T
Attoos and Trademarks
Tattoos were popular with European sailors from the fifteenth century on when contact with the East Indies began. American sailors, Nantucket whalemen among them, had their bodies tattooed as marks of their profession. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, as many as one out of five American mariners had tattoos. Among the whalemen, the percentages may have been even higher. One of the most famous trademark symbols in the world—R. H. Macy’s red star—may be derived from a tattoo that the store’s founder, Nantucketer Rowland Hussey Macy (1822–77), received on a whaling voyage. Like most Nantucket boys, Macy went whaling at an early age. He shipped on the New Bedford whaler Emily Morgan at fifteen. Bound for the Pacific, the Emily Morgan called at Pernambuco on the coast of Brazil. According to one source, it was here that Macy decided to have a red star tattooed on the back of his hand. Another source tells a more dramatic tale: “The story is that once while at the helm of his ship in a dense fog, a great red star [perhaps Aldebaran] shone through a rift in the gray curtain, and guided by the star, young Macy was able to steer the ship into port; that incident was said to be the origin of the red star, the trademark of the R. H. Macy store.” It seems unlikely that greenhand Macy would have been charged to “steer the ship into port,” but nevertheless his business partners later vouched that one of his hands did indeed bore a red star tattoo. It was even said that he regretted the decision, and he would often hide it. The Emily Morgan returned to its homeport of New Bedford in 1841. The next year, Macy gave up whaling forever to apprentice in a printer’s shop. It has been suggested that, if the tattoo source is a legend, Macy may have first spotted the star there as a typesetter’s stock image, or perhaps later among the newspaper offices where he advertised. After a failed stint in California during the Gold Rush, Macy returned east and began his successful journey in retail in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He began to use the image of the red star in advertisements for R. H. Macy’s by 1862, and the rest is retail history.
N magazine
Rowland Hussey Macy
101