THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Mrs. William Slover
President Mr. David H. Wood
Ms. Nancy A. Chase
Mr. Richard Tucker
First Vice Preszdent
Second Vice Preszdent
Third Vice Preszdent
Mrs. Hamilton Heard, Jr. Clerk
Mr. Alan F. Atwood
Treasurer Jean M. Weber
Executive Director BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Mrs. Robert Champion Ms. Kimberly C. Corkran
Mrs. Scott Newquist Mr. Steven Rales Mr. Arthur Reade, Jr. Mr. Alfred F. Sanford ill Mrs. Joseph F. Welch Mr. Robert A. Young
Mrs. William E. Grieder Mrs. Edmund A. Hajim Prof. William A. Hance Mr. ArieL. Kopelman Mrs. JaneT. Lamb Mr. Peter W. Nash
Mr. John H.Davis Ms. Alice Emerson Mrs. Thomas H. Gosnell Mr. Erwin L. Greenberg
ADVISORY BOARD Mr. Walter Beinecke,Jr. Mrs. Richard L. Brecker Ms. Patricia A. Butler Mrs. James F. Chase Mr. Michael deLeo Mrs. Norman E. Dupuis ill Ms. Martha Groetzinger Mrs. Herbert L. Gutterson
Mr. William B. Macomber Mr. Paul Madden Mr. Robert F. Mooney Mrs. Frederick A. Richmond Mrs. William A. Sevrens Mr. Scott Stearns, Jr. Mr. John S. Winter Mrs. Bracebridge Young
Mrs. Robert E. Hellman Mrs. John G. W. Husted,J•._ Mrs. Arthur Jacobsen Mr. Francis D. Lethbridge Mr. Reginald Levine Mrs. John A. Lodge Mrs. Francisco Lorenzo Mrs. Thomas B. Loring
RESEARCH FELLOWS Dr. Elizabeth Little
Nathaniel Philbrick
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Mary H. Beman Susan F. Beegel Richard L. Brecker
Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham
Nathaniel Philbrick Sally Seidman David H. Wood
PROPERTIES OF THE NHA Oldest House Hadwen House Macy-Christian House Robert Wyer House Thomas Macy House 1800House Gt·eater Light Old Mill Old Gaol
Old Town Building Thomas Macy Warehouse Fire Hose-Cart House Quaker Meeting House Nantucket Whaling Museum Fair Street Museum Peter Foulger Museum Museum Shop
Cecil Barron Jensen
Bartholomew Gosnold Center Folger-Franklin Memorial Fountain, Boulder, and Bench Settlers Burial Ground Tristram Coffin Homestead Monument Little Gallery Eleanor Ham Pony Field Mill Hill
Elizabeth Oldham
EDJTOR
COPY EDITOR
Helen Winslow Chase
Claire O'Keeffe
HlSTORTAN
ART DTRECTOR
Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research , first-band accounts, reminiscences of island experiences, historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers. © 1997 by Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by tbe Nantucket Historical Association, 2 Whaler's Lane, Nantucket, MA 02554. Second-class postage paid at Nantucket, MA and additional entry offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket Box 1016 • Nantucket, MA 02554-1016 • (508) 228-1894; F AX:(508) 228-5618 • infonha@capecod.net
NANTUCKET SUMMER1997
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VOLUME 46, NO.3
Views from the Ship Nauticon
20 The Library Wish List 20 Book Section
One Woman's Journal by Cecil Barron Jensen
9
Nantucket Lights: An Illustrated History of the Island's Legendary Beacons
The Nantucket-Newport Axis Early lznks between Nantucket and Newport Quakerism
by Elizabeth Oldham
by Robert Leach and Peter Gow
15 E. C. Cutter's Nantucket Holiday 18 25 Pleasant Street in Miniature
21
23
by Betsy Lowenstein
A fully furnished scale model of an historic home by Cecil Barron Jensen
FROM
I
THE
N RECENT ISSUES OF HISTORIC NANTUCKET WE
have focused on a single theme. Many of them have been suggested by particular strengths in our collections: the history of the mill, library and oral-history records, and the historic properties owned by the NHA. Our resources are almost endless and the choices of new ideas for continuing research are enticing. Each time we consider the potential for new exhibitions and publications we are struck by the richness and variety of the historical materials we possess. In this issue we are again highlighting a major collection resource: the logbooks and journals kept by Nantucket whalers. They are intimate docw11ents of the adventure, the tediwn of hard work, the courage and the tragedies of the whaling industry. Though a relatively short period in the long and multifaceted history of Nantucket, that era has become by far the most fanilliar. Many view the town of Nantucket as a frozen venue of the whaling era. In fact, it is a landscape constantly reinventing itself, using the vocabulary of an earlier time. That past has taken on the heroic proportions of myth, combining the tales of high adventure at sea with the risks and high stakes of business on land. Museum artifacts and historic houses require interpretation. Until dated and documented they are HI S T O RI C
NANTUCKET
NHANews
In Memoriam Alcon Chadwick and Louise Hussey
On the cover: Susan Veeder's title page ofher Nauticon jouma/ invttes readers to see her whaling voyage as she dtd. Photograph by Terry Pommett.
EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR
without context. Except to connoisseurs who can "read " artifacts and architectural historians who can piece together the clues to identify a historic structure, the objects cannot speak for themselves. We give them voice and announce their authenticity by exhibiting them with labels and signage or through guided tours and interpreters. We provide context by selecting and arranging them to provide a story line. But the journals and ship logs speak for themselves. The words come directly from sightings of the events and the hands of observers and participants. They are powerful, unedited voices from the past. The illustrations and marginal decorations are often deeply personal views of a moment in another place and time: the first view of a South Pacific island, the sighting of a familiar vessel, the killing of a whale. The four-and-a-half-year voyage of the Nauticon, chronicled by Susan Veeder from 1848 to 1853, is one among 360 logbooks in our collections. With articles on the ties between Nantucket and Newport Quakers , on Nantucket's early tourist guides, and the history of 25 Pleasant Street, we stray happily from a single-theme to an omnibus issue. We are eager to share the diversity of our primary historic resources and we invite researchers and papers for publication.
by Jean Weber
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Views from the Ship Nauticon One Woman's Journal By [Extracts from the journal are faithful to original Cecil / spelling, grammar, and punctuation.] Barron Jensen
I
Photographs by Terry Pommett The busy port at Tahiti painted by Susan Veeder.
4
1-IISTOR! C
N 1995 THE FRIENDS OF THE NANTUCKET Historical Association purchased a journal of the whaleship Nauticon. The captain's wife, Susan Veeder, filled the journal with gentle watercolors and careful penmanship as she chronicled a voyage that was to last almost five years of her life- from September 1848 to March 1853. Beyond the repetitive notations of wind and weather, Mrs. Veeder takes contemporary readers back in time and
NAN TUCK ET
allows us to witness her life at sea with all of its joys, hardship, and discoveries. Traveling with Mrs. Veeder and her husband, Captain Charles A. Veeder, were their sons whom Mrs. Veeder refers to as "the boys." [The Veeders had three sons - Charles, George, and David but it is unclear if all three sons joined the fanilly on the Nauticon.] On the first few pages, a reader may wonder if Mrs. Veeder and her boys were up to the challenge of the voyage as tl1ey appeared to be suffering from seasickness. In fact, Mrs. Veeder reported that "I think that if I could of got on shore I SUMMER
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should of given up the voyage for I was very sick." But as things turned out Mrs. Veeder was of hardy stock as she rarely lapsed into self-pity or doubt for the remainder of the voyage and, indeed, withstood many great challenges. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the voyage was the birth and subsequent death of the Veeders' baby girl. After cruising south around Cape Horn, the Nauticon went into port in Talcahuano, Chile, in January 1849. Here the Veeders were invited to stay with the family of the consul, Mr. Crosby, for the remainder of the pregnancy. Mrs. Veeder reported that her husband planned to stay in Talcahuano for one month while the ship went back out to sea under the care of Mr. Archer. "Captn is in a bury to get the ship out - for it is a very bad place for men they has two deserted." Shortly after their arrival at the Crosbys', Mrs. Veeder delivered the baby: "Nothing of any note occured untill the 29th and then I was confined with a fine daughter weighing 9 lbs which was very pleasing to us both." Eighteen days later the ship was back in port and the captain decided to go back out to sea for "four or five weeks" and leave Mrs. Veeder with the Crosbys: "to day the wind is fair at 2 ock the Captn and boys left me and the ship went out to sea and I am left alone." Not happy by herself in Talcahuano, Mrs. Veeder wrote: "I feel quit feeble to be left among Strangers" and "I feel very lonesome." Despite feeling lonely, Mrs. Veeder and the baby grew healthy in the absence of their family and on March 23 the ship returned to port and they prepared to head back to sea. Over the next months, Mrs. Veeder wrote occasionally about the baby - mostly about her growth and charming nature. On December 31, 1849, she wrote "Mary Frances is 11 months old has 7 teeth creeps all about the ship and is very cunning She is now on deck taking a ride on his wagon." Sadly, though, in Tahiti on March 5, 1850, Mrs. Veeder wrote "tuesday morning our babe did not seem very well." G uessing that she was teething and wishing to leave Tahiti the next day, the Veeders decided to take the baby to a doctor and have her gwns lanced. The doctor said the baby was fine but had a cold. He prescribed a powder. That night the baby grew very sick; "at 3 oclock in the morning She was taken convulsed and we very soon see that they was no hope for her recovery, we sent amedially for a phisiHISTORIC
NANTUCKET
cian and every thing was done that could be done but all in vain she was poisned no doubt by takeing the second powder what can be done what can be done was all that we could say the thoat of loseing our babe was more than we could bear to think of She was a fine child to good to live, and at 11 oclock AM she breathed her last." The thought of leaving the child in Tahiti was out of the question: "we must take her with us away, so we have had a lead coffin made and the corps embalmed to take home with us." On March 7, Mrs. Veeder wrote "today we have had the remains of our little one taken on board and we are ready for sea." The child and her death were never mentioned again in the journal. Instead, Mrs. Veeder continued to chart the course of the Nauticon as it traveled through the Pacific in search of whales. The whaling voyage was Mrs. Veeder's first, and she wrote about the hunting of whales with great interest. Coming upon a dead sperm whale afloat in the ocean, she commented on the smell and wrote that she hopes they all do not smell as bad. When they do catch their first sperm whale, however, she simply remarked that it was her first and from that point on she was caught up in the chase and the rewards of whaling. There were also the frustrations of whaling; on August 4, 1850, Mrs. Veeder wrote that it had been six months since they have even seen a sperm whale so she declared she "put away my book and hope the next time i write we shall have more oil." Amazingly, Mrs. Veeder wrote that they caught a sperm whale the very next day! Mrs. Veeder wrote not only of the whales caught but also of those that got away. The details of each chase, even when the whales went too fast or slipped under ice, were chronicled. It is clear that she reflected the highs and lows of the crew in their pursuit of whales. When one was caught, Mrs. Veeder reported on the amount of time the men spent in their chase, once the whale boats were lowered, and on the time spent cutting and boiling. Each account was concluded with a tally of the barrels stored. For Mrs. Veeder it was also a voyage of discovery. The whaleship traveled from port to port, island to island, and sea to sea. At each location, Mrs. Veeder gives us her impressions with words and with paintings. Her watercolors are among the most beautiful journal illustrations in the NHA's possession. S U ~\ M E R
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5
Susan Veeder ( 1816--97), shown here in a detail of a portrait c. 1860
by an unknown Chinese artist, was born and died on Nantucket, according to the Barney Records.
6
HfSTORJC
She captured the colors of the South Pacific, revealing to us what the island harbors looked like in the mid-nineteenth century. She also painted whaleships at anchor, allowing us to imagine the impact of the gigantic ships on the islanders' horizon. Mrs. Veeder also wrote of her visits to shore and her impressions of what she saw, both good and bad. On September 4, 1849, she wrote this description of Tombez: "about all that is to be seen is a few bamboo houses and a lot of half naked children." Pitcairn, in April 1850, left her with a more favorable impression: "About 4 PM we went to the house of Fletcher Christians and their we stoped we had not been their many minutes before the house was full of People every one in the place came to see me I think they are the kindest people I have ever meet with." Upon leaving the island, after three days, she wrote "they all got together and collected many things Some Fowl, others oranges and coconuts and some other things, they all folowed us down to the boat and wated our departure we had the pleasure of naming a little one while their, son of henry and Albina Young, the number of Residents is 164." In the summer of 1851 the ship went north to the Arctic. Up above the Fox Islands, Mrs. Veeder wrote of her encounters with natives who paddled to the ship in canoes. Her entry of June 26 reads: "two canoes came along side with about 30 natives they brought a few fish and teeth and some skins to sell they apear to be very harrnles and honest all they wanted was tobaco needles and knives." Her adventure in the far north, however, turned out to be of a natural kind. On June 30 she wrote "Monday this morning we have had the misfortune to get our ship in the ice we let go the anchor in 25 NANTUCKET
fathoms watter but it did not stop her the ice is coming down very fast." On July 3 "we made all sail on the Ship in hopes that we could start her a little but she would not move the ice is Close to her when we shall get away from here I know not." Despite the restless crew's efforts, the ship was stuck in the ice for thirteen days. One highlight of the misadventure was the spotting of a polar bear on July 9: "At Eight Oclock this morning we saw a white bear close to the Ship, but his hearing a noise he started of the other way very quick." Finally, on July 11, the men were able to cut the ice around the ship and haul it into floating ice and on July 12 they were back in clear water again "to the great joy of all on board. " Other intriguing discoveries for Mrs. Veeder included the finding of shipwrecks. On June 27, 1850, Mrs. Veeder announced that they spotted a wreck lying on a reef: "the Captain went to her and found it to be the Lafayett of Newbedford." Captain Veeder and his crew worked with Captain Sisson and men of the ship Callas to see what the wreck held. Aside from the abandoned ship, they found thirteen members of the crew stranded on an island. For the next four days the men worked on the wreck and helped themselves to one hundred and twenty barrels of oil for each ship and other things such as bread, flour, sails, iron, spears, and rigging. The Nauticon shipped four of the shipwrecked men, took two more to Chatham Island, off the coast of Chile, and one more man was kept on the Nauticon because he was too sick to be left behind. Along the journey, Mrs. Veeder occasionally announced the sighting of other wrecks or reported on the news of ships that were lost. At the end of the voyage they took home four survivors of a bark that was lost in the Rio de la Platta. Clearly, part of the challenge of being at sea was avoiding shoals, reefs, and other natural hazards. Mrs. Veeder also commented on daily life on board the Nauticon. She wrote of cleaning and painting projects completed on the ship. Trips to shore to collect wood, coconuts, terrapin, fish, hogs, potatoes, and other necessities were regularly noted in her journal. On September 11, 1850, she went to Cocos Island to wash clothes. "I think this is one of the best places to wash clothes I ever saw, the Captn has had a tent put up so we can wash comfortable." She even had a "fine shower" on the island. Occasionally Mrs. SUMMER
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Veeder commented on the food eaten on board the ship. On New Year's Day 1852 she wrote that they dined on "beans and Skip Jack. " Entries between April 7 and 9, 1852, reveal a sense of the familial domesticity on board the Nauticon. Mrs. Veeder wrote twice about sewing a new pink calico shirt. Then she reported: "Chas making a pair of shoes for David [son] this morning. " And finally she spent a day cleaning out her own room on the ship and had a bedstead repaired. Part of the daily routine for the captain was managing his crew, which proved on occasion to be a challenge. Early on in the voyage a rebellious crew "demanded liberty." Mrs. Veeder described the event calmly in August 1849 claiming that "the fuss was soon stoped b y puting the ring leaders in the rigging and giving them a dozen or two." In March 1850 two men deserted the ship. After searching the nearest island for the two men, Captain Veeder told the twelve natives living there that he would return in a few days and if the men had not been caught "he should take away their Pigs and burn their houses acordingly in three days he returned as soon as they see the ship they set a flag and made a fire to let us know that they had caught them." The captain only shipped one of the men; the other he did not want as this was "the second time that he had rw1 away and got others to go with him." illness and death were other realities of life on board the ship. One of the more harrowing events reported was a whaling accident involving the second mate. On November 21, 1852, the crew in a whaleboat had "struck another whale the line got foul and took the second mate out of the boat and draged him under watter some minutes - when taken out found him quite exhausted and he vomited considerable blood another boat lowered and took him to the ship and got him quite comfortable." A few days later she wrote that he was recovering well and was out on deck with some of the other sick men. Another tragedy was the death of the third mate after falling from the rigging on April23, 1851: "it has cast a gloom over the whole ships company." The next day, Mrs. Veeder wrote "at 8 oclock AM all hands was called to Bury the dead the head yards was hauled a back and the Ensign was set half mast prayers was read and the body commited to the deep And a salem sight it was to us all." HISTORIC
NANTUCKET
A high point of life at sea for Mrs. Veeder was the opportunity to "speak" to other boats. Visits with other captains and wives on board the Nauticon and other vessels were regularly detailed by Mrs. Veeder. She even described gifts given to her by visitors. On July 3, 1850, she wrote about a visitor who "came on board to dine I got one letter he gave me a nwnber of things tins of fresh meat cranberries Pickles." Visitors also brought gifts for the boys. Trips to ports were opportunities to socialize with other whaling fan1ilies. On October 31 , 1851, the Veeders attended a ball on Oahu Island where they "had a fine timeabout 350 their." It is Mrs. Veeder's incidental personal comments that make the reading of the journal touching and
Cocos Tsland, with the washing left out to dry, as depicted by Susan Veeder.
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poignant. Early on in the voyage, she wrote, "The nights are so short that I am a bed about half of the day the Captn is all attention and says he is very happy to think I am here and Incourages me by saying that he thinks I get along first rate." Later she comments on the captain's and her birthdays. "Chas has a birthday aged 42 years" on August 2, 1851, and then on August 9, 1851, she writes "I have a birthday aged 35 years Injoying good health." Finally, after years at sea they rounded Cape Hom again and headed for home. There was almost tactile joy in her words on January 15, 1853, when she wrote "At 1 PM we had a fair wind and took our Anchor and left St. Catherines for home." She grew
impatient by the end: "Agoing along nicely toward home. I hasten the tin1e when we may arrive their" and "today is the last day of the month [February] hoping to be home by the 15th of the next month." The Weekly Mirror's "Marine Journal" column announced the arrival of the ship on March 27, 1853. And so ended Mrs. Veeder's adventures on the Nauticon. One cannot help but be curious about the woman's life after that date. Little is known - only a few dates and names in the Barney record; another daughter, Marianna, was born on Aprilll, 1860. In the end, the journal stands as a fascinating window into Mrs. Veeder's life and the lives of other Nantucket women at sea.
Ships' Logs and Journals in the Collections of the Edouard A. Stackpole Library and Research Center
0
FFICIALLY, A LOG IS AN ACCOUNT OF A SHIP'S
voyage that is kept by the captain or the first mate. Accounts of voyages kept by other crew members are also frequently referred to as logs, aliliough journal is a more accurate term. The NHA possesses 360 logbooks and journals, spanning 200 years, of merchant, whaling, and even recreational voyages. The earliest account of a voyage is for iliat of ilie sloop Mary in 1752. The latest log describes the 1919-1923 voyage of the catboat Light. Brief descriptions, or synopses, of the logbooks and journals have been entered into ilie library's in-house database. The synopses contain information on ilie lengili and range of a ship's voyage, its captain and keeper (ilie person who kept ilie log or journal), and oilier information of note, such as wheilier ilie log contains illustrations. As a preservation measure, twothirds of ilie ships' logs and journals have been microfilmed. The library prefers iliat researchers access ilie microfilm and not the original volumes, many of which are fragile. The library also contains microfilmed copies of logbooks and journals for Nantucket ships, or ships crewed by Nantucketers, iliat are in oilier repositories. The majority of the logbooks and journals in the library collections date from the nineteenili century and document
8
HISTORIC
NANTUCKET
whaling voyages iliat lasted from one to five years. The logs can be dry reading: monotonous accounts of weailier, position, land sighted, ships spoken (when one ship communicated with another eiilier orally or by signals); even ilie taking of a whale is described tersely and unin1aginatively - at least to modem eyes. Yet, frequently, iliese logbooks and journals provide vivid insight into the lives of whalemen, revealing their opinions of the food and crew, the ways in which iliey occupied themselves, and their impressions of foreign ports and tropical islands. The log of Charles Gilchrest of the ship Charles Carroll typifies the kinds of adventures iliat befell a mid-nineteenili-cenrury whaleman. Over a iliree-year voyage Gilchrest was struck by lightning, fell overboard, and had his whaleboat bitten in two by an enraged whale. Many of the ships' logs and journals are enlivened visually, by lists of crew members, whales taken, and barrels of oil tried. Poetry and songs can be found recorded on ilie pages at ilie back of a book. Stamps and drawings intersperse a text. The most beautiful logs and journals are illustrated with watercolors of islands and ships, such as those produced by Susan Veeder of ilie ship Nauticon.
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The Nantucket-Newport Axis Early links between Nantucket and Newport Quakerism
N
ANTUCKET'S EARLY POLITICAL LI KS TO
New York are well documented, and equally well established are the connections between the island's first English settlers and the Merrimack Valley region north of Boston. Less known, however, are the strong ties that developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between Nantucket and the thriving port city of Newport. By the time that Nantucket's white community was established, Newport, only a day's sail away from the island, had become one of New England's key seaports. With a population of about two thousand in 1700, Newport was a thriving trade center that eagerly absorbed whatever the fanners and fishermen of tl1e region could produce. More important for the future of Nantucket, however, was Newport's vital and expanding Quaker community. Newport's conunercial and religious leadership would provide Nantucket \vith economic, spiritual, and ultimately social connections crucial to the island's explosive growth in the mid 1700s. Newport's first settlers had not been the followers of Roger Williams (who founded the Providence Plantations at the north end of Narragansett Bay), but Anne Hutchinson and her coterie. Hutchinson's religious beliefs had led to her expulsion from Puritan Boston and her self-imposed rustication to the wilds of Aquidneck (or Rhode) Island in the center of Narragansett Bay. Although Hutchinson soon left Rhode Island for the promise of even greater religious freedom in New Netherlands, she and her followers left in Newport a growing community whose radically tolerant religious ethic was matched by its entrepreneurial spirit. Newport saw its first Quakers in 1657. The strongest of the sects that had grown out of the Seeker movement in Civil War-era England, the 1-!TSTORTC
NANTUCKET
Religious Society of Friends based its tl1eology not on ilie primacy of scripture or sacrament but on the belief that the individual would achieve salvation through a life lived according to ilie Truth of Jesus' teaching. Quakers, as Friends came to be known (the term was first offered as an insult but was quickly taken up by adherents), eschewed not only the clergy but also such traditional Christian practices as a formal liturgy. Truth, it was (and is) believed, can be found in the individual soul without external mediation. The contemplative Meeting for Worship provides a setting within which the collective spirit of assembled believers enhances receptivity to the Truili (or "Inner Light") \vithin. At first the Baptists and other nonconforming Protestants of Rhode Island resisted the coming of Friends. An early tactic of traveling Quaker ministers - oilierwise known as Public Friends- was to disrupt church services witl1 denunciations of ilie clergy and of submission to scripture alone. [Note: Ministers, in Quaker practice, are not clergy but ratl1er individuals whose eloquence in meeting causes them to be acknowleged as having a "gift" in the ministry, i.e., tl1e ability to articulate the Truth toothers in a particularly effective way.] The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay retaliated with the proscription of Quakers and, ultimately, acts of brutality- clin1axing with the hanging of several men and one woman -carried out against persistent Friends. Rhode Islanders refused to be baited by such behavior. The Quaker presence in Newport led in 1657 to Rhode Island's first official statement of religious toleration - although old Roger Williams never warmed up to Quakerism - and Friends quickly earned a place in the community by virtue of their willingness to add to Newport's productivity. In 1658 the first meeting of Friends in Rhode Island was gathered.
By Robert}. Leach
and PeterGow
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9
The Great Friends Meeting House c. 1860, by
William Dame. Courtesy of The Newport HistoncaiSociety.
10
HISTORIC
Newport was not the only Quaker enclave in New England. In the Cape Cod village of Sandwich a young Friend named Christopher Holder had established a Quaker meeting in 1657. Individual Quakers had settled elsewhere on the fringes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in Salisbury, Massachusetts, several families, including that of John Swain, had become strongly inclined toward Quakerism through the work of Public Friends who passed-illegally-through the community. Before settling in Sand~ch, Christopher Holder had briefly cast his eye on the islands owned by Thomas Mayhew as the potential site of a Quaker commonwealth. When approached on the matter, however, Mayhew had sent Holder packing. A strong, if not stiff-necked, Puritan, Mayhew was proud of the work he and his subordinates (including Peter Folger) had done in Christianizing the Indians of his islands; even the natives on Nantucket had been exposed to the regular preaching of Folger and others. But when Tristram Coffin and the other men who would become the Nantucket Proprietors made Mayhew an offer several years later, he readily sold. The spiritual diffidence of Nantucket's first English settlers is legendary, but a dormant Quaker nucleus existed on the island from the first. The NA
TUCKET
Swains, William Worth, Sarah Shattuck Gardner, and shortly Stephen Hussey all represented at least a degree of Quaker belief, although the settlers at Capaum in the 1660s showed no inclination toward forming a meeting or even acknowledging their shared faith. In Newport, however, the Quaker presence expanded steadily, and the structure of Quakerism created an important role for the city and its Friends in the spiritual life of southeastern New England. Four times a year individual Quaker congregations-called monthly meetings, because members gather at that interval to discuss matters of business and policy-send representatives to regional quarterly meetings at which Friends discuss issues of common concern and report on the activities of the monthly meetings. As practiced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the quarterly meeting system was not only a way of facilitating communication among Friends, it also served as a system of checks on each local meeting's interpretation of Truth. A further check was provided by the yearly meeting, which representatives from quarterly and monthly meetings attended. It served as a forum for the discussion of major issues as well as interpretations of doctrine and discipline. SUMMER
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By 1660, Newport was the home of New England Yearly Meeting. As the center of a region containing a number of monthly meetings as well as a city whose wealthier Quaker residents could offer gracious hospitality, Newport was ideally situated to take the leading role in New England Quaker life. With quarterly meetings established as of 1672 in Newport, Salem (Massachusetts), Sandwich, and Dover (New Hampshire), New England Quakerism was a large and growing phenomenon. Adding to Newport's prestige was the visit made to the city in 1672 by Quakerism's founder, George Fox. His arrival in the city-and his subsequent pan1phlet war with Roger Willian1s on the subject of women as ministers - certified Newport as a Quaker center and guaranteed that future Quaker visitors would make it a stop on their itineraries. Much of the spiritual fuel that kept the light of Quakerism burning in that early period came from the presence of Public Friends, whose peregrinations created a tight-knit network binding Quakers all around the Atlantic rim. From England to Barbados to the Jerseys to Newport, such travelers were welcomed as bearers of news both institutional and per-
HISTORIC
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sonal. A well-known visiting minister at a meeting for worship would be a point of pride as well as a way of maintaining the orthodoxy of a meeting's interpretation of Truth. Following Fox's example, Public Friends made Newport a priority destination, and the community of Friends there (who by the 1670s represented the city's commercial and political elite) became especially well connected to leading Quakers on both sides of ilie Atlantic. The first Public Friend to call on Nantucket was the ultraradical Jane Stokes, who passed through on her way to Jamaica in 1664. We know little about her visit, oilier than iliat she had come from Newport and iliat her preaching apparently had little effect on the islanders. Not for anomer iliree decades would Friends begin to make a serious dent in Nantucket's nondenominational armor. The islanders' resistance to organized religion was abetted by ilie policies of the Puritan magistrate John Gardner, who did all iliat he could to discourage Quaker ministers from coming to Nantucket between the 1680s and his retirement in 1698. In spite of Gardner's wishes, ties between Nantucketers and ilie Quaker world were expand-
A map by Paul MitchelÂŁ c. 1782,
belonging to the Yearly Meeting a/Rhode Island. (Copy of original in archives o/ Moses Brown SchooÂŁ Provzdence, RI).
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ing. In 1690 a Yarmouth Quaker, Ichabod Paddock, also came to Nantucket to participate in Quaker was recruited to teach his whaling skills to islanders, meetings for worship. In time, their descendant and a number of Nantucket families, including the James Mott, then of New York, would marry the Starbucks, acquired Quaker relations through mar- Nantucket-born activist Lucretia Coffin. The riage. Even Stephen Hussey, an unobservant Quaker Slocombs' other great contribution to Newport at best, found himself connected to the Yarmouth Quaker history was their (and especially Ebenezer's) (Cape Cod) Meeting through the marriage of his part in the erection, in 1699, of the Great daughter in 1695. As those children and cousins of Meetinghouse there, a structure that still stands and Nantucket's proprietors became active Friends- in that was for many years the home of New England many cases ministers - it became harder for Yearly Meeting (illustration, p. 14). When John Richardson, a highly regarded Nantucket to maintain its nonsectarian character. In 1698, two Public Friends visited Nantucket. English Public Friend, came to Nantucket in 1702 The first was the Englishman, Thomas Turner; the to implant Quakerism permanently in the island's second, Thomas Chalkley, a Philadelphian via fertile spiritual soil, he, too, came via Newport (and Barbados. Chalkley, who brought with him John Sandwich). His transportation was also provided by Easton, a former deputy governor of Rhode Island, Peleg Slocomb. clearly came with an eye to establishing a permanent In the period between 1698 and 1708 no fewer 'John Richardson's Quaker body on the island . Turner, and probably that forty-seven Public Friends, ministers, and elders Meeting;' Chalkley, were brought to the island (having both visited Nantucket. They made a total of sixty-nine stopped in Newport) by Dartmouth Friend Captain visits, some of which lasted for weeks. Forty percent an illustration by Peleg Slocomb, whose brothers Ebenezer and of those visits were made by members of Rhode Margaretta 5. Hinchman Eleaser were leaders in the Newport Meeting. Island (Newport) Monthly Meeting, and the visitors in Early Settlers Peleg's wife was Mary Holder, the daughter of the included John Easton; Walter Clarke, the third Christopher Holder who had helped found the Quaker governor of Rhode Island; and John Clarke, of Nantucket, Sandwich Meeting. In the same year their sister, another former governor. The presence of those depicts the Joanna Slocomb Mott, surprised Nantucketers men, who came to Nantucket bearing Quaker first meeting when she arrived, without her husband, to preach at credentials, is a strong indication of the importance a specially called Quaker meeting on the island. Her Newporters attached to Nantucket. Such encourat the home o/ husband and son, Jacob Mott and Jacob Mott, Jr., agement can only have helped Nantucket Mary Coffin Starbuck. Quakerism gather strength during that critical period in its development. When in 1708 Mary Coffin Starbuck and the other founders of Nantucket Quakerism were certain that they had achieved the "critical mass" necessary to request formal recognition as a monthly meeting, it was to New England Yearly Meeting in Newport that they sent their petition. In a highly unusual action, Yearly Meeting, many of whose members were drawn from Newport's merchant class, granted Nantucket's request directly, without having the matter pass through the intermediate hands of the quarterly meeting to which the new monthly meeting would be attached. Thus did the Nantucket Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends come to be, under the care of both Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting - made up of monthly meetings in Newport and Greenwich, Rhode Island, and Dartmouth, Massachusetts -
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and the New England Yearly Meeting. Boston, still no place for Quakers, figured nowhere in the matter In the next seven decades the Newport connection would be strengthened by the establishment of other ties to Nantucket. Commercially, Newport's virtual monopoly on the manufacture of spermaceti candles would guarantee a market for as much spermwhale oil as Nantucketers cared to sell, and by 1722 the Starbuck fan1ily, in the person of Barnabas Starbuck, established an office for its whaling activities there. Wool from Nantucket's annual sheep shearing was sold on the Newpott market as Nantucketers looked to their Quaker friends -acquaintances made in quarterly and yearly meetings - as trustworthy business partners. Although by the 1730s Boston had established itself as New England's first city, the interests of Massachusetts Bay and those south of Cape Cod were often in competition. As Nantucket becan1e more Quaker, and Boston, without becoming less Congregationalist, became more Anglican, religious incompatibility between the two also became more manifest. Although Nantucketers did trade with Boston, the focus of another in1portant set of connections with both commercial and social significance continued to be Newport. In both Nantucket and Newport, meeting membership was becoming key to upward social mobility. For non-Friends seeking spouses and Quakers wishing to marry within the meeting, the two commw1ities provided each other with potential brides and grooms. In some cases the early marriages, like that of Benjamin Barney to Lydia Starbuck in 1722-he a well-to-do Newport merchant and she one of the Nantucket heirs to the fortune of Sir William Gayer- were as much strategic capital alliances as love matches. The BarneyNantucket link was further cemented by the marriage a year later of Benjamin's brother Jacob to HISTORIC
NANTUCKET
islander Dorcas Barnard. In that case, and others like it, another pattern appears: the sibling pairs would settle, one in Newport, one on Nantucket. Preswnably that also protected fan1ily interests in both locations. Other marriage alliances of the mid-eighteenth century included those of Mary Coffin to ewport merchant Clothier Peirce, Sr., in 1731. In 1742 Clothier Jr. also wed a Nantucketer, Lydia Hussey; she and Dorcas Barney became notable as Newport hostesses for visiting Nantucket Friends. Later in the century three of the children of Nantucket magnate William Rotch would marry siblings in the Rodman family, another leading Newport fanlliy. On at least one subject minor philosophical discord arose between Nantucketers and their mainland counterparts. In 1716, when Nantucket Monthly Meeting affirmed its belief that chattel slavery was against Truth, the matter was brought as a matter of course before the New England Yearly Meeting. By that time any number of Newport Friends were involved in the slave trade, and, although Nantucket's conclusion was not disputed, at least a few of the Newporters must have been galled. In any event, the policy seemed to have no lasting effect even on Nantucket, where Quakers held slaves w1til, at last, pron1inent Friend Benjan1in Coffin manw11itted his own slaves on the eve of the American Revolution. With the British occupation of Newport during the Revolution, its influence on Nantucket was considerably weakened. New England Yearly Meeting moved to Providence for the duration, and the city's trade (along with the fortunes of many of its leading Quaker families) was shattered. Newport swiftly became a commercial backwater and a spiritual nonentity. With fighting ended and Newport in American hands, it was clear that the center of gravity in southeastern New England had shifted.
Detail of Wtlliam Rotch, Sr., (1734-1828), a key figure in Nantucket Quakerism between 1760 and 1800. Collection of Dr. Louise S. Clark, courtesy of the Old Dartmouth Historical SocietyNew Bedford Whaling Museum.
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New Bedford, largely a Nantucket offshoot commercially, was now a viable and growing city. More significantly, it had been to Boston that Nantucket had been forced to turn in making its pleas for neutral status during the war. Philadelphia was now the First City of American Quakerism, and emigration from Nantucket to other region s had turned islanders' attention away from Newport. In 1781 Nantucket Monthly Meeting asked to leave Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting and be placed under the care of Sandwich Quarterly Meeting. A new easterly and Massachusetts-centered economic universe had come into being, and Nantucket, now a whaling center of global in1portance, formed its chief This house, element. The eastward shift was completed a decade now at the corner of later wh en the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting also Pine and School streets, requested to be transferred from Rhode Island to Sandwich Quarterly Meeting. Nantucket remained was originally located ilie center of iliat new universe until it was eclipsed in Sherburne and by N ew Bedford in th e 1830s. Nantucket is reputed to Quakerism , although still connected to Newport through New England Yearly Meeting, would also be the szte of take its own course in ilie nineteenth century, dwinthe first meeting. dling through attrition and disownment and at lengili john McCalley collapsing in the 1890s after a series of schisms tl1at began in 1830 . The uph eavals in Am e rican Collection.
Quakerism in th at pe ri od bad little to do with Newport , alth o ugh its meet ing suffered through many of the same dislocations and d isputes that so damaged Nantucket. P e rhap s th e las t s ig ni ficant moment in Nantucket's relationship with Rhode Island was the discovery in 1940 that the ea rly records of Quaker Nantucket were being held in safekeeping by members of a small Quaker group in Centerville, Rhode Island. That body still maintained the corporate identity (alth ough with only the most tenuous of geographical co nn ecti o ns) o f Na n t u cket Monthly Meeting. Through those Rhode Islanders' care, the records, long believed lost, have been preserved and made availabl e to co ntem porary researchers of Nantucket Quaker history. [The records are now held in trust by the antucket Historical Association until the Nantucket Monthly Meeting of Religious Friends is revived, at which time they will revert to the possession of the Meeting.] While the documents bring to life one aspect of the Nantucket- ewport connection, those interested in experiencing a more tangible vestige of tlus important part of the island's heritage can still visit the 1699 Great Meetinghouse in Newport, follO\ving in the foo tsteps of so many Nantucketers of the past.
Robert Leach and Peter Cow are the coauthors of Quaker Nantucket: The Religious Community Behind the Whaling Empire. Mr. Leach, a scholar and educator, bas taught comparative religion, history, and civilization /or many years, and was a founder o/ the International Baccalaureate Program. He bas been a member of the Religious Society of Friends /or nearly sL¡<ty years and has been coming to Nantucket since 1923. Mr. Cow has been a contributor and editor /or several Nantucket and marztime-culture projects. A history teacher /or twenty years, he is currently at Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hzll, Massachusetts.
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1997
~ )r~ ~ J,~ ~?--ÂŁ:;~~
E. C. Cutter's Nantucket Holiday N AUGUST 17, 1881, E. C. CUTTER, with his wife and two children from Washington, D. C. , checked into the Sherburne House on Orange Street. There are no mementos of their trip in the archives, no documentation of what they did and what they saw; not even the length of their stay is known. The only evidence that the Cutters visited Nantucket is a signature in the Sherburne House Register from the library's "Lodging and Eating Establishments" collection. However, from a survey of newspapers and schedules, guide books and brochures, the nature of the Cutters' summer holiday can be surmised. In Washington, some days prior to August 17, E. C. Cutter would have purchased four "excursion (roundtrip) tickets" from the Pennsylvania Railroad, agent for the Old Colony Railroad and Steamboat Company. The Cutters would have traveled by train to New York and from there on a steamer of the Fall River Line to New Bedford; at New Bedford they would have embarked on the Island Home for Nantucket. As the steamer approached the island, a black speck appeared on the horizon. The first landmark to be spotted by the Cutter family was the Wannacomet Water Company's tank, perched on iron stilts out at Trotts H ills. Church spires rose above the bluffs. Bathers splashed at the Cliff Shore Bathing Houses. Catboats criss-crossed the harbor. The Island Home rounded the light at Brant Point and, paddle-wheel churning, docked at Steamboat Wharf. The Cutters disembarked into a large crowd of islanders that regularly met the boat to hear the news and to survey the summer visitors, whom they referred to as
0
HISTORI C
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"strangers." E. C. Cutter engaged a hack to transport hin1 and his family - and luggage - to the Sherburne House where he signed the hotel register, perhaps under the gaze of the proprietor himself, Thomas H. Soule, Jr. Why Nantucket? The fact that the Cutters had journeyed from Washington was proof that word of Nantucket's "clear tonic air" and temperate climate had traveled beyond New England. Most of the guests who stayed at Sherburne House in the early 1880s were from Massachusetts: Boston , Cambridge, Provincetown, Falmouth, Salem, Swampscott. Yet entries for more distant towns were on the rise: New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Savannah , and Charleston. Visitors were even comin g from such places as Peoria, Illinois; Newton , Iowa; and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Perhaps E. C. Cutter had perused "Our Popular Summer Resorts and Fashionable Watering Places," published in 1881 by the Old Colony Railroad, in which the attractions of Nantucket, "this quaint old place, " were appealingly described . As early as 1878, Nantucket, together with Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod, was being referred to as a "famous smer resort." Nantucket's growth as a summer resort was certified by the opening of the island's first tourist agency: the Tourists' General Registry Agency, in 1880. Certainly, the local population was aware of the island's lure as a vacation spot: "We went down to the boat and wh at a lot of strangers can1e," noted Harriet Morey Gardner in her diary on August 5, 1882. There was plenty to occup y a "stranger," or visitor, on Nantucket in the summer of 1881. It so
by Betsy Lowenstein
(above)
E. C. Cutter's signature / rom tbe Sherburne House Register August 17, 1881. (at left)
Our Popular Summer Resorts and Fashionable Watering Places as published by the Old Colony Railroad in 1881.
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happened that the arrival of the Cutter family coincided with the main event of the summer: the Clan Coffin Celebration. The reunion of five hundred Coffin family members, which began on August 16 and extended through August 18, encompassed numerous festivities. Speeches, memorials, songs, and poems extolled the accomplishments o[ the Coffin line and the glory of Nantucket. Dinners and clambakes were consumed with relish amidst orations and anthems. Brass bands played, and a Grand Ball at Surfside concluded the three-day celebration in glorious style. The Cutters (tickets for the exercises were $2.50) may have participated in the pilgrimage to the Tristran1 Coffin homestead or attended the Promenade Concert at the Atheneum. A survey of the Inquirer and Mirror over the ensuing three weeks reveals other events the Cutter family may have enjoyed during their visit to antucket. The Reverend Phebe A.(Coffin) Hanaford, a prominent minister, preached to a full congregation at the Unitarian Church on the morning of Sunday the 21st. "[A]n able and thought inspiring sermon," reported the Inquirer and Mirror. On Tuesday the 23d, a baseball game between the Nantuckets and the 'Sconsets was played at Surfside, a game that alas for those who attended -was deemed "not a brilliant showing." On the evening of the same day a roller-skating party was held at the Roller Skating
Wmting/or the train at Sur/side Station, c. 1881-1897
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HISTORIC
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ANTUCKET
Rink, also at Surfside. Mr. Whitney performed an exhibition of fancy skating and music was furnished by Cushing's orchestra. For those who did not bring their own, Winslow Improved Skates could be rented for ten cents. A pyrotechnic display from the bluffs at Surfside dazzled a large crowd on the night of August 27. And on September 7 and 8 the twenty-sixth annual exhibition of the Nantucket Agricultural Fair was held, complete with an exanunation of stock, a plowing match, and "music by a good band." Those two days also witnessed a Great Bicycle Race, with the winning cyclist receiving a purse of $50. Perhaps the Cutters were part of the crowd watching the fireworks or admiring the horses at the Agricultural Fair. Undoubtedly, they occupied themselves with visits to historic sites and beaches in the manner of modern-day tourists. The first complete guide to Nantucket - E.K. Godfrey's Island of Nantucket: What It Was, and What It Is, published in Boston in 1882 - illuminates in great detail the history and attractions of "one of the most celebrated watering-places in the country. " (As the manager of the Tourists' General Registry Agency, it was in Godfrey's best interest to promote the charms of the island.) Nantucket's primary attraction to vacationers was its saltwater bathing. There were two bathing estab-
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lishments at the Cliff and another at Clean Shore, just north of Steamboat Wharf and now known as Children's Beach. At nine, ten, eleven, and twelve o'clock bathers could board the yacht Dauntless at Old North Wharf for the Cliff Shore Bathing Houses. Wam1 saltwater baths could be had at both locations , while surf-bathing could be found at 'Sconset and Wauwinet. For those who wanted to be on the water, boats could be hired for a day of sailing, fishing, or sharking. Besides bathing at the Cliff or Clean Shore, the Cutter family could enjoy the train ride to Surfside on the newly opened Nantucket Railroad. The journey - along the harbor, past Goose Pond, and across the commons - was particularly scenic. Passengers disembarked at the Surfside depot, where they could enjoy quahog chowder, or bluefish cakes, and iced lemonade on the depot's long verandah. After lwKh, the Cutters could stroll along the beach, visit the Life Saving Station (which was not in operation until September) , and perhaps before departing purchase one of [Henry S.] Wyer's "Surf-Side Views " as a souvenir. Price of the round trip fare: thirty cents. Other favorite destinations were Wauwinet, via the steam yacht Island Belle, and 'Sconset, a village seven and a half miles from town reached by a single track across the moors. Few vacationers left the island without visiting the Atheneum and its library and museum. The museum contained many interesting relics and curiosities, including a mammoth sperm whale's jaw, eighty-seven feet long and two tons in weight, taken in the Pacific Ocean by Captain William Cash of the bark Islander in 1865. The history of the objects was enlivened by the commentary of the janitor, Joseph S. Swain. Other local attractions included the Unitarian church on Orange Street, where visitors could admire the new town clock and the "old Spanish" bell- which was neither Spanish nor very old - the Jethro Coffin house on North Shore Hill (now Sunset Hill), and the "old mill." In the midst of their sight-seeing, Mr. and Mrs. Cutter and their two children could refresh themselves at the ice cream saloon run by the Misses Chadwick on Orange Street, or conswne oysters and chowder at Alfred Scudder's restaurant on Steamboat Wharf. A native culinary treat was the sguantum. Rare the summer visitor who did not HISTORI C
NANTU C K E T
savor a sguantw11, or picnic, of soft-shell crabs, oysters, com on the cob, and sweet potatoes cooked on the beach. There is no evidence that the Cutters revisited Nantucket. An examination of the Sherburne Hotel registers for 1882 through 1887 does not reveal their names, although it is possible that they returned to stay at another hotel, or one of the many smaller boarding houses , or even to rent a cottage at 'Sconset. Perhaps as the Island Home row1ded Brant Point, E. C. Cutter, with his wife and two children, felt a pang of regret at their departure. And in their home in Washington they could hang, with due nostalgia, a copy of the recently produced print "Bird's Eye View of the Town of Nantucket," purchased for $2.00 at Miss Phebe E. Clisby's shop at 7 Centre Street.
Saltwater bathing c. 1884.
Library Sources Used for This Article Lodging and Eating Establishments on Nantucket Collection, 1809-1986. Nantucket Tourist Guides Collection, 1868-1996. Austin, Jane. Nantucket Scraps. Boston: James R Osgood and Company, 1882. Bellan1y, Edward. Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1878. Lancaster, Clay. Holiday Island. Nantucket Historical Association, 1993. Northrup, A Judd. Sconset Cottage Life. New York: Baker, Pratt, & Co. , 1881. S U :-.1 ,\ \ E R
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25 Pleasant Street in Miniature by Cecil Barron Jensen
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HI STORIC
N 1995 THE ESTATE OF ROBERT CARY CALDWELL gave a miniature of 25 Pleasant Street to the Nantucket Historical Association in memory of Katherine Sanford Deutsch. It is a fully furnished scale model of the historic home once lived in by Mr. Caldwell's ancestors, including among others Cyrus M. Hussey. One look at the miniature, now on exhibit in the Peter Foulger Museum as part of the "Away Off Shore" exhibition, and anyone can see that for its creators (Bob Caldwell and Katherine Deutsch) it was a painstaking project. What one would not know is that it was a labor of love for two people who lived at 25 Pleasant Street. The house is believed to have been built in 1745 when the property was conveyed to Stephen Chase from Jonathan Folger. Stephen Chase had married Dinah Folger a few years before and they and their fanllly moved into the house. For over two hundred years, until1956, it was occupied by descendants of that family. It was a remarkable period of time in Nantucket's history, and judging by the stories of family members who lived there, it was a remarkable time for them as well. One of the most famous of those was Cyrus M. Hussey, who had moved there when his father married Lydia Gardner in 1812. As a young man, Hussey went to sea as a cooper on board the whaleship Globe. In January 1824 there was a terrible mutiny on board the ship, in which Captain Worth and his three officers were killed, and Samuel Comstock, the chief mutineer, sailed to a South Sea island. Hussey was one of only two survivors of the abandoned crew rescued two years later in the Mulgrave Islands by a U. S. naval ship. On reaching home the two survivors, Hussey and William Lay, wrote the account of their experiences in the volume The Ship Globe, published in 1828 in New London. (The NHA owns a first edition of the book.) Sadly, not long after his return to Nantucket, Hussey went back to sea in another whaleship and never returned. Lydia Gardner Hussey was the owner of the house at 25 Pleasant Street until 1857 when she transferred the property to her daughter Margaret Hussey Cary, who had married James S. Cary. Cary was the son of
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the famous Nantucket shipmaster James Cary, who sailed the ship Rose from Nantucket to Canton, China, in 1805. A nwnber of beautiful China-trade articles, ranging from furniture to porcelain, were brought home by Captain Cary and inherited by his son and placed in the home at 25 Pleasant Street. James S. Cary followed his father to sea in the merchant business. In 1851 he was serving as first mate on a merchant ship in South America when he contracted typhoid fever. On the return voyage to New York he was taken by a shipmate to a hospital where such fevers were treated. The shipmate was apparently so frightened by the illness that he simply took Cary to the hospital and then deserted him without properly identifying him or even leaving the nan1e of his vessel. Two days later Cary died with no identification papers, and was buried in potter's field. News of his death did not reach his fanllly at 25 Pleasant Street until a year later when Margaret H ussey Cary saw a shipmate and inquired after her husband. Margaret Hussey Cary lived in the house a nun1ber of years after her husband's death , leaving the house to her daughter Lydia Cary, who lived there until 1905. She never married, and left the house to her brother George Cary who eventually passed it on to his daughter Edith Folger (Cary) Caldwell who left it to her son Robert. Robert Cary Caldwell loved the old house on Pleasant Street, but with no electricity or heat living there was a challenge. After a few years he built a cottage next door for himself and his fanllly. In 1956 he sold the old family home to Richard Lowell Neas. He, too, found the job of adding electricity and heat daunting so he sold the house to Richard Deutsch and his first wife, Katherine, in 1959. It is a typical, sturdy, eighteenth-century house facing south, as was the tradition, with a central chim~ ney. Given its location under the hill where the Old Mill stands, and its history, it charmed the Deutsches, especially Katherine. In the 1970s Deutsch approached his friend Robert Caldwell, who was a skilled woodworker, with the idea of building a model as a gift for his wife. The idea intrigued Caldwell and he happily took up the task.
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Deutsch never dreamed that the project would become so involved and hold such fascination for Caldwell and his wife. "We took hundreds of photographs of the house, every corner of the building," he recently explained. "Then Bob came and measured every detail." Everything from the molding above the fireplace, which Caldwell painstakingly hand-carved with a pin, to the exact proportions of the floorboards are done to scale. "It took Bob four or five years to complete the house." Once the model was finished, Mrs. Deutsch took over. She had had a passing fascination for miniatures , but now she became fully engrossed in the project of furnishing 25 Pleasant Street. Through her contacts in the miniatures business, she consigned artists to replicate the materials, wallpaper, and furnishings used in her house. Everything was found or made in exact miniature, even the bathroom fixtures. Now that the model is exhibited at the Peter Foulger Musew11, Deutsch came to revisit and marvel at the fine work of his friend and former wife. He pointed out the grandmother clock in the first floor
dining room- "You know it keeps time," he said. He also told tl1e story of the "friendship rug" in one of the bedrooms upstairs. "It is an exact replica of a needlepoint rug that my mother and her friends made. My daughter now has the original." Looking at wallpaper, furnishings, and art work in the miniature, Deutsch marveled once again at how perfectly matched they were to his house. However, he did say that not everything in the miniature was actually in the house. It seems that Mrs. Deutsch got carried away with her decorating - including the whole of the attic decorations. "Nobody would ever want to sleep up there, it was much too hot," he said. But he remembered the joy his wife had in collecting, especially a miniature Noah's Ark she found for her grandson Noah. One final look at the house revealed the tiny ivory mortgage button placed on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs by his good friend Robert Caldwell. "He was a perfectionist and he loved this house," said Deutsch. And he wasn't the only one! Upon the death of his wife, Deutsch gave the miniature to Caldwell, whose family, in turn, left it to the NHA. Deutsch sold 25 Pleasant Street in 1993. Today the house stands, with very little changed, as a reminder of Nantucket's past. And the miniature pays tribute to its history and the people who cared for it.
Detail (at far left) of the 25 Pleasant Street scale model tllustrates the incredzble detail of Bob Caldwell's construction and Katherine Deutsch's decoration. Bob Caldwell (near left) outside 25 Pleasant C.
HISTORIC
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1955.
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The Library Wish List ollowing upon the success of the first wish list, the Edouard A. Stackpole Library and Research Center has compiled a second list of books that would benefit both staff and researchers. If friends are interested in don ating any of these books, please call us at 508-228-1894. All gifts will be commemorated by a special bookplate.
F
At Home: The American Family, 1750-1870, by Elizabeth Donaghy Garrett $49.50 This book provides a detailed picture of how Americans decorated their homes before 1870. When used in conjunction with more specific texts on Nantucket interiors, it is a useful resource. Shipmasters of Cape Cod, by Hemy C. Kittredge $17.95 "The single most important work about Cape Codders in the Great Age of Sail." This book chronicles New England's trade with the West and East Indies, Europe, and China, as well as its whaling voyages to the Arctic Sea and its race to California's gold fields. George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals in American Culture, 1876-1896, by Karal Am1 Marling $47.50 This text documents the significance of George Washington as an American icon and the use of his in1age in American decorative atts. Washington's image is depicted on a number of the artifacts in the NHA's collections. The New Oxford Annotated Bible $37.95 The library does not possess a contemporary, scholarly edition of the Bible- a vital resource given the spiritual history of the island.
An Interpretation of Our Masonic Symbols, by J.S. Ward $16.95 The NHA has a small collection of masonic artifacts and documents. This book will shed light on the use and significance of these obscure symbols.
Letters from China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838-1840, compiled and edited by Phyllis Forbes Kerr $39.95 Providing additional insight into the China trade, this book will complement the NHA's publication From Brant Point to the Boca Tigris: Nantucket and the China Trade. Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, by W. Jeffrey Bolster $27.00 The most recent account of African American seamen, it includes discussion of the activities of Absalom Boston, a prominent black mariner and businessman of nineteenthcentury Nantucket, and Paul Cuffe, Jr., whose correspondence with several Nantucketers is held in the library. Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships, by David A. Chappell $29.95 This book illuminates the lives of 250 Pacific Islanders, or "Kanakas," who sailed on Western ships in the 18th and 19th centuries, including whalers. The author discusses the effects on their culture and on the peoples with whom they came in contact.
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Hzstorz¡c Nantucket Book Section by Elizabeth Oldham Nantucket Lights: An Illustrated History of the Island's Legendary Beacons, by Karen T. Butler. P ublished by Mill Hill Press; hardcover, $45.00. T HIS BOOK IS ALMOST MORE OF A LOVE STORY THAN A
labor of love. O f course th at might be said of any work of nonfiction requiring prodigious research and with so much attractive and interesting illustrative material: the book is handsomely designed , with many black-and-white photographs never before published and a color section reproducing both photographs and paintings. Karen T. Butler presents each of Nantucket's "legendary beacons," as she calls them - Brant Point, Great Point, Sankaty, and the South Shoals Lightship - with formidable attention to the details of the buildings, their function and maintenance, and the lives of those who served as keepers and crew. U.S. Coast Guard and other government records establish a scholarly sensitivity. The author has not only docwnented the history of each structure and the ship, she has sought out the keeper's children who lived at the lights, several of whom still live among us and are well known in the community, and men who served on the lightship. From the former she has gleaned memories and borrowed family photographs, establishing the human element that precludes a dry-as-dust account. Renny Stackpole has provided a touching account of visiting Sankaty Head Light when his grandfather, Eugene Larsen, was keeper. A man who served on the lightship recalls the boredom and terror of that duty: he was out there when the Andrea Doria sank and the liner Ile de France "rushing at full speed, passed close to the lightship and the crew ... nervously watching its approach on radar having to crane their necks upward to see the name on the bow of the liner." A love for Nantucket shines through this chronicle of lights. The author quotes a young naval officer who was born on Nantucket and whose service in the late nineteenth century took him to another island - in a lake in India, to a maharajah's swnptuous compound, which, however, was infested with snakes and scorpions. He remarked to his wife, "I would not exchange the whole of this poisonous island with all its Palaces for standing room in Sauls Hills." SUMMER
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NHA NEWS
Susan Boardman has volunteered almost three hun-
Susan Boardman
dred hours since last fall in preparation for the exhibition "'Carefully Inwrought': Nantucket Needlework 1797-1997." Most of her time she has spent researching and cataloguing objects, including samplers and needlework accessories. Susan has also compiled a genealogy for every sampler-marker exhibited at Fair Street Museun1 using the sources available at the NHA's research center. Her interest in the subject allowed her to make some new discoveries regarding island needlework schools and teachers, information that has proven invaluable in learning more about Nantucket's past and the role women played at home while many of their husbands and fathers went whaling. Susan will be presenting some of the findings at her lecture, "Nantucket Samplers," to be held July 10 at 7 P.M. in the Quaker Meeting House. We would like to express our appreciation for Susan's generous efforts on behalf of the Association. Also in conjunction with the exhibition at Fair Street we will be hosting a lecture by Glee Krueger on August 14 entitled "New England Textiles." On September 13 we will host MassQuilts - a quilt docun1entation project. The public is invited to have pre-1950s quilts docw11ented for a research project by MassQuilts (reservations required). The Musewn Shop is offering sampler kits inspired by originals on exhibit. Please call the offices at 508-228-1894 for further information about the exhibition, lectures, or kits.
at the opening of
Historic Preservation at the Quaker Meeting House What started out this spring as a small painting project at the Quaker Meeting House grew into a fascinating reconstruction process with a number of historically significant discoveries. As part of the ongoing repair and preservation of NHA properties, director of museums and curator Michael Jehle and curator of structures Rick Morcom decided it was time to paint the ceiling and walls of the Quaker Meeting House. To complete the job, it was necessary to remove the wooden pews, which produced the first discovery: the lower portion of the walls of the 1838 building were not painted gray, as first thought, but had been left natural with painted graining added for decorative purposes. HISTORIC
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'"Carefully Inwrought': Nantucket Needlework 1797-1997."
After analysis, we hired Kevin Paulsen, an island faux-finish artist, to grain the walls from the windowsills down. Above the windows, the walls and the loft were to remain gray. So we sent off a paint sample for historic matching. The results came back with a color that would have been available in the late nineteenth century. "We wanted to be sure we were painting with a color that was available in 1865 when the building was first used as a meeting house," said Morcom. Morcom spent most of the spring painstakingly scraping and sanding the old plaster walls of the meeting house. Doing the work, he discovered two more intriguing artifacts. When preparing the walls at the front of the building he found a fid - an iron tool that was used for splicing line and cable- under the raised platform. He decided to investigate further and found a long wooden box containing about a hundred glass negatives, which Peter MacGlashan and Michael Jehle found to be Daguerreotype portraits dating from the 1840s - all in perfect condition. All in all it was a fascinating spring at the Quaker Meeting House. The interior restoration is significant and beautiful and we invite members to have a look. We also wish to thank the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and Edward Tash for their grant and the Religious Society of Friends for its support of the project. Without those contributions the restoration would not have been possible.
The painting and reconstruction have made a dramatic difference at the Quaker Meeting House.
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license he has also worked as a free-lance navigator for sailing races. He also has his pilot's license. Film and video production is yet another interest for Moran. Happy to be involved with th e NHA, Moran is looking forward to making Nantucket his permanent home. Marie Henke joined the staff in June as receptionist and secretary. A graduate of the University of Oregon's Master's Progran1 in Urban and Regional Planning, Henke has worked for the Nantucket Planning Commission, architects, builders, and surveyors and is looking forward to learning more about historic preservation. A year-round resident since 1974, Henke lives with her husband and cat down the road from the Old Mill. Comet Hale-Bopp as seen by photographer Rick Morcom at the Old Mill
New Publication NHA docents are now producing a newsletter of their own. The "Docent Gam " announces upcoming NHA events, provides updated information about NHA properties, and news about the docent staff. Our thanks to Mary Woodruff and Jenn Dowell!
Staff Promotions Jeremy Slavitz has been promoted to Coordinator of Public Programs. Due to Slavitz's initiative and responsibility, his role as docent coordinator has grown to include coordinating the children's programs, group tours, and lecture series. He will also coordinate efforts with other local nonprofit organizations and schools, plan for an expansion of the education programs, develop a varied concert and lecture series, and continue to coordinate the successful sixth-grade program. Slavitz will retain his docent-coordinator responsibilities, which include recruiting, hiring, and supervising the interpretive staff. Originally a swnmer docent in 1992 while at tending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Slavitz has been the docent coordinator since 1993.
New Staff Tim Moran was hired as the Maintenance Assistant in May. Moran has spent his life summering in Madaket and fondly remembers being chased through the dunes as a child by Madaket Millie. Since graduating in 1993 from the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, Rhode Island, Moran has worked as a property manager for various real estate companies in Rhode Island. With his captain's
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Antiques Show Planning for the 1997 August Antiques Show is well under way. This year celebrates the 20th anniversary of this major NHA fundraiser. The dates of the show are August 8-10 at the Nantucket High School. The Preview Party will be held on Thursday, August 7. The Antiques Show lecture sponsored by the Friends of the NHA will take place on Monday, August 4. We are fortunate to have Dr. Malcolm Rogers, Director of the Mu seum of Fine Arts, Boston, as this year 's lecturer. The title of Dr. Rogers 's lecture is "American Museums Today: A Personal View. " The chair for this year's show is Carolyn MacKenzie and the theme will once again center on the collections of the NHA. The focus will be on the whaling journals and logbooks, highlighting several drawings and paintings from ships such as the Washington , the Edward Carey, and the Nauticon . Chase Manhattan P rivate Bank has agreed to be the title sponsor for the show. We have also received an additional sponsorship from Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. For additional information, please call th e NHA offices at (508) 228-1894.
Progress Report Joan Clarke and Patty Hanley, who are doing yeoman duty at the keyboard, report that computerization of the "Eliza Starbuck Barney Genealogical Record" has progressed through the Macy family (that was a long one), bringing input to completion midway through the fourth of six volwnes. Creating the database at the computer is a triun1ph of technology; still, there is something to be said for reading in Mrs. Barney's fine hand entries like these: "Isaac, SUMME R
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NHA NEWS
single. He was shot by the Spaniards in South America"; "Tristram, d. single. He was lost at sea on his way to London" ; "Timothy was lost at sea in Sir Cloudesly Shovel's fleet"; "Phebe, single. She was drowned at Mattaket"; "Emeline married George Bolles, a stranger, of Springfield"; "John m. Bethial Folger, d. of Peter and Mary. John and Bethiah were lost in the sound coming from the Vineyard." The study of genealogical records can be a dry-asdust enterprise, but Mrs. Barney's notations (there are not many happy ones) humanize the families, and we mourn with them, even at this far remove. The project is being funded by a grant from the Tupancy-Harris Foundation.
Century American Art, by Elizabeth A. Schultz The Light of the Home, by Harvey Green Volunteer Opportunities Support the NHA with a commitment of your time and energy. Numerous projects in the library and curatorial departments are in need of a volunteer's interest and enthusiasm. Volunteers are important because they assist in enhancing the organization and accessibility of the NHA's collections. Volunteering provides a unique opportunity to learn more about the NHA's extensive holdings of artifacts, books, and manuscripts, as well as the island's history. Volunteers are needed to:
Thank You The following titles were not in our wish list but were provided by the library for the people cited who wished to donate a book.
Cece Bibby John Paul Jones and the Ranger, edited by Joseph G. Sawtelle
Earle and Dottie Craig Girlhood Embrozdery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850, by Betty Ring Jim and Colette Abbott Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislavery Movement, by Jane and Willian1 H. Pease Jonathan Folger Swain Frederick Douglass, by William S. McFeely Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-
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• • • • • • • •
Index ships' logs Create indexes to several research resources Assist in answering research and reference queries Organize files of newsclippings on Nantucket history Catalog photographs Develop prints in the darkroom Arrange and describe the John Welch Magazine Collection Inventory and catalog sections of the decorative-arts collection at the Gosnold Support Center
For more information on volunteer opportunities and how you can get involved, please contact the librarian, Betsy Lowenstein, at 228-1894, or the registrar, Ain1ee Newell, at 325-7885.
MEMORIAM
he trustees and staff of the Nantucket Historical Association join \vith the community in mourning the loss of two beloved and respected citizens - Alcon Chadwick and Louise R. Hussey, who died in the same week in May. Born on a farm in Polpis in 1904, Mr. Chadwick was for many years associated with the NHA as a trustee and advisor, loyally supporting our mission and offering advice in his quiet, gentlemanly manner.
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Mrs. Hussey, born in Fairhaven in 1901, was the NHA librarian for more than a quarter of a century. In 1982, the University of Massachusetts/Boston awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree "for the extent of her knowledge and her professional command of research methods." Even as late as the past winter, library staff was heard to say "Maybe we should ask Louise Hussey." Alcon and Louise: Nantucket is the better for their having been here, and the poorer for their passing.
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Living History
for Children Have you ever wondered what it was like to live on Nantucket in the past? The Nantucket Historical Association is pleased to offer hands-on activities based on island life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Programs offered in July and August:
Tuesday: The Whale Fishery Learn the skills necessary to sign on for a whaling voyage. Children will "learn the ropes" by creating a knot board and see how whales were captured and processed by Nantucket Whalemen.
Wednesday: Colonial Life Children will begin at the Old Mill where they will help the miller grind corn. They will then walk to the Oldest House where they will bake bread on the open hearth and explore colonial life.
Friday: Whaling Lore Children will follow the voyages of the Nantucket whalemen as they travel round the world. Each child will make a Sailor's Valentine, a popular maritime souvenir from the nineteenth century. Each program is offered as a two-hour session twice each day at 10 A.M. and 2 P.M. Space in each session is limited to ten children aged &-10. Reservations required. Cost $20 per child. $15 for members of the Nantucket Historical Association. For more information, call508-228-1894.