Historic Nantucket
SPRING 2013 VOLUME 63, NO. 1
A PUBLICATION OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Representative
Lives
Samuel
Haynes Jenks
Writer, Editor, Mapmaker
Jedidah
Lawrence
Robert
Mooney
Eileen
McGrath
NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Historic Nantucket A PUBLICATION OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
4
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Jason A. Tilroe, VICE
|
Vol. 63, No. 1
Samuel Haynes Jenks Newspaperman, writer, and leading public
Janet L. Sherlund, PRESIDENT Kenneth L. Beaugrand, VICE
Spring 2013
figure on Nantucket during the rise and
PRESIDENT
PRESIDENT
fall of the Golden Age
William J. Boardman, TREASURER BLAIR DEBORAH NEWCOMB
William R. Congdon, CLERK Josette Blackmore
9
Anne Marie Bratton
Jedidah Lawrence Tragedy and resilience in the private life
William R. Camp, FRIENDS OF THE NHA PRESIDENT
of one nineteenth-century Nantucketer
Chip Carver
ELIZABETH OLDHAM
Constance Cigarran Michael Cozort
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Franci N. Crane
Robert F. Mooney
Denis H. Gazaille
A profile of one of Nantucket’s leading
Nancy A. Geschke
twentieth-century historians, public figures,
Whitney A. Gifford
and “storytellers”
Georgia Gosnell, TRUSTEE
EMERITA
KENNETH ROMAN
Kathryn L. Ketelsen FRIENDS OF THE NHA REPRESENTATIVE
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William Little
Eileen P. McGrath
Mary D. Malavase
A life of service as educator,
Sarah B. Newton
librarian, and “sage”
Anne S. Obrecht
BETSY T YLER
Laura C. Reynolds Kennedy Richardson L. Dennis Shapiro
3
Phoebe Tudor
Exploring the Watery World WILLIAM J . TRAMPOSCH
EX OFFICIO
20
William J. Tramposch
Nantucket History Course at NHS CLAIRE WHITE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
22 Benjamin Simons
News Notes
EDITOR
Elizabeth Oldham COPY EDITOR
Eileen Powers/Javatime Design DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION
ON THE COVER: Samuel Haynes Jenks, 1839, oil on canvas, by Dominic W. Boudet (d. 1845), 1901.58.1; Jedidah
Lawrence, ca. 1850s; SC763-8; Robert F. Mooney, 1950s, SC892-12; Eileen P. McGrath, 1937, SC900-1. Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research; firsthand accounts; reminiscences of island experiences; historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers. ©2013 by the Nantucket Historical Association
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Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554 –1016; (508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228–5618, info@nha.org For information visit www.nha.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks.
FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Exploring the Watery World “ The world is upheld by the veracity of good men, they make the earth wholesome.” — RALPH WALDO EMERSON WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH
T
HESE WORDS APPEAR in the first of his series of lectures and essays, Representative Men. Now, before half of our modern readers take exception, I emphasize that this is what Emerson wrote. It was he who said “representative men,” and it was he who wrote only of such “men”: Plato, Shakespeare, and Goethe, to name a few. From its beginnings, the Nantucket Historical Association has recorded and celebrated the contributions of people. This issue of Historic Nantucket looks at some of those “representative” men and women, whose lives unfolded both here on island and elsewhere, and whose “veracity” “upholds” us still. As “representative” Nantucketers, they are—by definition—like so many others who have done as much, or perhaps even more. The biographical sketches that follow are not in the mode of “the best of the best.” They portray individuals who represent (thus include) so many of us, for we are kindred spirits in this work. Intentionally, I said both here and elsewhere. I chose those words, because, as this issue of Historic Nantucket goes to press, I have just come back from “elsewhere”: Mangonui, New Zealand. This tiny town is tucked beside a narrow but deep harbor in the center of New Zealand’s Far North District, just northwest of the famous Bay of Islands. I had been asked to assist for a week with a fascinating project there—a small but significant whaling museum called Butler Point. Here sits the original home of William Butler, who, in the mid-nineteenth century, built a provisioning store that serviced the legions of whaleships arriving from America at the height of the Golden Age of whaling. In fact, between the years of 1850–60 (the heart of our so-called “American Renaissance”), Butler and his hospitable family welcomed the crews of more than 250 whaleships. Even more amazingly, in January of 1852, this tiny harbor was the temporary reprovisioning home to twenty-seven New England whaleships, several of them out of Nantucket! That is 800 whalemen, by the way, and if you were to see the diminutive scale of this rural outpost today it would boggle your imagination. Butler had imagination. He knew that if he built, they would come. His story is a fascinating one . . . for another day. This introductory note is about “representative men,” and Mr. Butler was followed by one of whom we definitely need to take note— Dr. Lindo Ferguson. About a hundred years after the peak of whaling in these harbors, Dr. Ferguson and his wife, Laetitia, arrived at Butler Point. These several hundred acres, redolent of history and natural beauty,
captured their imaginations; since they bought the property in the 1970s, they have labored in its meadows, orchards, and hillsides. They focused first on the original family home, the main attraction of Butler Point, transforming it into a small gem of a whaling museum that captures and tells the stories of a time when this place—this harbor—played a key role on the world stage. Now, forty years later, the restoration is exacting, the gardens are beautifully kept, and to see Butler Point today is to witness the power of historical imagination. So vivid was the whaling past to Lindo Ferguson that Butler Point now virtually reverberates » DR. LINDO FERGUSON with history—a history that links Nantucket and New England with a then-nascent New Zealand. Lindo Ferguson and his Butler Point family were my hosts as I worked alongside them to recover some of these stories, and to design the best ways to tell them. There is no shortage of tales to tell. These bays and inlets, I believe, were more familiar to Nantucket and New Bedford whalemen than, perhaps, their own Madaket or Mattapoisett. Nantucketers, Melville wrote, “explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it.” Lindo Ferguson knew this from the start. His vision and imagination merged to recreate an inspiring place in the New Zealand (and Nantucket) cultural landscape. As I write this, I smile to know that twelve time zones away, from the tip of Butler Point, and literally catching the first rays of a new day, flies a Nantucket flag. Lindo Ferguson, ninety years old this day, is truly a “representative man,” a kindred spirit to Nantucketers, and a reminder of a time when the seas were our highways and Nantucket was the very center of the world’s first global industry.
WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH NHA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Spring 2013 | 3
Samuel
Haynes Jenks By
Blair
Deborah
Newcomb
T
of Samuel Haynes Jenks (1789–1863) now on display in the Island Life exhibit at the Hadwen & Barney Oil & Candle Factory shows a handsome, prosperous, and self-assured man in the prime of life. The inkwell and paper in the background symbolize his profession: they are tools of the writing trade. By the time he sat for this portrait by Dominic Boudet in 1839, Jenks had established himself as the influential and sometimes controversial editor of the Nantucket Inquirer, a post he held off and on for many years beginning in October 1822, eventually becoming the publisher and owner as well. Over the course of a long career, Jenks was also a teacher, postmaster, auctioneer, and part owner of the Atlantic Silk Company, a local business that operated with some success from 1836 to ca. 1844. He represented Nantucket in the Massachusetts legislature, as senator in 1835 and representative in 1839 and 1840, and played numerous other leadership roles in the political, religious, and cultural life of the island. Jenks also spent several years editing and publishing newspapers in New York and Boston. In 1824, he took his first leave of absence from the Inquirer and spent a few months in New York editing the National Union, a weekly that supported William Crawford for president in the 1824 election. HE FINE PORTRAIT
Âť SAMUEL HAYNES JENKS, 1839, OIL ON CANVAS, BY DOMINIC W. BOUDET (D. 1845). Gift of Carrie Bartlett Nicholson and Robert E.Bartlett, 1901.58.1
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Jenks definitely led a creative and interesting life, but it was by no means a carefree one. As a young man he faced personal tragedy, burying three beloved wives between 1814 and 1822. In a poem published in 1829 he asked a question that surely arose from his own experience of loss: O! May we not weep for the loved who have fled From our presence on earth, though their home be in heaven;
When Jenks left the paper in November 1827, his farewell editorial suggests not only the price he paid for taking unpopular stands on a regular basis but also his pride in doing so:
And may not our tears at the grave of the dead,
In the prosecution of my task as
When flowing in silence and hope, be forgiven?
editor hereof, it has been my lot to be buffeted around somewhat
When Jenks and his fourth wife, Martha Washington Coffin, were married in 1823, he was the bereaved father of three children, the youngest a baby just four months old. Happily, he and Martha went on to have a long marriage and to be the parents of five children who grew up alongside their halfsiblings. In the professional realm, Jenks experienced both success and failure. He built up the Inquirer and its circulation as Nantucket grew and prospered in the early nineteenth century. At the time of his death, the paper’s editor wrote,
rudely, on account of certain sentiments which I have ventured
»
MARTHA WASHINGTON
to promulgate in relation to
COFFIN JENKS, 1839, OIL ON
matters of local policy—and
CANVAS, BY DOMINIC W. BOUDET
particularly with regard to the
(D. 1845).
establishment of Free Schools in
Gift of Carrie Bartlett Nicholson and Robert E.Bartlett, 1901.58.2
this town. This object, fraught with such immense importance to the community and to the rising generation, after ten years’ exertion
His editorials were ever attractive, and those of a controversial
among its advocates, has at length
nature were so spiced with wit, piquancy and satire, as to cause
been effected. [NOVEMBER 10, 1827]
his numerous readers to anticipate the appearance of the Inquirer from week to week with an interest bordering on to impatience. [SEPTEMBER 30, 1863]
He would return in 1833, after spending the intervening years as an editor at various papers off- island. The Inquirer was a thriving business when he sold it in 1841 for $2,950 in order to take up the job of postmaster. In 1846, however, he edited another Nantucket newspaper, the short-lived Warder, which folded in less than a year. In the Warder’s pages, Jenks took an entrenched position in his editorials against the integration of Nantucket schools, at a time when the town was bitterly torn over »
SKETCH OF THE NORTH SIDE OF LOWER MAIN STREET BEFORE AND AFTER THE GREAT FIRE, 1975, BY CLAY LANCASTER (1917–2000), PRINT. NHA Collection. MS1000-4-3-1
Spring 2013 | 5
SAMUEL HAYNES JENKS this critical issue. He also clashed with John Morrissey, the current editor of the Inquirer, concerning the terms of its sale five years earlier, specifically as to whether Jenks was permitted to begin a rival business on the island. He and Martha endured financial misfortune as well: in 1848, after having moved permanently to Boston, they lost their Union Street house to foreclosure. Yet Jenks seems to have faced the challenges and even setbacks of life with a resilient temperament and wry sense of humor. In a letter dated June 1833 he told his friend Nahum Capen, a Boston bookseller and publisher: I am rubbing along here, between wind and water—endeavoring by rigid economy and hardfisted industry to find food, lodging and raiment for my numerous dependants. . . . If I can do this, I suppose I ought to deem myself fortunate, after so many cuffs and buffetings about [by] this rascally world.
Jenks was born and raised in Boston and adopted Nantucket as his home when he was a young man. We do not know the precise sequence of events that led him to settle on Nantucket in 1819, though it is clear that once having arrived he became a compelling presence in the community. Family ties undoubtedly played a part. His father, Samuel Sr., moved at some point from Boston to Nantucket; his first wife, Polly Way, had died, and after 1802 he married Eunice Wyer, the widow of Joshua Swain. Their blended family eventually included twelve children. Jenks was a teacher before becoming a newspaperman. Advertisements in the Inquirer show the growth of the Franklin School, which he founded, and announced in July 1822 that he would “be assisted in his professional duties by an able instructress.” By September 1822, he had added an Evening School “for instruction in the common branches of education” and in November announced the first session of another venture—his evening class in the “Theory and Practice of Musick, vocal and instrumental.”
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He was an outspoken advocate of free schooling for all children (to clarify—though he would fight against school integration, he was for public funding of separate but equal schools). Whether Nantucket should provide schools at public expense was a topic hotly debated on the island during the early nineteenth century, this despite the fact that Massachusetts towns were required by law to do so. Jenks was out in front on this issue, first airing his views, under the pen name Quidam, in a series of three articles that appeared in the Nantucket Weekly Magazine in July 1817. He argued that education was the foundation of civil society: “[V]irtue and honour are never fashionable, except where a good education is generally promulgated.” When children are educated together, they will “imbibe a sameness of thinking and uniformity of reasoning which is productive of much subsequent harmony and friendship.” Some members of the community were most likely offended when he ventured beyond the abstract philosophy of education and touched on the delicate topic of religion as it affected the schools controversy. “Those who are Friends or Quakers, and those who are not, it is said will not assimilate. Their opinions differ, and their practice is at variance.” His solution to this dilemma? Establish separate schools if need be. If it be really the fact that religious scruples prevent the Friends from acceding to the plan of intermixing their children with those of other persuasions at a common school, let a committee be appointed . . . to ascertain the relative proportion of taxes paid by those belonging to each persuasion; and to recommend a suitable mode for the proper division of the same.
Jenks was a key player at a turning point in the history of education on Nantucket, when Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin visited the island in 1826 and was a guest in the Union Street home of William and Deborah Coffin. Like Jenks, Mr. Coffin was devoted to the cause of public schools. He had served on a committee that investigated the issue in 1818 and recommended that the town raise funds by taxation to teach those children “whose
parents, in our opinions, are unable to give them even the first rudiments of an education.” It was during this visit that the admiral decided to endow a school for the descendants of Tristram Coffin—a group that included many, though not all, of the children on the island. Jenks naturally would have had a chance to share his views on education with the illustrious guest: Samuel and Martha Jenks lived at 20 Union Street, right across the street from Martha’s parents, William and Deborah Coffin. Other Coffin relatives lived close by, forming a sort of family compound that was typical of Nantucket at this time. Years later, in October 1839, Jenks spoke at an education association meeting and told how Sir Isaac Coffin had been persuaded to endow the school.
ancestor of the Coffin race in America; and besides, added he, who knows that the example will not itself stimulate the people of Nantucket, to the exhibition of a corresponding spirit?”
In May 1827, the town finally appropriated funds to establish public schools, and in June the Coffin School was incorporated by the Massachusetts legislature. Jenks’s mission to promote education and selfimprovement extended beyond schools per se. Early in 1823, he set up the Commercial Reading and News Room, a clearinghouse for information that was adjacent to his
It chanced to be my fortune to be one of those to whom he [the Admiral] confided his desire to do something, as he expressed himself, for the benefit of his kinsmen in this place, so that when he finally came to anchor, his name might not be forgotten. He had at first no particular plan in his mind. . . . But upon being apprized [sic] of the existing deficiency in regard to schools, and it having been suggested to him that the singular bequest of Dr. Franklin in behalf of the Boston public schools, though small in amount originally, was so devised as to call his name into fresh remembrance at every annual examination, he remarked, “Well, I do not know that I can better secure a monument to my memory than by endowing a School which shall forever bear my name, and be consecrated to the use of the descendants of the common
»
MAP OF THAT PORTION OF THE TOWN OF NANTUCKET DESTROYED BY FIRE, 1846, BY SAMUEL H. JENKS (1789–1863), PRINT. Gift of Elizabeth and William Guardenier. 2008.8002.1 NONA
»
SKETCH OF THE NORTH SIDE OF LOWER MAIN STREET BEFORE AND AFTER THE GREAT FIRE, 1975, BY CLAY LANCASTER (1917–2000), PRINT. NHA Collection. MS1000-4-3-1
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SAMUEL HAYNES JENKS newspaper office. Open daily from morning until night, it offered newspapers “from all the states in the Union” and many journals, as well as a “newsbook” “in which all marine and other information relative to this place, or interesting to subscribers, will be faithfully registered.” The fee was four dollars per annum for subscribers to the Inquirer and five dollars for others. Jenks argued early and often against the law requiring imprisonment for debt. Well into the nineteenth century debtors who could not pay their creditors went to prison, even when no fraud was involved. Ironically—since they were more or less penniless—debtors were required to pay for their own food and lodging, unlike ordinary criminals whose room and board were provided. In an editorial called “Punishment for Poverty” [March 11, 1823] he wrote:
Jenks attracted attention in the wider literary world, too, not just in the realm of newspapers per se. In September 1835 he received a letter from Park Benjamin, the editor of New England Magazine, a quality literary periodical published monthly in Boston from 1831 to 1835. Dear Sir: Will you write for the New England Magazine? This is an abrupt request but one which I have long intended to make. I am now reminded of my wish to address you on this subject by reading in the Nantucket Inquirer a capital sketch headed “A City Sabbath.” Can you not favor my periodical with the like or must your whole effort be concentrated on your journal? . . . I trust that you take an interest in its welfare and for the sake of New England literature (we must not let the New Yorkers beat us) you will be disposed to lend your valuable aid.
We can make nothing else of it: for, crime is punished by imprisonment; imprisonment is inflicted on poor debtors; ergo, POVERTY IS A CRIME!
As a representative to the state legislature in 1839, Jenks introduced a bill to abolish the practice in Massachusetts. Jenks’s reputation as an eloquent writer extended beyond Nantucket’s shores. In a letter dated October 27, 1837, Nathaniel Silsbee (U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, 1826 –34) wrote to him: I received by this morning’s mail the Nantucket Inquirer of the 25 instant, and the object of this scrawl is to assure you that I think your obituary notice of the late unfortunate David Barton Esq. of Missouri, one of the most perfect delineations of the kind that I have ever read. You must have seen much of Mr. Barton to enable you to give so correct a description of his powers and his peculiarities.
Unfortunately, we don’t know how Jenks responded to this request. In any event, only a few more issues of the magazine were published before it merged with another periodical; he is not listed as an author in any of the final issues. In 1846, he and Martha left Nantucket and moved to Boston, where he continued his newspaper career until a few years before his death in 1863. His obituary in the Boston Journal lists among his accomplishments that he served as State Insurance Commissioner and was senior warden of St. Matthew’s Church, where his funeral was held. Martha lived at their home in South Boston until she died in 1887. In conclusion, Jenks clearly loved and promoted Nantucket long before it became a popular destination for tourists. In the summer of 1833 he urged Nahum Capen to visit the island. “Friend Capen,” he wrote: This place (in reply to your inquiry) will please you
Politics became theater when seen through the eyes of Jenks:
amazingly for a few weeks’ or months’ residence. We have fine air and everything comfortable. Pray come and see us. Take
Mr. B. was one of the most extraordinary men among the
the stage to New Bedford —then the steamer for this place.
many eminent characters included in the memorable 21st
The jaunt will be pleasant, and your visit, I will assure you,
Congress. During the session of 1829–1830, when some of the
agreeable and happy. You can have fine rides, fishing
most agitating political questions were largely discussed in
excursions, Squantums and good society. We have 7000
that body, we had frequent opportunities to hear the
people, 5 churches, 3 banks, and all that. Pray come, and
outpourings of his singularly powerful mind . . . the words
bring Mrs. C. also, without fail.
seemed to drop from him, full of weight and woe, like
In great haste,
cannon balls silently rolled from the ramparts of some closely
Yours truly,
besieged fortress. Quietly but irresistibly grasping his political
Jenks
opponents, and especially his then colleague [presumably Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri], as it were with the
BLAIR DEBORAH NEWCOMB, PH.D., AN INDEPENDENT
grip of a Cyclops, he would gradually crush, grind, pulverise,
SCHOLAR, IS A DIRECT DESCENDANT OF MARTHA JENKS’S
and annihilate their positions and arguments. [THE INQUIRER,
BROTHER, WILLIAM COFFIN JR., WHO WAS THE FIRST PRINCIPAL
OCTOBER 25, 1837]
OF THE COFFIN SCHOOL.
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Jedidah LAWRENCE
By Elizabeth Oldham
JEDIDAH (SWAIN) LAWRENCE (1777–1861) was one of those nineteenth-century Nantucket women whose resilience and fortitude in the face of hardship and tragedy transformed them into legendary figures. The fourth of nine children born to Francis and Mary (Paddack) Swain, she was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Peter Folger in the line of his daughter Experience, who married John Swain. Perhaps it was those formidable Folger genes that kicked in when Jedidah’s misfortunes began to accumulate. Little is known of her childhood and young adult life, but because the Swains were members of the Society of Friends, it can be assumed that Jedidah was educated in the conventional Quaker manner and thus imbued with the rigorous piety, respectability, and industry that marked the Friends’ way of life. At the age of twenty-one, Jedidah married James Lawrence, whose father, George, had come to Nantucket as a mariner from Alexandria, Virginia, and married Judith Coffin—whose line made Jedidah’s husband the great-great-great grandson of Tristram Coffin! Perhaps Jedidah’s and James’s relationship to the First Settlers was not so unusual, considering the fecundity of both Peter Folger and Tristram Coffin, but to come upon such a dual lineage in researching this brief biographical sketch was more than a little spine-tingling. It may be that James followed his father’s trade as mariner, either as a whaler or in the coastal trade, and he appears to have been successful enough to support his growing family—five children being born between 1801 and 1807. We do not know what motivated the family in 1809 to prepare for a move to Alexandria, Virginia, birthplace of James’s father. It may be that there was family property awaiting them, or a business opportunity not to be ignored. In any case, in September of that year, James and his daughter Sally, eight years old, embarked with most of the family’s household goods on a coastal packet bound for Virginia, intending to settle in and return to Nantucket for the rest of the family. Because Jedidah’s sixth pregnancy was well advanced, it was considered imprudent for her to travel with them. Not long after the vessel’s departure, news came that it had run into heavy weather, had foundered, and was never heard from—all aboard having drowned. On Christmas Day, 1809, Jedidah gave birth to triplets— two boys and a girl. There she was—a young widow with four children under ten and three tiny babies (incidentally, the first such birth recorded on Nantucket). She knew she would have to make her way; so, possibly with some family money and probably with the help of friends, she set herself up as a shopkeeper selling dry goods and groceries. The
location of her original store has not been determined, but we do » JEDIDAH LAWRENCE (1777–1861), CIRCA 1850s. Scan gift of David Barrett, SC763–8 know that she was a successful businesswoman, making periodic trips to Boston to replenish her inventory. After the Great Fire of 1846 had decimated the business section of Centre Street, Jedidah was able to purchase the lot at the corner of Centre and Pearl Streets, where she built a two-story building and conducted her own business, renting out space to other merchants. Her enterprise flourished for a time until some stiff competition came along and she decided to give up her store and take in boarders. An inheritance had made it possible for her to buy a house at the corner of Main and Howard Streets, where the Homestead now stands, and there she reared her family. Inheriting all those formidable genes evidently helped her children to become respected and responsible citizens. Her son Benjamin was one of the survivors of the Essex disaster (and here another constellation arises; he was the grandfather of Leander Alley, one of Nantucket’s Civil War heroes). All of the triplets married and had children and lived through their seventies. The girl triplet, Mary, was the mother of Harriet Anne (Paddack) Folger, b. 1843, who wrote a reminiscence of her grandmother that is in the NHA’s manuscript collection and provides intimate and loving insights into the life of this extraordinary woman. Harriet visited her grandmother in the house on Main Street and recorded details of her later life: e.g., Grandmother Lawrence bought a little house in ’Sconset, in order, she said, “that she might be beside the burial place of her beloved husband and child.” Harriet writes: Naturally I knew her only when she was old and broken by the overwhelming sorrows of life. In her last years nature softened for her by giving back a child mind. To us it seemed sadness, to her perhaps release of life’s tensions. . . . As I write, the memory of it all clings and I pay to her today the tribute of the years that have passed. . . . As I look at the beautiful picture that hangs gold framed in my own home, I find that the gold is a fitting halo for the serene and glorified face it surrounds and I tenderly and reverently say,“My grandmother.” ELIZABETH OLDHAM IS RESEARCH ASSOCIATE IN THE NHA’S RESEARCH LIBRARY AND COPY EDITOR OF HISTORIC NANTUCKET.
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THE
STORYTELLER
{} and
HIS story
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It is July 13—a date the gravelly voice on PBS radio pronounces
authoritatively as “the most important day in Nantucket history, the day of the Great Fire of 1846 that destroyed one-third of downtown and marked the end of Nantucket as the whaling capital of the world.”
N AN T U C K E T ’ S
B O B
N OBODY IS MORE QUALIFIED to deliver that definitive judgment than Robert F. Mooney, native son and storytelling historian, whose own story is uniquely wrapped in Nantucket history. Bob Mooney’s family came to Nantucket in 1851, when on December 18 his great-grandparents were shipwrecked in the Muskeget Channel. They were aboard the full-rigged British Queen, which had sailed from Dublin, headed for New York and carrying Irish families fleeing the potato famine. It was one of the so-called “coffin ships” of the period, in which many passengers died from malnutrition or from typhus, which spread easily through the overcrowded vessels. The British Queen ran aground in a blinding storm that had pushed it off-course. Surf was pounding, and ice was forming in the sound. A lookout in the South Tower spotted the ship’s distress signal—the Union Jack flying upside down from the mainmast—but rescuers couldn’t get there until the storm abated. After two hellish days and nights, all 226 immigrants were rescued by Nantucketers in schooners (there was no Coast Guard in those days) and brought ashore to be put up in public halls—the original “wash-ashores.” On Christmas day, most of the Irish packed up and boarded the steamboat Telegraph for the first leg of their journey to New York, their original destination. Most, but not all: After eight miserable weeks at sea and two nights of terror, newly married Robert and Julia Mooney had seen enough saltwater for a lifetime and refused to board another ship. Instead, they settled on Nantucket as tenant farmers off the Polpis Road. Robert made a brief trip across the sound when he was eighty; Julia never went to “America.” Today’s descendant of the shipwrecked Mooneys, Bob is a familiar presence on island—lawyer, former State Representative, respected citizen—and a highly regarded historian, author of seven books and numerous articles on Nantucket history. He’s a regular on the Main Street bench with Max Berry, who calls him “the unofficial mayor of Nantucket.” The British Queen quarter-board marks his home on Orange Street.
M O O N E Y
BY KENNETH ROMAN
» LAWRENCE F. MOONEY, LEFT, AND HIS SON ROBERT F. MOONEY AS U.S. NAVY OFFICER CANDIDATE AT THEIR 46 WEST CHESTER STREET HOUSE, WITH BRITISH QUEEN QUARTERBOARD ABOVE THE DOOR, 1952. Scan gift of Frances Karttunen, SC902-1.
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N A N T U C K E T ’ S
B O B
M O O N E Y
THE SHIPWRECKED M O O N E Y. . . wanted nothing to do with the old country. He declared himself an American (signing his naturalization papers with an X) and never looked back. Bob’s grandfather grew vegetables on one side of the farm (now Slosek’s) and pastured dairy cows on the other. Bob’s father worked as a farmer before joining the police force, serving for thirty-nine years— the last seventeen as chief. The day Bob graduated from Nantucket High School was “the proudest day of my father’s life.” Bob grew up on the island, went to the Academy Hill School, worked in Mac’s Pharmacy (now Nantucket Pharmacy) and Conrad’s Beach (now Cliffside), and delivered newspapers and groceries. A $500 high school scholarship paid half his tuition at Holy Cross, where he waited on tables and majored in political science. At twenty-one, he joined the Navy and went to Korea on a destroyer, the USS Lowry. Impressed by Bob’s Nantucket heritage, the captain made him first lieutenant in charge of deck seamanship. “He thought I knew a lot about saltwater. I didn’t at the time, but I learned.” Bob also learned about leadership. One day, the skipper told him that he wanted to have the forward deck painted. Bob relayed that message to the chief bosun’s mate, who replied that his men were busy and they would do it the next day. Hearing this, according to Bob, the captain said, “‘Mr. Mooney, when you’ve been in the Navy a little longer, you will learn that the U.S. Navy is not a democratic institution.’ So I got the message, and the deck was painted.” After three years in the Navy, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill and enrolled at Harvard Law School. “Most Holy Cross graduates became doctors, lawyers, or priests. I knew I couldn’t do two of those,” he explains. While still in law school, Bob married Lee McGrady (now Lee Rand Burne), who says he was freckle-faced and blonde as a little boy; as a young man, he was “handsome, like Spencer Tracy.” That marriage lasted nine years, and he then married Betty Bowker and lived in their house on Lower Orange Street for forty years until she died in 2006. They had three adopted children, all boys. One son, Rob, lives next door with his wife Erika who grew up in ’Sconset
» FROM TOP: ROBERT F. MOONEY AS A CHILD WITH HIS FATHER LAWRENCE F. MOONEY ON MOONEY FARM, POLPIS ROAD, 1932, gift of Robert F. Mooney, P21897; NANTUCKET HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 1948 IN WASHINGTON D.C., gift of Robert F. Mooney, P21787; LTJG ROBERT F. MOONEY, CA. 1955, scan gift of Robert F. Mooney, SC892-12; MOONEY WITH SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY, CA. 1960s, scan gift of Robert F. Mooney, SC892-1.
12 | Historic Nantucket
(Bob said he “always told his sons to marry someone from out of town”). Bob’s grandchildren, Robbie and Marin, complete the family compound. In 1958, during his second year in law school, Bob successfully ran for Nantucket’s representative to the Great and General Court of Massachusetts (House of Representatives) as a Democrat, at a time when there were only two hundred Democrats on the island. These were the exciting Kennedy years and Bob got to know Jack before he ran for President, and Ted, who frequently sailed to the island and visited the Wharf Rats. Harvard questioned whether Bob could handle school and politics at the same time, but he pointed out that the legislature met in the afternoon and his classes were in the morning, so they kept him on so long as he maintained his grades. Bob ran against two Republicans and won by 130 votes, becoming the youngest state representative and the only Democratic representative ever elected on Nantucket. When he graduated from Harvard Law with honors, Dean Griswold marveled that no one else had ever managed to do what he did. A maverick in his home town, he was nominated by both parties in 1960 and was re-elected. “I was young and popular then,” he says. Bob’s terms in the House were marked by two landmark achievements for Nantucket: the first state-funded bike path, on Milestone Road, and changing the route of the Steamship Authority vessels serving Nantucket. We now take direct boat service for granted, but back then the ferry originated in New Bedford—the five-hour trip included stops in Woods Hole and Martha’s Vineyard and was exhausting and uneconomical, but New Bedford fought to stay on the line. Bob introduced a bill to drop New Bedford from the schedule, and the islands campaigned in its support. It finally passed in 1960, starting the postwar boom on Nantucket. “This will go down in history as a red-letter day for Nantucket and the Vineyard,” he correctly predicted. The idea for a bike path on the island came from President Eisenhower’s physician, Dr. Paul Dudley White, who instructed his famous patient to exercise after his heart attack while in office. Dr. White generated publicity for a healthy lifestyle by riding his bike everywhere, but when he vacationed on Nantucket, he found no good, safe place to ride. Bob went to work with his friend Morris Ernst, a prominent New York lawyer and summer resident, to remedy that. The first bill Bob proposed after being elected in 1958 was for a bike path to ’Sconset. Bob’s legal career on Nantucket included a twelve-year run as assistant district attorney and the high-profile trial of Joe Kennedy III, Bobby’s son, for a driving accident on the Polpis Road. He successfully prosecuted the case, saying: “Joe was found guilty and sentenced to Congress.” Bob’s writing career started with a “legal” history of Nantucket—The Nantucket Way (1980), coauthored with lawyer André Sigourney. More accurately, it is a social history of the island. It tells stories about, for instance, the attempt in 1977 to
» PORTRAIT OF ROBERT F. MOONEY BY FABIAN BACHRACH, CA. 1950s. Scan gift of Robert F. Mooney, SC892-4
secede from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Charles O’Conor, the New York attorney who retired to Nantucket after defending Jefferson Davis against the charge of treason; Daniel Webster coming to the island in 1828 and defending—and winning—every case on the docket. The Nantucket Way was followed in 1988 by his great-grandparents’ story, The Wreck of the British Queen. When historian Nat Philbrick first moved to Nantucket, he read Bob’s books about the island and became interested in Nantucket history. Philbrick says his best-selling Away Off-Shore
WE NOW TAKE DIRECT BOAT SERVICE FOR
GRANTED, BUT BACK THEN THE FERRY
ORIGINATED IN NEW BEDFORD—THE FIVEHOUR TRIP INCLUDED STOPS IN WOODS HOLE AND MARTHA’S VINEYARD
was influenced by the way Bob tells history through stories. Tales of Nantucket (1990) tells the stories of Nantucket mysteries, crimes, sea battles and shipwrecks, and its notable characters. The Advent of Douglass is a dramatization of the compelling story of the fugitive slave Frederick Douglass and his emotional first talk to a white audience in 1841 in the Great Hall of the Atheneum, which launched his career as an orator in the Abolitionist movement. The Civil War: The Nantucket Experience (1994), coauthored with Richard Miller, tells of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and the pacifist Elders of the Quaker Meeting, who disowned anyone who wore a uniform, bore arms, or served on armed vessels. Their antiwar sentiments were overridden by the Quaker belief in uplifting humanity, so they eventually became leaders in the antislavery movement in the North. The Civil War Spring 2012 | 13
N A N T U C K E T ’ S
B O B
M O O N E Y
NANTUCKET ONLY YESTERDAY (2000)
IS AN ISLAND VIEW OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY.
» FROM ABOVE: MOONEY WITH TIM RUSSERT AND REV. PAUL CARON, CA. 2000, SC892-15; BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE ON REP. MOONEY, DECEMBER 17, 1961; BOARD PRESIDENT MOONEY DURING THE 1990S NANTUCKET ATHENEUM RESTORATION, SC8928; MOONEY WITH RUSSELL BAKER, 2000, SC892-17. Scans gifts of Robert F. Mooney.
14 | Historic Nantucket
monument at the head of Main Street commemorates the seventy-three Nantucket soldiers and sailors who gave their lives. It starts in 1900, when Nantucketers had been lost to the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the lure of mainland jobs, and its population was down from its whaling era peak of 10,000 to just over 3,000. It chronicles the Great Fire of 1846, the 1896 storm that separated Great Point and Coatue from Coskata, the summer railroad from Steamboat Wharf to Surfside Beach and ’Sconset, the vacationing actors and actresses who founded the ’Sconset Actors Colony and performed in the Casino, the first motor vehicle on the island (a Stanley Steamer) in 1900, the Sankaty Head Golf Club in 1921, the first deer on the island (“Old Buck”) rescued just off-shore, the Nantucket Golf Links on Cliff Road, the Whaling Museum in 1930. It tells the stories of notable Nantucketers—Bill Macomber, Vito Capizzo, Bernie and Grace Grossman, and Rev. Ted Anderson—and concludes with the first sighting in the United States of the millenneum’s sunrise, in 2000. More Tales of Nantucket (2005) tells—well, more stories— including “Mornings on Main Street,” Bob’s personal memories of growing up on Nantucket. Then there are his Historic Nantucket and Nantucket Magazine articles on local lore — “The Nantucket [Folger’s] Coffee Connection,” Civil War hero General George Nelson Macy, William Chadwick’s mysterious real estate investment, the Nantucket Police Department, and the several ways to get to ’Sconset. Trained as a lawyer, Bob gets high marks as a writer. NHA research associate Libby Oldham, who worked in book publishing and copy-edited all his books, found “very little reason to correct, only stylistic emendations.” Always interested in books and libraries, Bob was easily persuaded when asked to go on the board of the Atheneum and then become its president. “There was not much going on, the place was only open from two to five in the afternoon.” The old building was suffering from benign neglect; “The old trustees wanted to preserve it so much they didn’t want to change anything.” Then engineers told him that the Greek Revival building was about to collapse, and it was clear a big fund-raising campaign was needed to restore it. Grace Grossman and Bill Macomber, with Bob, mobilized the board. “Grace was adamant that we do it ourselves—no off-island experts—and made me chairman of the thing.” “For two years, he did nothing else,” says Lee Burne, who assisted in the campaign. “The library had been limping along,” remembers Nancy Sevrens, who chaired the board at that time. “There were no new books. The librarian was paid a minimum wage. The place would have fallen apart if not for more money. We never would have
» MOONEY WITH DAVID MCCULLOUGH IN THE GREAT HALL OF THE NANTUCKET ATHENEUM, CA. JULY 6, 1996. Scan gift of Robert F. Mooney, SC892-13.1.
BOB SCORED A COUP IN BRINGING
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR DAVID MCCULLOUGH TO THE ISLAND FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE
RESTORED ATHENEUM ON JULY 6, 1996. gotten the money and moved ahead with the renovation without Bob.” With the help of architect Don Lethbridge and advertising executive Dick Mercer (who came up with the line “The heart of Nantucket”), Bob spearheaded the drive. The Atheneum had been a public library since 1900, but it was Bob who got it registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity and eligible for soliciting funds. “People don’t understand how Bob’s strategy and sensitivity helped to propel an island institution into the twenty-first century,” says Nat Philbrick, whom Mooney invited to join the board. “I don’t know who else could have done it. He made it happen. The negotiations were not all pretty. He launched a successful $3.5-million campaign when those were big numbers. And he dealt with issues like reducing green space in the garden for a children’s library. People didn’t want things to change, and he was respectful of the way it had been and how to do it. Nantucket is particularly hard, given the potency of its past.” Bob scored a coup in bringing Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author David McCullough to the island for the dedication of the restored Atheneum on July 6, 1996. Standing on the steps of the library, sun shining through his silver hair, McCullough told of how the original Atheneum went up in flames in the Great Fire of 1846 and was the first building to be built out of the ashes, and then went on about the role of free libraries in America. “Of all the great institutions in America maybe our public library system is the greatest. Everyone . . . has an absolutely equal access opportunity to the world through these rooms, these books, these periodicals, and now the wonders of electronic communications. And they are free. All free. That’s the magic of
it. . . . We must not take it for granted.” The entire speech hangs framed just inside the front door of the Atheneum; it’s well worth reading. Nat Philbrick describes the renovation and McCullough’s visit as a turning point for the library, and for the island. That Bob is no longer a trustee—he served ten years, president for seven, then president emeritus—has not diminished his interest. He still goes to the Atheneum almost every day, says executive director Molly Anderson, and makes his rounds. He checks on the staff, and they set aside new books for him—especially those on the Civil War. And there is Library Ladies Night, when Bob provides cocktails and hors d’oeuvres to thank the staff for the work they do. “The Atheneum is close to his heart,” Molly says gratefully. “He’s a wonderful friend of the library.” He was the first Nantucket representative on the State Board of Library Commissioners, and was honored with Nantucket’s Brightest Light Award of 1996 and Senior Citizen of the Year in 2008. Bob has been a great friend of the Nantucket Historical Association for many years, and is currently an NHA Research Fellow. The new Civil War exhibit at the Whaling Museum includes a portrait photograph of General George Nelson Macy that he donated. According to Ben Simons, Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator at the NHA, “Bob is simply, after Edouard Stackpole, the leading public historian of Nantucket in the postwar period.” That’s not all. Bob was president of the Nantucket Boys & Girls Club and, says Lucile Hays, was instrumental in moving the club to its current location on Sparks Avenue where it serves 200 to 300 kids in the winter. He was a founder of the Nantucket Conservation Association and the Nantucket Shipwreck & Life Saving Museum. He remains a force at St. Mary’s Church, where a stained-glass window is dedicated to his grandparents; he helped to raise the funds for the 1997–2000 renovation and still works the annual church fair. Several years ago, a reliable source called to tell NHA executive director Bill Tramposch the sad news that Bob had passed away the previous night. Bill was trying to hold back his tears when Mooney appeared at his office with a donation to the NHA. Bill said, perhaps imprudently, that he thought Bob had died. “Yeah, I hear that a lot,” Bob replied, “but I always seek a second or third opinion.” Bob is still around, living and telling Nantucket history—and reminding us why it is important. One cannot turn back the clock or the calendar. I do not believe the island should live in the past. I only hope to describe the island as it was, how and why it changed, so that the Nantucket of the future will never forget the Nantucket of the past. KENNETH ROMAN, A 32-YEAR SEASONAL RESIDENT OF MONOMOY, IS A FORMER CHAIRMAN OF OGILVY & MATHER WORLDWIDE AND AUTHOR OF SEVERAL BOOKS, INCLUDING A BIOGRAPHY OF DAVID OGILVY.
Spring 2013 | 15
»
EILEEN P. MCGRATH, TEENAGER, AND TODAY’S SAGE OF BURNT SWAMP, SC900-1-2; OPPOSITE: VIEW OF MCGRATH FAMILY HOME ON BURNT SWAMP LANE, PH76-11
16 | Historic Nantucket
Eileen P. McGrath: SAGE of
Eileen P. McGrath, self-proclaimed and universally endorsed Sage of Burnt Swamp, is, without a doubt, one of Nantucket’s most respected residents, known for her extraordinary memory, sparkling wit, and a love of Nantucket that is expressed in her involvement in a number of civic and charitable organizations. Her island story began July 1, 1923, when she was born at Nantucket Cottage Hospital—then located on West Chester Street in the cottages that gave the institution its name—to Thomas H. and Alice F. McGrath. Their third child, following Thomas Jr. and Mary, Eileen was the first of their children born on Nantucket and is proud of her native status; her brother Bobby was born on the island two years later. Both her parents were first-generation Irish in America: Eileen’s paternal grandfather immigrated from Waterford, Ireland, to Newton, Massachusetts, where he took care of horses for a wealthy family. Her maternal grandfather came to Canada from County Kerry, but moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he found work building the West Boston Bridge in the early 1900s. Consequently, Eileen was blessed with a double dose of the Irish, which shows in the twinkle in her eyes and her penchant for classic hand-knit Irish sweaters.
Burnt
By Betsy Tyler
Swamp Spring 2013 | 17
E I L E E N P. M C G R AT H Thomas and Alice McGrath began their married life in Somerville, Massachusetts, but in 1922 made their way to Nantucket where Thomas’s sister, Margaret, had relocated more than a decade earlier when she came to the island to work as a nursemaid. Attracting the attention of three local suitors during her stay, Margaret selected Byron Snow and married him in 1910, making Nantucket her home. Byron was the stepson of Main Street grocer William Holland, who, according to Eileen, was “the nearest thing to a Democratic ward boss in Nantucket at that time.” The Snows owned Fairview Farm, a tract of several hundred acres that extended south from the junction of Hummock Pond and Somerset Roads, encompassing what is now known as Austin Farms. Thomas visited his sister frequently, developing a love of Nantucket that coincided with a lack of work in the Boston area after World War I. In 1922, with the help of a loan from Holland, he bought nine acres on the north side of Hummock Pond Road bordered on the east by Burnt Swamp Lane— not far from Margaret— and moved a small house from the Cliff area to his new homestead, dubbing it Sunshine Farm. The family’s property was not a dedicated agricultural endeavor like the large farms in the area; although they kept a Jersey cow, known as Mooley McGrath and tended a kitchen garden as well as a large strawberry patch. Thomas H. McGrath supported his family as a plumber, a » MARY, EILEEN, AND THOMAS, JULY 1925. trade he learned on SC900-5 Nantucket. The McGrath outpost was one of a handful of houses on Hummock Pond Road in the 1920s and ’30s, and Eileen remembers every one of them—from a little cottage owned by Walter Lubig just across Hummock Pond Road; to her aunt’s Fairview Farm; Ed Gardner’s Mount Vernon Farm; Harry Larrabee’s Pine Grove Farm; “Junie” Bartlett’s spread closest to the south shore, Ocean View Farm; and east of that, Somerset Farm run by Matthew Jaeckle. Eileen started school in 1929, a member of the first class to attend all twelve grades at the brand new Academy Hill School building that opened that September, replacing an earlier building that was no longer serviceable. The imposing three-story edifice impressed six-year-old Eileen: “The grounds around the building were still unfinished and there was a big pile of dirt, but 18 | Historic Nantucket
we didn’t care. The building was absolutely spanky clean; the new floors were varnished like crazy. It was a beautiful building for us.” She rode the school bus—a four-door Packard with jump seats— with other students from the Hummock Pond area: Frank Powers, Pat Gardner, the Larrabee sisters; and later, two Jaeckle girls, Joan (now Fisher) and Jeanne (now Dooley), who were a little younger; Jane Jaeckle (now Hardy) had not been born yet. At 11:50 each day, everyone, including teachers, went home for lunch. Eileen and her brothers and sisters would meet their father at the Civil War Monument or the corner of Prospect and Milk Streets and they would all head home for a nice hot dinner prepared by her mother, then back to school at 1:20. “I enjoyed studying,” Eileen said matter of factly and modestly about her school years on Nantucket. In fact, her personal quote in the 1941 Islander, the inaugural Nantucket High School yearbook (which she edited), was “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” Not only was she voted the “most studious girl” and “most ambitious” student, a tally of the ballots deemed her “wittiest” too. Along with classmate Francis “Franny” Pease, who was voted “most humorous,” they must have livened up the classroom of young scholars—and both can still be found eliciting chuckles from their friends around town. Dedication to her books and inherent smarts and determination made Eileen valedictorian of the class of 1941. For her senior-class dance, Eileen’s mother “put her heart and soul into making a Scarlett O’Hara–style dress of figured silk” for the graduation ball at the Nantucket Yacht Club and her father accompanied her in the first dance, surprising Eileen with his skillful performance. Graduation exercises were held at the Dreamland Theatre, where Eileen read the class prophecy. Then she was off to Radcliffe, where her older sister, Mary, was a student. Although it seems remarkable that two island girls attended Harvard’s sister school almost seventy-five years ago, they were likely candidates, bright and dedicated, with the support of their community behind them. Maria Mitchell Association astronomer Margaret Harwood was a big influence on both McGrath sisters. She was a Radcliffe graduate herself, as was Eileen’s favorite high school teacher, Evelyn Tiews, who taught college preparatory English to a small class of juniors and seniors. Radcliffe was the logical college of choice, endorsed also by Eileen’s mother, who had been impressed with the Radcliffe graduates who were her high school teachers in Cambridge. Miss Harwood helped the McGrath girls and other students find scholarships and local benefactors. Graduating with an A. B. in Biology in February 1945, Eileen took a teaching position at Concord Academy, where there was an immediate opening. She taught biology and physics, the latter course one that she described laughingly as “the blind leading the blind.” She remained at Concord for the next two school years before beginning a long and distinguished career at the Lincoln School in Providence, Rhode Island, where she was able to teach her favorite subject, biology, for the next thirty-eight years, from 1947 to 1985. During that period she earned a Master of Science at
don
» ABOVE: ENTRY FROM ISLANDER, THE NANTUCKET HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOK, 1941 Photo: Bill Had
RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MARIA MITCHELL ASSOCIATION’S ASTRONOMER, MARGARET HARWOOD, BY BILL HADDON, CA. 1950s. P432
Brown University; became head of the Science Department at the Lincoln School; and was awarded the Dorothy W. Gifford Chair, presented to the teacher who best displayed “loyalty and dedication to students and the school, deep involvement in developing programs . . . and dedication to strong ethical values.” Those very qualities exemplified Eileen’s life on Nantucket after she retired from teaching: a loyalty and dedication to Nantucket and a clear sense of what was right for the island. During the years she was living in Providence, Eileen returned to Nantucket each summer to contribute her skills and enthusiasm to the Maria Mitchell Association, helping out in the observatory, in the science library, and as a nature class instructor. From 1966 to 1983 she was director of the Natural Science Department. The only summer Eileen didn’t spend on Nantucket was in 1960. Her mother died in 1959, and Eileen was too saddened to think of returning alone to Sunshine Farm; her father had died suddenly in 1943, when she was in college, and her siblings were all married and living in their own homes. Instead, she visited her sister, Mary, in Geneva, Switzerland. Although a little reluctant to miss a summer on her home turf, the foreign experience was enlightening; following the trip to Geneva, Eileen visited Ireland four times with a favorite Radcliffe classmate, until local regulations required those over the age of seventy-five to relinquish the wheel. They would have had to hire a driver, curbing their enjoyment of spontaneous exploration. To the delight of her many island friends, Eileen returned to Sunshine Farm full time in 1985, to the house she grew up in, now surrounded by newer family houses: brother Bobby (who died in 2007) on one side, and nephews Tommy and Bobby on the other. Her beloved niece, Christine (McGrath) Iller, who is also her godchild, lives with her husband across the meadow. Eileen began working at the Atheneum on August 30, 1985, when Barbara Andrews and Janice O’Mara were at the helm, and stayed through the renovation and expansion in 1995, officially retiring from that institution in 2010—but she’s still there, volunteering her services. Of the many associations and committees Eileen has been involved with, one of the dearest to her heart is the now defunct Sons and Daughters of Nantucket, an annual gathering of Nantucketers—mostly in Boston but
sometimes on Nantucket—for an evening of food, drink, and entertainment. [The Sons and Daughters celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1994, and only two more meetings were held thereafter.] Eileen was often the unofficial entertainment of the evening, telling stories of the island from her girlhood, or in 1941 lugging a projector to the meeting to show a film made by the Chamber of Commerce while providing running commentary. On island, her involvement in organizations followed in the footsteps of her father, who encouraged her to be active in support of her beliefs. She’s one of nine Coffin School trustees, especially dedicated to the judicious delegation of Elizabeth R. Coffin scholarships to Nantucket High School graduates; she admitted that taking minutes of the meetings as secretary was a harrowing experience, so she relinquished that duty. She’s also a longstanding member of the Town Association and its current treasurer. Her prime interest now, however, is the Community Foundation for Nantucket, a philanthropic clearing house for people who want to donate money to Nantucket charities but aren’t sure where it will best benefit the community. The foundation allots about $43,000 a year to nonprofits (there are more than one hundred on the island) in small grants that make a huge difference. With her scientific, unsentimental eye tempered by an abundance of good humor and a remarkable memory, Eileen is a valuable commentator on the local scene, a pundit from the old days who cares deeply about the future. She has contributed her perspective on island life for numerous gams, gatherings, and interviews, and is a walking encyclopedia of local lore—from intricate family genealogies to the alma maters, occupations, triumphs, and tribulations of Nantucket’s citizenry. Although witness to staggering changes on her home island during her almost ninety years, Eileen has lost neither perspective nor wit, often threatening to write an apocryphal history of Nantucket. She has graciously abstained, however, because, as she put it: “I don’t want to be responsible for any heart attacks.” BETSY TYLER HOLDS OBED MACY RESEARCH CHAIR AT THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, AND IS THE AUTHOR OF OVER FORTY BOOKS, CATALOGS, AND HOUSE HISTORIES ON NANTUCKET SUBJECTS.
Spring 2013 | 19
BY CLAIRE WHITE & NHS STUDENTS
Nantucket History Course at NHS In the spring of 2012,the Nantucket High School offered a new Nantucket History elective course. THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION collaborated with the school to introduce island students to the process of studying and conducting historical research through access and use of the Research Library. Social studies teacher John McGuinness, who partnered with Jeremy Slavitz to develop and teach the class, uses the rich history of Nantucket as a foundation for teaching the broader fields of local history and museum studies. The course introduces students to the unique history of Nantucket as well as to community members who work in the fields of museums, history, preservation, and research. The goal is to inspire students with an interest in these fields and deepen their connection to their hometown. For the final project of this inaugural course, students received a historic photograph of a building in the downtown historic district from the NHA’s collections. They determined at which address the building was located, photographed it in its current state, researched the history of the building using sources from the Research Library, and wrote brief
Mitchell’s Book Corner 54 Main Street, 1895, by Henry S. Wyer. GPN4490 Oscar Andersen, Nik Nakov, Adam Parker
This handsome redbrick building at the southeast corner of Orange and Main Streets—decorated in this photograph for Nantucket’s 1895 centennial celebration— replaced a structure destroyed in the Great Fire of 1846 that housed several different businesses. Acquired by Mitchell and Mary Allen Havemeyer in the late 1960s, it became Mitchell’s Book Corner; from 1978 it was managed by their daughter, Mimi Beman, until 2007, when it was acquired by ReMain Nantucket. Renovated in June 2009, it is an energyefficient building with a silver LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Managed by Wendy Hudson of Nantucket Bookworks, under an entity called Nantucket Book Partners, it continues to operate as Mitchell’s Book Corner, where passionate readers of all ages, sometimes helped by the knowledgeable staff, are assured of finding just the right book and frequently take advantage of the comfortable reading area upstairs.
Jared Coffin House
histories of the buildings. The NHA is pleased to publish excerpts from
Circa 1900. GPN2663
the students’ more comprehensive essays.
Nicci Aguiar and Alex Cooker
CLAIRE WHITE IS MANAGER OF EDUCATION AT THE NHA
Mary Harris Nye’s Store Centre Street. P1956 Vanessa Calderon, Katy Tejada
Mary Harris Nye, née Riddell, was born in 1840 and married Joseph P. Nye in 1864. She was the daughter of Charlotte C. Chase (1806–85), and Timothy W. Riddell (b. 1806). Mary Nye was one of those enterprising nineteenth-century women who kept the home fires burning during the whaling era while the men were away at sea. Many of them, like Mary Nye, occupied shops on Centre Street, which came to be known as “Petticoat Row.” They sold everything from daily necessities to exotic goods, and were known for their business acumen as well as their capacity to care for their children when the fathers might be at sea for several years at a time.
20 | Historic Nantucket
The Jared Coffin House, at 29 Broad Street, is Nantucket’s only three-story brick building that was originally a family dwelling. Jared Coffin, a wealthy whale-oil merchant whose first home at 19 Pleasant Street is now known as Moor’s End, built the new house in 1845 to please his wife, who had high social ambitions and thought they were too far out of town (and too close to the smelly whale-oil refineries at that end of town). The house, with its brick walls and slate roof, helped prevent the Great Fire of 1846 from spreading. Less than a year after the fire, however, the Coffin family moved to Boston and their home was bought by the Nantucket Steamboat Company and used as a hotel called the Ocean House. In the twentieth century, the hotel went through a period of decline until the Nantucket Historical Trust took over its restoration in 1961. The Jared Coffin House has had at least fourteen different owners throughout the years, and has been owned and managed by Nantucket Island Resorts since 2004.
Thomas Macy Warehouse
The Hub
12 Straight Wharf, 1989. T290
31 Main St, 1975,
Marina Jube
Eda Shanzer. A101-15a Desirée Digianvittorio,
The Thomas Macy Warehouse, at 12 Straight Wharf, was built after the Great Fire of 1846 by merchant Thomas Macy on the lot he purchased from Levi S. Starbuck, whose own warehouse had been destroyed. Used to store supplies and equipment needed to outfit Nantucket’s whaleships and as a chandlery, the Thomas Macy Warehouse passed through several owners and housed other businesses after the whaling era ended and well into the twentieth century. In 1944, the Nantucket Foundation, Inc., purchased the warehouse as a setting for the Kenneth Taylor Galleries of the Artists Association of Nantucket. In 1958, management of the foundation was turned over to the Nantucket Historical Trust, and the building continued to be occupied by the Artists Association of Nantucket until 1984, when it was donated to the NHA. The NHA used the building for exhibition space and a branch of the Museum Shop until 2005. It is now leased to a variety of business tenants.
Emanuel Johnson
The Pacific Club
This brick building dates to the Great Fire of 1846, when all of the north side of Main Street went up in flames and was then rebuilt. The downstairs rooms housed the grocery store of E. H. Parker. Above the door leading to the second floor, a sign reads “Institution for Savings,” the entity that became Nantucket Bank, and business certificates indicate that a Mrs. J. F. Roberts had a store there in 1928. In 1979, it was bought by Congdon & Coleman, which continues to operate its real estate business and insurance agency there to this day.
1895, Henry S. Wyer. GPN4478 Bridget McGuinness
At the foot of Main Street, facing up to the Pacific Bank, the three-story redbrick building has connections to some key events in early American and Nantucket history. Known today as the Pacific Club, the building was constructed in 1775 as the counting house of prosperous whaling merchant William Rotch. Rotch and his partners owned two of the three Boston Tea Party vessels, Dartmouth and Beaver, as well as the Bedford, the first American vessel to hoist the American flag in British waters in 1783. Although its interior was gutted, the Pacific Club survived the Great Fire of 1846 and became a place for the retired whaling captains of the Pacific fleet to play cribbage and tell of their adventures. Membership in the club is by recommendation of its sitting members, some of whom are descendants of those early mariners. It has survived countless winters, when freezing and thawing cracked its masonry; fires have broken out on all three floors; and it has had numerous tenants—the U. S. Weather Bureau, District Court, judges’ chambers, lawyers’ offices; the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce; television stations, and photography studios. Today it houses the Four Winds Craft Guild on two floors and a Bank of America automatic teller machine on the ground floor.
The Hub is well named, for it has long been the central place in Nantucket Town where tourists and residents alike can pick up a newspaper; purchase souvenirs and postcards; find a random selection of knickknacks, toys, magazines, and books; candy and chewing gum; and even refreshing bottles of the famous Nantucket Nectars. Old-timers will remember the Hub’s creaky wooden floorboards, friendly atmosphere, wall of penny candy, and the mailboxes that used to reserve newspapers for the locals.
57 Main Street 1895, Henry S. Wyer. GPN4491 Jess Halford, Madison Joslin, Alicia Patterson
The Seven Seas Gift Shop 47 Centre Street, 1960s, John W. McCalley. P7254 Kevin Mclean
The original Seven Seas Gift Shop, in a house at 46 Centre Street, was established in 1960 and for many years was a favorite place for Nantucket children, their parents, and tourists looking for great gifts at modest prices. It was once the home of Captain George Pollard Jr., master of the Nantucket whaleship Essex, which was stove by a whale and is the subject of the book In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Captain Pollard’s red-shingled house on Centre Street continues to be used as a gift shop and also houses an art gallery, showing that Nantucketers would rather save a building and put it to good use rather than destroy it. Spring 2013 | 21
News Notes & Highlights 2013 EXHIBITIONS
Nantucket Legends: Foggy Facts and Fictions
Nantucket Whaling Museum April 26–November 15, 2013 Members Reception: May 23, 5:30 P.M.
John Austin: One Artist’s Nantucket Whitney Gallery NHA Research Library, 7 Fair Street May 24–December 31, 2013, Reception: May 24, 5–7 P.M.
The photo-realist paintings of island artist John Austin (1917–2001) captured the laid-back Nantucket of » SEA SERPENT BY JOHN EGLE
the 1970s and ’80s. His remarkable body of work in tempera and other
Walk down Main Street on a busy August afternoon and you’ll likely overhear someone telling
mediums ranges from classic views of
a story about Nantucket’s history—a tale of the day a sea serpent visited the island, or how
Steamboat Wharf; the lighthouses,
Main Street came to be paved with cobblestones. This season, the Nantucket Historical
beaches, and shorelines of Nantucket;
Association will explore some of the tales—those rooted in documented history and those of
to quirky subjects like the wrecks at
fantasy—that are integral to how the island community understands its history and presents
Chester Barrett’s “vehicle graveyard.” Exhibiting for over thirty years at
Nantucket to the world. Nantucket Legends: Foggy Facts and Fictions will take a close look at some of Nantucket’s
Reggie Levine’s Main Street Gallery,
colorful stories: the 1821 sea serpent, the first Nantucket tea party, the legend of General
Austin was collected by locals,
Lafayette’s cheese, Tony Sarg’s sea serpent hoax, the origin of roof walks on Nantucket houses,
summer visitors, and the likes of
and Nantucket Reds. Visitors to the exhibition will learn that it isn’t always possible to
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Mrs.
distinguish fact from fiction, but that stories told about the events, places, and people of
Paul Mellon.
Nantucket change over time to reflect the identity and interests of the storyteller.
A collaborative exhibition with the Artists Association of Nantucket
The Nantucket Conservation Foundation’s Fiftieth Anniversary A collaborative exhibition with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation Overlook Gallery, Whaling Museum Opens July 1, 2013, during museum hours 22 | Historic Nantucket
PHOTOS: ROB BENCHLEY
“For Love of the Island”:
2013 EVENTS
Save the Date
MEMBERS CELEBRATION
Nantucket Legends: Foggy Facts and Fictions Thursday, May 23, 5:30 P.M. Whaling Museum
NHA MEMBERS TOUR: Afternoon Tea at Greater Light featuring the Monaghan Textiles Wednesday, June 19, 4 P.M. Greater Light
Antiques & Design Show OF NANTUCKET TO BENEFIT THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
ANNOUNCING
Friday, July 12, 5 P.M. Whaling Museum
The Antiques & Design Show of Nantucket
Designer Luncheon with Alexa Hampton
August 1–5, 2013, Bartlett’s Farm
Thursday, July 18, 12 P.M. Great Harbor Yacht Club
Preview Party: Thursday, August 1
NHA MEMBERS TOUR: Whaling Logs at the
There’s excitement in the air at the Nantucket Historical Association as we plan for what will be a wonderful new approach to a treasured tradition. The August Antiques Show, now in its thirty-sixth year, is changing its name—and so much more! The event will now be known as: The Antiques & Design Show of Nantucket
119th Annual Meeting of the NHA
Research Library Wednesday, July 24, 11 A.M. Research Library
Antiques & Design Show of Nantucket Preview Party Thursday, August 1, 6:30–9 P.M. Bartlett’s Farm
Designer Panel By Susan Zises Green with panelists Alessandra Branca, Christopher Drake, Jamie Drake, Brian J. McCarthy, and Alex Papachristidis Friday, August 2, 9 A.M. Bartlett’s Farm
Antiques & Design Show of Nantucket Friday, Saturday & Sunday August 2, 3 & 4, 10 A.M.–5 P.M. Monday, August 5, 10 A.M.–3 P.M. Bartlett’s Farm
NHA MEMBERS TOUR: Breakfast on the Rooftop featuring a tour of Nantucket Legends Wednesday, August 21, 8 A.M. Whaling Museum
From August 1 to 5, the Antiques & Design Show of Nantucket will be infused with an abundance of elements that celebrate the synergy created by incorporating antiques into design. Featured this year are the Designer Luncheon with Alexa Hampton on Thursday, July 18, at » HONORARY CHAIRS ELIZABETH AND GEOFFREY VERNEY the Great Harbor Yacht Club; the Preview Party on Thursday, August 1; and the Designer Panel, by Susan Zises Green, on Friday, August 2, with panelists Alessandra Branca, Christopher Drake, Jamie Drake, Brian J. McCarthy, Alex Papachristidis. This year, the NHA is delighted to recognize Elizabeth and Geoffrey Verney as the Honorary Chairs of the Antiques & Design Show of Nantucket. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit our Web site at www.nha.org.
Festival of Wreaths Preview Party Tuesday, November 26, 5–7 P.M. Whaling Museum
Festival of Trees Preview Party Thursday, December 5, 6–9 P.M. Whaling Museum
NHA 1800 HOUSE
Arts Crafts 2013 C O U R S E S
1800 House Summer Classes Begin June 11 Art inspired by Nantucket history. Register at nha.org/1800house Spring 2013 | 23
P.O. BOX 1016, NANTUCKET, MA 02554-1016
NHA.ORG
PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT NANTUCKET, MA AND ADDITIONAL ENTRY OFFICES
Support the NHA in 2013 with a Tax-Free Gift from an IRA Rollover Join the members of the Nantucket Historical Association who are taking advantage of recent legislation and making charitable gifts to the NHA directly from their IRA accounts without incurring income tax. If you are age 70½ or older, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 permits you to transfer up to $100,000 from a Barbara traditional or 2010 Roth IRA directly to the Hathaway, Antiques Show Chair NHA through December 31, 2013. ThisAugust amount would be excluded from your income and federal taxes, and it would count toward your mandatory IRA withdrawals. With such a gift, you might consider making a pledge to the endowment, increasing your Annual Fund or membership support, or fulfilling an existing pledge. To learn more about how this legislation can directly benefit you and provide important support to the NHA, consult with your personal financial advisor and contact Joan Galon King, director of advancement, at 508 228 1894, ext. 120, or jking@nha.org.
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