Historic Nantucket Spring 2025, Volume 75, No. 1

SPRING 2025 | VOLUME 75, NO. 1

Board of Trustees 2024–25

SPRING 2025 | VOLUME 75, NO. 1

Table of Contents

Annabelle Fowlkes, President Wendy Hudson, Vice President Carla McDonald, Vice President Craig Muhlhauser, Treasurer Sara Schwartz, Clerk Lucinda Ballard Stacey Bewkes Connie Cigarran, Friends of the NHA Representative

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Reconstructing the Old Mill's Tailpole

Amanda Cross

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Clinton Folger’s Horsemobile and the Nantucket Auto Ban"

Lexi Gibbs

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Beyond Emancipation, Prince Boston in the Revolutionary War Period

Cam Gammill Graham Goldsmith Ashley Gosnell Mody Robert Greenspon Connie Anne Harris

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Update on Reverend James Gardner Ross

Ayesha Khan

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News, Notes & Highlights

Mary Read

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Member Events

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Summer Save the Dates

Valerie Paley Bill Richards Marla Sanford Roberto Santamaria Denise Saul, Friends of the NHA Representative Janet Sherlund, Trustee Emerita Carter Stewart

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Melinda Sullivan Michael Sweeney Jason Tilroe Ex Officio Niles D. Parker, Gosnell Executive Director 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. ©2025 by the Nantucket Historical Association.

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Editor: Ashley Santos Designer: Amanda Quintin Design all photos by nha staff unless otherwise noted.

Cover: Detail of chainstitch treadle sewing machine, ca. 1900. Willcox & Gibbs. Donor unidentified, HA105.

A Look Behind the Seams FROM THE BOARD PRESIDENT AND GOSNELL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Spring is here, but our team at the NHA hit the ground running back in January for what will be a very exciting 2025 season! As the year began, our maintenance and curatorial teams were hard at work making upgrades and updates around the Whaling Museum. From new object displays and installations to restroom renovations, and a brand-new elevator, many of these upgrades have expanded storytelling and improved accessibility. Work also continues on the major restoration of the Candle Factory North Wall with the project on track to be completed before summer. We are glad to share more about this project as well as providing an update about the exciting Old Mill restoration project in this issue. We’ve announced our featured exhibition, Behind the Seams: Clothing and Textiles on Nantucket, opening at the Whaling Museum in May. This will be the first major exhibit of objects from the NHA’s 2,000-piece costume and textile collections since completion of a major inventory funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services in 2018. The NHA’s textile collection is a significant one, critically important as a gateway for research into better understanding Nantucket’s history and changing culture. The multi-year effort to catalogue and better care for this collection has led to this point and we are excited to share our work with NHA’s members and the public. We also look forward to creating programming and experiences around this year’s exhibition theme, so stay tuned for many offerings in what will be a

Annabelle Fowlkes President, Board of Trustees

Summer of Seams! This includes a community quilt project that we recently announced and is modeled after the success of Morton, the Sea Monster, and our Tony Sarg exhibition. Our staff wanted to create programming and initiatives that bring our exhibition themes to life and spark interest in learning. There is a long-standing history of community quilt-making that our exhibit touches on, so we are excited to spearhead the creation of a piece of work in that same spirit, and showcase the story of the Nantucket community today. Learn more about this initiative in News, Notes & Highlights. We hope you will take part in the fun and creativity! In addition to our robust slate of yearlong public programs connected with the exhibition, our summer benefit events present an array of entertainment. This includes a reimagined Baskets, Bubbles & Bourbon party that will be a celebration of the iconic Nantucket Lightship Basket craft. Nantucket by Design is liningup to be a busy, fun-filled, and creative week with an outstanding slate of luminaries. And lastly, A Nantucket Night gala will be a standout celebration of our Behind the Seams exhibition and supports the mission of the Nantucket Historical Association. To sneak in a few more exciting notes about this season, grab your bikes and join us on our new Historic Bike Tour launching in May and stay tuned as we unveil the long-awaited request to produce a Nantucket history podcast, as well as the release of other publications. We look forward to gathering with you, sharing these stories, and together, telling more of Nantucket’s history. Thank you!

Niles Parker Gosnell Executive Director

Left: Quaker dress, 1830s Silk, linen and cotton lining, metal closures Gift of Elizabeth Kite, 1905.10.1 Right: Day dress owned by Sarah Coffin Akin, 1840s Cotton, silk, wool Gift of Margaret Alden Simmonds, 1956.21.3

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Behind the Seams: Clothing and Textiles on Nantucket With Generous Support from Charina Endowment Fund The H. L. Brown Jr. Family Foundation Institue of Library and Museum Services Patricia & Thomas Anathan Kim Bepler Anne and Thomas Broadus Maureen and Edward Bousa Patricia and Christopher Burns

The NHA’s featured exhibition for 2025, Behind the Seams: Clothing and Textiles on Nantucket, will open Memorial Day weekend. Curated by independent costume and textile specialist, Jennifer Nieling, this exhibit will present over 150 objects from the NHA’s costume and textile collections to illustrate the stories that clothing and textiles can tell. Exploring more than two centuries of textile production, trade, and use on Nantucket, featured objects will provide different perspectives on making, meaning, and island identity from the whaling era through the island’s transformation into a summer resort and up to today.

Kaaren and Charles Hale Cassandra Henderson Bonnie and Peter McCausland Ann and Craig Muhlhauser Andrew Law and David Rattner Teckie and Don Shackelford Cece and Mack Fowler Dorinda Dodge Helen Lynch

“ So many aspects of island history can be explored through textiles and clothing. The NHA is excited to present visitors with a rare look at some of the most intriguing objects in our collection—the clothing and textiles that people created and used on Nantucket in the past.” — Michael Harrison, NHA Chief Curator and Obed Macy Research Chair

Carole and Gary Beller Thomas Barnes Patricia & Barrett Burns Elisabeth and Thomas Giovine Janet and Keith Lindgren

Presenting Sponsor

Sandra Holland and Alfred Sanford III Fran Karttunen Bonnie & Peter McCausland Melissa and Nathaniel Philbrick Lucile W. Hays Gary McBournie & William J. Richards Peter Steingraber

With

Nancy and Joe Serafini Rose Gonnella and Frank Holahan

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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Bright, new exterior and a straight, solid tailpole.

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Reconstructing the History of the Old Mill’s Tailpole By Phoebe Botticelli-Pohl

Above: The Old Mill prior to the NHA’s purchase, 1890s, GPN2687. Oposite page: The Old Mill following the NHA’s purchase and preliminary repairs, 1890s, GPN4565

When the Nantucket Historical Association acquired the Old Mill in 1897, it was already one of the island’s most-visited tourist attractions, as evidenced by the proliferation of photographs, paintings, and other visual representations produced in the late 19th century. Most of these convey an identical air of romantic antiquity. The mill appears atop the unkempt meadows of Windy Hill in a painterly state of disrepair: the shingles weathered and missing in patches, the windows and doors falling crooked away from their frames, and the sagging tailpole propped up on an impromptu armature. The few images that do stand out show the distinctive structure in a drastically different state. Captured in the final years of the century, they show the results of the NHA’s preliminary repair efforts which left the mill with a bright, new exterior and a straight, solid tailpole.

The mill appears atop the unkempt meadows of Windy Hill

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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View of Nantucket Harbor, showing Steamboat Wharf and the Skipper Restaurant, 1934, F1895

The NHA hesitated briefly before making these necessary improvements. They understood that the public appreciated the mill’s rustic and worn appearance, but also that its longevity relied upon consistent upkeep. Describing the dilemma, recording secretary Mary Starbuck recounted, “The question resolved itself into this: Shall we keep a picturesque ruin, for, at the longest, five years, or shall we repair and shingle the outside and so preserve for an indefinite number of years the ancient interior?”1 When they chose repair, this early cohort of NHA stewards set an institutional precedent for prioritizing the preservation of the mill’s working mechanism. And in the case of fixed-body smock mills, few features are more important than the tailpole, the long boom that rotates the cap and turns the sails into any prevailing wind. A prominent feature both visually and functionally, this massive sixty-five-foot spar has always been the subject of fervent theorizing, with many wondering specifically

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about its source. Some suggest that the original beam was felled locally from among the stands of oak that grew on the outskirts of town. Others purport it was salvaged from a shipwreck. Although we will never have a definitive answer, studying its subsequent replacements sheds light on the many incredible difficulties associated with acquiring, transporting, and installing a timber of this size. Decades after the initial repairs of 1897, the Old Mill was once again defunct, prompting an intensive renovation by the organization in 1935. The goal was to restore the mill to full working order, a task that included recutting the grind stones, recanting the sails, and, of course, replacing the tailpole. The members of the NHA’s Old Mill Committee were evidently “much worried about obtaining a boom suitable for the tail piece.”2 That is until Edna Prentice, owner of the beloved island restaurant The Skipper, offered up a suitable spar. Her donation was the tall mast of the Allen Gurney, the intentionally-grounded antique coasting schooner that housed the tea room of her restaurant on Steamboat

RECONSTRUCTING

Installing new tail pole on the Old Mill, 1972, P4172

Installing new tail pole on the Old Mill, 1972, P4173

Wharf. With the simple addition of a short splice, the timber was successfully repurposed and the mill opened for the 1936 season on July 11, with a public demonstration of the fully articulate, rotating cap. Not only had the NHA restored the signature swivel of the antique machine, but they had done so with an inventiveness and frugality that added to the structure’s already rich and lengthy history. As NHA secretary Catherine Ray Egers wrote in her 1936 Annual Report, the “gift of the Skipper mast lends a new note of historical interest as well as value to the mill, in-asmuch as it has served one purpose and is now serving another equally well.”3

He and his crew built a temporary trussed chute just under the existing tailpole. After cutting away the old beam in short lengths and sliding them down the wooden armature, “the new pole was placed in the same chute and dragged upward with a truck and block and tackle to the top of the mill, where it was secured.”4 Images of the installation show members of Lamb’s crew watching attentively as an excavator guides the pole up the sloped structure into the opening in the cap. After three days of work—twelve years of inactivity— the Old Mill was once again prepared to grind corn.

Nearly forty years later, in 1972, the NHA replaced the tailpole for a third time. Although the mast of the Allen Gurney had served the mill well until the late 1950s, the machine had rested in a state of dormancy and disrepair for over a decade. As in 1935, the major obstacle facing the organization was the procurement of the proper length of heavy timber. According to newspaper accounts, two years of searching proved entirely unfruitful before the NHA enlisted the expertise of board member Albert ‘Bud’ Egan Jr. and his crew at Marine Lumber Company. They quickly found an appropriate replacement in the inventory of a New Hampshire-based lumber supplier that specialized in the trade of telephone poles. The new, treated cedar spar was twenty-three inches in diameter and weighed more than 3,800 pounds. Once it arrived onsite, local contractor Mike Lamb devised a plan for its installation.

For the past few years, the mill has once again found itself in a state of inactivity. The cedar tailpole has been patched and repaired a number of times in its fifty years of service, but is no longer strong enough to rotate the cap effectively. As we prepare for another substantial project, the NHA’s goal remains to restore the mill’s working mechanism. As we learned from the repairs of 1935 and 1972, achieving this goal is certain to be arduous, technical, and time-consuming. But the mill is a complex machine and the NHA believes, as it did in 1897, that it is not enough for it to be a fascinating relic; it must be a functional one as well. With patience, we can all hope to see the mill run again soon.

1 Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the NHA, 1898, 3. 2 Proceedings of the NHA: Forty-second Annual Meeting, 1936, 11. 3 Proceedings of the NHA: Forty-second Annual Meeting, 1936, 11. 4 Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, Aug. 10, 1972.

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NANTUCKET AUTO BAN By Brian Quigley Brian Quigley lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is a reference librarian at Boston College Law School.

Car wreck on Nantucket, mid 1920s. The first report of an automobile accident on Nantucket was published in 1900, when a horse was surprised by an auto and threw its owner. A24B-3a

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CLINTON FOLGER’S HORSEMOBILE AND THE

Nantucket Auto Ban

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t the turn of the last century, if you wanted to travel from the town of Nantucket to the village of Siasconset, you had two options: a slow and bumpy trip via horse-drawn wagon or the faster and smoother but seasonal Nantucket Railroad. As early as 1899 the Inquirer and Mirror noted that some summer residents had expressed a desire to bring their automobiles over on the ferry. The first report of an automobile accident on Nantucket was published in 1900, when a horse was surprised by an auto and threw its owner. At a meeting on August 5, 1903, a group of prominent summer residents presented a petition to Nantucket’s Board of Selectmen stating that the presence of motor vehicles on the island was dangerous to users of horsedrawn carriages and that drivers had been speeding, startling horses, and driving recklessly through intersections. At the time, Massachusetts had a statewide maximum speed limit of fifteen miles per hour, but allowed localities to lower that limit or exclude autos from certain roads altogether. Any local regulations could, however, be vetoed by the Massachusetts Highway Commission.1

1 “’Sconset Notes,” Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (hereafter I&M), Sept. 9, 1898, 4; “Here and There,” I&M, Aug. 18, 1900, 4; “Selectmen’s Meeting,” I&M, Aug. 8, 1903, 2; 1903 Mass. Acts 507–512.

This page: Cars on the Polpis Road. Automobiles eventually catalyzed the residential development of Nantucket outside the confines of town and ’Sconset. P14805 NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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The Clinton S. Folger horsemobile on South Beach Street, 1914. P14801

Nantucket’s selectmen unanimously voted to implement a maximum speed limit of four miles per hour in town and eight miles per hour outside of town. The Massachusetts Automobile Association filed an appeal with the Massachusetts Highway Commission, which voted to overrule the selectmen’s action as, in their view, the eight mile per hour speed limit seemed unnecessarily restrictive.2 Over the next few years the selectmen passed a variety of additional ordinances designed to ban cars from the island, either outright or functionally. All were struck down by the commission. Painter W. V. Birney and businessman Frank J. Tyler both brought autos to the island and were charged with violating one of the ordinances. Both were found not guilty on the grounds that the selectmen had no legal right to implement a total ban on automobiles. Repeated defeat before the commission and in the courts did not deter those in favor of a lasting ban. In 1907, summer residents began to circulate a petition calling for the Massachusetts legislature to pass a law expressly granting the Nantucket selectmen the power to exclude automobiles. By September, the list of signatories was eleven feet long and included a total of 644 names. A hearing before the state legislature’s Committee on Roads and Bridges was soon scheduled. After an inconclusive hearing, the committee decided to travel to Nantucket to observe conditions for them-

2 “Automobile Hearing,” I&M, July 22, 1905, 2; “Nantucket Law Void,” I&M, Sept. 2, 1905, 2.

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Auto exclusion sign, 1911. P20506

selves. Despite a choppy ferry ride, the representatives were given a warm welcome, including an evening of bowling, billiards, and cards. Whether prompted by an objective, dispassionate assessment of the island’s poor road conditions or by an appreciation of the islanders’ hospitality, the committee were at least partially convinced. The General Court soon passed a bill granting the selectmen the authority to ban automobiles, albeit only for the summer season. The selectmen duly passed a regulation banning automobiles from all of the major streets of the island from June 15 to September 15. In the off season, the Inquirer and Mirror reported that “no one anticipated a visit from a single machine.”3

3 Will Petition the Legislature,” I&M, Aug. 31, 1907, 1; “Legislators Visit Nantucket,” I&M, Apr. 8, 1908, 1; “Legislators Bowled,” I&M, Apr. 8, 1908, 1; “Exclude Autos,” I&M, June 20, 1908, 1; “Here and There,” I&M, Sept. 16, 1911, 4.

NANTUCKET AUTO BAN

The automobile issue receded into the background for the next few years. In October 1913, liveryman Clinton S. Folger received a government contract to transport mail between Siasconset and town and announced that he intended to buy an automobile for that purpose. In response, the selectmen quickly issued an order extending the auto ban to cover the entire year. Under an updated Massachusetts law, this action would, however, require that they post notice of the ban on every closed street and receive approval from the Highway Commission. Folger and his five-passenger Overland landed on the island on November 5, 1913. He was met at the pier by a crowd of hundreds, as “to see an automobile passing through the town was fully as interesting a sight as it would be to see a man trundling a wheel-barrow full of turnips up Washington street in Boston.” Some expected him to be arrested immediately, but nothing so exciting occurred. Folger posed for pictures with his new machine, loaded it up with the mail and a passenger, and set off for ’Sconset. Folger said that if the selectmen attempted to interfere with his use of the auto, he would see them in court. Even Folger, however, supported a ban on automobiles during the summer tourist season. Out-of-season he felt that he ought to be able to use his auto to best pursue, as the Declaration of Independence states, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In any event, nothing could be done to limit his auto use until a hearing before the Highway Commission scheduled for November 19 in Boston. That hearing served as a sort of Nantucket reunion, with large numbers of year-round and summer residents in attendance. After some deliberation, the Highway Commission found that the selectmen’s order was, in fact, “consistent with the public interests.” With this approval, the order went into effect.4

he was stopped and charged with violating the order. Folger said that the auto ban was unconstitutional and that he again intended to appeal to the higher courts. When it came time to set a fine for this second offense, Fitz-Randolph heard from town attorney William A. Morse. Morse drew the court’s attention to Folger’s deliberate violation of the law. Folger showed no respect for his fellow citizens or for the court, as “in a spirit of braggadocio he came to court in his machine and after being sentenced paraded in the streets again, in defiance of both the selectmen’s ordinance and the order of this court.” Morse continued that “It pains me to see what is going on down here on this beautiful spot—to read how this defendant is bringing Nantucket into ridicule—to see how he is trying to make a farce of the administration of law and in a spirit of defiance is dragging his miserable automobile through the streets of the town behind horses.” Judge Fitz-Randolph ordered him fined sixty dollars.5

Clinton Folger continued to drive his mail car across the island. He was soon charged with violating the selectmen’s order and pled not guilty. Judge Fitz-Randolph, the trial judge for Nantucket County, heard the case and fined Folger fifteen dollars. Folger filed an appeal to the Superior Court. Folger then proceeded to drive away from the courthouse in his Overland. Once again,

While waiting for his day in Superior Court, Clinton Folger continued to test the bounds of the exclusion order. He had begun to travel by “horse-mobile” (powered by “horseoline”) within the town limits before un-hitching his team and switching to motor power for the state highway, which Folger believed the selectmen had no power to regulate. He began each day by starting his Overland, driving it up the wharf, loading mail and passengers, driving it down the wharf, and adding his horse team only where private property ended and public roads began. The selectmen were skeptical of the idea that being drawn by horses rendered an automobile no longer an automobile. On cold winter mornings Folger kept the Overland’s motor running while it was pulled through town by his horse team. This way, the automobile would be warmed up for the drive across the island. For this, Folger was once more charged with violating the automobile ordinance. The legal question was whether “the operation of the engine not in gear, while the horses are drawing the car through the streets, is actually a violation of the statute.” The factual question was whether or not the Overland had been in gear, with witnesses taking both positions. The case was repeatedly continued be-

4 “Long-Heralded Automobile Arrived on Nantucket Wednesday,” I&M, Nov. 8, 1913, 1; “Highway Commission Says ‘Consistent With the Public Interests,’” I&M, Nov. 29, 1913, 4.

5 “Exclusion of Autos to be Tested. Folger Appeals to Superior Court,” I&M, Dec. 20, 1913, 1; “Folger Fined Again,” I&M, Dec. 27, 1913, 1; “Folger Fined Again,” I&M, Dec. 27, 1913, 1, 3.

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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Two views of Joseph Terry (in bowler hat) and Orison Hull (in uniform) posting automobile exclusion notices in town, 1913. P14804, P9580

fore eventually being dropped. The statute enabling the exclusion regulation required that signs be posted on the closed streets. Over time, many of these signs had been taken down “through numerous agencies—wind, rain and storm, coupled with help from boys,” making the signs “conspicuous only by their absence.” Folger believed that the ordinance was technically no longer in force on these streets and began running his automobile on them. The selectmen were unsure whether it was wiser to just put up new signs or charge Folger again with violating the ordinance. For all his mischief, Folger was quick to put his auto to socially beneficial use, as in several instances where he rushed doctors to urgent cases.6 The selectmen sought a legislative solution to Folger’s provocations. A new bill containing a flat exclusion of automobiles from the island was considered at a crowded hearing before the Massachusetts legislature’s Committee on Towns. There was one surprising proponent of the ban: Louis S. Spear, president of the Massachusetts Automobile Association. Spear reported that even many avid automobilists enjoyed having a place away from the modern machines. Dr. Benjamin Sharp presented a petition signed by 229 Nantucket residents

6 “Interesting Developments in Nantucket’s Automobile Controversy,” I&M, Dec. 27, 1913, 1; “No Further Developments,” I&M, Jan. 3, 1914, 1; “What Others Say,” I&M Jan. 3, 1914, 4; “Automobile Again Doing Business Under Power,” I&M, Apr. 25, 1914, 1; “Automobile an Ambulance,” I&M, Mar. 28, 1914, 1; “The Automobile Valuable in Emergencies,” I&M, May 2, 1914, 1.

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in support of the proposal. The manager of the Nantucket Railroad attended the hearing, as the railroad was considering some improvements that would not be worth undertaking if automobiles were admitted. William Thibodeau appeared on behalf of Folger and, by extension, all automobilists. He argued that the selectmen had dismissed concerns about narrow streets and dangerous drivers and repeatedly overstepped their authority by enforcing the bans; he presented a pro-auto petition signed by 462 Nantucket residents too intimidated to come to the hearing in person. On a humorous note, Folger was handed an anti-automobile petition from 1912 containing his signature. He said that he did not recall signing the petition, but, being a “very accommodating sort of chap,” may well have.7 The Committee on Towns quickly advanced a bill permitting Nantucket to hold a referendum on the automobile question and to enforce a complete ban if that were the will of the majority.8 The bill soon passed the legislature and was signed into law by Governor Walsh. As passed, chapter 585 of the Acts of 1914, “An Act to Regulate the Operation of Motor Vehicles in the Town of Nantucket,” reads:

7 “Automobile Hearing,” I&M, Mar. 14, 1914, 1, 3. 8 “Town to Decide on Total Exclusion of Automobiles,” I&M, Apr. 11, 1914, 1; Nantucket’s Auto-Exclusion Bill Reported Monday,” I&M, Apr. 18, 1914, 1.

NANTUCKET AUTO BAN

Section 1. It shall be unlawful to operate automobiles or motor vehicles on any kind of highway, state highway, or townway in the town of Nantucket. Section 2. Whoever unlawfully operates an automobile or motor vehicle contrary to the provisions of this act shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten nor more than one hundred dollars. Section 3. This act shall take effect upon its acceptance by a majority of the voters of Nantucket present and voting thereon by ballot at an annual or special town meeting duly called for the purpose.9 At a June town meeting on the issue, 610 town residents voted: 376 in favor of implementing the act and 234 opposed. With that, the ban went into effect. In 1916, Clinton Folger sent a petition to Charles L. Gifford, the state senator for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. In response, Gifford introduced a bill to repeal the law authorizing the auto ban. The bill met stiff opposition and failed to advance out of committee. With legislative reprieve not forthcoming, Clinton Folger again looked to the courts. In December, he fired up his long-dormant auto, loaded it with mail, and did the run to and from Siasconset. Upon his return, he sat down and awaited arrest. Folger was clearly attempting to create a test case and claimed to be ready to fight 9 1914 Mass. Acts 506–507.

the automobile ordinance all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. His actions created a “mysterious unease” among islanders gathered to discuss the event. Many felt that Folger had to have some sort of outside support: “But there the mystery deepens. Who would support such a dastardly enterprise? Nobody would dare admit doing so, anyway. Clint is a ‘crafty creature’ however, according to those who ought to know, and must ‘have something up his sleeve.’” Folger avoided arrest for the incident. As Police Chief Gibbs relayed, no one wanted to be the one to file a complaint against him. To further antagonize the anti-auto crowd, Folger had been running an advertisement in the Inquirer and Mirror: his ten horses were for sale, but his automobile was not.10 The following year a number of navy sailors were stationed on the island to repair submarine chasers engaged in the hunt for German U-Boats. A few bored young sailors discovered Clinton Folger’s auto at rest in his barn; they took the car on a joy ride and “honked their way through town and across the state highway to ’Sconset, having a delightful time.” Upon their return, the driver, Arthur Farash, was fined $25 for driving without a license. He reported that the experience was worth every penny. Not everyone was amused—lo10 “Folger Brought His Auto Out Again,” I&M, Jan. 6, 1917, 1; “An Auto Actually Invades Old Nantucket Town,” I&M, Jan. 20, 1917, 1; “For Sale,” I&M, Sept. 9, 1916, 4.

A cartoon poking fun at Clinton Folger and the automobile ban. P12705

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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"To see an automobile pass­ing through the town was fully as interesting a sight as it would be to see a man trundling a wheel-barrow full of turnips up Washington street in Boston.”

Clinton Folger’s Overland automobile arriving at the wharf, 1913. P9583

cal historian and auto opponent Alexander Starbuck threatened to contact one of his acquaintances, the secretary of the navy, over the incident.11 In November 1917, Clinton Folger once again fired up his machine and took it for a jaunt across the island. This time he was placed under arrest upon his return and again brought before Judge Fitz-Randolph. He was charged with violating the auto ordinance and pled not guilty. Folger claimed that the ordinance was invalid—not as an unauthorized or unjust exercise of town power, but because the original town vote in 1914 did not comply with Massachusetts ballot laws. Town Clerk Bunker was summoned from his card game and tasked with producing the records from that vote. They revealed that each voter had been handed two ballots, one marked “yes” and one marked “no,” and had simply handed in their preferred ballot. According to Folger’s attorney, Massachusetts law required a single, or Australian, ballot to be provided for each voter. Briefs for each party were published in the newspaper. Judge Fitz-Randolph found the issue perplexing and chose to pass the case on to the appeals court for a hearing scheduled the following July. Clinton Folger repeated that he was prepared to see the case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.12 With the Folger case pending, the auto ban ran into practical, rather than legal, headwinds. The Nantucket 11 “‘That Automobile’ Exercised Once More,” I&M, Oct. 20, 1917, 1; “That Joy Ride,” I&M, Nov. 3, 1917, 2. 12 “Folger Bound Over to Grand Jury on ‘Probable Cause,’” I&M, Dec. 8, 1917, 1.

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Railroad had long struggled to turn a profit. It had repeatedly changed owners, been beset with mechanical problems, and was routinely damaged in winter storms. By 1918, it was in dire shape and its stockholders voted to sell it off for scrap. Two real estate developers with property near Siasconset at Tom Nevers Head, Franklin E. Smith and Edgar C. Linn, quickly filed a bill to repeal the 1914 Act authorizing the auto ban.13 A hearing on the proposed bill was held before the Committee on Towns. Around two hundred interested parties attended, with the anti-automobilists still in the majority, although not as dominant a majority as in previous trips to the state house. While Nantucket’s auto ban remained popular among both year-round and summer residents, the impending closure of the Nantucket Railroad threatened to make travel across the island more difficult and prevent further development. The Committee on Towns soon recommended that the legislature pass a bill repealing the 1914 bill, with this repeal only becoming effective if accepted by Nantucket voters after a referendum using the Australian ballot. This bill quickly passed through both houses of the legislature and was signed into law by the governor. The referendum was scheduled for May 15, 1918. The pages of the Inquirer and Mirror were the site of intense debate over the vote. The issue of ’Sconset dominated discussion. G. H. Brinton noted that the railroad had brought growth and prosperity to ’Sconset. He had 13 “To Repeal Nantucket’s Auto Exclusion Bill,” I&M, Jan. 12, 1918, 1.

NANTUCKET AUTO BAN

Clinton Folger and his horsemobile. Scan gift of Helen Seager, SC810-37

long opposed admitting autos, but now he felt them necessary: “If we deny ’Sconset this improvement, it will be like striking a heavy blow from which, in my opinion, it will never recover.” Monsignor John Walsh, president of the Siasconset Improvement Association, agreed. Without autos, he feared “isolation and the rearing of barriers that would intercept our free and easy access to and from the town—to and from the steamers, to and from our mails, our living, and the world abroad.” Without this access, Siasconset faced “dark and lonely days.”14 Others looked slightly further afield to Martha’s Vineyard. Frederick P. Hill said that many were opposed to autos because they loved Nantucket and “wish[ed] to prevent its becoming the semi–Coney Island that Martha’s Vineyard has in part become.” He had spoken to Vineyard residents who regretted the introduction of the auto. J. S. Smith noted that twenty years prior, the Vineyard’s rail line had been junked, and the autos that had replaced it had brought with them development and prosperity. Benjamin Woods agreed that the auto had spurred development on the Vineyard but felt that similar development would see ’Sconset “become a third-class picnic joint like Oak Bluffs.” One Vineyard resident, Henry V. Greenough, wrote that autos had become ubiquitous on the island and that “on almost any fine Sunday afternoon during that month [August] there is practically one continual line of them from Gay Head to Vineyard Haven.” They had brought danger, 14 G. H. Brinton, “Auto Go Forward,” I&M, Apr. 20, 1918, 6; John Walsh, “Father Walsh Speaks for the Siasconset Association,” I&M, May 11, 1918, 5.

noise, and dust, and Greenough wished that they had not been brought at all.15 Supporters of ending Nantucket’s ban emphasized the economic benefits to allowing automobiles. Franklin E. Smith, one of the developers that had introduced the bill, argued that he had only done so because it was in the best interests of the entire island, although, as treasurer of the Nantucket Cranberry Company, he wanted autos to be better able to take care of the company’s bogs and to get workers to and from town. With autos, “it will be possible to build at any point on the island, and still be able to get mail, provisions, and transportation at reasonable prices.” These new communities would fuel the island’s economy and lead to lower taxes for existing residents. Edward H. Packard felt that those opposed to the automobile wanted “the finest bit of God’s Universe on this side of the ocean— reserved for the exclusive use of the rich.” Instead, the island should be opened to auto travel, so that “values will double and quadruple in price and settlements discounting the Los Angeles suburbs spring up all over your island.” Packard urged the islanders to “Win your auto! Fight! Get a modern trolley system going! Build a Lincoln highway around the island! . . . Get a wiggle on!” J. E. C. Farnham believed that Nantucket’s voters had been presented with the choice between forward 15 Frederick P. Hill, “From a Summer Resident of Siasconset,” I&M, May 4, 1918, 5; J. S. Smith, “Automobiles Have Built Up the Vineyard,” I&M, May 4, 1918, 5; Benjamin Woods, “Down With the ‘Tin Red Devils,’” I&M, May 4, 1918, 5; Henry V. Greenough, “Mr. Greenough’s Letter,” I&M, May 11, 1918, 5.

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looking optimism and a retrograde traditionalism. The coming of the automobile was an inevitability. The only question was whether Nantucketers would celebrate or bemoan its arrival.16 Those who supported maintaining the ban made several arguments. Brainard T. Judkins contended that admitting autos would bring danger, drive away wealthy summer residents, and lead to increased taxes to maintain roads. Others emphasized Nantucket’s uniqueness. William Sturgis Bigelow felt that the biggest advantage the island had was its peace—a peace that would be shattered with the introduction of autos. Fredrik Fischer Meyer noted that Nantucket “is the only haven people have where they can get away from the evil-smelling, death-dealing, road-destroying, tax-raising, chauffeur-ridden, joy-riding, jitney-pesting, business-wrecking, law-defying mechanical contrivances which are running around loose all over the country.” It would be a shame to open up this one final preserve.17 16 Franklin E. Smith, “People Come to Nantucket Because of Wonderful Climate,” I&M, May 4, 1918, 5; Edward H. Packard, “Wants a Ticket to the ‘Coming Automobile Procession,’” I&M, Mar. 16, 1918, 6; J. E. C. Farnham, “Automobiles on Nantucket! Yes! or No!,” I&M, May 4, 1918, 5. 17 Brainerd T. Judkins, “Brainerd T. Judkin’s Reasons for Exclusion,” I&M, May 11, 1918, 4; William Sturgis Bigelow, “MacBeth Hath Murdered Sleep,” I&M, May 11, 1918, 4; Fredrik Fischer Meyer, “Mr. Meyer Opposed to Autos on Nantucket,” I&M, May 11, 1918, 5.

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Despite their disenfranchisement, women also made their voices heard. Anna Starbuck Jenks was the custodian of the Oldest House, a house built in 1686 that had become a privately owned summer museum. Jenks reported that visitors were delighted to be free from autos. As she saw it, islanders were faced with a clear choice: commercialism or humanitarianism. She was reminded of an anecdote of a father’s advice to his son: “Get money—honestly if you can, but get money!” Jenks felt that the attitude of the automobilists was, likewise, “Build up a summer resort; do it with autos—do it without killing off, or maiming, three or four deaf and lame old people, or sweet little toddling children that have suddenly slipped the leash of the mother’s dear hand, if you can, but get the automobile here anyway!” Georgine Flagg Judkins agreed with Jenks. Nantucket’s “pure and delicious air” with odors of salt, pine, wild rose, and vine ought not be “polluted by the sickening fumes of gasoline.” Eliza Codd, the local architect, worried about the fiscal ramifications of admitting autos. Many of the island’s largest taxpayers were wealthy summer residents who could move elsewhere. As she saw it, “Why run the risk of exchanging our present summer populace—the chief source of income for many people, interested in our island, loving every part of it—for an uncertainty?” Not every woman,

Cars on Main Street, early 1920s. P12706

however, supported the ban. Marion Crosby felt that admitting autos would “show that this lovely isle is not for the few, but the many.”18 Whatever their views, women could not directly influence the vote’s outcome. Alexander Starbuck noted that the 1915 Census had recorded 3,166 residents of Nantucket. In 1917, there were 909 legal voters, of whom 512 voted in the state elections that year. If turnout remained the same it could take only 257 votes, or twenty-nine percent of the legal voters and eight percent of the total population, to reach a majority. If turnout fell, the auto referendum could be decided by an even small percentage of the island’s citizens. Additionally, many of those most opposed to the admittance of autos were women left without any way to “express their overwhelming sentiment against the shrieking modern juggernauts.” Starbuck asked, “Is it fair? Is a referendum without their votes just to them?”19 On May 15, 1918, the issue finally went to a vote. By a margin of 336 to 296, the islanders voted to approve the act and admit automobiles. With that, it was over. The vote saw a strong turnout for a ballot question, with ’Sconset, Polpis, and Quidnet particularly well represented, where the vast majority voted in favor of 18 Anna Starbuck Jenks, “One Woman’s Voice,” I&M, May 4, 1918, 5; Georgine Flagg Judkins, “Another Woman’s Voice,” I&M, May 11, 1918, 5; Eliza Codd, “Motor Cars Should be Kept Out,” I&M, Apr. 20, 1918, 6; “Summer Resident’s Views Regarding Autos,” I&M, Apr. 27, 1918, 1; Marion Crosby, “Coming of Auto Inevitable,” I&M, May 4, 1918, 5. 19 Nantucket Jr., “Automobiles and the Referendum,” I&M, May 11, 1918, 4.

admitting autos.20 News of the outcome was celebrated in Polpis, where “guns banged, horns blew, dishpans clanged, flags waved, young and old cheered, and then they all got together and had a parade” featuring a mock automobile. The Inquirer and Mirror reported that not even the most radical “anti” was questioning the result of the election and “seem[ed] to have lost their bitterness to a considerable degree and are looking forward to the future without any outward sign of pessimism.” Even staunch auto opponent Alexander Starbuck seemed willing to make the best of the situation. He loved the island too much to stay away, and, as much as he regretted the change, he would “be there so long as I am able.” As the months went on, automobiles became a regular part of life. By October 1918, there were 53 automobiles on the island. That month, the organizers of a Liberty Bond parade held to support the war effort encouraged anyone in possession of an automobile to join in. The long line of autos was led by Clinton Folger, accompanied in the car by the afternoon’s speakers, the Hon. William Prentis Parker, the Rev. Henry VanOmmeren, and Henry Brown, president of the Nantucket Institution for Savings. In 1925—seven years after the vote—Clinton Folger’s Overland, the one-time horsemobile that had caused all that trouble, was sent to the scrapyard.21 20 “Nantucket Votes to Admit Automobiles by 336 to 296,” I&M, May 18, 1918, 2, 5. 21 “Verdict, the Polls a Credit to Nantucket,” I&M, May 18, 1918, 6; Nantucket Jr., “Make it Safe and Sane,” I&M, May 25, 1918, 3; “Nantucket ‘Drives’ Fourth Liberty Loan With Big Parade,” I&M, Oct. 12, 1918, 1; “Gone to the Dump, Last!,” I&M, May 30, 1925, 3.

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BEYOND EMANCIPATION Prince Boston in the Revolutionary War Period By Naomhán Fairweather Naomhán Fairweather received a master’s degree in historical archaeology at UMass Boston in 2023, writing a thesis on the women of the Nantucket African Meeting House. They are currently pursuing related archival research on the historic New Guinea neighborhood.

W

hile Prince Boston is not the most familiar figure in Nantucket history, his name often comes up regarding the end of slavery on the island—but only his name, with little else of him in those accounts. His strategies for navigating the eighteenth-century Atlantic world as a Black man have been reduced to a single misinterpreted 1773 court case. After 1773, the thread of his story drops out of the tapestry that is the history of Nantucket; but by casting a broader net into the documentary record, it is possible to pick up his thread again and, in doing so, follow his course through the American Revolution and the Anglo-French Wars as a free Black sailor.

Early Life and Emancipation Prince Boston was born in Nantucket on March 15, 1750, to Boston and Maria, a Black couple enslaved by William Swain Sr., a wealthy white Quaker. Prince was the fifth of eight children. In 1760, William Swain freed Boston, Maria, and their baby Peter, but would continue to enslave Prince and his six other siblings until they each turned twenty-eight. Prince was only ten years old at the time, with the prospect of spending the rest of his childhood and early adulthood in bondage.1 After William Swain Sr. died in 1770, his children continued to enforce Prince’s servitude. In 1772, John Swain sent Prince Boston whaling on William Rotch Sr.’s sloop Friendship, commanded by Elisha Folger. On Nantucket and across coastal New England, white families would send men they enslaved to do the hard, dangerous work of whaling, and, at the end of the trip, they would take the enslaved men’s lay—their share of the profits from

1 Nantucket Registry of Deeds, Vol. 6, p. 264; Vital Records of Nantucket, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850 (New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1927) 4:563; Frances Karttunen, The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars (Spinner Publications, 2005), 67. In descending order of age, Boston and Maria’s children were Tobias, Essex, Seneca, Patience, Prince, Silas, George, and Peter. George does not conclusively appear in the documentary record after age 5; all other siblings lived until at least their late twenties.

Left: John Swain vs. Elisha Folger (1773) in the Nantucket County Court Records.

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Prince Boston’s name in the register of British and Danish prisoners for the Department of Dinan, December 1779. Courtesy the National Archives, UK.

the voyage.2 However, at the end of the Friendship’s three-month trip, Captain Folger gave Prince Boston his share directly: a handsome sum of twenty-three pounds sterling, seven shillings, and sixpence. John Swain sued Captain Folger for not giving Swain the lay. The Nantucket Court of Common Pleas ruled in favor of Elisha Folger, meaning that Prince Boston was legally able to keep the money he had earned; in an appeal, the ruling was upheld and Swain was ordered to pay Elisha Folger’s court costs.3 For two centuries, it has been widely believed that the Prince Boston case ended slavery on Nantucket. This belief started with an 1822 report to the Massachusetts Supreme Court by the Committee on Negros and Mulattos. It relays an account from William Rotch Sr., then eighty-eight years old. Instead of saying the legal action was about Boston’s wages, Rotch said that “John Swain brought an action against the captain of the vessel in the Court of Common Pleas at Nantucket for the recovery of his slave, but the Jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendant, and the slave called Prince Boston was manumitted by the Magistrates.” According to this report, Rotch asked John Adams to represent Prince Boston in the Court of Appeals, rather than the appeal being about recovering his lay and legal fees. This convinced Swain to drop his case, and Boston was a free man in possession of 2 Daniel Vickers, “Nantucket Whalemen in the Deep-Sea Fishery: The Changing Anatomy of an Early American Labor Force,” Journal of American History 72, no. 2 (1985), 291. https://doi.org/10.2307/1903376 3 Swain v. Folger (1773), Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas, Nantucket County Court Records, vols. 1–2, pp. 1721–1802, microfilm 906828, image group 8131500, frame 161, https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/300823; Folger v. Swain (1774), Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Court Records 1773–78, microfilm 947011, image group 7942992, frame 313, https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/301381.

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just over twenty-three pounds sterling. Furthermore, Rotch’s account says, Boston’s legal case prompted the de-facto end of the practice of chattel slavery on Nantucket, though a handful of holdouts, Quakers and non-Quakers alike, refused to manumit the people they enslaved until Massachusetts officially outlawed slavery in 1783.4 No documentation has been found to support Rotch’s version of the court case. Neither has any documentation been found relating to Boston’s continued enslavement by John Swain, who died in 1772 shortly after the court decision with Elisha Folger, or by William Swain Jr., who died in 1773. Was Boston’s continued enslavement to the Swains not enforced? Did he buy his freedom? Was he manumitted in 1778 following William Swain Sr.’s 1760 directions? The record does not say. Regardless of when Prince Boston won his freedom, his younger siblings—Patience, Silas, and George—were still enslaved.5 In 1774, Silas Boston agreed to go whaling for the Swain family in exchange for his early freedom upon his return. The deal demonstrated the siblings’ continued enslavement but also shows the Swain family’s willingness to negotiate with the Bostons for their own self-determination.6 Although the exact circumstances of Prince Boston’s emancipation are unknown, by 1777, at the age of twenty-seven, he was off to sea once more—this time against the socioeconomic and political backdrop of the American Revolution.

The Revolution Comes to Nantucket Nantucket occupied an unenviable position in the conflict between the United Kingdom and the American colonies. Influential white families played a carefully-negotiated game of neutrality on behalf of both themselves and the community at large. As an island, Nantucket relied heavily on imports from the colonial mainland; as a predominantly whaling-based economy, Nantucketers also relied heavily on Britain to buy their whaling products so that they could purchase mainland goods.7 As tensions between the colonies and Britain grew, so too did the pressures on Nantucketers to choose a side. In 1775, William Rotch Sr. and his brother Francis attempted to “save the whaling industry” from the increasingly complicated restrictions placed on it by both sides of the brewing war. The Rotches planned to send ships to a new port in the politically-neutral Falkland Islands and ship whale oil to London from there, avoiding the blockades and port restrictions in New England. The initial fleet consisted of five vessels: the Minerva, Diana, Abigail, Falkland, and Enterprise. Full crew lists do not survive for these voyages, but partial lists exist of the officers and leading skilled crew aboard the Enterprise’s 1777 and 1778 voyages under Captain Paul Pease of Nantucket. The Enterprise was, at this point, majority-owned by Dennis de Berdt, a London-based associate of the Rotch family. Here Prince Boston reappears as a “line man4 Theodore Lyman Jr., “No. 46. Free Negroes and Mulattoes,” Report to Massachusetts House of Representatives (Boston, 1822), 22–23; Karttunen, Other Islanders, 68. 5 If George was still living, he would have been 19 years old. 6 Karttunen, Other Islanders, 63. 7 Joseph Lawrence McDevitt Jr. “The House of Rotch: Whaling Merchants of Massachusetts, 1734–1828” (PhD diss., American University, 1978), 184–86, ProQuest 288053310.

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ager / boatsteerer” on the crew of the Enterprise. This higher paying role required skill; it implies that he had already been on previous whaling voyages.8 It is therefore possible to conclude that Boston sailed on a ship from the Rotches’ Falkland Islands fleet during at least two voyages, with earlier trips in the fleet possible but ultimately unknown. He and his crewmates received Admiralty protection on both of these voyages: once in September 1777 and again in August 1778.9 Such protection was extended to mariners in the British whaling industry on behalf of the United Kingdom, particularly those with specialized skills such as boatsteerers, and granted the individual in question a temporary reprieve from impressment into naval service.10 The two dates of protection mark times when Boston and the rest of the Enterprise’s crew made port in London, either as two fully-separate voyages or to offload their cargo and resupply before setting sail once more. How did a formerly-enslaved Black Nantucketer end up with British Admiralty protection during the American Revolution? Although Prince Boston had a large extended family tying him to Nantucket—he had seven siblings, three sisters-in-law, and at least fourteen living nieces and nephews by the mid-1770s—economic prospects likely influenced Prince Boston’s decision to set sail and leave behind his family and hometown. Few job opportunities were available to free Black men even in times of economic prosperity, and, while dangerous, maritime labor proved one of the most reliable sources of income for Black men. The income from whaling could, in turn, be put towards business ventures that other men in Nantucket’s Black community undertook, such as purchasing land, opening boarding houses, or owning retail stores.11 But whaling income was scarce on Nantucket during the Revolution. The shuttering of the whaling industry hit shipowners and merchants hard. One can infer that Nantucket’s most economically marginalized citizens felt the effect even more profoundly. On the other hand, in 1777 the Enterprise brought forty tuns of sperm whale oil to London as its cargo. His lay as a line manager might have been as high as one thirty-second, which would have come out to around sixty-seven pounds and ten shillings for six to eleven months’ labor, up to three times as much as the average “unskilled” laborer on the colonial mainland could expect to earn in the same time.12 The choice to go whaling with the Rotches’ fleet suggests the existence of interpersonal connections Boston had already made in the whaling industry. William Rotch Sr. had also been the owner of the Friendship, presumably agreeing with Elisha Folger’s choice to pay Prince Boston directly despite a contract with John Swain. Perhaps Boston felt it was a safer choice to join a whaling fleet already under the direction of a powerful white abolitionist who he knew respected him at least enough to pay him his own wages. 8 McDevitt, “House of Rotch,” 209; British Southern Whale Fishery voyage and crew list databases (BSWF), WhalingHistory.org, accessed August 23, 2023, https://whalinghistory.org/bv/; Lance E. Davis, Robert E. Gallman, and Karin Gleiter, In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816–1906 (University of Chicago Press, 1997), 158. 9 BSWF. 10 A. G. E. Jones, Ships Employed in the South Seas Trade, 1775–1861 (Roebuck Society, 1992 [1986]), 13. 11 W. Jeffrey Bolster, “ ‘To Feel like a Man’: Black Seamen in the Northern States, 1800–1860.” The Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (1990),1191, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936594; Karttunen, Other Islanders, 72. 12 McDevitt, “House of Rotch,” 203; BSWF; Gordon Jackson, The British Whaling Trade (Liverpool University Press, 2005), 241; Eric Dolin, Rebels At Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution (Liveright Press, 2022), 44.

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Boston’s presence in the Falklands fleet during the early years of the American Revolutionary War provides an interesting point of comparison with three of his brothers during the war’s later years. Peter Boston, his youngest brother, and another “Mr. Boston” from Nantucket whose age matches that of his older brother, Essex, both joined the privateer Aurora under Captain David Porter in 1781. Another brother, Silas Boston, briefly enlisted in the Massachusetts Navy on the brig Hazard, commanded by Captain John F. Williams.13 Given the choices that his other brothers made to fight for the cause of American colonial independence, it is possible that Prince’s decision to work far away from the war’s effects was in part due to a difference in political opinions. Unfortunately, regardless of his reasons, he did not manage to avoid military entanglements for long.

But whaling income was scarce on Nantucket during the Revolution. The shuttering of the whaling industry hit shipowners and merchants hard. One can infer that Nantucket’s most economically marginalized citizens felt the effect even more profoundly. From Revolution to the Anglo-French War The Anglo-French War officially began in spring of 1778, soon after France began openly supporting the American revolutionaries. Prince Boston and his crewmates received renewed Admiralty protection on August 17, 1778. After September 26, the brig left London for the whaling grounds off the coast of Brazil. Less than a month into their voyage, the Enterprise—along with Prince Boston and his crewmates—was captured by the French frigate Belle-Poole.14 Despite being manned and commanded largely by Americans, the brig was considered a British asset because it was majority-owned by a London agent. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, in their positions as American Commissioners to France, wrote to the French secretary of state for the navy in 1778 to request that American crewmembers of several captured British ships be released back to America; however, though they refer multiple times to the plight of the Americans aboard the Enterprise, they never explicitly request their release.15 The next chapter of Prince Boston’s life is sketched out in the records of allowance payments sent by British naval commissioners to prisoners of war held in France.

13 Office of the Secretary of State of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War: A Compilation from the Archives (Wright & Potter Print Co., 1896), 2:292, 294, 295. 14 Renaud Morieux, The Society of Prisoners: Anglo-French Wars and Incarceration in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2019), 273; BSWF; Richard Grinnell to the American Commissioners, Oct. 23, 1778, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Claude A. Lopez (Yale University Press, 1998), 27:608, accessed via Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-27-02-0581. 15 Jane Clayton, “Foundations of the British South Sea Whale Fishery: 1763–1785,” The Great Circle 40, no. 2 (2018), 69, https://www. jstor.org/stable/44955794; Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to Gabriel de Sartine, Oct. 30, 1778, in The Adams Papers, ed. Gregg L. Lint, Robert J. Taylor, Richard Alan Ryerson, Celeste Walker, and Joanna M. Revelas. (Harvard University Press, 1989) 7:176, accessed via Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-07-02-0118

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A whaling brig like the Enterprise would have had about twenty-four men aboard. Of these twenty-four crew members, six—Captain Paul Pease, harpooner William Rhoads, ship’s boys Archibald Essel and William Tommet, and ordinary seamen Thomas Moreton and John Maitman—were being held in February 1779 in prisons at Saumur, Thouars, Doué, Montreuil, and Monmoreau. By summer 1779 and until at least March 1780, all were held exclusively at Saumur. No members of the Enterprise crew appear in subsequent prisoner records at Saumur.16 What of Prince Boston during this time? The prisoner-of-war system of the eighteenth-century Atlantic was complex enough that full records and exact numbers are impossible to obtain, both due to underreporting and to incomplete document preservation.17 It seems likely that Boston was in a different location from the six men and boys listed in Saumur, considering prisoners in those papers were grouped by ship. It also seems likely that, following his capture, Boston spent those months moving through the prize courts and prisoner-of-war system in France.

The ordinariness of Prince Boston’s briefly recorded time as a prisoner of war is quite remarkable, given the differential legal treatment and social degradation in other aspects of Blackmen’s lives in the 1770s Atlantic world. In his study of incarceration during the Anglo-French Wars, Renaud Moreaux discusses in depth the conditions and experiences of prisoners of different ranks. Unlike European and white American sailors, Black seamen were constantly at risk of being enslaved if their vessels were captured, though the risks were different depending on the capturing country. Throughout the 1700s, until the Napoleonic Wars, Britain largely appears to have refused to differentiate between free and enslaved non-white enemy combatants; men of color captured on prizes were treated as prize goods—able to be sold off—rather than as prisoners of war. France’s requests that Britain not enslave free Black French combatants implies that France at this time did not, perhaps, follow the same policy; though Moreaux notes that “the treatment of black captives by European powers continued to vary a great deal throughout the 1790s.”18 Boston’s status as a free Black man might have been called into question, and some of the missing ten months might have been spent dealing with prize courts. However, this is only one possibility; like the story of his emancipation, the details of those months may never be known.

16 James Farr, “A Slow Boat to Nowhere: The Multi-Racial Crews of the American Whaling Industry,” The Journal of Negro History 68, no. 2 (1983), 162, https://doi.org/10.2307/2717719; Register of British and Danish Prisoners of War for Brest, Dinan, Fougeres, La Rochelle, and Saumur, 1779–81, in “Prisoners of War 1715–1945,” ADM 103/134, parts 1–3, 1:30, 105, 168, 192, 369, 470, 554, 586, National Archives, London, UK, accessed Sept. 2023 via FindMyPast.com. 17 Morieux, Society of Prisoners, 12. 18 Ibid., 279–80.

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Prince Boston is next recorded as a prisoner of war on parole in December 1779, in Dinan in northern France. He had been held there since at least September 9, 1779.19 Records from Dinan earlier in 1779 and later, in 1780, were not present in the digitized National Archives collection, so it is difficult to know more about his movements or how long he remained in France after that. Boston was the only member of his crew at Dinan, which does not seem to have been unusual: many allowance lists record only one or two people from a particular vessel in any given location. Like all the men at Dinan and like his crewmates at Saumur, Boston’s prisoner’s allowance was one livre per week, which seems to have been fairly standard across the non-commanding ranks at this time.20 The ordinariness of Prince Boston’s briefly recorded time as a prisoner of war is quite remarkable, given the differential legal treatment and social degradation in other aspects of Black men’s lives in the 1770s Atlantic world. His legal freedom as an individual was upheld to the same extent as that of his white peers within the confines of their shared wartime capture. He was even granted a degree of mobility beyond that of his lower-ranking white crewmates, owing to his relative seniority on the Enterprise. Of the seven crewmen of the Enterprise who are listed in prisoner-of-war records, only Boston and three others (the master and two ship’s boys) were allowed out “on Caution or Parole.”21 Unlike many Black prisoners of war in the eighteenth century who were treated as property, sold by their captors, or forced to remain in prison, Boston would have been able to secure his own quarters and move about the town where he was paroled.22 Despite circumstances that once again placed Prince Boston in a position of captivity, he managed to maintain his emancipated status with enough honor to be considered worthy of parole by his white captors.

Beyond the Wars After the Revolution, and after the Anglo-French War, Prince Boston disappears from archival documentation for a decade. It is unclear if he returned to Nantucket during that time. By 1790, the documentary record is clear that Boston had built a new, possibly more stable life for himself in London: a marriage license indicates that he became a member of a Church of England parish along the London docks, in an area where many Black Loyalists settled after the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783.23 Prince Boston’s time in England is outside the scope of this essay, but his activities during the Revolutionary War illustrate his character beyond a single case in the Nantucket Court of Common Pleas. Circumscribed by the social and political events of his day, he navigated complicated loyalties and scant opportunities to carve a path through a tumultuous decade on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

19 Register of British and Danish Prisoners of War, 2:679–80. 20 Ibid., 1:168 and 192. 21 Ibid., 1:30. 22 Morieux, Society of Prisoners, 242. 23 London Church of England Parish Registers, 1774–1812, Skt/C/01/Ms 9671, p. 228, London Metropolitan Archives, London, UK, accessed July 27, 2023, via Ancestry.com; Gretchen Gerzina, Black England: Life Before Emancipation (John Murray Publishers, 1995), 19.

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Reverend James Gardner Ross By Barbara Ann White It is exciting when an article leads to During World War I, Ross raised money more information, and that is exactly and was assistant director of religion what happened as a result of the article for the YMCA at Camp Joseph H. Johnabout Eunice Ross and her family that son near Jacksonville. appeared in the Early Fall 2024 issue of The pamphlet was written before 1932, Historic Nantucket. Within a few days of the year of Ross’s death. It seems to publication, Carl J. Cruz, historian with have been written after Ross had rethe New Bedford Historical Society, tired in Jacksonville. The author writes sent me a digital copy of A Brief Sketch of that Ross “is still actively engaged in the Life and Work of Reverend J. Gardner preaching the gospel and is constantRoss, D.D., which he had discovered in ly receiving invitations to preach and the archives at the University of North lecture in the schools and colleges. Florida in Jacksonville. This pamphlet Notwithstanding his age, he appears roRev. J. Gardner Ross, D. D. fills in important gaps in the extraordibust, well preserved, magnetic of voice, nary biography of James Gardner Ross, clear of intellect and a minister of the New Testament.” Eunice Ross’s nephew, and reveals how much more James Gardner Ross’s career is all the more remarkable there is to learn about him and his family. when we consider that his grandfather, James Ross, In my article, I had lost the trail of James Gardner Ross had been born in Africa and was illiterate, and that his in 1899, when he was 55 years old. He had resigned from aunt Eunice had been denied a high school education a church in Nashville, Tennessee. The Brief Sketch, writon Nantucket. ten by “A Friend,” reveals that Ross traveled extensively. The pamphlet was donated to the University of North He served churches in an astounding number of placFlorida by Minnie Grimes Baxter, the daughter of Reves including Wilmington, North Carolina; Pittsburgh, erend Ross and his wife, Rosina, known as Rosa. MinPennsylvania; Youngstown and Lima, Ohio; New Orlenie married Thomas Baxter in 1893 in Jacksonville, and ans, Louisiana; Savannah, Georgia; Providence, Rhode their daughter Rosina later married Samuel S. CampIsland; and Lexington, Kentucky. The pamphlet inbell, a physician. Their son, James Ross Baxter, lived cludes few dates with the exception of noting that Ross to age thirty-three. Hopefully, someone will research was in Pittsburg in 1921. Thus, it is not yet clear when more about the family and continue tracing out these Reverend Ross preached in all these places, opening up lines; there must be descendants who are unaware of avenues for new research. their family’s connection to Nantucket. The pamphlet notes that Ross was in demand as an educator and was invited to teach at many places including Aiken, South Carolina; Lynchburg, Virginia; and MemThis is an update from the article Eunice Ross and phis, Tennessee. “A Friend” noted that he turned down Her Family by Barbara Ann White in our early fall most of the teaching positions despite the fact that they 2024 issue of Historic Nantucket, vol. 74. No. 2. would have been more lucrative than his preaching. Available to read digitally at NHA.org. Ross, he said, preferred to work as a pastor.

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NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS

Properties

Old Mill Restoration Project Progress Update The NHA began a major restoration project at the Old Mill, partially funded by the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee (CPC), in August 2024. The project includes critical repairs and overall structural repairs and reinforcement, as well as visitor experience enhancements. To conduct this project with preservation at the forefront, the NHA is sourcing extensive historical records for reference and working with preservation professionals to ensure the historic fabric of the building. This past fall, the NHA contracted the firm Husk Preservation Inc. to conduct an in-depth on-site evaluation and follow-up report of the work that needs to be addressed to restore the Old Mill properly. Currently, the NHA is using this report to evaluate each necessary phase of work that needs to be accomplished, along with important financial planning coinciding with it. “Our goal is to restore the Old Mill to a completely functioning mill, so it stands as an iconic landmark of the

island for years to come. With the in-depth structural analysis from Husk Preservation Inc., we are at a place now where we can confidently plan for the long-term nature of this project that is in front of us to meet the preservation standards we intend to meet,” said Niles Parker, NHA Gosnell Executive Director. “The Old Mill is not only a historic property, but it is also a historic machine, and the mechanics of the mill must be prioritized, which makes this preservation project far more complex involving more research, structural testing, and professional millwright involvement.” The NHA will continue to update our members and the community with each phase of work as plans formalize and move forward. This summer, the NHA hopes to implement creative programming for community members and visitors to learn more about the restoration project with on-site opportunities and tours. Stay tuned for more updates and contact ask@nha.org with questions. NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Properties

Candle Factory North Wall Restoration Update Over the winter, work has progressed on the restoration of the north wall of the Whaling Museum’s historic Hadwen & Barney Oil and Candle Factory. Since arriving on site in late October, Integrated Conservation Resources and Integrated Conservation Contracting, the preservation firm hired for the stabilization project, has been hard at work with site preparation, planning, and project execution. Their work began with the design and construction of a specialized scaffolding system that spans both the interior and exterior of the Candle Factory’s north wall, allowing craftspeople to work on both faces of the wall while simultaneously not placing pressure on the delicate wall during the period of stabilization. With this infrastructure in place, ICR-ICC and Old Structures Engineering were able to perform a detailed handson survey of the current conditions and devise a few different options for conserving the wall and bringing it into compliance with modern building codes. The NHA has elected to structurally strengthen the wall by thickening the upper gable end and filling in the two gable windows. A photograph of the building from the 1880s shows these windows not in place at that date, and suggests they may not have been part of the building’s original 1847 design. Filling in the windows now will give the wall greater strength. As well, the wall originally featured a slight taper below the eaves, where the brickwork narrowed from three wythes to two. ICR has begun to fill this recess, adding an addition wythe all the way up to the roofline. These new courses of brick will be fastened to the existing older courses with helical stainless steel wire ties for added strength and stability. While work continues on this upper section, simultaneous repairs have targeted areas of weakness across the remaining interior and exterior facades. ICR has already begun the process of repointing both the brick wall and its stone foundation. Working from the base

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Historic Nantucket | Spring 2025

Candle Factory project underway, April 2025.

upwards, they have carefully removed and replaced all compromised mortar joints. As they progress, they have also reconstructed cracked areas as they encounter them. Finally, through sounding and small test drilling they have identified a number of voids in the stone foundation masonry which they are filling with a compatible grout. Many of these architectural conservation and structural improvements necessitate the introduction of contemporary materials. Sourcing these has been a process which ICR has approached thoughtfully and patiently to ensure their alterations blend in with the original fabric of the building and are compatible with the historic construction materials. Utilizing data from an analysis of surviving original mortar, they have closely matched the replacement mortar, using their own blends of aggregates and lime. For bricks, they selected a water-struck variety from the Maine-based fabricator Morin, fired according to processes first developed at a Medford, Massachusetts, brickworks in the seventeenth century. These have been carefully selected to match the color and texture of the original brick that was used to construct the north wall.

Candle Factory cont. Before laying the bricks, ICR’s masons take the extra measure of chipping off some of the sharp square edges of each brick to simulate the shape and wear of the existing nineteenth-century material. The goal is for the replacement material to be undetectable against the original fabric. The work of ICR and Old Structures Engineering will ensure that the brick walls of the Candle Factory, an iconic feature of the Nantucket waterfront since 1847, is thoroughly prepared to face the pressures of wind and water that constantly bombard its facades. The NHA is grateful for the generous support of Nantucket’s Community Preservation Committee (CPC) throughout the restoration of this landmark structure.

Notable New Installation in Discovery Center As we reopened the Whaling Museum Discovery Center for the 2025 season, we were excited to unveil a new installation of significant carvings by the late master wood carver Paul McCarthy. The carvings depict stages of a Yankee whaling voyage to the South Pacific and have been displayed for the island community and visitors to enjoy. “Our Discovery Center is a vital space for island and visiting families to play, learn, and explore. These new carvings enhance the space tremendously and bring a new level of storytelling engagement for our staff to activate. We sincerely thank Finn and Kim Wentworth for this generous gift that will benefit our visitors for years to come,” said Niles Parker, NHA Gosnell Executive Director. Paul McCarthy (1943–2023) specialized in eagles, signs, quarterboards, and architectural carving. He opened his first shop in Scituate, Mass., in 1969 and worked for many years from a shop near the rotary here on Nantucket. His most notable work with the Nantucket Historical Association is the iconic “Going on the Whale” that decorates the front of the Whaling Museum on Broad Street.

Going on the Whale carving on exterior of Whaling Museum.

McCarthy’s whaling scene panels, now displayed in the Discovery Center, were made between 1997 and 2001. They include views of Nantucket Harbor and Brant Point, scenes in the Pacific, and representations of whale hunting. McCarthy’s carving work is highlighted by paintwork by Mindy Stevens. “Paul McCarthy, respected artist, master carver, and longtime member of the Nantucket community, considered this his masterpiece. It is our gift to the people and island we’ve loved,” said the Wentworth Family. We invite our members and visitors to view this notable new addition to its Discovery Center and enjoy this family play space!

New installation on display in Discovery Center. NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS

LEARN MORE

Conceptual Community Quilt

Community Quilt Project Underway The NHA has launched a Community Quilt project corresponding with the 2025 featured exhibition, Behind the Seams: Clothing and Textiles on Nantucket. The project invites Nantucket community members to contribute a panel to a conceptual quilt. A celebratory display of works of art will be revealed at the NHA’s Community Day, slated for Monday, August 4. Additional Community Quilt panel contributions and displays will continue into the fall at NHA programs and events and conclude with an exhibition finale celebration in October that will include an auction of the Community Quilt panels. The Community Quilt project will invite contributors, including individuals, organizations, and businesses to interpret what the Nantucket community means to them. All art mediums are welcome, from fabric to paint and more, with the NHA providing a 8”x8” wood diamond panel to each contributor for their artwork, thanks to the generous support of materials from Nantucket Create. In addition to community member contributions, the NHA will be making a series of Community Quilt project panels at many of their programs and events to provide community members with an opportunity to

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Historic Nantucket | Spring 2025

view panel-making in action. Textiles have long been made by and for communities to express social connection and reflect local identity. From mid-19th century “album quilts” or “friendship quilts” with their distinctive signatures to embroidered crazy quilts with whimsical designs, many quilts commemorate friendships and community gatherings and are themselves products of communal work. The NHA collection holds many examples of these meaningful pieces, some of which will be displayed in the exhibition Behind the Seams. These include a 19th-century friendship quilt with the signatures of eight Nantucket women bound by family ties, as well as an appliquéd quilt celebrating 300 years of Nantucket history through colorful island motifs. While techniques and trends have evolved over time, textiles have always served as vehicles for creativity and connection. Contribute to Nantucket’s rich textile history and create a shared work of art by participating in the NHA’s Community Quilt project. To sign up to contribute to the NHA’s Community Quilt project and learn more, please sign up at NHA.org

Programs

WINTER PROGRAMS Strive to introduce exhibition themes, service community needs, educate island youth, and engage with diverse audiences. Here are a few of some of our highlights from this winter.

Festa Fiesta Festa Fiesta, a welcoming festival celebrating learning, language, and family fun returned this March for a weeklong, community-wide celebration. The NHA was thrilled to collaborate with six other island organizations to expand this program into a week of multidisciplinary offerings, spanning from bilingual seed-starting workshops with the Land Bank, children’s short film screenings in Spanish at the Dreamland, bilingual music and movement class at the Nantucket Community Music Center, as well as multilingual offerings at the Whaling Museum. The NHA and collaborating organizations were thrilled to engage with Spanish/Portuguese-speaking community members and looks forward to continuing to offer multilingual programming at the Whaling Museum throughout the year.

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Programs

Textile Talks In celebration of our textile themed year, we launched a new program this winter, Textiles Talks, offered on the first Wednesday of each month from February through May as part of our Drop-In Craft Gam series. This free program opens the NHA’s cozy Thomas Macy House living room at 99 Main Street as a gathering space to work on any fiber art or needle work project in the company of other creatives, allowing attendees to share knowledge, learn from experts, and socialize throughout the winter. Each session features a show-and-tell talk by a different local maker/artisan who shares their story about their practice and their personal journey with fiber art. Speakers included Elizabeth Gilbert (Needlepoint & Lace), Rebecca Peraner (Weaving), Sheila Fee (Knitting & Crochet), and Susan Boardman (Embroidery).

Mindful History One of the NHA’s cornerstone programs, Mindful History, launched its third year of programming this winter, and continues to prioritize mental health and accessibility for Island community members. Spearheaded by the Visitor Experience team, a variety of programs fall under the Mindful History umbrella, including the flagship program, Mindful History: Connecting to Art and History through Conversation. This museum-based experience connects visitors, in an inclusive environment, using objects from the NHA collection to inspire conversation. Mindful Wellness continued with Yoga Nidra meditation, and Qi Gong classes held, during the off-season, at NHA Historic Property, Greater Light. Newer additions include Mindful Memories, reaching those with cognitive impairments and their caregivers. Programs included Sandpiper preschoolers sharing valentines, and specific interactive programs learning about and sharing memories of the Old Mill and scrimshaw. The Mindful Sensory program, geared for youth with sensory needs relaunched in February. Highlights included participants and their families enjoying music from Chris Hanson and Mark Carapezza. A new social narrative (visual guide) offered in both English and Spanish, was created to help program attendees navigate the museum.

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In the Heart of the Sea Community Reading On Saturday March 8 & Sunday March 9, the NHA, in partnership with the Nantucket Atheneum, Egan Maritime Institute, and Dreamland Nantucket hosted a community reading of local author Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea. We were joined by 40 community members who read aloud the 14 chapters over the span of two days. The readings were supplemented by activities at the Whaling Museum and Atheneum and the weekend concluded with a screening of Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea film at Nantucket Dreamland. NHA staff member and musician Andre Quackenbush lead a shanty concert featuring local musicians and singers and the Brotherhood of Thieves served up some of their famous homemade clam chowder for dinner. The weekend also included a trivia game, artifact station, book discussion, knot tying craft, and a Q & A with author Nathaniel Philbrick, NHA Executive Director Niles Parker, and NHA chief curator Michael Harrison.

There and Back The NHA Education and Visitor Service teams welcomed 142 Third Grade Students for what has become a right of passage field trip, There and Back, for the island’s youth. Throughout this day long field trip to the Whaling Museum, students from the Nantucket Public School travel through time on an imaginary whaleship voyage. As the voyage begins, students and teachers are assigned to a whaleship as part of a crew alongside an NHA Education team member dressed in costume as a ship captain to learn about the history of whaling with hands on activities in the museum. Students learn Portuguese words at a shop in the Azores, enjoy a chat with the cook to learn about what crew members ate aboard a whale ship, design their own scrimshaw motif, and have a chance to touch real baleen and whale's teeth as they learned about whale ecology. The trip rounded out with a sea shanty lesson, while Director of Education Mary Emery Lacoursiere, dressed as the ship owner announced the ship who has earned the most casks of oil from the journey.

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Corporate Partnerships

Compass Rose product on display in Ralph Lauren, including a baseball cap and Compass Rose product details on t-shirt pocket (bellow).

Gardiner’s Corner circa 1935. Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Donald Harris. PH47-2-1.

Details on t-shirt pocket.

Ralph Lauren Nantucket Continues to Give Back The compass rose on the side of the Ralph Lauren store at the bottom of Main Street is one of the island’s most photographed locations, but how did the iconic wall mural come to be? H. Marshall Gardiner first came to Nantucket in 1910 and soon established his gift and photography business at 16 Main Street. Gardiner designed the mural to bring attention to his business in the 1930s. He based the mural on the compass rose used by mariners and navigators and included distances from Nantucket to different locations around the world with links to the island’s whaling past and destinations of personal significance such as Mackinac Island and Daytona Beach, where he spent childhood summers. Many of the mileages were accounted for by Gardiner's daughter, Milly Lou Gardiner Smith with the help of Captain George Grant, the first curator of the Whaling Museum. In the fall of 2006 and 2016, the NHA partnered with Ralph Lauren to restore the Compass Rose mural at Gardiner’s Corner and the partnership did not end there. The NHA and Ralph Lauren have partnered with one another since 2008 to provide customers with the opportunity to take home a piece of this iconic mural through a curated Compass Rose product line, sold exclusively in the Nantucket store with 100% of the sale proceeds benefiting the NHA each year. This partnership has given the NHA over $230,000. The product line will continue into 2025 with adults and children’s shirts, sweater shirts, hats, as well as beach towels, mugs, and water bottles. We encourage our members and visitors to pay a visit to the Nantucket Ralph Lauren store and take home a piece with the iconic island symbol, all while supporting the NHA!

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Staff Update

NHA Staff: New Faces and New Roles Meet some of our new staff and staff in new, exciting roles! Deven Kirby, Collections Manager Deven is a native Texan. In 2022 she graduated from the Decorative Arts and Design History Master’s program at George Washington University, with a focus on Textiles and Historic Costumes. During that time, she interned at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum. Her other schooling includes a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History with a minor in Anthropology and one in Studio Art with a focus on Fiber Arts from the University of North Texas. She previously held the role of Assistant Collections Manager at the NHA from the time she joined the team in early 2023. She looks forward to taking on this new role of Collections Manager.

Ella Mae, Museum Shop Ella Mae has lived on the island her entire life and has been quite intrigued by the rich history behind Nantucket’s historic buildings and the waters that separate us from the world. Ella Mae is a proud member of the NHS Class of 2024. Due to her interests and direct relationship to over half of Nantucket’s original settlers, at the end of her high school career, she did an independent study to investigate her genealogical descent, digging deep into her ancestry, through the help of the NHA collections. Ella Mae then joined the NHA as a Museum Guide in June of 2024, and has since moved into a role at the Museum Shop. In addition to the Shop, she has designed I Spy pamphlets for several annual events, including Sensory Saturdays and The Festival of Trees. A major encouraging factor for beginning her involvement in the NHA is her family ties to the Association, including her great-grand uncle, Edouard Stackpole, who served as President of the NHA, as well as being a remarkable historian and author, of whom she hopes to follow in his footsteps.

Phoebe Strobino, Social Media and Events Coordinator Phoebe originally hails from the South Shore of Massachusetts, which meant many trips out to Nantucket growing up. She moved to the island full-time in May of 2022 after obtaining her master's degree in art and design education at Rhode Island School of Design. Before her time at RISD, she completed her undergraduate education in Art and Architecture History and Studio Art at UMass Amherst. After working primarily in the hospitality industry for the last few years, she is excited to join the marketing team at the NHA. Phoebe has always had a passion for museum work and is looking forward to turning her attention to the NHA’s benefit events and social media. While not at work, you can find her teaching or practicing yoga, out for a run, or on the beach. NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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NEWS, NOTES & HIGHLIGHTS Benefit Events

The Road to Nantucket by Design: Palm Beach

nantucket by design

This February, the NHA hosted its second annual The Road to Nantucket by Design in Palm Beach at The Colony Hotel on Thursday, February 13 with featured speakers, Tommy Hilfiger and interior designer, Cindy Rinfret. The Road to Nantucket by Design is hosted in locations with strong Nantucket ties and builds excitement leading up to Nantucket by Design’s summer event line-up. This year's Road to Nantucket by Design’s champagne brunch was an instant success, selling out within just twenty-four hours and drawing an esteemed crowd of over 160 design enthusiasts, industry leaders, and philanthropists. Guests enjoyed a seated brunch, and an exclusive program that highlighted legendary fashion designer, Tommy Hilfiger and interior designer, Cindy Rinfret. The discussion delved into their latest design collaboration in Palm Beach and their dynamic 25-year partnership, which has shaped 18 of the Hilfiger’s homes across the globe. Nantucket by Design is an annual benefit event for the NHA that celebrates art, design, and history bringing together world-renowned designers, artisans, and skilled craftspeople through panels, keynotes, master classes, social events, and more. This year’s event will take place on July 14-17 and will have a continued collaboration with the summer antiques show, The Nantucket Show, which will open on July 18 with a preview morning hosted by and to support the NHA.

Above: Tommy Hilfiger and Cindy Rinfret on stage at The Road to Nantucket by Design. Below: From left to right: Niles Parker, Stacey Stuart, Annabelle Fowlkes, Tommy Hilfiger, Cindy Rinfret, Bill Richards, and Marla Sanford.

Nantucket by Design is presented by:

LEARN MORE & PURCHASE TICKETS For questions and to learn more, please visit nantucketbydesign.com

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Historic Tours

New Historic Bike Tour Launching this Spring We are thrilled to be launching a new Historic Bike Tour this season to expand on narratives of Nantucket history and broaden the scope of history being told by NHA guides. This new tour will consist of a two-hour ride, taking participants to iconic NHA historic sites, as well as exploring new locations of historic significance throughout the downtown area.

SAVE THE DATE The NHA will host the first Historic Bike Tour on Friday, May 16 for the program series, Unwind Under the Whale. This will be the inaugural Historic Bike Tour ride, with additional dates being offered for visitors throughout the season. The NHA is excited to partner with Young’s Bicycle Shop to offer participants a discounted rental of a traditional or e-bike, if they do not have a bicycle of their own. The NHA will also be providing wireless transmitters to ensure the tour provides quality sound of the guided stories to each rider throughout the ride.

Our Visitor Services team has been working hard to develop this offering and is excited to introduce the first bike tour offered by the organization and expand upon our popular guided walking tours offered each season. The Historic Bike Tour will take visitors back in time, extending centuries, starting in the Ice Age and concluding in the present day. The tour will cover diverse communities and explore their economic and social contributions to the island, as well as how they harnessed limited resources that island life brought. The tour will also pass through cemeteries where some of Nantucket’s most influential historic figures are buried.

LEARN MORE & SIGN UP Learn more and sign up to join us for a Historic Bike Tour at NHA.org

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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IN MEMORY

Barbara Jane Stott Born in Natick and raised in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, she was the only child of Norman and Esther Butters.

Barbara interpreting history as Hanna Monaghan in Extraordinary Women presentation at the Whaling Museum.

Barbara never lost the brilliance that led her to attend Middlebury College at the age of fifteen and graduate at nineteen. One of her first positions was as a special education teacher and den mother at the High Mowing School in southern New Hampshire. Most of her education career was spent as a junior high science teacher in the Nashua, New Hampshire school system, where she also met her beloved husband, Charles. Barbara ultimately served as president of the Nashua Teachers Union between 1980 and 1987, successfully negotiating numerous contracts that improved the lives of her fellow educators. Her effectiveness in that role led to her election as President of the New Hampshire Federation of Teachers.

After moving to the Chicago suburbs, Barbara taught in Cabrini-Green and then continued her service to her fellow educators by serving as the assistant to the president of the United Professionals of Illinois Local 4100, a statewide union representing higher education faculty and staff at Illinois universities, where she handled communications and other duties. Upon moving to Nantucket in 2004, Barbara employed her skills as an interpreter at the Nantucket Whaling Museum, educating countless visitors about the island’s history. She became a lay scholar of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, immersing herself in the text and in documents related to that period. Active in the community, she served multiple terms as co-secretary of the Nantucket Civic League and designed newsletters and websites for several Nantucket organizations. An extraordinarily talented woman, Barbara engaged in arts and crafts throughout her life, including painting, jewelry and stained glass making, rug hooking, knitting, and graphic design. She generously shared her needlepoint and basket weaving with many friends and admirers, and her home warmly reflects her style and creativity. Barbara made an immense impact on so many of the staff here at the Nantucket Historical Association and will be dearly missed.

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2025 MEMBER EVENTS

Mark your Calendars! Whaling Museum Featured Exhibition Preview Reception Thursday, May 22 | 5:30 – 7 pm Join us for a special kick-off to the summer season while getting a first look at the opening of our featured exhibition, Behind the Seams: Clothing and Textiles on Nantucket.

Exclusive: Member Hour at the Whaling Museum Wednesday, June 4 | Wednesday, July 2 | Wednesday, August 6 9 – 10 am Join us for some quiet time as members get the Whaling Museum to themselves. Great if you have a busy beach day ahead of you.

Exclusive: Member Hour at the Hadwen House Wednesday, June 11 | Wednesday, July 9 | Wednesday, August 13 Early evenings from 4 – 5 pm Explore an exhibit of Nantucket Lightship Baskets as well as exhibitions highlighting the NHA’s decorative arts collection. Don’t forget to take a stroll through the gardens.

Behind the Scenes at the Collections Center Wednesday, June 18 | Wednesday, July 23 | Wednesday, August 20 Gosnold Center, 89 Bartlett Road Early evenings from 4 – 5 pm Ever wonder what’s in the NHA Collections that aren’t on display for the public? Join our curatorial team for a behind-the-scenes tour of our special collections of paintings, furniture, and Nantucket artifacts.

Behind the Scenes at the Research Library Wednesday, June 25 | Wednesday, July 30 | Wednesday, August 27 Early evenings from 4 – 5 pm

Advance registration is required and will be available on NHA.org. Please contact Laura Barnes, Director of Development at lnorton@nha.org or 508.228.1894 ext. 132 for more information. NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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Baskets BUBBLE .BOURBON

Friday, June 27 Co-Chairs: Annabelle Fowlkes & Connie Anne Harris Join us for our annual summer fundraiser, Baskets, Bubbles & Bourbon, celebrating the enduring tradition of Nantucket lightship baskets. This year, we are proud to honor collector Max Berry for his dedication to preserving this iconic island craft. The evening will feature an exclusive showcase of remarkable basket collections and a highly anticipated auction with works from today's finest artisans, including special collaborations with skilled craftspeople. Guests will enjoy bourbon tastings alongside our signature bubbles, craft cocktails, and light bites. Come be part of this fresh take on a beloved tradition and help support the future of Nantucket lightship baskets for generations to comel

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nantucket

by design

July14-17 Co-Chairs: Marla Sanford and Bill Richards This event brings together world-renowned designers, artisans, and skilled craftspeople to showcase the timeless elegance of Nantucket's design heritage. Through panels, keynotes, master classes, social events, and more, participants experience how modern style is interwoven with Nantucket's iconic history. This year's theme of Nantucket by Design is Interwoven. Inspired by the N HA's 2025 featured exhibition, Behind the Seams: Textiles and Clothing on Nantucket . Interwoven signifies thoughtful and balanced combinations, and we look forward to exploring this theme in many topics throughout our programming, from interiors to craft, and the meaning behind how we can interpret interwoven stories of the island and beyond.

Saturday, August 2 Co-Chairs: Annabelle Fowlkes & Franci Neely This event brings together world-renowned designers, artisans, and skilled craftspeople to showcase the timeless elegance of Nantucket's design heritage. Through panels, keynotes, master classes, social events, and more, participants experience how modern style is interwoven with Nantucket's iconic history. This year's theme of Nantucket by Design is Interwoven. Inspired by the N HA's 2025 featured exhibition, Behind the Seams: Textiles and Clothing on Nantucket. Interwoven signifies thoughtful and balanced combinations, and we look forward to exploring this theme in many topics throughout our programming, from interiors to craft, and the meaning behind how we can interpret interwoven stories of the island and beyond.

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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1894 Society Recognizing donors of $1,000 or more yearly to the NHA Annual Fund. $100,000 and Up Janet and Sam Bailey Connie and Tom Cigarran Amanda Cross Annabelle and Gregory Fowlkes Melinda and Paul Sullivan

$50,000 - $99,999 Anonymous

$25,000 - $49,999 Nancy and Douglas Abbey Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Mary-Randolph Ballinger Susan Blount and Richard Bard Ann and Stephen Bartram Maureen and Edward Bousa Anne Marie and Doug Bratton Margot Bush Gina and Colby Crenshaw Rachel and Jim Dunlap Shelley and Graham Goldsmith Mark Gottwald Rena and Josh Kopelman Carla and Jack McDonald Ella Prichard Mary and MacGregor Read Gary McBournie and Bill Richards Wendy and Eric Schmidt Helen and Chuck Schwab Janet and Rick Sherlund Patricia Hambrick and Harry Wilcox

$10,000 - $24,999 Sara and Seth Alvord Carole and Gary Beller Stacey and Robert Bewkes Patricia Nilles and C. Hunter Boll Jeanine and Alastair Borthwick Patricia and Barrett Burns John DeCiccio Deborah and Bruce Duncan Tracy and John Flannery Ola and Randall Fojtasek Connie Anne and Jeremiah Harris Ann and John Johnson Cecelia Joyce Johnson

Diane Pitt and Mitch Karlin Polly Hallowell and Steve Langer Suzanne Lingeman Isabelle and Ian Loring Debra and Vincent Maffeo Bonnie and Peter McCausland Ronay and Richard Menschel Ashley Gosnell Mody and Darshan Mody Ann and Craig Muhlhauser Franci Neely Laura and Bob Reynolds Linda Saligman Denise and Andrew Saul Christine and Stephen Schwarzman Georgia Snell Kathleen and Robert Stansky Katherine and Peter Sutters Kate Lubin and Glendon Sutton Wendy and Colin Sykes Kathryn Wagner

$5,000 - $9,999 Susan Akers Patricia and Tom Anathan Georgeann and Roger Ballou Eileen Gebrian and Timothy Barberich Liz and Ben Barnes Ritchie Battle Kim Bepler Jody and Brian Berger Kay and Peter Bernon Pam and Max Berry Anne and Toby Broadus Olivia and Felix Charney Beth and Andy Corry Christina Craighead Lisa and Nathan Cressman Ann and Stephen Davis Kate and Jim Denny Heidi and Rob Diemar Elizabeth Miller and James Dinan Gavin Ford Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth Cece and Mack Fowler Regina Gannon Nan Geschke Nancy Gewirz

42 Historic Nantucket | Spring 2025

Betsey and Charlie Gifford Jenny and Justin Green Claire and Bob Greenspon Lauren and Paul Gudonis Gordon Gund Karli and James Hagedorn Barbara and Ed Hajim Kaaren and Charles Hale Cassandra Henderson Linda Pizzuti Henry and John Henry Catherine and Richard Herbst Barbara and Amos Hostetter Wendy and Randy Hudson Susanne and Zenas Hutcheson Mary Ann and Paul† Judy Thomas Kligerman Anne and Todd Knutson Coco and Arie† Kopelman Jean Doyen de Montaillou and Michael Kovner Greeley Sachs and Seth Levine Diane and David Lilly Paula and Bruce Lilly Helen and Will Little George Korn and Thomas Livingston Laura and Brian Millham Peyton and Art Muldoon Carter and Chris Norton Lorena and Graham O'Brien Ross Padluck Tamara and Albert Rabil Karen Rainwater Andrew Law and David Rattner Elizabeth Reilly Susan and Ken Richardson Maria and George Roach Sharon and Frank Robinson Robin and Mark Rubenstein Catherine Ebert and Karl Saberg Laura Brill and Christopher Sands Burwell and Chip Schorr Donna Cooper and Karl Schulz† Gretchen Effgen and Anthony Schweizer Mary and Don Shockey Leslee Shupe Deidre and Joseph Smialowski Christopher Drake and Will Steele

Ann and Peter Taylor Garrett Thornburg Lara Trafelet Liz and Geoff Verney Dorothy and Richard Verney Roselee and Jim Wayman Mary and John West Alisa and Alastair Wood

$3,000 - $4,999 Lindsey and Merrick Axel Lucinda Ballard Susan and Bill Boardman Anne DeLaney and Chip Carver Beth Clyne Prudence Crozier Lisa Dawson Karyn Frist Elizabeth Georgantas Page and Arthur Gosnell Sara Schwartz and Will Hannum Amy and Brett Harsch Wendy Hubbell Lisa and Roger Krakoff Alice and J. Thomas Macy Toni and Martin McKerrow Annalise and Thomas Nelson Valerie Paley Kristin and Scott Paton Candace Platt Nancy and Bob Puff Janet Robinson Margaret and John Ruttenberg Sally Horchow and John Seitz Susan Shapiro Laura and Greg Spivy Peter Steingraber Robin Terres Laura Rosene and Scott Toop Maureen Wolff

$1,000 - $2,999 Mareta Hamre and Mark Abbott Carrie and Leigh Abramson Elizabeth Anthony Eleanor and Chris Armstrong Ayesha Khan and Nate Barber Deborah and Mark Beale

Veronica and Jamie Beard Jane Beasley Dennie Doran and Allan Bell Martha Berlin Kelly and David Berry Jodie and Jim Bishop Karen and Jim Bloomfield Amanda and James Boening Gail and Bill Bogle Veronica and Michael Bonnet Carol and James Bowditch Jennifer and Robert Bowman Katie Potter and Joe Bracken Diane and David Bradt Margaret and William Brenizer Lissy Bryan Julie Jensen Bryan and Robert Bryan Brooke and Bill Buppert Philippa and James Burke Patricia and Christopher Burns Mary Fontaine and James Burruss Christy and William Camp Patty amd Joe Carrolo Laurie and Robert Champion Dorene and Richard Chan Pamela and James Chapman Kay Krill and Alan Chapple Dianna and Richard Chesley Meredith† and Gene Clapp Catherine and Anthony Clifton Brenda Williams and Robert Coffin Ana and Paul Collins Jenny and Wylie Collins Janice Compton Suellen Ward and John Copenhaver Courtney Cotter and Pepper Frazier Susan and Christopher Cowie Cynthia Cross Maureen and Jeff Crowley Danielle Rollins and Tom D'Agostino Katherine and Kell Damsgaard Janie and Jerry Dauterive Robyn and John Davis Benjamin Deaton Amy Hauk and Scott Dehm Nancy and Joseph Delogu Dorinda Dodge Jennifer and Stephen Dolente Beth English and Mark Donato Erica† and Jeffrey Drazen Helen and Ray DuBois Lori and Brenton Durham Liz and Dean Durling Barbara and Michael Eisenson Ana and Michael Ericksen Elizabeth and Nelson Erickson Bob Felch Tina and Stuart Fietz Lynn and Mark Filipskio Laura and David Finley Jacquelyn and Michael Finn Marcia Weber and James Flaws Tanya and Tom Forman † Deceased

Jane and Charles Forman Lauren Fornes Esther Fox Tammy and Keith Frankel Kim and Robert Frisbie Karen and Chris Gagnier Cam Gammill Ann and Jeff Gardner Blewett S. Gardner Vera and Richard Gierke Laurie Gilmour Carol and Edward Glassmeyer Elizabeth Graziolo Stacey Stuart and Peter Greenhalgh Tamara Greenman Susan and Timothy Grell Sabine and Richard Griffin Joan and Philip Gulley Ellen Hallock Hakes Linda and Joe Hale Kathleen and Robert Hay Diana Hayden Maureen and Phillip Heasley Jacqueline and Robert Higgins Schuyler and Charles Hinnant Donna and Christian Hoffman Barbara and Richard Holt Sharon Horne Maureen Phillips and Douglas Horst Joseph Ingram Holly James Mary Ellen and Jeffrey Jay Carl Jelleme Ann and Charles Johnson Robin Gillen and Harvey Jones Jr. Elizabeth and Stephen Joseph Caitlin Kah Kathryn Karol Amanda Keenan Diane and Art Kelly Kathleen Cannon and Brian Kelly Ellen Lehman and Charles Kennel Jane and Doug Kern Teresa Heinz and John Kerry Kathryn Ketelsen Etsuko Yashiro and Ken Kimura Jonathan King Mary Beth and Adam Kirsch Nancy Dubuc and Michael Kizilbash Martha Dippell and Daniel Korengold Kimberly and Dennis Kozlowski Jackie† and Bill Kupper Lisa Todd and Robert Kurtz Kristyn Vandegrift and Joseph La Barge Robert Lahey Karen and Tony LaRocco Chris Larsen Katherine and David Lashway Samuel Lehrman Jill Lentowski Kathryn Lieb Deborah and Ronald Lilly Thomas Lloyd

This list represents donations from January–December 2024.

Sandy Murphy and Charles Loeb Christa and Mark Lopez Sharon and Frank Lorenzo Richard Lowry Helen Lynch Nicole and William Lynch Mary and Jeffrey Lynch Carolyn MacKenzie Holly and Mark Maisto Kathleen and Chris Matthews Susan McCollum Mary McDonald Molly and David McGrath Michael McGraw Lisa and Eric McKechnie Darina and Allan McKelvie Abigail Johnson and Christopher McKown Katherine and William McNabb Pat White and Jim Meehan Susan and Paul Meister Bunny and Duff Meyercord Betsy Michel Tina and Robert Miklos Miriam and Herbert Mittenthal Siobhán O'Mahony Moore and William Moore Jean and Paul Moran Joyce and James Morgan Winnie and Chris Mortenson Jacqueline Moss Susan and Christopher Mundy Una and William Murphy Sally Nash Laurie B. Newhouse Jeff Newton Darcy and Richard Nopper Sharon and David Northrup Mary and Al Novissimo Ann and Hardy† Oliver Vallorie Oliver Susan O'Malley Kathy and Angelo Orciuoli Maureen Orth Sandie Owen Laura and Bill Paulsen Liz and Jeff Peek Suellen and Andre Perold Ellen and Samuel Phelan Patricia and Joseph Phelan Melissa and Nat Philbrick Martha and Charley Polachi Julia and Larry Pollock Gene† and Robert Pratter Lloyd Princeton Ann and Chris Quick Suzanne Rand Katherine and Craig Raphaelson Hillary Hedges and Jeffrey Rayport Susan and Harry Rein Susan Renzulli Crystal and Rich Richardson West Riggs

Gretchen and Jay Riley Danielle and Bob Rizika Reed and Bradley Roberts Cindy and Michael Roberts David Roche Ken Roman Marion Rosenthal Ellen and David Ross Michele Kolb and Philip Ross Bonnie Sacerdote Lisa Gustavson and Chris Sales Sandi Holland and Alfie Sanford Gayle Bridgman-Santucci and Joseph Santucci Brian Sawyer Pamela Schofield Amy and Frederic Schroeder Hana Schuster Denise and Robert Schwed Michele Seass Heidi Cox and George Seyfert Teckie and Don Shackelford Sharon and Charles Shaver Rhonda and Bruce Shear Sandra and Edward Sheehy Dorothy Slover Ami Sokol Carol and Stephen Spinelli Sarah Barrett and Kenneth Stanley Janet Steinmayer Athalyn and Michael Sweeney John Sylvia Merrielou Symes Lisa and Peter Theoharidis Judith and William Thompson Karen Butler and John Thompson Rachael and Michael Thomson Jessica Torre Susan and William Untereker Kellie and David Urban Elinor and James Vaughter Mollie and Kent Wallace Gail and Robert Ward Elizabeth Watt Deborah and Daniel Wayland Susan W. Weatherley Denise and William Welsh Calista West Bridget and Mark Wiatrowski Janice Wiesen Will Willauer Pamela and Charles Williams Stephanie and Jay Wilson Linda Wisnewski Denise and Peter Wittich Mary and David Wolff Margot Young Ana and Christopher Young Carolyn Paris and Robert Young Carolyn Grant Zarrella and Ronald Zarrella Alison and Scott Zoellner

NHA.org | Nantucket Historical Association

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44 Historic Nantucket | Spring 2025

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Cross Stitch Kit - Nantucket Windmill Needlework

Needlepoint Kits by Elizabeth Gilbert Embroidered Pillow by Elizabeth Gilbert

Sometimes Think of Me Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries

Susan Boardman Embroidered Narratives Postcard Set

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