SPRING 1995
V 0 L U M E 44
Westward the Women
No. 1
From the President: Douglas K. Burch, Editor Helen Winslow Chase, Historian Sybille Stillger Andersen, Art Director Elizabeth Oldham, Copy Editor Photos: NHA collections unless otherwise credited
Much of the island's lore and tradition focuses on the adventures and accomplishments of Nantucket seafaring men. In this issue we recount the adventures and accomplishments of two very different women whose experiences ashore in a young and growing country are as exciting as most whalers' tales.
Martha Dunham Summerhayes A Nantucket Lady in Apache Country by Susan F. Beegel
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Mary Ellen Pleasant Mother of Civil Rights in California by Susheel Bibbs
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On the Cover: Sketch from a 1902 Christmas letter to Martha Summerhayes from Frederic Remington.
Departments What's News at the NHA Items of Interest
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OFFICERS Ms. Kimberly C. Corkran, President Mrs. William Slover, First Vice President Mrs. William B. Macomber, Second Vice President Mr. Alan F. Atwood, Treasurer Mrs. Hamilton Heard, Jr., Secretary Mr. C. Marshall Beale, Executive Director
Kimberly C. Corkran
BOARD OF TRUSTEES Mr. Alan F. Atwood Mn. Charles Balu Mn. Richard L. Bred<er Mn. Robert Ch~lon Miss Nancy A. ChMs. Kimberly C. Corkran Mn. Thomas H. Gosnell
Mr. Erwin L. Greenberg Mn. Willlm\ E. Grieder Prof. WUUam A. Hance Mn. Hamilton Heard, Jr. Mn. Sharon Lorenzo Mn. Willlm\ B. Maoomber Mn. Carl M. Mueller
Mra. Scott N~llt Mr. H. Flint Ranney Mra. William L. Slover Rev. Georgia Ann Snell Mr. Rlchaid Tuclcer Mr. Paul A. Wolf, Jr. Mr. David H. Wood
ADVISORY BOARD Mr. Walter Beinecke, Jr. Ms. Patricia A. Butler Mr. Alcon Chadwick Mrs. James F. Chase Mr. Michael de Leo Mrs. Walker Groetzinger Mrs. Herbert L. Gutterson Mrs. Robert E. Hellman Mrs. John G. W. Husted
Mrs. Arthur Jacobsen Mrs. JaneT. Lamb Mr. Francia D. Lethbridge Mr. Reginald Levine Mrs. Jonn A. Lodge Mrs. Thomas B. LOring Mr. Paul Madden Mr. William B. Macomber Mr. Robert F. Mooney Mr. Peter Nash
Arthur Reade, Esq. Mrs. Frederick A. lUchmond Mr. Alfred F. Sanford III Mrs. William A. Sevrens Mr. Scott Stearns Mr. J~h F. Welch Mr. Johri S. Winter Mrs. Joseph C. Woodle Mrs. Bracebridge Young
EDITORIAL BOARD Mrs. Dwight Beman Mr. Richard L. Brecker Mr. Robert F. Mooney Ms. Elizabeth Oldham
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pring heralds a renewal, a growth from the roots that susIt It when people and animals shake off the winter's quiet and become more active. So, too, does the NHA respond to the changing seasons. We have used the winter months to strengthen our roots so that this spring and summer we will indeed flourish beautifully as an important component of the Nantucket community. Committees have been quietly busy during the last few months, studying various areas of the association's activitie .. and making recommendations for augmenting the board of Directors. The search for an executive director has been continuing. The staff has settled into its new home at the Peter Foulger Museum and is working on plans for exhibitions and programs. I am proud of what has been accomplished by all of thL dedicated people. And I have realized that we must exerci constant vigilance and nurturing so that the roots of the Nfare well taken care of, for this is where it begins and all e • comes from. These roots can be strengthened through committed ail increasing membership and from solid financi al suppor Your association continues to grow in both of these areas, and that is good. With your help we can sustain that upward growth and can eventually accomplish the much neechxl maintenance projects, the continued proper care of our collections, more educational programs, and more superb exhib tions. This is your association. With your help we will contin ,, our mission: to be the guardians and gardeners of the island· rich heritage. I invite you to enjoy the wonderful exhibitions, events, kc· tures, and programs planned for the 1995 season, and I thank you for helping to make it all possible. tain throughout the year. is a time when plants and S trees begin to blossom and show their finery. is a time
Mr. Nathaniel Philbrick Mrs. L. William Seidman Mrs. Susan Beegel Tiffney Mr. David H. Wood
Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research, firsthand accounts, and reminisce nces of island experiences, historic logs, letters{ and_]:>hotographs are examples of. materials of inter~st to our reaaers. We expect articles to be entertammg and mstructlve for a general audience and to adhere to high standards of historical accuracy. Although Historic Na ntucket laCks the space to print notes or bibliographies w e encourage our authors to use documentation and Will make ann o t ated copies avrul.a ble a! the NHA's Research Center. Historic Nantucket strives lo P!lblish en}OY~ble reading that wil) promote ptlblic appreciation of !"'antucket s rustory and preserve important mformafion abou t the iSland's past.
Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) Is published quarterly as a privilege of membership by the Nantucket Historical Association, 2 Whaler's Lane, Nantucket, MA 02554 Second..:lass postage paid at Nantucket, MA Postmaster: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554-1016 FAX 508.2285618
WHAT'S NEWS AT THE NHA Report from the Curatorial Department he centennial year was an extraordinarily busy time for all of us in the Curatorial Department. Long hours were devoted to the preparation of 1994's three special exhibitions; all three were tremendously successful, resulting in the highest attendance figures in the association's history. In addition to the pleasure we derived from the public's enthusiasm for the exhibitions, we were gratified by the generous donations to our collections of some wonderful Nantucket treasures. Earlier issues of Historic Nantucket have documented the return to the island of the William Swain portraits of Obed and Abigail Macy through the efforts of a number of their descendants and other interested parties. Deborah Anderson and Ronald Poole gave us a nautical telescope and pocket compass that had belonged to Nantucket whaling captain William Cash (1816-82) along with a collection of his papers. In memory of her mother, Florence Farrier Hall, Helen Marshall Hall Brown donated an outstanding collection of early nineteenth-century material that had once
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Barbara Johnson's Miniature Desk. Photo: Doug Burch
belonged to Mary Brown Pinkham. A highlight of the collection is a sampler young Mary stitched in 1800, when she was twelve years old. Noted collector Barbara Johnson once again made us the beneficiary of her generosity when she gave us a China-trade portrait of Mrs. Charles Veeder, wife of a Nantucket trader, that she acquired at Rafael Osona's marine auction in August. Other items from that auction given to us by Mrs. Johnson are a rare tortoise-shell and whalebone miniature desk and an inkwell and pen that once belonged to Nantucket merchant William Rotch. The NHA is grateful to Mrs. Johnson and auctioneer Osona for their interest and generosity. The Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association donated seven rare and important whaling-related prints, an invaluable addition to the NHA's collection. Other items donated Fred Gardner's Whalebone Swift. to our collections dur- Photo: Doug Burch ing the centennial sumstanding whalebone swift mounted on a mer include an early-nineteenth- drum sewing table to the priceless colleccentury lady's shoe from Paul tion of this unique folk art he has already Pinkham, a whimsical Tony Sarg donated to the NHA. Martha Groetzinger gave us a woodcut apron from Mrs. Albert Blanchard, and a collection of print of the old Quaker Meeting House, Tony Sarg toys given by Jeanne and Joan Manley donated her father's Dickinson. Nancy O'Brien and Nantucket-made nineteenth-century dropher son David gave us a wonder- front desk. ful collection of Nantucket stereoThomas Burnside, who loaned many of graphs, account books, and arti- the baskets from his collection to the facts in memory of Nancy's broth- NHA's lightship basket exhibition, gave er, longtime NHA miller Dick two of them to the association's permaSwain. nent collection. The generosity of these and other John and Francis Elder presented a fine collection of donors made 1994 not only a year to celeNantucket-made silver spoons brate the NHA's hundredth anniversary and some Cartwright-Brock fami- but also a year to appreciate the many important contributions that help us to ly textiles. Continuing his long tradition preserve Nantucket's material heritage. We extend heartfelt thanks to all of our of annual giving, scrimshaw collector Fred Gardner added an out- dedicated friends and donors.
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A Nantucket Lady in Apache Country
Martha Dunham Summerhayes by Susan F. Beegel With thanks to C. Marshall Beale for use of family papers
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1889. Note Martha's army forage cap. n aging woman named Martha Dunham Summerhayes sat down at her desk and began to record her memories - "[I)n the delicious quiet of the Autumn days at Nantucket, when the summer winds had ceased to blow and the frogs had ceased their pipings in the salt meadows ... ". Her book, Vanished Arizona, was first published in 1908. Still in print today and considered a classic of Western history, Vanished Arizona tells how a pampered girl from Nantucket found herself in the desert, on the lookout for renegade Apaches with a baby by her side and a derringer in her hand .... Born on 21 October 1846 to a genteel
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Nantucket family of Puritan-Quaker lineage, Martha was never instructed in cooking, sewing, or child care: in the large and prosperous Dunham home, these practical arts were the province of servants. Free of household concerns, young Martha instead enjoyed the outdoor sports of boating, riding, and lawn tennis. She also applied herself to the excellent education available to island girls, thanks to the Quaker tradition of schooling both sexes. Throughout "barren winter evenings at Nantucket," Martha studied German classics with "unflinching perseverance," and when in 1871 her father agreed to send her to Germany for a year, "never was a hap-
pier or more grateful young woman ." In the medieval city of Hanover with its palace and zoological gardens, Martha boarded with the family of a German general named Weste. The Franco-Prussian war had just ended, Hanover was full of soldiers in "gay uniforms," and Martha perfected her German by conversing with handsome and attentive young officers at kaffeeklatsches, garden parties, concerts, dances, and theatrical performances . Austere Nantucket offered no such dazzling entertainments, and Martha was smitten with what she took to be a typical garrison life. In vain did her wise and embittered hostess, Frau General Weste,
endeavor to warn Martha that life in the army was actually one of "glaenzendes Elend"- glittering misery. Instead, the year in Hanover instilled in Martha a powerful attraction to "the straight backs and the slim lines" of men in uniform. "It seems to me," she would reminisce, that "any woman who was not an Egyptian mummy would feel her heart thrill and her blood tingle at the sight of them." Thus did a passion for German Romantic poetry seal Martha's destiny as a frontier wife. Almost immediately upon her return to Nantucket, she accepted the marriage proposal of Second Lieutenant John Wyer Summerhayes, a career army officer with the Eighth Infantry. Ten years older than Martha, Jack Summerhayes had adventure in his blood. He had trapped beaver on the upper Missouri and gone to sea in a New Bedford whaler before enlisting as a private in the Civil War. Sandyhaired and blue-eyed, Jack had been brevetted three times for "gallant and meritorious service" during that conflict, and bore the scars of wounds obtained at the battles of Ball's Bluff and Cold Harbour. Jack was a genuine hero, and "my hero" she would call him until the end of her days. On 16 March 1874, the couple were wed in an Episcopalian ceremony, and almost immediately Jack's regiment was posted to Fort Russell in Cheyenne, Wyoming. "In Nantucket," Martha would write, "no one thought much about the army. The uniform of the regulars was never seen there. The profession of arms was scarcely known or heard of." Now that Martha had "cast [her] lot with a soldier," she would learn the first and hardest lesson of the army wife - the fact that the service made no provisions for her comfort, or even for her existence. Elizabeth Custer, wife of the ill-fated general, describes the problem in her memoir, Boots and Saddles: [W]ith all the value that is set on the presence of the women of an officer's family at the frontier posts, the book of army regulations makes no provisions for them, but in fact ignores them entirely! It entered into such minute detail in its instructions, even giving the number of hours that bean soup should boil, that it would be natural to suppose that a paragraph or two might be wasted on an officer's wife!
In Cheyenne, Martha discovered with dismay that married officers' quarters, when available, were most often to be obtained by turning out the family of a
lower ranking officer. She . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . , learned too that, despite her Nantucket social standing and education, her status in the army would be no loftier than her husband's rank. A second lieutenant's housing allotment was one room and a kitchen. Martha thought it was "an outrage ... lieutenants' wives needed quite as much as colonels' wives." Jack believed that Martha, a lady who by her own admission had spent more time studying German auxiliary verbs than cookery, could prepare meals for two in army-issue pots and pans designed for the requirements of fifty men. Martha struggled to obtain an enlisted man as a servant, but he had no notion of housekeeping. Her troubles had only just begun, for in June the Eighth Infantry was ordered to Arizona, "that dreaded and then unknown land," to continue the on-going subjugation of its native inhabitants: L---------------~--Apache Indians noted for the John W. Summerhayes, Second Lieutenant, Eighth Infantry. sagacity and cruelty of their guerrilla warfare. Unknown the territory certainly was to a young river, Martha got her first taste of woman from Nantucket, where "few peo- Arizona's blast-furnace climate. Daytime ple manifested any interest in the life of temperatures soared to 122 degrees the Far West." In 1874, Arizona was home Fahrenheit in the shade. The silverware in to 20,000 citizens, a population less than the dining cabin was uncomfortably hot to half the size of the island's summer popu- the touch, and the zinc-lined deck burned lation today, occupying a land area more Martha's feet through her slippers, forcing than 2,000 times the size of Nantucket. her to wear heavy-soled shoes. At night, The territory contained vast stretches of officers and their wives sprawled on matwaterless desert, large tracts of malpais tresses placed on the deck, endeavoring to (ancient lava flows that covered the land catch a few hours of uncomfortable sleep with black volcanic rubble inimical to in "the sultry heat by the river bank" until horse and wagon), mountain ranges with being awakened before dawn by the peaks over two miles high, the "cracking and fizzing" of high-powered labyrinthine mazes of the Grand Canyon, steam engines. Three soldiers died of heatand unnavigable stretches of the untamed stroke, and when Martha reached the Colorado River (only recently explored in Grand Canyon, the grandeur of its scenery its entirety by the intrepid one-armed was lost on a woman "suffocated by the geologist John Wesley Powell - who had heat radiating from those massive walls of rocks between which we puffed and clatyet to publish his findings). The Eighth Infantry journeyed to tered along." Arizona by traveling overland to San From Fort Mojave, Jack's regiment Francisco, taking an ocean-going vessel struck out overland across the desert and down the Pacific Coast and then up the the Mogollon range for Camp Apache. Gulf of California, and finally embarking Sweltering and dusty, Martha rode in a on the river steamers Cocopah and Gila for jolting army ambulance, and found the a 41-day voyage up the Colorado River as country "positively hostile in its attitude far as it was navigable, into the lower towards every living thing except snakes, reaches of the Grand Canyon. On the centipedes, and spiders." At one desert
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Martha Dunham Summerhayes, San Francisco,
campsite, Jack drives Martha to wish him "at the bottom of the Rio Colorado" by insisting that she make some doughnuts for his commander. In vain does Martha protest that doughnuts cannot be made without eggs - "You're on the frontier now," Jack informs her, "you must learn to do without eggs." After a sudden sandstorm fills her "doubtful dough" with grit, Martha abandons campfire cookery forever, and all enjoy a meal of biscuits, bacon, and coffee prepared by Jack's striker. At Camp Apache Martha makes her first acquaintance with the Indians. Originally a nomadic tribe that followed the buffalo, the Apache, like the Plains Indians, were once entirely dependent on that animal for virtually every necessity of food and shelter. Waves of Spanish, Mexican, and American settlement in the Southwest, however, had brought the buffalo to the verge of extinction, and neither the Apaches themselves nor the climate of the Southwest were adapted for agriculture. Mounting themselves on Spanish horses, the Apaches became professional
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rustlers, driving off the sheep and cattle of invading settlers, and using the meat and hides of the domestic animals as they had used those of the buffalo. It was the Apache custom to attack isolated ranches, kill the men, take the women and children for slaves, plunder and burn the buildings, and drive off the livestock. As increasing settlement placed ever more pressure on dwindling supplies of game, the Apache need for livestock grew accordingly. Violence escalated. The tribe became notorious for atrocities - scalping and torturing their victims, gouging them with knives, burning them alive, dragging them to death behind horses. Apache savagery was motivated in part by concerted white 1877. efforts to exterminate the race. The American government offered bounties for Apache scalps, and captured Indian children were sold into slavery in Mexico. In 1871, when a band of vigilantes led by William Oury slaughtered 144 unarmed Apaches (including 136 women and children) on a reservation at Camp Grant, a Tucson jury showed its approval by acquitting Oury of murder after just twenty minutes of deliberation. Into this nasty amalgam of terrorism and genocide, bent on making the Arizona Territory safe for "civilization," rode General Crook and five companies of cavalry in 1871. Crook is generally considered the greatest and most "humanitarian" of Indian fighters. His military strategy against the Apache was simple but effective: "Go out and kill them until they change their minds"; his reputation as a humanitarian was based on just dealings with the Apaches who agreed to come in to a reservation system designed by Vincent Colyer, a Quaker. When Martha and the Eighth Infantry arrived in Arizona late in 1874, Crook's
preliminary work of subduing the Apache was nearly complete. Historian Dan Thrapp put it this way: The wild Indians could not sleep at night because they feared a murderous dawn attac::k. They could not hunt because the crack of a rifle would bring soldiers. They could not cook mescal because the flame and the smoke would draw the enemy. They could not remain in the valleys, and when they withdrew to th e snowy mountain tops the soldiers an d scouts followed them there.
Yet, although the Apache country into which young Martha Summerhayes journeyed in 1874 was not as dangerous as it had been in the days before Crook, still there were sporadic Indian raid s against outlying settlers and their army of occupation. Martha's observations in Vanish ed Arizona tell us much about the uneasy truce between white settlers and the Indians. At Camp Apache, she fin ds a reservation system successfully in place. Twice a week the Apache come in to the camp to be counted (the military's assurance that they are not taking to the hills for further depredations), and in exchange are given government beef, flour, and other supplies. Major Worth, commander of the Eighth Infantry, is a distinct egalitarian, and one of the most remarkable passag es in Vanished Arizona describes an occa sion when the major, against the advice of his officers, actually invites the Indians to a party. Martha puts it this way: "[T]o meet the savage Apache on a basis of soci al equality, in an officer's quarters, and to dance in a quadrille with him! Well, the limit of all things had been reached!" But Martha also frankly enjoys the party, as well as the "great good looks" of Chief Diablo in his necklace and "customary loincloth," and is amused when Diablo in his turn admires the "young, handsome wife of one of the officers," and endeavors to purchase her with several ponies. To Martha, the Apache quadrille was both unforgettable and "not especially subversive to discipline." Her own attitude toward the Apache could, at times, be as egalitarian as Worth's. Although raised as a Congregationalist, she perhaps absorbed on Nantucket the concern of Quaker activists like Lucretia Mott, who endeavored to end the cruel and unjust treatment of native peoples. After the birth of her son, Harry, she welcomes into her quarters a group of Apache women enchanted
by the novelty of a blond and blue-eyed baby. They come each day to enjoy Harry's antics in his bath, and it does not occur to Martha to worry about their playing with him and bundling him into a p apoose basket. She is surprised when Captain Worth, invited to join the Apache w omen in admiring Harry in the basket, shakes her hand in admiration of her courage. Not all is sweetness and light at Camp A pache, however. Soldiers riding out a lone for the mails are ambushed and killed, and sporadic firing breaks out in the hills. Martha has at least one unnerving encounter with white racism when she climbs on top of a wooden box in order to look over the fort's stockade. Something foul-smelling rolls out of the box, and Jack w hisks it away, telling her it is an "old Edam cheese." Later Martha learns that the "cheese" was the severed head of an Apache warrior, collected as a curious specimen by a camp doctor. She also form s an accurate opinion of t he Indian agent, a white contractor employed by the government to supply food to the reservation Indians. Many of these men were profoundly dishonest, selling for personal gain government food desperately needed by the Apache. After the 1875 departure of Crook, the system became so corrupt that the Indians would be forced by near starvation to leave the reservations and engage in a final, hopeless war for survival led by Chiricahua Apache Geronimo. Martha saw, at least in retrospect, where agency corruption might lead:"Heaven save us from a Government which appoints such men as that to watch over and deal with Indians." Jack insists that his position obliges them to recognize the Camp Apache agent socially, but Martha is adamant: "[N]o Government on earth can compel me to associate with such men as those!" Martha herself develops a healthy respect for the potential savagery of the Apache when she attends a dance very different from Major Worth's quadrille. The Apache men .. . were entirely naked, except for the loincloth; their bodies were painted, and from their elbows and knees stood out bunches of feathers, giving them the appearance of huge flying creatures; ~n gling things were attached to their necks and arms. Upon their heads were large frames, made to resemble the branching horns of an elk, and as they danced, and bowed their heads, the horns lent them the appearance of some unknown animal. . .. [T)heir painted bodies twisted
and turned in the light of the great fire .. . the noise of the tom-toms and the harsh shouts of the Indians grew wilder and wilder.... Suddenly the shouts became war whoops, the demons brandished their knives wildly and nodded their branching horns; the tom-toms were beaten with a dreadful din, and terror seized my heart.
with a narrow defile, two Mexicans who have been ambushed by the Apache. These victims "[implore them] by the Holy Virgin not to go into the pass." The officers nevertheless decide to risk it. Martha lies down inside the ambulance, taking out her derringer and cocking it. Her orders, from her husband, are as follows:
At this juncture, fearing that the dance is a [l)f I'm hit, you'll know what to pretext for an ambush, Martha and the do. You have your derringer; and when other white women present decide to you see there is no help for it, if they get leave. away with the whole outfit, why there's Far from being a vaporish Victorian only one thing to be done. Don't let them female, Martha Dunham Summerhayes get the baby, for they will carry you both could confront almost anything with off and-well, you know the squaws are much more cruel than the bucks. Dan't let aplomb: earthquakes, rattlesnakes, naked them get either of you alive. squaws leaping out of her kitchen cupboards, bulls in the bedroom, and her baby son covered with swarming ants. In all the The trip through the pass is long and adventures recounted in Vanished Arizona, nervewracking. To Martha, the minutes only the "devil dance" of the Apaches seem like hours as she looks "at my little causes Martha to sou.nd retreat, perhaps boy lying helpless there beside me, and at because she intuitively understood it. In his delicate temples, lined with thin blue Apache culture, the mounting frenzy and veins" and wonders if she can carry out her orders. escalating athleticism of masculine dancing is a .------------...----......--....-.......--......test of a young man's prowess and preparedness for war. What Martha witnessed was, in aesthetic and athletic intention, very much a war dance, doubtless rendered still more powerful by the suppressed rage of the Apache people in this brief historic moment between their first defeat by Crook and their last, tragic act of defiance, led by Geronimo. Martha' s most frightening encounter with the Apache, however, comes when Jack is transferred to Fort MacDowell, in central Arizona. Together with their nine-month-old baby, the couple ventures out of Camp Apache in a small band, comprising "two ambulances with six mules each, two baggage wagons, an escort of six cavalrymen fully armed, and a guide." On their L__ _ _ _ _ _ _ __..__ _ _ _ _ _....,....___ _.....;:.::..;..;~journey they encounter, Frederick Remington (I) and John W. Summerhayes (r) . Detail from near a mountain pass "Blue Quail Hunting in Texas," by Frederick Remington .
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In her book, written years after the event, Martha tells us that she comforted herself by fixing her eyes upon her husband, the Nantucket adventurer and frontiersman: "There he sat, rifle in hand, his features motionless, his eyes keenly watching out from one side of the ambulance." However, in her diary of that eventful day, 27 April 1875, she reassures herself with this thought: "It is rare that they attack a Government Ambulance now a-days, for they well know they would be hunted to the death by the military." Later she came back to this passage, crossed out "hunted to the death," and penciled in "severely punished," effectively whitewashing an accurate description of the Army's "kill them until they change their minds" policy. Perhaps deterred by fear of being "severely punished," the Apache do not attack the little cavalcade. In the end, the greatest risks run by Martha and her baby son in the Arizona Territory have nothing to do with the Apache, and everything to do with her inability to care for herself and her first born in an environment inimical to the needs of nursing mothers and babies. Far from the advice of midwives and experienced women, with none but a surgeon used to "sawing off soldiers' legs" to turn to, Martha at times becomes desperate: [W)ho has never traveled with a young baby cannot understand for a moment the difficulties attending it in a journey like this. The neglect which is inevitable and causes a mother's heart so much anguish. To see the suffering caused by want of bathing when bathing was utterly impossible, perhaps on account of the bad water, perhaps on account of the cold, to see the fatigue from the incessant jolting and know you cannot help it, to see a baby crying from hunger and not be able to nurse it, it being impossible to hold it to the breast, going over those dreadful roads, and impossible to stop the train on account of the delay. This is the hardest part of all.
Finally, the rigors of breastfeeding in a climate where fresh milk and vegetables are the rarest of luxuries drive Martha and Harry out of Arizona. Unable to nourish herself or her growing child, Martha becomes so emaciated and Harry so sickly that Jack fears for their lives and bundles them back to Nantucket, where, says Martha, "the east wind's tonic would not fail me, its own child." Summer on the island and a glut of dairy products, fresh fish, and vegetables soon restore her and the baby, and redouble Martha's resolve:
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[l)n my summer in the East I had discovered that I was really a soldier's wife and I must go back to it all. To the army with its glitter and its misery, to the post with its discomforts, to the soldiers, to the drills, to the bugle-calls, to the monotony, to the heat of southern Arizona, to the uniform and the stalwart Captains and gay Lieutenants who wore it, I felt the call and I must go.
Go Martha did, for the rest of her life, to posts ranging from San Francisco's Angel Island, where she soaked up sunshine and flowers and the comforting presence of Nantucket relatives and friends; to Nebraska's Fort Niobrara, where she chafed against snowbound monotony and the stuffy ladies of the local W.C.T.U.; until finally retirement enabled Jack and Martha to return to Nantucket for good. But searching for a place to end the most remarkable chapter of Martha Dunham Summerhayes's life, the story of Vanished Arizona, we would turn to the summer of 1886, when Jack and his regiment are ordered back to Arizona to help contain the Geronimo outbreak. Martha's sense of loss, as she discovers the territory of her newlywed days overtaken by civilization, begins to grow: We traveled to Tucson in a Pullman car. It was hot and uninteresting. I had been at Tucson nine years before, for a few hours, but the place seemed unfamiliar. I looked for the old tavern; I saw only the railroad restaurant. We went in to take breakfast . . .. Everything seemed changed. Iced cantaloupe was served by a spick-span alert waiter; then, quail on toast. 'Ice in Arizona?' It was like a dream, and I remarked to Jack, 'This isn't the same Arizona we knew in '74,' and then, 'I don't believe I like it as well, either....
Nor did Jack and Martha find any Apache renegades to fight. By the time they arrived back in Arizona, the evereffective Crook and three thousand cavalrymen had crushed Geronimo and his rebellious followers. Four hundred and ninety-eight Apache, including three hundred and ninety-nine women and children, had been rounded up as "prisoners of war." More than a quarter of the adults would die within three years in Florida concentration camps, and an equivalent number of Apache children would succumb to epidemic disease at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. As for Geronimo, after a brief period of captivity, he made a career of appearing at expositions and fairs,
became a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and died in 1909 after a drunken fall from a buggy. The Apache had finally "changed their minds." It was the end of an era. Th e Summerhayeses were posted out of Arizona almost as soon as they h ad arrived, without ever seeing an Apache, or hearing a shot fired in anger. Soon, they would find themselves caught u p in national nostalgia for the now vanished Western frontier . Both Jack and Martha were courted by Western artist Frederic Remington for experiences he could transform into painted romance and adventure. Owen Wister, best-selling author of the classic Western The Virginian (1902), would consult Martha in hopes of being able "once and fully, to place the army wife and her fortitude on record" in fiction . But more important, h e would encourage Martha to tell her own story: "If the people who did things could only be the people who also wrote about them, what a literature we should h ave of romance and heroism for our 1st hundred years." Nantucket's history is rich with the stories of people who did things and also wrote about them, and the best of their narratives lent "romance and heroism" to our national literature. William Lay and Cyrus Hussey's account of mutiny on board the whaleship Globe became the basis for Edgar Allan Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym, while Owen Chase's narrative of the Essex disaster inspired the climactic chapters of Melville's Moby-Dick. Martha Dunham Summerhayes's Vanished Arizona brought verisimilitude to the Western art of Frederic Remington and the fiction of Owen Wister, and should certainly b e ranked with the narratives of Lay and Hussey and Chase. Her story, like those of her whaling forebears, is the American story of westering and pushing back frontiers, of wilderness gone before it can be missed, and Martha herself understood this. No one in her family is particularly interested in her Arizona experience except "my darling old uncle, a brave whaling captain." He unrolls a map of the Western territories on the table and begins to trace his niece's travels. With pride, Martha locates Arizona in the area labeled "Unexplored," and receives the world-wandering Nantucket captain's ultimate encomium: "I must buy me a new map."
Mother of Civil Rights in California
Mary Ellen Pleasant by Susheel Bibbs Using lost or hidden memoirs, photos, letters, interviews and artifacts, researcher Susheel Bibbs has reconstructed the shadowy past of Mary Ellen Pleasant, a remarkable African-American woman who helped to change the destiny of our nation. Nantucket Island, with its tradition of entrepreneurial women and antislavery sentiment, empowered Pleasant to seize the economic opportunities afforded by the opening of the West and to help fund John Brown's slave rebellion, the event that touched off the Civil War. Because of her many achievements on behalf of her people, Pleasant is remembered in California as the Mother of Civil Rights. 11
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ary Ellen Pleasant (nicknamed "Mammy") was born a slave in Georgia circa 1817. Her father may have been John H. Pleasants, son of a Virginia governor. Ironically, Pleasants was killed in a duel in 1846, having been accused of being an abolitionist. Perhaps abolition was in his reputed daughter's blood. In 1828, at the age of eleven, Mary Ellen was brought to Nantucket by a guardian named Williams, who delivered her as a bonded servant to an island family-presumably to offset debts or to rid himself of her because of her insolence. It was said that Williams had become jealous of his Computer-enhanced reproduction of a never-before published photo of wife's attentions to the girl, Mary Ellen Pleasant, from the scrapbook of Emma Scott Jones. and that she annoyed him. Courtesy of Careth Reid and Jesse Warr Ill. C> Bibbs 1993 We know that her early
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years with the HusseyGardner family on Nantucket were some of her happiest. In her memoirs, Pleasant says that she lived on the island until about 1840, and other sources mention that she returned "home" briefly in 1849. She corresponded with the Gardner family until 1863, when both Phoebe and Ed ward Gardner were lost at sea, and Phoebe's mother (Mrs. Ariel Hussey) died. Her Nantucket years in bonded service on "Union Street under the hill" were years of self-discovery. It was on Nantucket that Pleasant came to recognize and develop her personal magnetism and business acumen, her most important assets throughout her life. In one memoir she explained: "Mrs. Hussey in her shop sold everything from fish hooks to a ton of coal .... Buying wholesale and selling retail was the way she did it and it paid. I was finally placed in the store as a clerk, and I could make change and talk to a dozen people all at once and never make a mistake, and I could remember all the accounts and at the end of the day she could put them down, and they would always be right as I remembered them." By 1839, Pleasant was considered to be a member of the family of Captain Edward Gardner, who took in the Hussey family after his marriage to the younger
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Union Street "Under the Hill" circa 1865. Phoebe Hussey. At that time many of the "new Quakers" in their fellowship espoused a philosophy of equality and were overt or covert abolitionists.
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Pleasant's one regret about her stay on Nantucket was that she acquired only what she called a "pick up" education, even though, she claimed, Williams gave
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the Husseys money to educate h er. She had to wait until 1849 before Thomas, one of the Gardner boys, taught her to read and write passably. Yet, compared to the tempestuous life to come, her years on Nantucket were a respite. Sometime between leaving t he island in 1840 and returning in 1849, Pleasant married an abusive husband, James Smith, a mulatto who "passed" as Cuban. Smith was an agent for William Lloyd Garrison's abolitioni st newspaper The Liberator and a spy for the Underground Railroad . H e involved her in abolitionist activities. After his death, and at his request, Mary Ellen took up "slave stealing," working with Nantucket and New Bedford abolitionists in Ohio (and possibly New Orleans) in keeping with her \\ own inner fire. However, most of Pleasant's antislavery work took place in San Francisco. Fleeing persecution brought about by her work for the Underground Railroad, she arrived in the Gold Rush boom town in 1852 aboard the steamer Oregon. Her second husband, John James PleasanÂŁg, Creole
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From the San Francisco Examiner. foreman of her first husband, had preceded her there. For reasons of personal safety, she took the name of Mrs. Ellen Smith, and was known to the general populace as a white cook and boarding house proprietress. [From these modest beginnings, with business acumen acquired on Nantucket, she would eventually amass a personal fortune of thirty million dollars.] In antislavery activities she was known as Mrs. Pleasan1:2 and worked covertly to keep California a free haven for escaped slaves. Because she most often worked behind the scenes and kept her name out of records, historians have not always given Mary Ellen Pleasant proper credit for her achievements. In the 1850s, she helped William West to establish a boarding house that was, in reality, a secret safe house for runaway slaves. Concurrently, she helped to organize California's colored citizens to discourage slavery there and to establish the right of "people of color" to testify in court. She repeatedly helped to secure writs of habeas corpus; financed trials to defend former slaves
From the San Francisco Chronicle. from extradition; secured lawyers; and even provided a hiding place for Archy Lee, in the famous case that finally outlawed slavery in California. Mary Ellen brought many "colored" families to San Francisco in the 1850s and saw to it that they prospered . She supported those families with spiritual guidance, housing, and employment in her boarding houses and their support enterprises-truck and dairy farms and laundries. She also provided financial backing for promising businesses. But the gains that she forged for her people in civil rights and employment were made possible by the power she gained through some unusual covert activities. Around 1854, the entrepreneurial Pleasant brought to San Francisco le placage (placing), the Southern tradition of contracting liaisons and marriages for wealthy white gentlemen. Many have alleged that she was a mere procuress who made her fortune running bqrdellos, but careful research refutes those allegations. In Gold Rush San Francisco, where
at one time men outnumbered women by 48 to 1, bordellos were often social venues where gala soirees (''brothel balls") and dinners were held. Those events often served as sources for assignations and marriages. It's not surprising that Mary Ellen Pleasant invested in bordellos as an adjunct to her placage matchmaking. However, she established them covertly, and never functioned as the madam. It was only later, in 1869 after her power was established, that she operated a shortlived rendezvous cottage where she organized periodic formal events at $500 per person, complete with lavish dinners and entertainment. Her motives were never merely financial. Those investments were her tools. Using the matchmaker-owner combination learned from her mentor, the notorious New Orleans madam Marie LaVeau, Pleasant was able to create the leverage she needed to advance her cause. The San Francisco Examiner put it this way: "Safely locked in her loyal breast are the secret
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histories of many of the prominent families of the coast. She has supplied the ladder upon which more than one proud woman and ambitious man have climbed to wealth and position." Pleasant did, indeed, keep such secrets, and they opened many new doors of employment and opportunity for colored citizens. According to B. Gordon Wheeler's Black California (Hippocrene, 1993) these included private catering, stewardship on steamers and in hotels, mining, and various private enterprises.
Legend, myth, and controversy began to grow around the power of Mary Ellen Pleasant. One of the controversies that persists involves Mary Ellen Pleasant's alleged aid to John Brown's 1859 raid on the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, the incident that lit the fuse that ignited the Civil War. She called the raid " ... the first blow at the root of the tree of slavery." Toward the end of her life Mary Ellen proudly spoke of her part in the historic event in order to let young critics in the "colored" commu-
Tabor's well-known photo portrait of Mary Ellen circa 1901. Courtesy: Baucroft Library
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nity know of her commitment to civil rights. First reported in Comfort Magazine (November 1903) in an article titled "How a Colored Woman Helped John Brown," the story was later denounced by John Brown's daughter,-who was said to hold racist views,-but was supported by various credible sources, among them John Brown's son. He stated in the same article that "a colored woman" gave his father some money at that time. Other testimony appears to confirm her involvement. While it is hearsay evidence, it seems credible because it comes from individuals who knew Pleasant well. For example, in an interview transcribed from the research of biographer Helen Holdredge, William Willmore, Jr., who grew up knowing Pleasant, reported: "Charles Crocker was in Canada at the time 'Mammy' met John Brown. With him was a man named William Stephens. Stephens knew a man who had seenbeen the actual witness to 'Mammy' giving support money to Brown." The son of a close associate, David Ruggles, Jr ., spoke about this too: '"Mammy' went East to meet John Brown; that I kno w authentic." Whether or not these and other accounts are correct, Mary Ellen Pleasant's own memoirs and two 1858letters from William Gardner of Nantucket help detail the following version of the story: Pleasant and her husband, John James, sailed on the Moses Tarlor (Taylor? ) on 5 April 1858, from San Francisco to New York. After collecting one of two drafts on funds that she had wired ahead, Pleasant went to Chatham, Ontario, to meet Brown. As attested by her letter and property deeds, she purchased property (a house and four lots) in Chatham West in her husband's name. According to two of Pleasant's letters, she believed that slavery must be ended by force, and she explained that she intended to use the Chatham property as a refuge for slaves subsequent to John Brown's raid. Following the failure of the raid she used the house to harbor her former brother-inlaw, Mr. Dunn, whom she had purchased after his capture and return to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act. Pleasant says that she met Brown and his son at a boarding house on King Street in 1858, and indeed an old monograph places John Brown in Chatham on that street during that spring. So it would appear that Mary Ellen
San Francisco trolley car circa 1880, when Pleasant won a test case that enabled people of color to ride on public transportation. Courtesy: San Francisco Ubrary
Pleasant probably met John Brown and gave him some money, but (contrary to conventional wisdom) she did not give him all of her personal funds ($30,000) as she had planned, because she found Brown to be impetuous, and because Captain Gardner's son William, to whom she had entrusted her second draft, had somehow tied up the money. In an 1858 apology William wrote: "When I received your money from Mr. Kelly, I was worth at least $30,000, and no more thought of there being danger at not having it whenever you might want it than I thought of some other improbable thing." Pleasant's correspondence and a San Francisco City Directory confirm that she returned to that city in December 1858. Her final memoir and a 1902 letter state that she went back east in 1859 and rode, disguised as a jockey, in advance of Brown to alert plantation slaves to Brown's plan of liberating and arming them after capturing the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Although the tall and lanky Pleasant would have made an awkward jockey, no one can confirm or refute this part of the story. It seems credible because, as the San Francisco Bulletin reported: "She is daring to rashness and has no idea of personal safety," and because her first husband had lived on a plantation only a few miles from Harpers Ferry. She knew the territory well because she had once lived there.
Even if the story is only partially true, Mary Ellen Pleasant did give of her time, her money, and her self in the John Brown endeavor. Back in California, Mary Ellen Pleasant continued her work on behalf of her people. During the Civil War, she acted as an organizer, protesting in the streets against California secessionists and becoming known as the "Mother of Civil Rights." She opened political doors so effectively that, by 1870, colored citizens called her the "Black City Hall." They had but to appeal to her and, miraculously, things changed within the city's power structure. Calling herself "a capitalist by trade," Pleasant advised and controlled the wealthiest businessmen in San Francisco by harboring the secrets of their pasts as they rose in society; and as a voodoo priestess with a network of domestic servants who were informants, she continually increased her business knowledge and power. Many of her acquaintances found her to be personally irresistible and skillfully persuasive, although at times brutally direct. Pleasant was a fighter. She did not hesitate to challenge the most powerful individuals when she believed her cause was right. She was often quoted as saying "I'd rather be a corpse than a coward." This daring and appealing woman faced and won many battles, but at the
end of her life her enemies "scandalized her name." In San Francisco's most famous trial of the 1880s, Mary Ellen Pleasant was accused of mysterious "misdoings," including baby farming, voodoo, blackmail, and confidence schemes. Sensationalized by the press, she was abandoned by those in society whom she had aided. Pleasant died in 1904, when she was almost ninety years old. As a result of the scandal, twentieth-century writers, basing their accounts on lurid contemporary reportage, have presented Pleasant as a zealous madam, an opportunist, and a cold-hearted murderer,-thus relegating her to a place in the annals of the notorious and best-forgotten. This article may help to rectify such erroneous perceptions. Although it examines but one aspect of her life--her accomplishments in the area of human rights-it should establish clearly who Mary Ellen Pleasant was and why she deserves to be remembered.
About the Author: A lecturer in Research Communication at the University of California, Berkeley, Susheel Bibbs is also a touring performing artist and singer who stars in a staged presentation of aspects of Mary Ellen Pleasant's career. She is working on a book based on her original research into the life and times of this remarkable woman. This article and illustrations are copyrighted and are published here with the author's permission.
Susheel Bibbs Photo: Jim Dennis
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ITEMS OF INTEREST Recent Acquisitions by Betsy Tyler, NHA Research Librarian e are often surprised at the places where Nantucket whaling logs are found. Locally, they have been uncovered in attics, old trunks, even at the dump. Sometimes an old scrapbook turns out to be a ship's log in disguise, and after the newspaper clippings, post cards, and photographs have been removed, the record of a long-forgotten voyage emerges. Occasionally, descendants of log keepers who now live far from Nantucket recognize the value of great-great-grandfather's handwritten accounts and give us a call here at the Research Center. That's what happened not long ago. Shirley Reilly of Salvatierra, Arizona, was touring New England with her family. She brought with her three manuscript volumes containing the logs of five voyages, four of which were kept by her ancestor Benjamin Riddell, master. She asked her friend Bob Driscoll, who lives on Cape Cod, to help her find an appropriate home for these volumes, and he called us. We determined that Benjamin Franklin Riddell (1804-62) was indeed a Nantucketer, and the logs were those of Nantucket vessels. The logs had been in the basement of Shirley's sister's home in Seattle for many years. Happily, they have survived in good condition. They now have a permanent home here, where they will be preserved for posterity. The Benjamin Franklin Riddell log books contain records of voyages made by Nantucket ships Harvest, Catawba, Zenas Coffin, and Surprise. The earliest log in the collection is that of the
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1853-57 whaling voyage of Harvest, a voyage that covered a lot of ocean from the Azores and Cape Verde to New Zealand, the Japan Grounds, Okhotsk, the Sandwich Is 1an ds, and the Marquesas. The 1 o g contains a wealth of detailed descriptive entries along with a daily record of temperature and barometric readings. The Catawba was on a trading voyage to Montevideo, Rio, Bahia, Barbados, Grenada, Puerto Rico, and New York in 1859 and 1860. A market was sought for soap, brooms, shoes, coal, horses, and mules. The livestock was purchased in South America and traded, not too successfully, in the West Indies. There are two logs from the Zenas Coffin in this collection. The first, bound with the Catawba log, covers the period January 1861 to February 1862. Among other entries is one describing deliveries of coal to Port Royal, South Carolina, during the Civil War; it includes firsthand information on local battles and the move-
ment of troops. The second Zenas Coffin log, covering the period from May to August 1862, is bound with the log of Surprise, 1868--69. Benjamin Riddell died in 1862, so we know little about the keeper of the short log of Surprise except that he was a young man not sure if he wanted to continue a career at sea. It's possible that he was one of Benjamin Riddell's sons, since the entries are written in Benjamin's volume. Surprise sailed from New York bound for Hong Kong and, loaded with tea, struck ground near Foochow and was ba dly damaged. In 1833, seventeen-year-old Susan C. Austin married Charles A. Veeder. Over the next fifteen years he served as master of three Nantucket whaling vessels and was away from home for at least seven years. He undoubtedly served as a mate before becoming master, so surely spent even less time on Nantucket with his wife and growing family. When Charles took command of the whaler Nau ticon on 12 September 1848, Susan, then 32, the mother of three, and four months pregnant, left her children at home and accompanied her husband on this four-and -a-half-year voyage. She kept a journal of her experien ces while on board. The Friends of the NHA purcha sed Susan Veeder's journal, which she illustrated with sixteen full page watercolors, for our collections, and have thereb y afforded us the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of this remarkable woman. Ships' logs like these are of interest and value even greater than the factual record of the voyages they chronicle, for they often provide unexpected, sometimes intimate, insights into the lifestyles, actions, and philosophies of the people whose principles, persistence, and courage contributed so much to Nantucket's priceless heritage.
Dates to Remember April1 April27 April29 May2S May26-29 May30 June2 JuneS June 10 June 17 June 22 July1 JulyS JulyS JulyS
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Whaling Museum open Saturdays 11-3 The Art of Scrimshaw: Lecture by David Lazarus Whaling Museum open Weekends 11-3 Favorite Photos from the NHA Collection: Slide lecture by Peter MacGlashan Museums open 11-3 Whaling Museum open daily 11-3 Museums open daily 11-3 Nantucket's Maritime History: Lecture by author Paul Morris Bill Schustik' s Harborfest Concert Museums open daily 10-5 Nantucket Lightship Baskets: Slide lecture by David Wood Artists Association '45 Group Show opens at Fair Street Museum NHA Living History children's program begins China Trade Exhibition reopens at Peter Foulger Museum Decorative Arts and Material Culture of the Pilgrim Century: Lecture by Heritage Plantation Curator Brian Cullity NHA Annual Meeting
ift Idea very special thank you to Denby Real Estate, Lucille Jordan Associates, Nantucket Real Estate, and MacDonald Real Estate. Their commitment to the NHA and its mission takes an important and concrete shape in the form of Family
Honoring the Artist Association 50th Anniversary: Lecture by Reggie Levine Whale Strandings: Lecture by Robert Prescott, July 26 Mass. Audubon Society Sharks, Tuna, and Marlin in Nantucket's August3 Waters and Beyond: Slide lecture by Greg Skomal, Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries August 12-13 NHA Antiques Show, Nantucket High School Sea Chanteys: Concert by Don Sinetti August 24 August 26 Tall Ships Dance, 8:00 pm, Whaling Museum Museums open daily 11-3 SeptemberS September 1S Lydia Foulger Fowler: A Lesser-known Daughter of Nantucket: Lecture by Alice Dixon Ghost Gam: Nantucket ghost stories, 8:00 pm, October30 Whaling Museum December 1-3 Festival of Trees, location TBA
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Location and Time Unless otherwise noted, all lectures and concerts will be held at 7:30 pm in the Whaling Museum, Broad Street. Admission There is no charge to NHA members. Admission is $5 for non-members.
Memberships that these firms give to home buyers as a token of appreciation for their business. Their gift idea is a good one to bear in mind when you're wondering what to give that special person who "has everything." NHA membership cards entitle their holders to free admission to all of the
NHA's museums and historic houses, a subscription to Historic Nantucket, a 10% discount on all purchases from the Museum Shop, and unlimited use of the resources of our Research Center. And, best of all, one size fits all. For more information about the NHA Gift Membership Program, call our Membership Department at (508)228-1894.
New faces hree newcomers join the association staff as we settle in to our new administrative offices on the second floor of the Peter Foulger Museum. The familiar face on the left is that of Gayl Michael, who served the NHA in several capacities for more than eight years. After a two-year hiatus she returns as the archivist for the Stackpole Papers. In the center is Christina LeBlanc, the association's administrative assistant, who keeps the many activities of the NHA moving smoothly and on time. Dauna Coffin assists curator Michael Jehle in her capacity as collections manager and registrar. You are invited to visit our Administrative Offices at any time. We welcome your comments and questions.
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THE MUSEUM SHOP
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he Museum Shop doors close in December, but activity behind the scenes at the shop continues unabated throughout the winter months. The first order of business as we end the season is the demanding but necessary chore of conducting the annual inventory. The main floor of the store is cleared of all items, which are then counted and put away in the second-floor storage space. When the showroom is cleared of merchandise, the floor and walls receive their annual refinishing as part of the general maintenance of the building and grounds. By early March this important process is completed and setting up for the new season begins. General research and development are basic to our business. Throughout the winter we continue our ongoing search for new and interesting products to offer our customers. We attend craft shows and exhibitions all over the country, meeting artists and craftspeople whose skills and talents provide unique items for our constantly changing stock. Distinctive items from the NHA's collections are adapted and reproduced by fine furniture manufacturers, custom printmakers, and other leading producers of quality merchandise, and added to our inventory. During this busy "offseason" time we continue to accept and process telephone and mail orders. The Museum Shop opens for the 1995 season during Daffodil Weekend in late April. Be sure to come in and see for yourself the results of our wintertime labors.
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The Museum Shop Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Reproductions and Adaptations Featuring Fine China, Furniture, Brass, and Silver Adjacent to the Whaling Museum, Nantucket (508)-228-5785 Members of the Historical Association are entitled to a 10% discount upon presenting their membership card.