member of the crew. In 1823, he was now the master of his own ship, the Indus, whaling off Brazil. Between 1824 and 1827, he was captain of the Peru on a cruise to the Pacific Ocean. The next cruise of which there is a record is that from 1835 to 1838, the subject of this journal. In addition to the span of eight years between 1827 and 1835, there are two other periods, each of four years' duration, that are unaccounted for. Near the end of the journal there is a note that at some time previously he had spent three years on the Mary Mitchell, and perhaps he was at sea during all three. It does seem that the 1835 cruise was his last. Finally, George H. Gardner's "Sketch Book," a FALL

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diary kept between the years 1841 and 1844, has the last bit of information about Samuel. The brief entry reads, Jan. 3, 1843-Capt. Samuel Joy died very sudden this afternoon-dropped dead going into his house.

Samuel Joy's gravestone is found in the Old North Cemetery. It is difficult for us now to imagine the demands to be met by a whaling captain in the years that Samuel Joy commanded his ships . There was supervising and directing the crew in maintaining, repairing, and sailing the ship. And there was the critical issue of navigation, often with charts that were not entirely accurate. His central task was to find whales; and when he did, he was responsible for directing those who killed them, brought them to the ship, cut them in, ran the tryworks, and stowed the oil. A whaleship was self-sustaining, and the captain had to find ways to replenish the supplies of food, water, and wood as they went along; and to recruit new men, since desertion was common and the death of a member of the crew an occasional fact. While anchored in New Zealand, he wrote: a lad during the night swam away by name of Owin Getchell so we cant go to sea today, and then, at 6 spoke Chris Mitchell [whaleship Chnstopher Mitchel4 Nantucket] informed us one of Our deserters named Getchill was found dead on shore in the bay of islands after our departure.

The captain was responsible for maintaining discipline, usually administering punishment himself. Finally, he was the ship's doctor and surgeon when the need arose and no other help was at hand. Although the captain usually could rely on the support of his three or four officers, the important decisions were his own and even the officers could not always be counted upon to execute his orders and follow his leadership. The crew included twenty-five or thirty seamen, many with little experience of whaling. Some were natives of Nantucket or New Bedford, but others were gathered from the farms and towns of New England and from islands touched during the cruise. Many signed on for the adventure or to escape events or places even less desirable than the life they would have on a whaleship. Usually absent was a passion for the sea, or for whaling itself, with its long cruises and uncertain pay at the end. Obviously, whaling captains were resolute and capable men. They had prepared for their duties through many years of service as seamen and officers, and had HISTORIC

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succeeded in the selection process that ultimately led the owners, with the hope of large profits, to entrust them with a ship and its crew. Perhaps those captains were not an overly introspective group. The few journals that they kept tend more to record observations and events and say little about their own personal feelings. Captain Joy's journal represents a notable exception. The cruise itself was actually remarkably successful. The Mary Mitchell returned in just under three years, a short cruise for the time, and so laden with oil that some barrels had to be lashed down on deck, there being no space for them below. Most whaleships were not nearly so successful and continued to hope for at least one more whale on the voyage home. Captain Joy notes, while off the coast of New Zealand on November 12, 1837, finished boiling and hove the tryworks over board.

The entries of the captain throughout his journal nevertheless record his impatience and distress at the pace, and at every delay and ten1porary failure. In addition, he frequently describes his thoughts related to the difficulties presented by his duties and responsibilities-from dealing with the crew and maintaining discipline to navigating, from finding whales to confronting leaking oil barrels and a leaking ship, and from setting broken Captain Samuel Joy's limbs to getting supplies. gravesite is in the The daily entries also record the usual details of a Old North Cemetery. whaling cruise. Weather, management of the sails, whales sighted and not, stove boats, and other events all have their listing. And there is the usual sprinkling of colorful phrases and observations. With respect to the sea and weather, he notes, a hobgoblin Sea all round and, thick Burgoo weather.

As to whales,

if there were Whales thick as Blackberries they would be of no use here the weather is to bad and, Saw 3 haglets on this Glorious ground it is as barren as tho swept with the besom of destruction . . . at 9 saw whales struck one run like a dog out of a smoke house.

When the wind failed, calm got up fiddlesticks.

But it is comments on the trials and chalFALL

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lenges of accomplishing a successful voyage and his reactions to them that make the journal unique. For example, there was the matter of navigation. In 1835 Captain Joy would have had many fairly accurate charts, even of the South Pacific islands, but the challenge was to plot the ship's exact position while at sea. Equipped with a set of Bowditch tables and a sextant, and barring long episodes of foul weather, determining latitude was quite satisfactory. Longitude was another matter, for then there was the additional requirement of knowing the precise time , which depended on the accuracy of the chronometer. Early in the cruise, just after leaving the Azores, where its performance was verified, he wrote, Our Chronometer Careful Observations is right to a minute nothing more exact.

And six weeks later, at 7 passed by many schools of fish and resembling shoals or reefs Quite sufficient to alarm a person in a dark night but we have an excellent timekeeper with good observations and I know our Situation exactly and also know that no reefs or shoals are Known to exist in our vicinity it is a great Satisfaction to know a ships place and our Chronometer has hitherto indicated precisely and I place the utmost reliance in her correctness.

Islands sighted allowed a check on the accuracy of the chronometer. Thus, a year later, now off the coast of New Zealand, he records, Our Chronometer gives I think about 25 or thirty miles too much Easting that is to say the Ship is that much further West than the Chronometer indicates.

An error of thirty miles was no small problem in those unfamiliar waters, especially in stormy weather. And it was navigation along with a scarcity of whales that had led him to write two weeks before, I hope to be pardoned for all my repinings but I can stand no more my hopes are exhausted my wishes frustrated by adverse circumstances and none to hear a part of them with me nor offer the least word of Encouragement but appear perfectly unconcerned about our good or ill Success may they in their turns experience my feeling tis all the harm I wish them.

On June 28, 1835, the Mary Mitchell had been towed over the bar by a steamboat and anchored off Brant Point. Supplies were brought out by lighter, and on July 17 the captain came on board. Bound on the instructions of her owners for the Indian Ocean and the

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whaling grounds off New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific, she set a course for the Azores, then south toward the Cape Verde Islands and the Cape of Good Hope. In October, the Mary Mitchell reached the Tristan whaling grounds off the west coast of Africa. Captain Joy wrote, sent up our cutting tacks in hopes to have a use for them Soon may the lord grant it,

but a week later he records, Saw finbacks but nothing else the ground is terrible barren and I am fairly tired and, I expected to have had 300 bbls. Now by others talk of this ground I am however disappointed no unusual thing for me my life had been a tissue of disappointment the Will o the Lord be done.

Joseph McCleave wrote in the log: Having looked over the Tristan ground thoroughly and seen no whales we concluded it best for the interest of all concerned to make the best of our way round tl1e Cape of Good Hope.

The Indian Ocean grounds were little more productive, and it was here that Captain Joy entered his remarks on blackberries and the weather, even though four whales were eventually taken. After five weeks, Captain Joy wrote, heavy gales and hard squalls with a Tremendous sea cut up our blubber put it into casks and got Some Oil between decks Ship labors hard and the scene above and around us beggars all description let no man ever talk to me again about whaling in this Country.

A course was set for New Zealand. During the months from April through September the Mary Mitchell was anchored in Cloudy Bay, New Zealand. Eleven whales were taken. The remainder of the cruise was spent in the South Pacific. Despite what could have been regarded as considerable success, the spirits of the captain seemed never to reflect it. He wrote a month later, just 12 months Ago there was Abundance of Right Whales in this Precise spot but We were not here and now we are here there is no Whales-let us head where we will there is sure not to be any Whales or else a gale of wind I am heart Sick and Know not which way to head but I must go some where for we see nothing here I desire to have Patience Granted me for all my trials.

In a rare departure from his usual practice, and perhaps reflecting the captain's despair, Joseph McCleave about FALL

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this time wrote, we have 5 dollars up on the Miz'n mast as a bounty to any one that will raise Whales if we get a horse piece but it appears as if the very heavens were league'd against us and, I wish it would rain Sperm Whales as it appears we shan't see any unless some such phenomena doth happen.

Toward the end their luck improved. After Captain Joy's, "5 Weeks since seeing Whales Be patient Samuel," there was, in November of 1837, the joyful note that it now remains for us to be thankful to Providence which has crowned our Endeavor with Success and enabled us to fill our ship at last.

In November 1835, in the Indian Ocean, when the first whales were taken. Joseph McCleave entered in the log, Saw Right whales At 10 AM lower'd our boats and soon struck 2 large ones they work' d together bad and got the Larboard boat stove slightly and David Mitchell got his left arm and right leg broke.

British whaling, merchant, and naval ships all had a surgeon in the crew, but on American whaling ships, serving as ship's physician was one of the captain's duties. Samuel Joy was not one who felt confidence in his doctoring skills. With respect to David Mitchell's fractures, he wrote, Set our Wounded mans limbs as well as we were able Had the assistance of Captn Fitch of the ship Boston of N London We did as well as we were able. All did not seem aright, though, and ten days later he wrote, I dont like the looks of Mitchells leg I am afraid all is not as it ought to be I pray we may fall in with some Ship having a surgeon.

The next day he was able to record, at 7 spoke British barque Lord William Bentinck from London to Sydney Monro master his surgeon obligingly came on board and visited our wounded pronounced him in a fair way of recovery and bones well set.

In the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, he had a French doctor reduce a seaman's dislocated shoulder and on other occasions was able to get help from the whaleships Navy and Asia. Still, he described having to care for cases of scurvy, clap, rupture, consumption, "hypo," and, on himself, "a bad boil on my right hand, and twice dysentery"-perhaps never with much confidence, for in December of 1835 he reports, HISTORIC

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tried to speak a Large English ship but she would not and tho we set our Colors she would not answer them he was so proud perhaps of his freight of white thieves he was carrying to Port Jackson but I wished to speak him on account of our third officer who is laboring under some disease.

And there were matters of discipline to tax the resolve, wisdom, and sometimes even the arm of the captain. Some were minor: All hands employed serting up Rigg'n to Pay for their Quarreling-the rascals.

Others were not: at 4 James Bums was Brought on board by a Can aka in a canoe he had been absent 8 days had shipped another man in his room I tied him up and gave him two dozen put him in the canoe again.

Joseph McCleave wrote of this incident, at 2 PM J. Bums was brought aboard by the Canakoos after being absent 7 days. the Capt. gave hin1 24 lashes with a cat and he went off again in a Canoe.

Some other infractions were straightforward and dealt with very directly: John Wood left ship without leave got drunk I flog'd him and put him in irons ... let the prisoner out of irons on promise of amendment, and, at 7 broke the cook's head for getting rum from the Shore contrary to the law.

Other problems with the crew could not be so directly resolved. One was the case of Mr. Lawson, the fourth mate. Lawson wished the ship on the rocks this he repeated to the Second mate as he is rather underwitted and the most useless piece of furniture I ever saw on board the ship I am detem1ined to unship him after due consideration on the subject for I do not mean to do any thing in a hurry to be sorry for hereafter but from my opinion after calmly discussing the case.

Mr. Lawson was eventually discharged to another whaleship at his own request, his share of the oil taken to that time going with him. And, I have been obliged to Suspend our Second officer from duty for repeated acts of Neglect, Disobedience and instigating and encouraging others of the Crew to do the same Contrary to my Repeated advice and Orders ... Put M on duty again [2 days later].

Impatience, despair, and frustration are common themes throughout Samuel Joy's journal. He writes, FALL

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At the end of his journa4 Samuel Joy is counting the days

my hopes are small compared to my Wishes, and, in short things must soon grow Better for Worse tis almost impossible for them to be, and, verily if patience makes Saints or trials make them We are in a fair Way of earning that honor.

until he can leave His religious beliefs do not seem to have provided him the Mary Mitchell.

with consolation or serenity: Our time is going I am wore out may God forgive my repining I am nearly destitute of hope Oh for wings to fly from this horrid country [the N. Z. coast] any person looking at this journal can enter into my feelings it seems Sometimes as though all nature conspired against us I try to bear it patiently but I cannot and to think how hard we have to strive against adversity is Sickening to the Soul but I have been taught that God is merciful and he only can help us we can do nothing of our selves and if it is his pleasure I should be thus afflicted his will be done may he strengthen me to bear it and may all these trials work for my Âˇgood.

Weather, especially the wind, was a constant theme in his distress and impatience. When the ship had a full cargo of oil and turned west toward New Zealand for final provisioning before sailing home, he wrote, fresh SW wind and heavy sea from the NW don't go an inch I never expected such weather or I would have steered East but Whenever we start to go any where we are twice as long as any other Ships and generally have 3 days head wind calms or gales to one fair this has been the fate of this ship for six years that I have been in her and I verily believe was we bound East the wind would come there before 24 hours had elapsed and I am wore out with Such trials.

The Mary Mitchell sailed for Nantucket on January 2, 1838. The feeling of toiling against a pitiless fate persisted through the four and a half months it took to sail east around Cape Horn, and north to Holms' Hole, Martha's Vineyard, where the Mary Mitchell at last came to anchor on May 18, 1838. There had been only one stop, at Pernambuco, Brazil, where they put in for water, bread, beef, and molasses. With respect to Cape Hom, Captain Joy wrote in February,

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So We get along No Western or Southern winds off Cape Hom to speak of I have watched Clouds I have walked deck I have done everything man could do but no good comes of it I have doubled the Cape 12 times before and Never saw the Match of this nor did I ever hear of it before I try not to murmur for perhaps all will work together for good but the prospect is as dark as ever and Sometimes I almost despair may Providence in its Mercies help us for no other can avail us in the least and, if I ever get away from here and get home again I am almost determined never to come again my mind is in a deranged state cares and Anxieties sweep over me.

In March and again in April he mentions his wife: Calm calm all night and all Latter part and I cant get home to Betsy ... by 4 a lovely sunset ... Course NNW for my dear Betsy God Bless her.

And a last note a week before home, begins calm and I suppose the middle and latter the Same this ship never made so quick passage and where as any other Ship or vessel in fact we must always allow 113 or 114 more time for her passage than others. Since we passed the Diegas 3/4 of the time the wind had been ahead or it has been Calm and it will always be so with her I am wore to the bone and will sum her up in these words after a person has had as much of her as I have they ought to Quit her and I mean to as soon after she arrives as I can get my foot on land Which I pray the Lord may soon be Good Bye Mary Mitchell hard Lucky Craft Long Passage Ship

But it was a successful whaling cruise. Thirty-four months after sailing, the Mary Mitchell returned with 1,974 barrels of whale oil and 596 barrels of sperm oil, the product of the fifty-seven whales that had been taken, and Captain Joy did not find it necessary to go out again. Sadly, only five years after he returned, he died at the age of 47. In his obituary in the newspaper the Islander, of]anuary 7, 1843, he was described as a "most excellent man ... of strong mind, of great sagacity, and extensive reading ... a man of excellent conduct." Betsy was to live another forty-two years, and die in 1885 at the age of 90.

Leslie W. Ottinger, a physician, retired to Nantucket in 1996. He has been a volunteer in the Research Library since February 1999 and previously contributed "Fine Times on the Old Three Brothers" /or the winter 2002 issue a/Historic Nantucket. ---- ---- ---

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Seizing Agency: Black Nantucket and the Abolitionist Press) 1832-48 Editor's Note: This article is excerpted/rom chapters three and four a/Justin Pariseau's Advanced Independent Research Project written in his senior year at Boston College: "A Separate World: Black Nantucket and the Fight /or Equality, 1769-1858," a copy of which can be found at the NHA Research Lzbrary. Expanding on earlz~ er research by Nantucket scholars Barbara Linebaugh White, Isabel Kaldenbach, Frances Karttunen, and others, Pariseau's research in off-island newspapers sheds new light on Nantucket's New Guinea community.

N AN AGE OF RACISM AND ADVERSITY, BLACK

Nantucketers carved a life for themsdves out of a predominantly white, Quaker world. A small community on the outskirts of town near the present-day Five Corners and the African Meeting House, New Guinea was a separate world, one whose residents fought to make meaning out of segregation and who would settle for nothing less than equality. Seizing upon the abolitionist and black press of the 1800s, Nantucket's blacks exercised agency and remained an essential part of the reform movements of the period. By piecing together evidence that survives and examining the wider material culture of New Guinea, a complex picture emerges, one in which members of a black elite reached out to a larger maritime world in the fight to end slavery and attain social justice for themsdves. Surviving records indicate that Edward]. Pompey, born sometime around 1800 on Nantucket, was likdy between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty in 1830, roughly fourteen years younger than the already wellestablished Absalom F. Boston, famous for his 1822 captaincy of the whaleship Industry. Despite the difference in age, Pompey and Boston shared similar interests; both earned the title of captain and were storeowners and merchants in New Guinea. A search of HISTORIC

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historical records strangdy yidds far fewer references to By Pompey than to Boston, a fact that belies the important Justin A. Pariseau position Pompey assumed in the black community. As a businessman and abolitionist leader, Pompey hdped shape the thriving community's future. Pompey established himself early on as one of Nantucket's leading black abolitionists. In the early to mid-1830s, as evidenced by his correspondence with and contributions to the major off-island abolitionist newspapers of the period, Pompey began to support the growing antislavery effort. Exposure to the Arthur Cooper incident as a young man in 1822 would have The African rendered him very much aware of the issues surroundMeeting House, ing southern slavery, and particularly its impact on Nantucket. Whether experienced firsthand as a men1- photographed ber of the mob that gathered in New Guinea to protect in 1912 by Cooper's family from the slave catchers, or from sec- Alexander Starbuck. ondhand accounts after returning from a sea voyage, r6 18t

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that incident and the antislavery heritage of the predominantly Quaker island would have set the stage for Pompey's activism. Beginning first with his activities as agent for William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator in the early 1830s, Captain Edward J. Pompey made a move by the end of the decade to broaden tl1e scope of abolitionist literature available to black Nantucketers. It was his chance to make a statement on Nantucket Island, both against slavery and for black equality. After Pompey accepted "the Agency for the Liberator in Nantucket" according to William Lloyd Garrison's 1832 letter, evidence suggests iliat a sizable number of black Nantucketers subscribed to the newspaper. In an attempt to collect late payments on subscriptions

H I S T 0 R I C

N A N T U C K E T

to the Liberator, the newspaper's general agent in Boston wrote to Pompey, care of Absalom F. Boston. On September 9, 1835, Henry E. Benson noted for Pompey, "on looking over our books I find iliat anumber of our subscribers in your town have not paid." Of the thirteen subscribers who owed payment, eleven names are recoverable from ilie original document. All were "colored" residents of Nantucket, including William Harris, John Banks, Jacob Jones, Lydia Morey, William R. Robinson, George Watson Sin1mons, James Dennison , Frederick H. Quaine, James Williams, Samuel Harris, and Absalom F. Boston. Aliliough tllls list of names is representative of older, mature leaders in Nantucket's black community, by subscribing to ilie Liberator in 1835 they were making a statement about the direction they wanted New Guinea and its residents to follow in ilie future, particularly to ensure ilieir children would grow up in a more just world. Pompey's involvement in the abolitionist press only grew. He went on to link hin1self to ilie leading black newspaper of the time, the Colored American. Judging from the correspondence of Pompey and Absalom Boston, there is more than enough reasonable evidence that New Guinea blacks were reading and invested in tllls paper. Under the heading "New Agencies" in ilie July 15, 183 7, edition of the Colored American, Nantucketers could read the following: "Our General Agent, Brother RAY, has appointed Captain E. J. POMPEY of Nantucket, Mass., AGENT for that place. We ...--..-hope Mr. P. will exert himself in our behalf." In the same issue, the general agent of ilie paper, the same Charles B. Ray who appointed Pompey to his post, announced his intention to visit Nantucket. "I am abundantly encouraged with regard to the object of my mission," Ray noted, "though having done noiliing yet-and if I do not succeed beyond what I expected, I FALL

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shall be very much disappointed. I have been invited to visit Nantucket, on the subject of the paper, and shall probably do so, and spend a few days, more hereafter." Having the black editor of the most popular black newspaper in America visit Nantucket must have been exciting for New Guinea residents and would likely have engendered a good deal of racial pride. Later that same year the editors of the Colored American reported "the following swns have been received within the last month, from agents and friends." Edward J. Pompey was one of the correspondents listed, with five dollars by his name, either in new subscriptions or donations in fulfillment of his charge as an agent of the newspaper. One year later, he sent the newspaper $10.00. As an agent on island for both the Liberator and the Colored American, Pompey tied himself and his community to a growing network of abolitionists and an important nineteenth-century voice of African Americans. Pompey was not the only Nantucketer in contact with the Colored American in the 1830s. The Reverend John P. Thompson of Nantucket's African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church also corresponded with the newspaper. In August 1839, he sent "letters and money." His ministerial activities in July and August 1839, however, deserve the most attention. "On Thursday evening, July 18th, [were married] by the Rev. J . P. Thompson," the Colored American announced, "Mr. James Clough to Miss Caroline D. Boston of Nantucket, eldest daughter of Capt. A. F. Boston." Noted as "both colored and residents of Nantucket" in the marriage record, they represented so much more. The title "Captain" once again singled Absalom F. Boston out as extraordinary and worthy of respect. The advertisement, probably placed by HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

Caroline's father, emphasized the social standing of the Boston family. As the daughter of Captain Absalom F. Boston, Caroline was coming from the upper echelon of New Guinea society and thus merited such notice in the press. Local island newspapers rarely covered such news when it involved black islanders. Boston turned to the Colored Amencan, which was published in New York, to give voice to his pride in his family and community. Another marriage notice that was published in the same edition stated, "on Tuesday evening, 23d July by the Rev. J. P. Thompson, Mr. Randolph Cooper of Nantucket was wed to Miss Ann Brown of the san1e place." This time the bride's family placed the notice in the New York paper, with Cooper's family placing their notice in the Boston press. Randolph, the twenty-nineyear-old son of Arthur and Mary Cooper, was only twelve when slave catchers arrived on Nantucket in 1822 and threatened to destroy his family. Forced to flee from house to house as a young boy, Randolph, now a grown man, was the embodiment of New Guinea's future, as well as a renlinder of how close the small community had come to disaster seventeen years earlier. Another entry reveals both the practical concerns of blacks in seaside communities and the solutions provided by circulation of a black newspaper such as the Colored American. Rufus Cooper, a black resident of the island, served as delegate to the An1erican AntiSlavery Society in 1840. Interestingly, he and his counterparts appear in the May 23 edition of the Colored American not for their service at the meeting, but for recommending William C. Powell and his boardinghouse in New York City. "The accommodations are neat and clean, the table amply supplied with good and

Above: A sizable number of blnck Nantucketers subscrzbed to the Liberator, with its evocative masthead, in 1835. Opposite: A tintype of the Reverend Arthur Cooper. F6lJ2

A letter to Edward Pompey from Wtlliam Lloyd Garrison of the Liberator.

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An August 18, 1834 letter to Edward Pompey from the Anti-Slavery Office of New York included the notice at right, which ong,inally appeared in the Emancipator, and this quote: Coming from a repenting slaveholder

[Mr. Birney of Kentucky] and above all being

the very best thing of its length ever written against colonization, it deserves to be sent to every colonizationist. ... "How much will you

give to scatter this letter as it ought to be?"

HISTORIC

wholesome food, and last, though not least, the charges are moderate ," wrote the black travelers from Providence, New Bedford, and Nantucket. "Therefore, with pleasure," the delegation agreed, "we recommend his house to our colored brethren traveling to this city, as worthy of their patronage and support." Seemingly an insignificant gesture, these men were actually providing a vital service for the blacks in their home communities and the readership of the Colored American. Mariners and travelers needed places to stay. Reputable and affordable boardinghouses that catered to black clientele were difficult to find. As W. Jeffrey Bolster has shown in Black Jacks, the boardinghouse was a combination of "the most dominant institution in mariners' lives" on shore and a potentially dangerous place that threatened to wipe out hard-earned savings. Rufus Cooper's antislavery activities thereby dovetailed neatly into the practical social concerns of New Guinea blacks who made a living at sea and hoped to find refuge in reputable boardinghouses on shore. Captain Edward J. Pompey also continued his work for the Colored American during this period. Pompey remained active in his capacity as an agent for the paper at least between July 25, 1840, and January 30, 1841. He would have been instrumental in facilitating the June 1840 trip of the Colored American's editors to Nantucket in his capacity as agent. "Before this article shall present itself to our readers," the editors reported on June 20, 1840, "we shall probably be more than one hundred miles from our post, working in some other department for the success of our paper. ... We hope the friends where we go, will be ready to meet us. We expect to visit New Bedford and Nantucket and many other places." As black Nantucketers continued to reach beyond the confines of New Guinea and the shores of Nantucket in order to unite with their black counterparts in other communities in the cause against slavery and for equality, the abolitionist movement at home was growing stronger and more affluent. The focus for abolition-minded Nantucketers was by 1840 shifting to their home island. The abolitionist press provided a voice for those oppressed by slavery and inequality. The Liberator and the Colored American became engines for social change that were embraced by black elites, even those blacks who resided thirty miles off shore on Nantucket Island. The weddings of Caroline Boston and Randolph Cooper were also representative of the New Guinea NANTUCKET

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HISTORIC

f" l a.rtuon.

NANTUCKET

community's attempt to break out of the roles defined by race relations on Nantucket. Declaring marriage intentions and publishing news of the ceremonies, though seemingly a simple act, carried a deeper meaning that resonated within the social structure of New Guinea. Whether the affirmation of a captain's standing in society, as in the case of Absalom Boston, or of the triumphant victory of Arthur Cooper and his family over slavery, the messages were declarations of pride to a wide audience of readers. They were also declarations of independence from the oppressive forces that debased blacks and painted them as criminal and irredeemable. By 1839, New Guinea residents were consistently reaching beyond the confines of the small neighborhood that comprised their home. It was only a matter of time before pride and honor began to chafe against traditional social norms. The 1840s would be a major watershed in Nantucket history for all island residents, but not before there were major clashes over the issues of slavery and social equality for blacks. Captain Edward J. Pompey, the man who took up the mantle of leadership during the 1830s in concert with Absalom Boston, would not make it beyond the 1840s, dying of "consumption" on October 6, 1848, at roughly the age of forty-eight. He succumbed to the disease known today as tuberculosis and one common and well known to Nantucket's blacks. Among the final records associated with Pompey's life, the inventory of Pompey's estate compiled in November of that same year stands out and reveals much about New Guinea's involvement in the abolitionist movement. When executors of Pompey's estate compiled this record, they found several books of note owned either as personal property or in the inventory of his New Guinea store. Along with such titles as "Hist. of Nantucket," a "History of the late war," and "Prayers and devotions," were books related to the antislavery movement that was so much a part of Pompey's life. The appraisers noted a "Lecture on Slavery," as well as a "life of Danl. Webster." Most telling, however, were the discoveries of the "Narrative of Wm Brown," undoubtedly the Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, published a year before in 1847 out of Boston, and three copies of the "Life of Douglass," the famous Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, published for the first time in 1845 . Both works recalled the horrors of slavery, with the Douglass narrative dramatically recounting the proud FALL

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moment for himself and black Nantucket when, in August 1841, he had addressed the antislavery convention gathered on the island and began his career as an abolitionist. Of the books associated with Pompey that survive in the historical record, the edition with the most copies, the Narrative of the Lzfe of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, emerges as the book most important to him and his customers. The single entry "3 Life of Douglass" speaks volumes about the conviction of New Guinea residents in the fight to end slavery, and to their hopes and dreams for a promising future and equality as the community ventured onward without one of its leading advocates. Their collective memory was of Douglass in 1841, delivering a powerful rendition of his escape from slavery, not of the riots and civil unrest of 1842. Nantucket in the 1840s was the scene of a concerted effort in favor of abolition, the beginning of Frederick Douglass's career, and terrible mob violence that recalled the slaveholding past of some of Nantucket's first Quakers. A minority of Nantucketers engaged in an open discourse that ran counter to popular opinion. While some northerners were rabid supporters of slavery, far more were at the very least indifferent to the degradation of an entire race of people who suffered, forced to "wear the painful yoke" in the words of one Nantucket newspaper. Nantucket's abolitionist movement survived the 1840s, with New Guinea continuing to prosper and grow during this period. The Nantucket Inquirer, however, saw in August 1845 dear portents of terrible hardship: Upon the political horizon of our country, at the present time, there are to be seen clouds of darkness gathering. What it imports none can tell, save those who are well versed in political knowledge. We should, however, be upon the look-out, and watch with eagerness the changes in the position, and the general direction of these clouds, many of which are e~dently charged with influences which, like the lightrung, may be needed to purify the moral atmosphere. Our land is covered with churches, but we doubt whe~er all these, even if thrown into one, would be suffioent to save her from wrath which her sons and daughters have provoked, and which may yet burst upo.n .us for our misdeeds, as a nation nominally Chrisuan. Let us be wise, and repent of our GREAT

OFFENSE. For Nantucket's Quakers, and black residents especially, who were deeply invested in the plight of southern

H""!ST 0 RIC

slaves, the douds of darkness remained over a land whose basic freedoms were rooted in slavery. As long as the country's greatest sin remained a part of the political landscape, the stability of American society remained in question. Set against the backdrop of the abolitionist press and black activism, developments in New Guinea from 1832 to 1848 provided hope for Nantucket as a local community, in spite of the darkness that pervaded national affairs. Nantucket's black elite subscribed to abolitionist newspapers, read the fugitive-slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, and connected themselves to a larger black community. Those efforts helped facilitate their fight for dignity and social justice in the face of oppression, and allowed some light to shine through the ominous clouds forming on the horizon.

Justin A. Pariseau, a recent graduate ofBoston College and winner ofan Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies, will begin doctoral study in nineteenth-century United States history at the College a/William and Mary this fall. He has worked as an interpreter for the Nantucket Historical Association /or the past four summers.

Sources: 1830 Census. Collection 222: Blacks on Nantucket, 1773-1886, Folder 6, Nantucket Historical Association. Collection 335: Edouard A. Stackpole Collection, 1750-1990, Folder 591, Nantucket Historical Association.

Colored American (New York, New York). Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts). Nantucket Inquirer (Nantucket, Massachusetts). Probate Records, 17, Nantucket Town Building, Nantucket, Massachusetts. Scott, Henry Edwards, ed. Vital Records a/Nantucket,

Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Volume III-Marriages (A-G). Haverhill: Record Publishing Company, 1927. Scott, Henry Edwards, ed. Vital Records a/Nantucket,

Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Volume V-Deaths. Haverhill: Record Publishing Company, 1928. W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age ofSail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

NANTUCKE - -T- - - - - - - - - - -

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The Asylum at Quaise: Nantucket)s Antebellum Poor Farm Quaise, meaning the "end point" in Algonquian, is an isolated area three miles northeast a/Nantucket town. Very little has changed there since the nineteenth century when an experimental town poor /arm and asylum were located there. Yet the szlence and barrenness of the area betray the phantom screams of asylum inmates who perished in the /lames of an 1844 poorhouse fire. Fiftynine bedrzdden, insane, and pauper inmates and their "keeper" slept in the asylum the night a/Wednesday, February 21, 1844. Frederick Chase, one of the indigent inmates, was the finÂˇt to discover the acrzd smell of smoke coming/rom the cook-room on the lower level of the three-story structure at 2:00A.M. Ten inmates were burned to death. The fire raises a host ofquestions, chiefly, why were there inmates at Quaise?

HE ASYLUM AT QUAISE WAS THE PRACTICAL

manifestation of Nantucket's reform policy on the poor in the first half of the nineteenth century. It served as a safe harbor or refuge for the intemperate, feeble, unemployed, and insane. It is important to interpret the Quaise Asylwn in terms of its historical setting and the influence of local, state, and national trends. The prosperity of the people of Nantucket during that period enabled them to purchase the land and buildings for an asylwn. Great emphasis was put on the rural setting, which was believed to be restorative. The removal of the afflicted from the community was seen as part of the cure. One of the earliest indications of the island's attitude toward the less fortunate came during a smallpox epidemic before the Revolutionary War. The townspeople made provision not only to take care of the sick, but to protect themselves as well. At an HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

October 19, 1763, Town Meeting, the town voted that by two houses be built on isolated Coatue Point "for the Alison M. Gavin reception of such Persons as are Infected with Small Pox." It was also decided "that the Town will suffer Inoculation of Small Pox." However, as Obed Macy noted in his journal in an April 13, 1822, entry, "Somewhere in 1796 it was concluded that all those who received supplies from the Town must come and reside at the work house [so called] . ... In 1797 the whole expense for the Department of the Poor was $885.19, an enormous sum." Prosperity came to Nantucket after the War of 1812, and with leisure time came the opportunity to assemble for reasons of reform. Inspired by leaders such as Dorothea Dix in her efforts to reform education and the treatment of the insane, Americans campaigned for change. However, the chief reason for poor reform was money. An estimated one-half of taxes was going to support the indigent. The misuse of alcohol was the perceived primary cause of poverty, and it was believed that with "heroic effort," it could be cured. It is also true that during this period insanity was believed curable. A March 7, 1822, article in the Nantucket Inquirer praised the success of the McLean Asylum (near Boston): the success of the "moral treatment" there was "highly gratifying to every one, who is justly sensible of the value of a sound understanding and of the direful sorrows connected with a state of insanity."

On April13, 1822, at the annual Town Meeting, the idea of a permanent town poorhouse and asylum was shaped into reality. The concept of the poorhouse, isolating a community's poor instead of providing them with provisions on an individual basis, spread

Detail of Lucy Macy map, 1830, showing the Quaise Asylum.

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PuLrco:.-rcot"odayaftelniHin,or.• Ra•dall, a roal-blaek, fal\-ltloud~d AfrM:n, •• .r•,-~-"·-,-:~ bro~:~o;ht lt~fure JG•Lir;e Whitman on .. amplai"'

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through New England in the 1820s-40s. As reported in the Inquirer, a locale far from the town's taverns was given as the rationale for the site. The newspaper reported on April 18, 1822, '"The Committee to look into the poor department met last Saturday and it was voted that the town would buy the farm now occupied by Daniel Howland . . . not to exceed $2000.00." By 1823, the asylum, situated on 273 acres in Quaise, was ready for new inhabitants. The poor, elderly, unemployed, and insane who could not take care of themselves were "sent there" by relatives or applied for permits to live there. The annual Nantucket Town Meeting dictated the direction of the Quaise asylum, choosing three overseers, who were responsible for hiring a keeper. Some of the overseers, such as Capt. Job Coleman, were wealthy whaling captains who also took an interest in town affairs. Coleman's portrait, which hangs in the Whaling Museum, shows a serious, handsome, contemplative man. Overseers such as Coleman were responsible for visiting the Poor Farm on Saturdays making observations and referring recommendations to the Town Meeting in the form of a report. Poor Farm policy emerged from those reports. For example, on March 8, 1830, Nantucket Town Meeting passed a regulation limiting the number of visitors to the Poor Farm. Perhaps it was the intention of towns-

HIS T 0 RIC

NANTUCKET

people to take a casual drive out to the farm and look at the unfortunates in their element. Whatever the case may have been, the Meeting "Voted to add to the Duty of Overseers that they shall prohibit all persons from visiting the asylum at Quaise without a permit in writing from one of the Overseers." What did the town and overseers intend to do for the indigent inmates? Moral reform was the philosophical treatment of the poor and alcoholic. But a physical building would fill the needs of the poor and embody the causes of the "moral poor. " For the elderly and insane, at least, such a poorhouse might be their last home , while orphans would be nurtured at the nearby Polpis school. The asylum would also b e a place of rehabilitation for the able-bodied unemployed, who, by means of hard labor, would have the opportunity to improve themselves through the decency the poorhouse provided. Historians have generally used one of two models, confinement or rehabilitation, or a combination of the two, to explain the formation of institutions such as poorhouses and asylums. Two "keepers" journals in the possession of the NHA reflect those institutional philosophies; the two models help us interpret them. The first, kept by an anonymous superintendent from 1826 to 1828, is believed to be the work of William Chase, the man referred to in the third person throughout the journal. This earlier journal displays the hallmark of the confinement model. Escaped inmates brought back to the asylum unwillingly-dnmken men and women who "kept a bad house"-were punished by their containment in the House of Correction. The House of Correction, on the grounds of the asylum, was the last resort for Quaise inmates, a place reserved for the most incorrigible inmates. An April 20, 1826, journal entry described the retrieval of two inmates: "William Chase went down after Lucretia Cuff and Jane Freeman found in Guinea Town and brought them up ." Work transgressions were similarly punished: July 20, 1826: "[Overseer] Capt. Myrick ... brought . .. a pauper girl by the name of Eliza G. Thompson an indented [sic] servant to Robert Folger. She is to be kept here a few Days for a Punishment for Disobedient [sic] of Orders in the afternoon." The ordeal of Betsey Jones, a chronic alcoholic, best illustrates Chase's lock-up policies. In early September 1826, she missed the vessel that was to return her to Connecticut "where she belongs" and F A LL

2003

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"she returned to the Asylum in Sailing Trim Ballesed with Ginn. " "September 5: Took Betsey Jones out of Prison & she Refused to work then Put her in again." Jones remained in the House of Correction for over a year. May 3, 1827: "At night cart returned from town [with] Robert Barker after being absent Six Months this is the third time he has been here." Thus, morals, temperance, and obedience to the keeper dominated Chase's tenure. The second journal is that of Alexander Coffin, an ill-fated whaling captain, who as a mariner had seen his ship's captain killed by a whale and had been captured by cannibals. A Quaker, he exemplified the Quaker tenet of finding "that of God in every man." He and his wife, Lydia Myrick Coffin, and their two sons settled into the asylum keeper's quarters at Quaise in 1839. According to a later account, Coffin was "desirous of relinquishing the seaman's life for that of a farmer." Not surprisingly, Coffin ran his poor farm as a well-run, but extremdy productive, whaleship. William Chase's journal dealt to a large extent with the "House of Correction"; Alexander Coffin's, in contrast, is principally concerned with the rehabilitation of inmates through agricultural labor. Nearly every entry begins with a list of vegetables, eggs, and dairy products and how much they sold for in town. He made sure every inmate who could work participated in the healthy, restorative, rural atmosphere. Those who could not work outside in the fidds of wheat and rye, or with the livestock, did woodworking in the "House of Industry. " Even the elderly and house-bound were given "oakum," a flax-like fiber, to pick in their rooms. However miserable their circumstances, it was hoped that some inmates at least might work out their vices. Thus, under his care, the poor farm was a useful and profitable place for the town of Nantucket. Three general assumptions concerning the asylum need to be clarified. The first concerns African Americans; of sixty-five inmates in an 1840 census, five were black. Early Town Meeting minutes reflect that blacks were housed in a separate building on the asylum grounds, so it would seem that a majority of the island's indigent and disadvantaged blacks remained in Guinea. The second considers the misconception by many that women predominantly peopled the asylum. Throughout the asylum and town censuses, the numbers of men and women in the poorhouse remain fairly equal. Finally, the asylum at Quaise housed very few HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

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people actually considered lunatics. An extensive survey conducted by the Massachusetts Committee on Lunacy in 1854 revealed the prevalence of insanity for the state was 23.4 per 10,000; Nantucket was one of the two counties found with a rate of 15, the lowest in the state. The climax of the poorhouse experience, and one that really figured in its demise, was the 1844 fire at the Quaise Asylum. (The Great Fire occurred in Nantucket two years later.) On a bitterly cold night in February 1844, the daughter-in-law of the keeper, now Timothy Baker, awoke to find the three-story structure on fire. She had the presence of mind to seize the bell rope and pull hard. The sound rang out over the deserted area. Although the bell could be heard for miles around, no attempt was made to send the fire engine from town; the roads were nearly impassable. Rescuers from the adjoining farm bdonging to Charles A. Burgess made their way through the snowy fidds. They brought ladders and formed a bucket brigade using water from the asylum's cistern. But the rescuers were few in number, and many of the inmates were disoriented and confused. One rescuer, according to the Nantucket Inquirer, "found in the third story an aged man and his wife in bed. He warned them of the imminent danger and the man got out safely, but the woman resolutdy refused to move ... she struggling all the time to prevent the rescue." Many of the inmates themselves enacted feats of heroism. Notably, Lydia Bowen, one of the teo inmates

Opposite: This journa~

kept by Quaise Asylum reszdent James Cook Hussey, has color/ullocal news items pasted into its pages along with handwntten songs, poems, and · accounts. This page: A listing of the deaths at the asylum recorded by Mr. Hussey.

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Above left: This photo of the Quaise farm at sheep-shearing shows a building first used as part of the Quaise Asylum. 1'5957

Right: Shown here after being moved to Lower Orange Street, it functioned as Our Island Home, and in 1986 became Landmark House. P157.H

H I S T 0 R I C

burned to death that night, "carried her child to a place of safety, and returned to try and save something, but did not herself escape the burning flames." TI1e Inquirer put its ghoulish report into religious terms: "We saw what remained of the body of Lydia Bowen, burnt to a cinder ... forcibly admonishing the holder, of the uncertainty of the time and manner, in which he may be called to yield up life." A ninetieth-anniversary retrospective of February 17, 1934, noted, "It was many a day before those present could forget the scenethe blazing pile with its hun1an occupants, the bitter wind, the snow-covered ground, the unearthly cries of the doomed." During the next year, rebuilding would take place on the same site at the cost of twdve thousand dollars. It might seem that the experience of the asylun1 fire, with its component of inaccessibility, eventually changed the minds of the town planners, for in 1854 the asylum building was removed timber by timber to Orange Street, in town, and incorporated into a new building, constructed with a "dungeon" in the cellar and a chapd on the top floor. The cellar proved to have multiple purposes through time. The building was renamed "Our Island Home" in 1905, and from that point on was exclusivdy a home for the sick and dderly who could no longer care for themselves. With the opening in 1981 of a new, state-of-the-art nursing-home facility, also named Our Island Home, the old Quaise Asylum building was converted to Landmark House, an apartment complex for independent living of lowincome dderly and physically challenged residents. One wonders what the pivotal factor was in taking the Poor Farm apart in 1854. The answer may lie in the opening of the Taunton (Massachusetts) Asylum for the Insane that year. The evacuation of the insane to Taunton was one solution for the islanders: the asylun1 on Orange Street, which concentrated on the dderly and bedridden, was another. Nantucket was returning to a type of "out relief," or treatment of each individual case of poverty, as early as the 1850s. Town Poor N A N T U C K E T

Department Accounts for 1858--{)0 reveal the names of over a hundred needy Nantucketers receiving aid in the form of wood, coal, and flour. The town sold Quaise Farm to George C. Gardner in 1855 (although evidence suggests some sort of town farm existed on the island as late as 1913 ). Personifying the era best, perhaps, was the last full-blooded Indian woman on Nantucket, Dorcas Honorable, who died at the Orange Street asylum on January 12, 1855. Born April12, 1776, she had lived out her life in Nantucket during a period of great social experimentation. The era of the poor farm is over, and in the present day, Nantucketers treat its less fortunate with comprehensive social programs and enlightened attitudes.

Sources: Some of the resources consulted /or this article include the minutes a/Nantucket Town Meetings, records of the Poor Department, the NHA's collection a/Poor Farm/Quaise Asylum papers 1839-41, and the town censuses of 1830, 183 7, 1840, and 1850. Byers, Edward, The Nation a/Nantucket: Society and Politics in an Early Amencan Commercial Center, 1660-1820. Hunter, John M., "Need and Demand for Mental Health Care: Massachusetts 1854," Geographzcal Review, 1987. "Remarks at the Asylum at Quaise" by Alexander Coffin, 1839-1841. Rothn1an, David J., The Discovery of the Asylum. "The Quaise Farm Horror of 1844: Burning of the Asylum," Historic Nantucket, 1977.

Alison M. Gavin, the NHA's 2003 E. Geoffrey and Elizabeth Thayer Verney Fellow, is now a wnterleditor /or the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. She expects to receive her master's in American History in January 2004 /rom George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. FALL

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Historic Nantucket Book Section Nantucket: A Destination, a Community by Ene T. Bonnyay

Nantucket Vanishing Photographs by Jim Dunlap Introduction by Cary H azlegrove

ANTUCKET IS A COMMUNITY OF LIVING

beauty and a nostalgic sense of the beauty that has disappeared. It is often difficult to say which is more authentic and which more constructed, as everyone who loves Nantucket participates to some degree in building the elaborate set-design that is needed to pull off such a spectacular show. Like any good piece of theater, Nantucket manages to capture its audience in spite of much of the artificiality of its scene-rigging and the often tiresome repetition of its best vignettes. Photography books about Nantucket often fall victim to this repetition, but some occasionally manage to discover original growth among the cracked lines of tradition. In Nantucket: A Destination, a Community, Ene Bonnyay presents the island in color as a collection of beautiful locations and picturesque occupations, each with its own discrete charm for visitor or year-row1der alike, gathered together as a hannonious organism made up of elegant parts. Artists and artisans such as Gerry Scheide, basketmaker Charles Rogerson, Nantucket Moorings' Dennis Metcalfe, and innkeeper Charles Balas (Anchor Inn) appear in their workspaces like creatures in their habitats-busy, content, productive, quietly contributing to the larger life around then1. In addition to many excellent shots of traditional Nantucket scenery, some spectacularly fresh scenes appear-bread resting idly in a Daily Breads window, a white cat arching along a wooden fence with the sea behind, a field of mustard in Dionis, and the Waquataquaib kettlehole pond. Bonnyay emphasizes the sleepy, autumnal quality of Nantucket time, where even the busiest activities, human and natural alike, seem shrouded in the deeper wisdom of the seasons. Nantucket, she seems to say, is a canvas richer and deeper than any of its individual brushstrokes. In such a presentation, it often seems that there is no room for the critical eye, for anything negative or disHISTORIC

NANTUCKET

senting about the island. What about all that is happening to our environn1ent, to our natural resources, to the island's capacity to sustain life, or even to the modesty of our dwellings? An10ng all of the deeply lit and freshly shingled scenes, where do we turn to experience the "older truer" Nantucket that is being eclipsed by our rebuildmg, renovating, and prettifying contemporaries? In his book of black-and-white photography, Nantucket Vanishing, Jim Dunlap captures the old and decayed relics of Nantucket's past that are still among us. In her introduction, Cary Hazlegrove says, "It's hard to believe that these are conten1porary photographs." Buildings decline, tides conswne, and nature takes her annual toll, tearing rooftops, battering shingles, ~d destroying layers of paint. Dunlap's bleak but beautiful photos attest to the ongoing see-saw battle between man and nature for upkeep and destruction, with no clear victor. His photos have a wonderful ambivalence about them: is the decay they present beautiful, or something to be fought against? There is the venerabl: mystery that we love old things-but do we love them if they are old and broken? . . This ambivalence gains a certain resolutwn m the book's epilogue, in which several of man's creations o? the island are shown in a restored or renovated condition. We see two of the NHA's restored properties: the Oldest House (struck by lightning in 1987), and the Old Mill. Other notable restorations are shown: the refurbished town clock in the Unitarian Church; the Lifesaving Museum; Brant Point, Sankaty, and Great Point lighthouses. The emphasis suggests that the battle against nature's forces and the destruction of neglect can be won through community concern and the noble efforts of preservationists. A shot of Auld Lang Syne in 'Sconset appears in the final grouping, indicating that even extremely old structures endure. The book ends with several shots of beaches at sunset and snowcovered landscapes, all without houses or any signs of man's intrusion . The cycle hints, if only gently, that nature will resume her ancient privileges in the end. Ben Simons is the NHA's assistant curator.

Reviews by Ben Simons

CAPITAL

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NEWS

Making History at the Whaling Museum by

HE WHALING MUSEUM, THE COUNTRY'

MOST

important repository of artifacts detailing Bruce A. Percelay Nantucket's whaling past, is about to make history itself. For Nantucketers and island visitors, the Whaling Museum has since 1930 been a prized resource for the telling of perhaps the most dramatic and compelling story ever told about men and the sea. The museum has captivated hundreds of thousands of visitors who have observed firsthand the size of whales, the tools used to hunt them, and the bounty they produced. As fascinating a story as the museum has presented over the years, there is far more that can be told-but only in an expanded facility. On October 11, 2003, the NHA broke ground for BUll.DING the most significant new building to be erected on the COMMITIEE: Trish Brzdier island in the past one hundred years, one that will transform the Whaling Museum into a historically Robert Brust sensitive yet more spacious and dynamic building. The John H. Davis result will be an experience that further connects peoPeter Nash ple to Nantucket's past and gives them an even greater Pat Paradis appreciation for the extraordinary vision, bravery and skill of Nantucket's whaling captains and their crews. Niles Parker The construction process will entail restoring the Bruce A. Percelay Peter Foulger Museum and the historic Whaling Martin Sokoloff Museum and connecting them with a structure E. Geoffrey Verney that will house objects sddom before seen by the public and in a manner that will hdp bring Nantucket's

H I S T 0 R I C

N A N T UC KE T

extraordinary history alive. This new "museum center" will be tied into the Foulger Museum and the candle factory (Whaling Museum), both of which have deteriorated over time and will be painstakingly renovated and restored. Designed by Cambridge architect Martin Sokoloff, with Boston museum-display specialists Amaze Design, the new building will capture the essence of Nantucket on the exterior and visitors' imaginations on the inside. The exterior will be clad with white-painted flush boards, similar to those used on the far;ade of the Atheneum. The entrance will feature a distinctive portico reminiscent of the historic Pacific Bank building at the top of Main Street and flanked by federal-style windows at street levd, along with a window that will reveal the F resnd lens from Sankaty light. The second-levd far;ade of the building will display a restored version of the bdoved hunt carving formerly mounted on the side of the Whaling Museum. It will become a new, yet familiar, focal point of the building. Another prominent feature of the building will be the bdvedere on the roof, similar to that atop the Jared Coffin House, from which natural light will filter through to the center of the museum. Dramatic egress to the bdvedere will be via a spiral staircase that wraps around the restored mechanism of the rare nineteenthcentury Howard clock that served as the town clock from 1881 to 1957. FALL

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The belvedere will open to a roof deck providing a spectacular and unobstructed view of the harbor. An elevator will be available for those unable to navigate the stairs. The deck will be open during the day and will include signage that will orient visitors to Nantucket's historic waterfront. As visually striking as the exterior of the new museum and observation deck will be, the inside of the new museum will be where Nantucket's whaling history will come alive. At every possible opportunity, interactive displays will provide a sense of realism that will result in a more interesting and exciting experience for children and adults. From the moment they enter, visitors will be surrounded by the history and drama of the whaling era. A state-of-the-art sound system will broadcast period music and whale cries in the hunt-gallery display while the glow of Sankaty light will emanate from the stairway. Handsome mahogany wainscoting in the reception area will be reminiscent of a sea captain's quarters. Following an introductory historical timeline exhibit, guests will experience the first-floor whale-hunt room that will display the sperm whale skeleton and whaleboat in a new and dramatic way. On a screen mounted in a re-created ship's hull, a dramatic video of the whale hunt and the Nantucket sleigh ride will engage visitors while interpreters relate lively stories of Nantucket's whaling past. Visitors will have the option of using hand-held wireless tour guides that provide details on each exhibit. Prior to leaving the museum, visitors can place the devices into a docking station, punch in their e-mail addresses, and receive on their home computers information they highlighted during their tour. The existing tryworks display will be expanded to reveal more elements of its structure. A 2,100-squarefoot, climate-controlled gallery will feature rotating displays from NHA collections and loan exhibitions from other museums and private collections. The gallery will have a high, vaulted ceiling with exposed ribbing much like the inside of a ship's hull. All of the old and popu-

N E W S

The NHA is pleased

lar displays- from the collection of whaling implements to the NHA's matchless scrimshaw-will be presented in new and dynamic ways. These are but a few of the new museum's components. Together, the design, layout, presentation, and exhibits will create an inspiring portrait of Nantucket's whaling history and will offer a resource that will serve the island for generations.

to announce that by the beginning of October the capital campaign had received gifts and pledges of $17.2 million. Cu"ently, we have

Robyn and John Davis Curator

$3.8 million left to raise

The NHA board of trustees is pleased to announce a new endowment gift donated to the capital campaign. Robyn an d John Davis h ave given $1 million to endow the position of chief curator. Niles D. Parker has the honor of being the first Robyn and John Davis Curator. "We are happy to be able to endow this important position at the NHA," said John Davis, a trustee of the association since 1996, who voluntarily came forward with his gift at the conclusion of the August 29 meeting of the trustees. The gift will generate funds annually to support the salary and benefits of the curator. NHA president Peter Nash was surprised and delighted by the contribution. "It is a great vote of confidence in the NHA and demonstrates the high regard the donor holds for the position of chief curator and the organization's long-term mission," said Nash. "The gift provides a terrific boost to the capital campaign, particularly our commitment to build a strong endowment for the NHA." Nash is pleased that the gift will enable the organization to maintain a professional staff to preserve its historic properties and educate the island's young people in perpetuity. Parker has been chief curator at the NHA since September 1999. He has been responsible for some of the organization's most dynamic and popular exhibitions including The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nantucket and the Declaration of Independence, The Nantucket Rarlroad, Jag.' Cape Verdean Heritage on Nantucket, and "Plain Threads to Nantucket Reds": Three Centuries a/Nantucket Fashion.

toward the overall goal

of $21 million for the Museum Center, permanent endowment, and Research Lzbrary. Included in the achievement are grants of $4.6 million/rom twenty-eight foundations, and gifts and pledges of $12.6 million/rom 217 indivzduals. In October, a mazling of campaign materiÂŁ1/s went to all of our members and island residents. We trust that the in/ormation in the packet will enlighten the community on the scope ofthe project and will lead to enthusiastic participation in its success.

Dr. Robert Seinfeld

Nantucket Island and the Nantucket Historical Association lost a kind friend and supporter this fall. Bob Seinfeld was a well-traveled, sophisticated, caring doctor who made close and lasting friends-the kinds of friends one rarely makes later in life. He surrounded himself with beauty and adored his harbor-view Nantucket home, which he shared with his wife, Judy. He filled his life with music and entertained his friends on his player piano. Well known for his benevolence and loyalty to island nonprofits, he graciously gave of his time to many organizations. He will always be remembered as the pony-tailed Christmas Elf on Stroll Weekend, twinkling with amusement as he entertained children waiting in line to visit Santa Claus. We have lost a true Nantucketer, but by choosing to be buried here, on the island he loved, his spirit will remain with us always. -Peggy Kaufman

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HERITAGE SOCIETY RESEARCH PROJECT

Anna G. Fish Bequest This is an account of a bequest made to the NHA by Anna G. h1Âˇh in 1941. As part of the Heritage Society Research Project by island researcher Betsy Tyler, future issues of Historic Nantucket will include other such stories of bequests to the NHA made over the last century.

NATIVE OF NAN1UCKET, BORN IN 1869 TO ARTIST

and careers in the wider world. As she says in the mticle, "If a door opens in China or a subway is dug in Boston, there is sure to be a Nantucketer at the bottom of it." In her later years, Miss Fish chose to winter on Nantucket, a quirky alternative to the popular idea of summering on Nantucket. Miss Fish demonstrated her faith in the mission of the NHA by donating two paintings to the association during her lifetime: a portrait of Gideon Gardner by artist William Swain, and a portrait by Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin called Old Age, whose subject is Anna Fish's grandmother, Anna G. Chase Derrick. The textile collection of the NHA benefited from her bequest in 1941 of some fine Nantucket apparel and accessories: a red silk shawl, a cashmere shawl, two muslin caps, a kerchief, a quilted petticoat, and a beaded bag. She also bequeathed a sampler stitched in 1753 by Sarah Fish, sister of the ..--â&#x20AC;˘ curiously named Preserved Fish. Anna G. Fish's bequest of her beloved family items is one of fifty-six bequests of artifacts made to the NHA since

George Fish and Judith Derrick, Anna G. Fish was valedictorian of her graduating class at Nantucket High School, and a budding violinist. She left the island to further her education, which led to a position in Watertown, Massachusetts (appropriate location for a Fish) , at the Perkins School for the Blind. Although she was associated with the school for forty-three years, her love of Nantucket remained strong. As president of the Boston group of expatriates, Sons and Daughters of Nantucket, she would reach into her imaginary "Nantucket Scrap Basket" and hold forth with memories of the island at each annual meeting. Her scrap basket idea was borrowed by William F . Macy and Roland B. Hussey, who compiled a book of Nantucket anecdotes with that title in 1916. Miss Fish wrote an article for the 1924 Proceedings of the Nantucket Historical Association , titled "Nantucket's Principal Exports," which she classifies as being those teachers and other talented souls, like herself, who left Musicale in the Fish family parlor, Anna with her violin. the island for lives

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1905. -Betsy Tyler

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Library Assistant Honored Part-time assistant in the NHA Research Library, Suzanne Gardner was honored on June 20, 2003 , when the Nantucket School Committee dedicated the library serving grades 6-12 at the Cyrus Peirce Middle School and Nantucket High School in her name. Suzanne was the library media specialist from 1969 to 2002 , guiding the growth of the individual school libraries and their subsequent integration into a central facility in 1990.

Nantucket High School Student Award Museum interpreter Amanda Nichols was honored with the first Erwin L. Greenberg Book Award in graduation ceremonies at the N an t ucket High School in Jun e. The award, established by his friends, is intended to honor former trustee Greenberg and his love for the island of Nantucket and the N antucket Historical Association. The award will be presented annually to an outstanding graduating student who has demonstrated a special interest in Nantucket's history. Amanda, an avid reader and researcher, has worked at both the NHA and the Nantucket LifeSaving Museum, where she has given tours and lectures and assisted with exhibitions. She is currently a freshman at the University of Florida.

Annual Meeting The NHA held its 109th Annual Meeting on July 25, 2003, in the garden of Had wen House. During the meeting the association's members officially elected several new trustees. The proposed slate of officers was confirmed and voted on by the trustees following the meeting. Trustees elected to fill unexpired terms were Melissa D. Philbrick and Jay M. Wilson. Elected to the class of 2007 were Pamela C. Bartlett, Patricia M. Bridier, Nina Hellman, Julius "Reb" Jensen ill, Bruce A. Percelay, Susan F. Rotando, and Bette M. Spriggs.Wilson, Philbrick, Bartlett, Hellman, and HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

NEWS

Spriggs are new to the board of trustees. Elected for one-year terms were Harvey Saligman, president of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association, and Carolyn B. MacKenzie, also a representative of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association. After the annual meeting, the board of trustees elected a new president, Peter W . Nash. Nash has been the chairman of the NHA's capital campaign since 1997, and has also served as first vice president on the board of trustees. Other new officers elected are Geoff Verney, first vice president; Barbara Hajim, second vice president; Tish Emerson, third vice president; Marcia Welch, fourth vice president; John Sweeney, treasurer; and Trish Bridier, clerk. Leaving the board of trustees are Alfred Sanford ill and Arthur I. Reade Jr., both of whom have served since 1995.

Bill Schustik in Residence The NHA launched its new Artist-in-Residence program with a visit from Nantucket favorite , troubadour Bill Schustik, in July. Schustik, whose rich baritone is heard annually at the Whaling Museum, extended his stay this summer to three weeks and performed over twenty concerts as part of the program. "Bill is an extraordinary performer, and was generous about sharing his talent with other organizations," noted education and public programs coordinator Kirstin Gamble. In addition to performing at the Whaling Museum and in the Hadwen House garden, Schustik shared maritime traditions and history in special concerts for the Saltmarsh Center, Our Island Home, and the Nantucket Atheneum. "We were so pleased to be able to share our resources with other island nonprofits," said Gamble. A highlight of the program was a twilight concert at the Old Mill, which featured old favorites like "Shenandoah," as well as recently rediscovered tunes-including one by a Nantucket whaler reminiscing about the annual sheep-shearing festival that he was missing while at sea.

Top: Bzll Schustik and fans in the garden at the Hadwen House. Bottom: Executive director Frank Milligan; speaker Gene E. Schott, director of development for the Thornton W. Burgess Sodety; outgoing preszdent Arie Kopelman; and newly elected president Peter Nash attheNHA's annual meeting in July.

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Elizabeth Alden Little of the NHA Research Library includes fifty-six tis sad to report to Nantucket Historical items authored or coauthored by Betty Little, Association members the passing of with topics ranging from prehistoric diet on the Elizabeth Alden Little on August 12, island to the genealogy of island sachems' fami2003, at age 76. lies; the involvement of Nantucket Indians in Betty Little earned a bachelor's degree in the whaling industry; and transcripts of court physics from Wellesley College in 1948 and a records, deeds, wills, and probate inventories Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1954. She marthat illuminate the lives of Nantucket Indians ried MIT Professor John Little in 1953 and after the arrival of the English settlers. Shelved devoted the next two decades to raising their in the reading room of the NHA Research children and actively participating in elemenLibrary are four thick notebooks of research tary education in Lincoln, Massachusetts, by Betty's son, Tom, ul d 1 "B"bli h ÂŁ Hi Âˇ where she engaged children in natural history Photograph and courtesy o/Dr. John Little. res ts an a arge 1 ograp y or stone and Prehistoric Nantucket Indian Studies," and colonial-history projects. Born in Mineola, New York, she was mindful of her first compiled in 1987 and revised three times, most recently descent from Mayflower Pilgrims and from the first English in 1996. Current and future researchers are forever in her settlers on Nantucket, a place to which she had an intense debt for organizing and making accessible all this material. attachment. When, in 1989, she compiled a history of her Dr. Timothy Lepore, who collaborated with Betty Little family, it was cast not in conventional genealogical terms but on a search for the cause of the devastating epidemic of as a history of island beach shacks and the lineage of people 1763-64, which killed over sixty per cent of Nantucket's connected with them. Indian inhabitants, was quoted by the Boston Globe on In the 1970s Betty Little resumed professional research, August 26, 2003 , as saying, "Betty always treated goods found at Indian burial grounds with respect," and she vigorwriting articles about the Eastern Algonquins and undertaking a master's degree program in anthropology with a conously warned Nantucket writers to avoid giving offense by centration in archaeology and geology at the University of even mentioning skeletal remains. Massachusetts, Amherst. She received her degree in 1985, Just as she insisted on the term "Nantucket Indians," Betty Little also preferred the old term "at Nantucket" to the served as president of the Massachusetts Archaeological current "in Nantucket (Town)" or "on Nantucket (Island)." Society, and twice received preservation awards from the Massachusetts Historical Commission for her efforts to She once confided that despite the tragedies of the 1700s, she reduce damage to archaeological sites on Nantucket. wished that she could have lived at Nantucket before the "Indian Sickness" so she could have personally witnessed For a decade she was curator of prehistoric artifacts for Nantucket Indian society. It is most fitting that her obituary the Nantucket Historical Association and editor of the NHA notebook series Nantucket Algonquian Studies. As series ediin the Boston Globe shared the page with the obituary of tor and contributor she brought Nantucketers to an informed Chief Running Deer of the Aquinnah Wampanoags, the understanding of the earliest inhabitants of the island, serving cousins of the people at Nantucket to whose memory Betty as mentor and coauthor on studies of archaeological sites and Little committed her life work. of documentary history. Of the series articles, she authored or coauthored thirty-six. Altogether, the publication catalogue -Frances Ruley Karttunen

(This is a slightly abridged version of the obituary written for the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.)

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Schustik came to Nantucket after spending the spring at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where he participated in its successful "Meet the Artist" series. He is also artist-in-residence with the Sarasota County Arts Council in Florida.

2003 Children's Programs For more than ten years, children have traveled back in time as part of the NHA's Living History program. This summer, the one-day workshops and crafts programs were significantly expanded to cover new topics and reach a wider audience. Old favorites-like the Colonial Life class, in which children help grind com at the Old Mill and then bake it into cornbread over the hearth at the Oldest House-remained the heart of the program. New offerings, which touched on Wampanoag culture, architecture, collecting, and life aboard a whaleship, were also popular. Five museum educators implemented the courses, which took full advantage of the NHA's resources and were held at the Whaling Museum, the Oldest House, and the Old Mill. "Our emphasis was on hands-on learning," said education and public programs coordinator Kirstin Gamble. "It was wonderful to see the children's eyes light up when they touched a piece of baleen, wrote with a quill pen, or raced hoops around the lawn of the Oldest House, just as the Coffin or Paddock children might have." In all, over 650 children participated in this summer's revamped education offerings. "We are thrilled with the number of children we were able to reach," Gamble said. "This summer was also a great opportunity for our museum educators to test out the ideas we had developed as a team." Gamble anticipates that next summer's courses will be even more successful as the education department continues to learn about its audience.

NHA's Educational Program Growing Stronger with New Programs in Nantucket's Historic Crafts and Decorative Arts To meet the growing curiosity and interests of island residents and tourists, plans are moving ahead at the NHA to offer year-round hands-on workshops in Nantucket's historic decorative arts and crafts. Sessions such as tole work, decoupage, trompe l'oeil, stenciling, floor finishing, antique-furniture restoration, rug hooking, historic gardening, knitting, and other needlework will soon be offered to adults and children on a yearround basis at the NHA's 1800 House on Mill Street. HISTORIC

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In January 2003 the NHA's board of directors approved an expenditure of $250,000 from the NHA's Capital Campaign to begin to restore and rehabilitate the 1800 House as a living museum for Nantucket's historic arts and crafts. The idea of exposing new audiences to Nantucket history through its material culture has been championed on the island for some time by Nancee Erickson, a self-professed "lifelong learner" in historic crafts. Erickson worked closely with NHA staff over the past year to establish a vision for the new programs and, with the assistance of NHA Robyn and John Davis Curator Niles Parker and NHA education coordinator Kirstin Gamble, led two summer "think tank" sessions at the NHA's Thomas Macy House on Main Street. Over one hundred participants offered advice on the future of the program and completed curriculum surveys that will help determine the initial courses that the NHA expects to begin offering in 2004. A surprising number of these potential students expressed their enthusiasm for enrolling in more than one craft area. Many established Nantucket artisans and crafts persons attending the sessions offered to teach courses or to assist in locating instructors for advanced courses in Nantucket's architecture, its gardens, its traditional crafts, and decorative arts. The goal is to serve an expanding community of interested, talented people who are keenly interested in learning, preserving, and teaching Nantucket's traditional crafts. Over the autumn and winter the NHA will commence the restoration and landscaping that will lead to the reopening of the 1800 House. As envisioned by Erickson and NHA staff, the Mill Street property will become a wonderfully exciting learning "laboratory" in traditional Nantucket historic crafts for students of all ages. "The 1800 House," states NHA executive director Frank Milligan, "will become one of a number of "living museun1" NHA properties where educational activities and cultural demonstrations will complement the NHA's new exhibition galleries, which will reopen at the association's Broad Street site in the spring of 2005." If you are interested in receiving e-mail updates on the progress of the 1800 House project and a survey, please send an e-mail to the NHA's administrative assistant Cindy Squire: cindysquire@nha. org or call her at (508) 228-1894, ext. 0.

A sailor's valentine

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Chair Anne Obrecht and Debbi Hatfield; Trianon/Seaman Schepps' Shelton Ellis and Binnie and Jay Bauer; Anne Obrecht, honorary chair Nat Philbrick and his wife, newly elected NHA trustee Melissa Phzlbrick; Leanne Kendnck; Heidi Berry with Friends of the NHA guest lecturer Leslie Greene Bowman, director and CEO a/Winterthur; Collectors Booth chairs Vzcki Livingstone and Josette Blackmore; and cocktaz1 party host Manlyn Whitney.

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Twenty-sixth Annual August Antiques Show The Twenty-sixth Annual August Antiques show was once again an enormous success, with the largest attendance on record. Revenues are expected to exceed last year's, with a net income of $585,000. Raffle sales and the Collectors Booth showed increased profits that helped to raise the bottom line. In addition to being the NHA's primary fund-raising event, the show helps to increase awareness of the association and its mission of historic preservation and education. I would first like to thank our underwriters for their loyal support and Marybeth Keene and Clement Durkes, who coordinated the effort. Of particular significance this year, in lieu of a title sponsor, a friend of the NHA stepped forward to issue a challenge grant that was successfully met. Thus, the show was underwritten by the grant and the many loyal returning corporate sponsors. I would like to extend my gratitude to the founders, chair's circle, benefactors and patrons, who, along with our corporate sponsors, made the show a success. The NHA is also grateful to Bob and Mia Matthews who hosted a reception at their Cliff Road home for the founders and underwriters. And thanks to our honorary chair, Nat Philbrick, an NHA research fellow and successful author and historian. His nationally acclaimed books have taken the history of Nantucket into homes around the world. He is a great friend of the NHA and an enthusiastic ambassador for our island. Antiques Show week began with a cocktail party held in Marilyn Whitney's lovely garden at Moor's N A N T U C K E T

End. Following cocktails, Rafael Osona led us once more to a record-breaking live auction. Following the auction, guests were ushered to the Eleanor Ham Pony Field for a fabulous evening of dining and dancing under a tent spectacularly decorated by a team of volunteers led by Leanne Kendrick and Rhonda Cassity. We were also treated to live vignettes of historic pictures, in life-size frames , brilliantly conceived by the dinner committee. Theatre Workshop of Nantucket provided the actors for the vignettes. Founders, chair's circle, and benefactors were dinner guests of Trianon/Seaman Schepps. Thank you Shelton Ellis, Leanne, and Rhonda for coordinating this fabulous evening. Our next event was the lecture sponsored by the Friends of the NHA-held at the Point Breeze Hotel, with over 180 people attending. The speaker was Leslie Greene Bowman , director and CEO of Winterthur, An American Country Estate, who spoke about Henry du Pont and the creation of his personal museum at Winterthur. Special thanks to Heidi and Max Berry for bringing Leslie Greene Bowman to Nantucket. On Wednesday evening Nancee Erickson once again planned a delightful dinner at the Thomas Macy House to honor the thirty-four dealers and thank them for the hard work of setting up for the show. Thursday night was the preview party at the Nantucket High School with a record number of people attending. In keeping with the show's theme, Three Hundred Years of Fashion on Nantucket, the decorations committee, led by Debbi Hatfield and Pat Anathan, transformed the high school into a nineteenth-century setting with quilts and stencils. Phyllis Freilich and Olivia Charney coordinated the preview party-complete with a signature frozen drink, which FALL

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in ninety-degree temperatures was a brilliant and much appreciated touch. The Collectors Booth, chaired by Josette Blackmore and Vicki Livingstone, was beautifully displayed, chock full of goodies, and a record success this year. The raffle, chaired by Chris Donelan and Ann Quick, featured nine items generously donated by Nantucket businesses and friends; proceeds topped last year's by $4,000. On Friday, Mia Matthews and Heather Kennedy arranged a program to entertain the children while parents visited the show. It was great fun, with thirty children stenciling canvas totes with signal flagsincluding one for me. As you can see, the show was outstanding in every area. My sincerest gratitude to everyone on my committee-all 111 of you! Your energy, talent, dedication, and enthusiasm made the show something very special. The NHA and I are so proud of what you helped accomplish. Thank you. And last, I want to thank NHA special events manager Stacey Stuart and the wonderful and professional staff of the NHA, who worked so closely with me to make this twenty-sixth Antiques Show such an incredible success. - Anne S. Obrecht, Chair 26th August Antiques Show

Members Meeting On Tuesday, August 26, in the Whaling Museum, the Nantucket Historical Association held a special members meeting, called in order to vote on proposed preservation easements for the Quaker Meeting House and the 1800 House. The easements are a condition for receiving grants from the Community Preservation Committee for the restoration and preservation of the two properties. Earlier this summer, the board of trustees unanimously passed two motions to move forward with these easements. In accordance with the NHA's bylaws, the motions were then put before the members, who voted unanimously in favor of granting the easements. The preservation easements are held by a third party, which must be consulted before any future changes to the building's exterior are implemented.The grant for the Quaker Meeting House had already been approved, and the Nantucket Preservation Trust has agreed to hold the preservation easement on it.The motion on the 1800 House allowed the NHA to seek a preservation easement partner in order to apply for funds in the near future to restore that property. HISTORIC

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FALL/WINTER EVENTS Friday, October 10 "SCALLOP SEASON" EXHIBITION OPENING Whitney Gallery, NHA Research Library 7 Fair Street

Open through December Wednesday and Thursday October 29 and 30 NIGHTMARE ON MAIN STREET

Reservations required Wednesday, November 5 NHA EXPLORATIONS: PLIMOTH PLANTATION

Space is limited, reservations required Tuesday, November 25 FESTIVAL OF WREATHS PREVIEW PARTY Preservation Institute: Nantucket 11 Centre Street Friday, Saturday, and Sunday November 28, 29, and 30 FESTIVAL OF WREATHS Preservation Institute: Nantucket 11 Centre Street Thursday, December 4 FESTIVAL OF TREES PREVIEW PARTY Egan Institute of Maritime Studies at the Coffin School 4 Winter Street Friday, December 5 FESTIVAL OF TREES Egan Institute of Maritime Studies at the Coffin School 4 Wmter Street

Saturdays and Sundays through December 28

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Lz/esaving display

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During the Move

at the Cuttyhunk

Until the renovation work is completed at the Peter Foulger Museum, the administration offices will be Nobska Light at Woods housed in two NHA properties-the Bartholomew Gosnold Center and the NHA Research Library. The Hole seen from the boat Whaling Museum dosed to the public on September to Cuttyhunk. 28. It will remain closed until we reopen-restored The only mansion on and reinterpreted-in the spring of 2005. In the meanCuttyhunk was built time, we hope you will continue to visit all of our other properties and participate in our educational and interin 1915 as a wedding p~etive programming. For those interested in whaling present for the son of history, lectures and the Essex Gam will be held at the Wzlliam Madison Wood, Quaker Meeting House, 7 Fair Street. History tickets president ofthe Amenean will be sold at the Museum Shop, 11 Broad Street and other NHA properties open to the public. If you have Woolen Company and any questions about memberships or programming a major landowner on changes during the move, please visit our website at Cuttyhunk. Wood installed www.nha.org or call us at (508) 228-1894, ext. 0. Histoncal Society.

the island's power plant and financed the undergrounding of all the utility lines. The present owner is Wzlliam Wood's grandddughter, who conducted a delightful tour of the house, whzch is virtually unchanged. Photos by Bob Hellman. NewNHA administrative assistant Cindy Squire.

NHA Properties Book The NHA has just published a twentyfour-page, four-color souvenir book about the association's historic properties. Edited by Cecil Barron Jensen and Ben Simons, it includes a brief description of each building or site and is full of wonderful images. It sells for $6.95 ($6.60 for NHA members, incl. tax.) "It will be a great keepsake of Nantucket and the NHA," said Cecil Barron Jensen. To order a copy, please call the Museum Shop at (508) 228-5785.

Explorations Nantucket Explorations resumed for a third season when thirty-five "explorers" traveled to Cuttyhunk in the Elizabeth Islands on September 9. We walked around this tiny island, visiting the local Historical Society museum, the venerable Cuttyhunk Fishing Club, and a

remarkable early-twentieth-century private home.The simple life style of this place offered a step back in time, which was most thoroughly enjoyed. Participation in NHA Explorations has been very enthusiastic.The next trip will be a tour of Plimoth Plantation and the May/lower II. A seventeenth-century lunch with traditional English and Wampanoag foods, hosted by a food historian, will be included. The date for this one-day excursion is Wednesday, November 5. Space, as on all Explorations, is limited, so early reservations are advisable. By popular demand, "Salem Revisited," an overnight trip, is being scheduled for February. The highly acclaimed new galleries at the Peabody Essex Museum have been opened, and we are very excited about this sojourn. Call (508) 228-1894, ext. 0, for further information.

New Staff The NHA was pleased to welcome Cindy Squire as the new administrative assistant in September. Previously, Cindy worked at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, for twelve years-eleven as the assistant to the head of school. She moved to Nantucket permanently in August 2002. "I look forward to working with the NHA team," she said. "It is such a great organization and I'm delighted to make Nantucket home." For the next year, Cindy will be working in the NHA Research Library but will move with the rest of the NHA staff back to the Peter Foulger Museum after the renovations are complete.

Celebrations as the NHA Breaks Ground on Museum Center The NHA invited the Nantucket community to share in the commencement of the restoration and renovation project at the Whaling Museum and Peter Foulger Museum on Broad Street on Saturday morning, October 11. The festivities included welcoming comments by NHA president Peter Nash and words of support by donors Robin Gosnell Travers, and John Davis. Cyrus Peirce Middle School student Janeen Manghis shared her thoughts on Nantucket history and the FALL

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NHA's whaling-hlstory programs. In addition, musician Steve Sheppard and the Shepcats performed and everyone was treated to a cdebratory cup of "grog" as Mimi Beman raised a toast to the occasion. Executive director Frank Milligan described the scope of the restoration and renovation project, including information about planned exhlbitions for the new facility. He also introduced clerk of the works Patrick Paradis, archltect Martin Sokoloff, and representatives from Shawmut Design and Construction of Bostonthe construction company hired to complete the work.

New Location for Festival of Trees The NHA is pleased to announce that the 2003 Festival of Trees is moving to a new location-the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies at the Coffin School, 4 Winter Street. In cdebration of the tenth anniversary of the Festival of Trees, NHA past president Kim Corkran is the honorary chair. Underwritten for the ninth year by Nantucket Bank, the Festival will

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be kicked off with a preview party on December 4, (r.8 Visitors will also be able to see the display of over forty trees on Friday, December 5, and Saturdays and Sundays through the month of December, 11 A.M.-4 P.M. For more information about the annual holiday tree festival, please call (508) 228-1894, ext. 130. P.M.

Antiques Show 2004 Barbara Hajim, chair of the devdopment committee of the board of trustees, is pleased to announce that the chair for the 2004 August Antiques Show is Leanne Kendrick. Previously the chair of the decorations committee in 2002 and the dinner in 2003 , Leanne is well recognized for her creative and imaginative skills and ability to manage a large team. "Her talents are endless, along with her energy," said the 2003 chair Anne Obrecht.The Antiques Show will begin next year with the Preview Party on Thursday, August 5; the Antiques Show Cocktail Party and Dinner is on Saturday, August 7; and the show runs August 6-8. Mark your calendars now.

MEMORIAM Helen Winslow Chase

ut of Nantucket's past emerges a gallery of figures whom the grateful island, with due pride, keeps alive in memory and even renders more vivid by an assiduouness of research that is hard to match in any other community. But sometimes the researcher deserves to be the one researched. Hden Winslow Chase-who was responsible for recording, organizing, and sharing so much of the island's hlstory-is a presence among us along with those old captains and folk of the town she wrote about and hdped others write about. I would wish her remembered as vividly as they. Almost thirty years ago I sat down at the one long table in the center of what was then the library of the Nantucket Historical Association and wondered who the impressive lady leafing through the Barney Record was. She looked like the embodiment of the strong Nantucket woman, and that impression remains. When she and I talked, and I fdt that I knew her, she came to look like the embodiment of scholarshlp of the island and the sea, and that impression remains. And she was quickly seen to be a warm, honest, noble soul-and that impression remains. Hden's devotion to the scholarshlp of whaling was not

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only enduring but adventurous. She was aware of the resources available in Australia and New Zealand, and nothing would do but that she should go out to the Pacific and work with them. And nothing would do but that she should go in a way that was as dose as possible to the voyages of the old whalers: she went in the cabin of a freighter. I hope that many an anecdote about Helen will be recounted-how, for example, she managed to see Pitcairn Island by talking so engagingly about her interest in the nineteenth-century Pacific, that she won over the captain of the freighter, who went off course and falsified ills log so that Helen could see Pitcairn. And her days in Samoa, where a simple yes to a proposal could have made her a queen. Her wit in describing these episodes was delightful-Samoans like their ladies large, she said, lingering on the adjective. Those who knew her well were aware of her heroic, even good-natured, tolerance of physical disability at the same time that she was being a model of thoughtfulness of others- and that she was even when suffering most. "Researching" Helen, one finds a great mind and a great heart. That's the image to keep alive in the mental gallery of great Nantucketers. -Thomas Farel Heffernan

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Manager Georgina Winton (r.) with assistant manager Patricia Sheehy.

Stop in and see us! We are here to assist you with all ofyour holiday needs. We can create gz/t baskets, gift wrap, and ship anywhere, and even offer free delivery of on-z~'lland gifts. • Nantucket Books • Discounted NHA Publications • • Reproduction Photographs /rom the NHA Collections • • Decoys by Will Kirkpatrick • Reproduction Scrimshaw • • Jams, Jellies, and Gourmet Products • Candles • Paper Goods • • Nantucket Stocking Stuffers • Children's Gifts • And Much More.'

Open daily 10 to 5 through December 23

11 BROAD STREET

•

(508) 228-5785

OR E-MAIL GWINTON@NHA.ORG

REOPENING APRIL 2004 AND OPEN THROUGHOUT THE MUSEUM RENOVATION