Historic Nantucket, Fall 1992, Vol. 40 No. 3

FALL 1991

V 0 L U ME 40

No.3

African-American History on Nantucket

From

The President

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Diane Ucci, Managing Editor Helen Winslow Chase, Historian Shannah Green, Art Director Photos: NHA collections unless otherwise credited

The Brotherhood of Thieves Riot of1842

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To understand why the island experienced a riot, one must appreciate the temperaments and talents of the exceptional people who came together for the Anti-Slavery Convention of 1842.

By Susan F. Beegel

ul Will Take to the Water":

Frederick Douglass, the Sea, and the Nantucket Whale Fishery

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Douglass's linking of the sea with freedom was no idle figure of speech, for his understanding of seafaring life enabled his escape from slavery in 1838.

By Nathaniel Philbrick

The Integration of Nantucket Public Schools

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By Barbara White

Departments We couldn't do it without you ...

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Recognition of Our Committed Supporters

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Items of Interest The Museum Shop 42

OFFICERS

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Cover Photo: Florence Elizabeth Higginbotham, Courtesy of the Museum of Afro American History, Boston.

Museum Support Center Capital Campaign

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Joseph J. McLaughlin, President Paul A. Wolf, Jr., First Vice President and Treasurer Walter Beinecke, Jr., Vice President Ms. Kimberly C. Corkran, Vice President Mrs. William B. Macomber, Secretary and Assistant Treasurer Maurice E. Gibbs, Executive Director

The trouble began in 1840 when Eunice Ross, a student in the African School, was denied admittance to the high school after passing the entrance examination.

What's News at the NHA

s we begin to prepare our plans and activities, it is essential that we evaluate this year's activities and accomplishments. After reviewing our mission statement this year, a commitment was made to place more emphasis on education throughout the organization, and to work with other island nonprofit entities. This issue highlights and supports efforts to restore the African Meeting House.

We opened our season with the "Changing Landscapes" exhibit at the Thomas Macy Warehouse; a new scrimshaw exhibit showcased at the Whaling Museum, the MacyChristian House reopened interpreting two different periods in history; and the Fair Street Museum housed the Artists Association permanent collection, along with some paintings from our collections.

Other educational efforts were expanded when the children's "Living History" program added a whaling voyage and the lecture series was increased to one a month.

Education was an integral part of this year's Antiques Show, managed by the Antiques Council and chaired by Dorothy Slover and her dedicated team. The NHA had a booth demonstrating restoration and preservation techniques. Each day a participating dealer offered a lecture entitled "Through the Expert's Eye." Next season we will further develop our educational theme, continue our property refurbishing, and move our collections to the new Museum Support Center.

-Joseph J. McLaughlin

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Mr. Alan F. Atwood Mrs. Charles Balas Mrs. C. Marshall Beale Mr. Walter Beinecke, Jr. Mr. Max N. Berry Mrs. RichardL. Brecker Mr. Charles C. Butt Ms. Kimberly C. Corkran Mr. John W. Eckman Mrs. Thomas H. Gosnell Mr. Erwin L.Greenberg Mrs. William E. Grieder Mrs . Bernard D. Grossman

Prof. William A. Hance Mr. Hudson Holland, Jr. Mrs. Earle MacAusland Mrs. William B. Macomber Mr. Joseph J. McLaughlin Mrs. Cail M. Mueller Mr. David M. Ogden Mr. H. Flint Ranney Mrs. William L. Slover Rev. Georgia Ann Snell Mr. Paul A. Wolf, Jr. Mrs. Bracebridge H. Young

ADVISORY BOARD Mrs. Robert Bailey Ms. Patricia A. Butler Mr. Robert C. Caldwell Mrs. Helen Winslow Chase Miss Nancy A. Chase Mr. Michael de Leo Mrs. Herbert Gutterson Mrs. Hamilton Heard, Jr. Mrs. Nina Hellman Mr. Gene Horyn Mrs. John G. W. Husted Mrs. Arthur Jacobsen Mrs. Jane Lamb Mr. Francis D. Lethbridge Mr. Reginald Levine

Mrs. Sharon Lorenzo Mrs . Thomas B. Loring Mr. William B. Macomber Mr. Paul H. Madden Mr. Robert F. Mooney Mrs. William Pullman Prof. F. Blair Reeves Mrs. Frederick A. Richmond Mr. Alfred F. Sanford III Mrs. William A. Sevrens Prof. Susan Tate Mr. Joseph F. Welch Mr. Johri 5. Winter Mrs. Joseph C. Woodle

EDITORIAL BOARD Mrs. Dwight Beman Mr. Richard L. Brecker Mr. Gene Horyn Mr. Robert F. Mooney

Ms. Elizabeth Oldham Mr. Nathaniel Philbrick Mr. H. Flint Ranney Mrs. Susan Beegel Tiffney

WHAT'S NEWS AT THE NHA Staff Changes

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f you stop by the Historical Association offices this fall, you will see some new faces and miss some others. Gay! Michael, former Director of Development, has gone on to become the Assistant Director of External Affairs at MontclairKimberley Academy in Montclair, New Jersey. Gay! was on the staff at the NHA for eight years, first as Assistant Curator of Research Materials and then Director of Development and Public Relations. She is grateful to the administration for providing her with the opportunity to utilize her skills and grow professionally to the point where she was ready to take on the new position at Montclair-Kimberley. Gayl's theatrical and educational background will be a tremendous asset in an academic setting, and we all wish her well in this challenging endeavor.

Michael Langlois, former docent and this year's Summer Internship Coordinator is sorely missed around the office. In addition to assisting Diane Ucci, Director of Education, with interviewing, hiring, scheduling, and training this season's museum guide staff, he played a role in public relations while writing about the

historic sites for various publications. Michael has left to pursue graduate studies in social work at Smith College, where his warmth and ease with people will be well received.

New faces include Valerie Ryder, Financial Manager of the Historical Association since May. Valerie attended Malden Business School and has

Dorrit Gutterson (left), Sheila Cabral, and Valerie Ryder perusing an issue of Historic Nantucket together. been on Nantucket for Photo: DianeUcci twenty-two years. She worked in real estate with Royal-Colley sion. With thirty years of secretarial expeAssociates for five years and also ran for rience and an education from Wheaton Town Clerk. She feels the NHA has come College, Sheila's abilities are being put to a long way since she came to the island, good use. You will also see Dorrit and she hopes to see it go even further. Gutterson, the new receptionist, in the Another new arrival in May was Sheila front office assisting Sheila with her myriCabral, the secretary at the Historical ad duties. Dorrit lives in 'Sconset with her Association. Sheila grew up in a house in family, after being out on the west coast Windsor, Connecticut, which was built in for several years. She studied at Rollins 1740, and has had a lifelong interest in his- College in Florida, as well as going to sectory and preservation. Both of her parents retarial school, and enjoys being a part of were presidents of the Windsor Historical the NHA's operation.

Society so she is no stranger to our mis-

Children Go Whaling

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his summer the NHA continued to reach out to younger visitors and members of our community through our "Living History" program. Directed by Diane Ucci, the program was facilitated by

Children gathered around the whaleboat at the Thomas Macy Warehouse with Marianne Dombroski (right).

Photo: Diane Ucci

Elizabeth Duffin, returning for her fifth summer, along with Missy Wisentaner, who was also a volunteer with us last summer, and Marianne Dombroski, a new face from Connecticut College. Last year's activities at the Old Mill and the Oldest House were so popular that we offered them again this season, bringing yet another "hands-on" component to it.

Thanks to Wayne Pratt & Company, an antiques shop on Nantucket, children were able to handle and then conjecture what certain kitchen implements from the 17th and 18th centuries might have been used for. A hand loom resembling the one the children saw during their tour of the Oldest House was donated by Maureen Dwyer, Assistant Curator of Collections, which allowed the children to try their hand at weaving as well.

A second phase of the program unfolded this summer at the Thomas Macy Warehouse and the Whaling Museum. Small groups of children gathered at the Warehouse relief map and

went on a simulated whaling voyage, led by the highly theatrical Captain Dombroski, assuring them that women went to sea as well. From there they anchored long enough to design and create sailor's valentines for their loved ones.

Lynn Walsh, owner of the Sailor's Valentine Gallery on Nantucket, was helpful in assisting us with information about this process. While the glue was still drying on their valentines, the group ventured out to the Whaling Museum where Bob Allen, manager of the museum, gave them a tour starting at the Whale Room and ending in the Great Hall where the whaleboat is displayed. On their return to the Warehouse they dipped their own candles, having learned about the value of the whales, spermaceti as a source of light and heat. Questionnaires completed by parents whose children attended the program were enthusiastic about its tangible qualities and eager to see what next summer would bring.

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During February last year, Mark Fortenberry, Curator of Structures, was licensed as a Lead-based Paint Abatement Supervisor through Tufts University's im Tyler's painting company methodi- Center for Environmental Management. cally removed twenty-two coats of Concerned with the increasingly stringent paint from the Main and Pleasant Street state lead laws, especially for historic sides of the Hadwen House this past sea- buildings, he felt that a thorough underson. This is the first phase of the Structures standing of current legislation and knowlDepartment's restoration of the property, edge of recommended removal techniques and it will be completed during the fall. would be important assets for future Phase two, slated for the 1993 season, buildings-maintenance projects. Mark was includes the remaining two sides. able to utilize his knowledge of abatement Continuing groundwork for the new laws and removal procedures by assisting Museum Support Center Building and the the Town of Nantucket's Health Hadwen restoration have been the depart- Department in drafting and enacting poliment's two major projects during the last cies for the safe removal of lead-based paint. The Hadwen House painting project several months. .--------------,-..,...-------------..,~ was used as a "test case" by town officials and was instrumental in ensuring healthier and safer working conditions for Nantucket's painters and general public.

Mark is available to concerned homeowners for consultation by contacting our offices.

The MacyChristian House also received much needed attention this summer. In conjuncRemoval of paint from the Had wen House ay Jim Tyler's tion with this seapainting company.

Photo: Diane Ucci

Structures Update

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Fire Hose Cart Shines

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he Fire Hose Cart was delicately and meticulously restored just in time for the eleventh annual Fourth of July "water fight" between H. Flint Ranney, heading the North Avenue Fire Reserves, and the Nantucket Fire Department.

The restoration was done by Heather and Melissa MacLeod, sisters, who are founders and owners of MacLeod Studio.

Both women are local artists who have restored other historic items in the area, such as a wooden boat built in 1868.

Their work on the Fire Hose Cart required a great deal of concentration due to its intricate detailing. The colors used were based on those they uncovered during the sanding process. The MacLeods look forward to doing more restoration because of the creative challenge it presents and the history their work helps to preserve. The restoration of the Fire Hose Cart was made possible by a generous donation from the

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Nantucket Fire Department.

The fire engine that Flint parades in on the Fourth is a 1927 American LaFrance Quadruple City Service ladder truck, which he purchased from the Town of Nantucket in 1961 for $510. The Town owned and operated the truck from 1927 to 1960. After the fire engine had been restored in New Bedford, Flint brought his bride to the island in it. Even though Flint Ranney's American LaFrance has won all eleven water fights, the newly restored Fire Hose Cart certainly looked glorious in her attempt!

MacLeod Studio restoring the Fire Hose Cart.

Photo: Diane Ucci

son's new interior interpretation, the Liberty Street facade was given a coa t of paint. Necessary gutter and exterior trim repairs were completed by the Structures Department. Rick Morcom, A ssis tant Curator of Structures, also re moved and cleaned the iron door hardware, treating it with an oxidation inhibitor before repainting and reinstalling it. David Whi te ' s Great White Painting Company was contracted for the painting, and we appreciate David working us into his busy schedule.

The final product certainly reflects his talents. Along with the revitali zation of its garden, sponsored by Gale H . Arno ld, Greater Light continues to be transformed this summer. Rick Morcom has installed all of the restored window sash and has begun the tedious process of repairing the structure's exterior trim d eta il s.

Fortunately, structural damage h as been minimal, although some cornerpost a nd sill restoration is required. Rick has used a variety of epoxy consolidation techniques in order to preserve as much of the building's components as possible. The project will continue throughout the fall of this year.

In late Augu st the Hi s torical Association finally received a building permit from the Town of Nantucket allowing us to proceed with the new Mus e um Support Center. If you happen to be out by lower Bartlett Road, s top in and see how the building is progressing. We are thrilled to have the process under way, and the collections eagerly await their new home.

To understand why the island experienced a riot, one must appreciate the temperaments and talents of the exceptional people who came together for the Anti-Slavery Convention of 1842.

The Brotherhood of Thieves Riot of 1842

By Susan F. Beegel

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obs in Nantucket!!! I would as soon have thought of finding the Non-Resistance Society armed with clubs, as to see a mob in that retired spot.

But let us know, let all know, that there is not a foot of soil protected by the American flag, whereon the cursed spirit of slavery doth not strive to kill free discussion: that omnipotent spirit dwelleth in all the land. And we should not be surprised at it. We must still expect to have mobs, while slavery lives."

The Liberator 26 August 1842 Today, little remains to remind us of the riot that took place on Nantucket 150 years ago except a hand-painted sign outside a popular Broad Street pub-The Brotherhood of Thieves. The sign depicts a minister with devil's horns. In one hand he holds a weeping slave in chains; in the other, a bulging bag of money; behind him, a ship plies the ocean waters. She is probably a slaver, suggesting the furtive activities that some maritime historians believe made Massachusetts "the nursing mother of the horrors of the middle passage."

The occasion for the Brotherhood of Thieves riot was a six-day anti-slavery convention held in the island's Atheneum Hall in mid-August, 1842. The roster of individuals gathered for the convention reads like a veritable "Who's Who" of the abolitionist movement, both in the nation at large and on Nantucket. To understand why the island experienced a riot, one must first appreciate the temperaments and talents of the exceptional people involved.

Heading the speakers assembled on the platform was William

Lloyd Garrison, president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and editor of The Liberator. Believing that the United States Constitution, which permitted slavery, was a "Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell," Garrison advocated dissolution of the Union, and secession of the free from the slaveholding states. A compelling orator known for his ability to whip anti-slavery crowds into impassioned demonstrations, Garrison had begun his calling as an abolitionist with these now-famous words: "I am in earnest-I will not equivocate-! will not

excuse-I will not retreat a single inchand I will be heard."

African-American orator Charles Lenox Redmond was also on hand-a speaker, according to Garrison, "whose eloquent appeals have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic." A fiery man who did not subscribe to a doctrine of nonresistance, Redmond believed that Sharps rifles from Kansas were the surest cure for slavery in South Carolina. At his side was Frederick Douglass, a fugitive slave who only the previous year had made on Nantucket a startling debut as an abolitionist lecturer. That island initiation marked the beginning of a distinguished career as an orator, editor, and statesman. In the opinion of his contemporaries, Douglass as a public speaker excelled "in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of language." Together, Redmond and Douglass "made color not only honorable but enviable ... . If they were politicians or divines, the press would stretch itself to speak of them, and magnify their eloquence."

As if this battery of rhetorical might were not sufficient, Stephen Symonds Foster also was present to speak in Atheneum Hall. One of thirteen children born to a New Hampshire farming family and a graduate of Dartmouth College, Foster had attended Union Theological Seminary to prepare himself for the ministry, but left when the seminary refused to accommodate a protest meeting.

Convinced by his experience that American churches did not uphold genuine Christian principles, but instead connived with businessPortrait of Stephen S. Foster, circa 1869. men and politicians to maintain Reprinted from Ahead of Her Time, by Dorothy Sterling.

Photo: Michael Galvin the lucrative institution of slavery,

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Nantucketers who, in the language of The Liberator, desired "equal participation in the blessings of mechani~~~~~~99~~~~ cal, commercial, educationSTElUlOTYPE EDITION. ~ al, and religious improvement." Certainly present were such African Til£ American leader as Edward J. Pompey, prominent in local abolitionist activities, and Absalom Boston, pros~ perous sea captain.

On Wednesday afternoon, 10 August 1842, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, this remarkable group of A TllU'£ FtCTUl\£ people, black and white, male and female together, Or TUA convened at Atheneum Hall to begin their AntiSlavery Convention. After AMgR.lCAN CHURCH AND CLERGY. electing officers, the convention adopted a slate of resolutions that would become the subject of setpiece orations by the invited speakers and lively 8-r STEPHENS. FOSTER .

• impromptu debate by the audience. One resolution in particular would be responsible for setting off Nantucket's riot, and it BOSTON: read as follows : A.."fl1-SLAV£1lT OFF1CE, Z COR:oilllLL..

"Resolved, That it is a dreadful libel on the l~H .

Christian church to affirm that slaveholders, or the apologists of slavery, were ever members of it; and therefore, the real disciples of Christ, who is the Prince excellent propriety and great acceptance" to the 1839 annu- Photograph offirst edition, Atheneum Collection, by Michael Galvin. of Emancipators, will never al meeting of the American give the right hand of Anti-Slavery Society, but difficulties in too was present, acting as one of the con- Christian fellowship to any such persons, projecting her voice prevented her from vention's secretaries. A poet and diarist nor recognize them as among those who duplicating the celebrated public-speaking who would become an important advocate are born of God." career of an Abby Kelley or Angelina of women's suffrage, Gardner put her aboThe convention adjourned for dinner, Grimke. Instead, Eliza directed her aboli- litionist sentiments to work by serving for and reconvened in the evening in genuine tionist efforts to fund-raising, instituting a four years as teacher at the island's harmony as the assembled abolitionists successful anti-slavery fair on Nantucket, African School. rose together and filled the Atheneum and assisting national organizations in Although they did not serve as officers with the sound of anti-slavery hymns. identifying and approaching island of the convention and hence are not men- Then the provocative anti-clerical resoludonors. "Thou knowest that we must be as tioned in the published minutes of the tion passed in the afternoon produced a 'wise as serpents' as well as 'harmless as 1842 meeting, it seems likely that the number of stunning anti-slavery orations. doves"' was Eliza Barney's political philos- island's African-American abolitionists One was of national historic significanceophy. were present in force. Only a few weeks Stephen S. Foster's famous "Brotherhood Thomas Macy, a prosperous refiner and earlier, "a large number" and "vast assem- of Thieves" address. Foster argued that exporter of sperm oil, served with bly" of Nantucket's African-American the institution of slavery involved men in Nathaniel Barney as a vice president. population had assembled in the Friends' the commission of five particular crimes: According to Eliza Barney, Macy's gener- meeting-house to hear Lucretia Coffin theft, or the stealing of a man's labor; adulous financial contributions constituted his Mott's "testimony against slavery." The tery, the disregard for the "requisitions of chief importance to the movement: "He is Atheneum was now open to the island's marriage" involved in holding women as far the most worthy of our abolitionists, as African-American citizens, the Nantucket "stock" and prostituting them; man-stealregards this world's goods," but she also County Anti-Slavery Society was also inte- ing or kidnapping, the act of claiming a thought him more arrogant than "consci- grated, and the anti-slavery convention man as property; piracy, the illegal taking entious" or "benevolent." Anna Gardner held many attractions for those of slaves from the coast of Africa; and

the embittered Foster became one of the most extreme and vitriolic of abolitionist orators.

It's difficult to imagine that a more exciting slate of speakers was ever assembled on Nantucket. Yet it's equally important to remember that the audience of island abolitionists who gathered to hear them and debate the anti-slavery resolutions they proposed were themselves a group of exceptionally strongminded, committed, and articulate individuals. Nathaniel and Eliza Barney served, respectively, as vice president and business committeewoman for the convention. Nathaniel's letters, preserved in the Nantucket Historical Association's research center, reveal the strength of his devotion to the abolition of slavery and to civil rights for both African-Americans and women. A considerable portion of his public life was spent in laboring for these causes in letters and speeches made forceful by his gift for rhetoric and relentless logic.

Eliza Barney was one of the earliest abolitionist women to take the stage and speak out to a "promiscuous audience" as assemblies including women as well as men were known to critics of outspoken females. Eliza spoke "with

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murder, the firm intention of masters who could hold slaves only by the "threat of extermination." What's more, Foster continued, because members of the Southern clergy in the Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches held slaves, and Northern members of those denominations kept fellowship with slaveholders, they were all, by extension, guilty.

The church, Foster proclaimed, was the "Bulwark of Slavery," its clergy "a designing priesthood," and its membership a "Brotherhood of Thieves."

Foster's language was deliberately inflammatory. Even the intrepid Douglass, while admiring Foster's "splendid vehemence," and believing him to be "one of the most impressive advocates the cause of the American slave ever had," believed that Foster was sometimes "extravagant and needlessly offensive in his manner of presenting his ideas." He never failed "to stir up mobocratic wrath" wherever he spoke, and told Douglass that his " theory was that he must make converts or mobs. " Frequently mobbed, beaten, stoned, and arrested for inciting to riot, Foster was truly, as James Russell Lowell called him:

ers-that our clergymen were "pimps to Satan"-that there was not a drunkard or a rumseller in town that was not nearer the Kingdom of Heaven than our clergymen.

We have been told that one of our ministers of religion, eminent for his talents and piety, and warmly endeared to the hearts of his people, was an INFAMOUS WRETCH-and that the Methodist Church, here and elsewhere, was infinitely worse than any brothel in New York, and that the only conceivable motive for the adherence of its pastors to the church was that they wished to retain the black women as concubines!

of the Atheneum told convention organizers that they would have to leave unless they could assume financial responsibility for damage to the building.

For the next three days the hostile mob pursued the anti-slavery convention from site to site. The convention left the Atheneum, was refused use of the Town Hall, and moved to Franklin Hall, where, after dark, the mob arrived in force sufficient to break the meeting up entirely. On Sunday, the group tried to meet in the town square, but it began to rain . The town fathers reluctantly allowed them into the Town Hall, then revoked the privilege on "perceiving the rampant developments of the mobocratic spirit." The convention next moved to a "large boat-builder's shop, on the outskirts of the town." The mob was quieter, but when the abolitionists ventured a return to the Town Hall, rioting broke out afresh . On Monday News of Foster's speech flashed around evening, "fearing ... from developments the island, and when it grew dark the fol- apparent, that the meeting would again be lowing evening, a crowd assembled assailed by the mob, stimulated by their around the Atheneum, "hooting, screech- passions to deeds of lawless violence," it ing, [and] throwing brick-bats and other was "deemed expedient" to "give up the missiles." On Friday night, the mob grew meeting."

There's little doubt that the fiercer, having rallied its forces during the day. The noise made by the stamping and "Brotherhood of Thieves" speech was A kind of maddened John the Baptist, whistling crowd was "hideous." Rotten responsible for firing the Nantucket riot.

To whom the harshest word comes aptest, Who, struck by stone or brick ill starred, eggs and stones were thrown, windows Stephen Foster admitted it: "The strong broken, and a woman in the audience language of denunciation of the American Hurls back an epithet as hard, Which, deadlier than stone or brick injured when struck in the face by a brick- church and clergy, which I employed at Has a propensity to stick. bat. On Saturday morning, the proprietors the late antislavery convention on your island .. . was the occasion of the His oratory is like the scream disgraceful mob, which disturbed Of the iron horse's phrenzied steam and broke up that meeting .... " Which warns the world to leave The minutes of the convention conwide space fess it: "Some hard truths had been For the black engine's uttered by individual members of swerveless race. the Convention, relative to the imbecility of the clergy, and the If Foster was capable of shockimpious hypocrisy of the church in ing confirmed abolitionists like neglecting to labor for the slave ...

Douglass and Lowell, it's easy to at which the spirit of mobocracy imagine how harsh his invective had taken offence, and come up to must have sounded to Nantucket's the rescue of these hoary-headed more conservative townspeople, institutions." many of them members of the very But if Stephen Foster's speech churches Foster denounced . Not all was fiery, Nantucket was, in 1842, of the islanders assembled at the uniquely flammable. Just two years Atheneum to hear him were abolibefore, a highly qualified Africantionists. Some were undecided on American student, Eunice Ross, had the issues of slavery and civil rights applied for admission to the and simply curious; others were island's high school and been political enemies of the Nantucket refused . Both African-American County Anti- Slavery Society, come and white abolitionists began workto see what its members were up ing vigorously to integrate the to. The moderate editor of the school, and would not abandon the Inquirer, while deploring subsestruggle until, in 1847, they were quent events, expressed his indigultimately successful. But in 1842, nation this way: despite two years of explosive town and school committee meetings, the We have been told that issue was still unresolved. What's our people were a set more, efforts to secure secondary of thieves, pirates, robJosiah Freeman's photograph of Eliza Barney, circa 1882. education for the island's Africanbers and man-steal-

.

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American children focused attention on other civil rights issues-the segregation of the island steamer Massachusetts, for example, and particularly the segregation of some island churches, including the Methodist and the North Congregational.

Many of the Nantucket abolitionists present at the anti-slavery convention were vocal proponents of integrating the island's public institutions. Nathaniel Barney was the most outspoken integrationist on the town's school committee.

Eliza Barney wrote to mainland activists about Eunice Ross, "an industrious and respectable girl," and advocated "constant and unwearied action" to end segregation on Nantucket. Thomas Macy and Edward J. Pompey ran (unsuccessfully) for school committee. Anna Gardner was the teacher who had groomed Eunice for the entrance exams she passed so handily. Captain Absalom Boston would, in three more years, hire a lawyer and sue the town to secure a high school education for his daughter Phebe Ann. These local struggles had a great deal to do with the impact of Foster's oration, for Nantucket abolitionists supplied him with the names of local citizens obstructing the cause. When Foster denounced the clergy as a "Brotherhood of Thieves," he named specific Nantucket ministers whose denominations practiced segregation or kept fellowship with slave-holding Southerners. He singled out as "Pimps to Satan" those members of Town Meeting who had upheld segregation of the schools. Foster's speech was as personal as it was vituperative. Not only did he offend the followers of island ministers and town politicians, but he touched upon that eversensitive Nantucket nerve-insular dislike of mainlanders. The Inquirer summed it up: Under the cover of supporting a benevolent and philanthropic cause, these strangers have come into this quiet and isolated community and heaped the most insulting and opprobrious epithets upon its members, abused, by name, in the most personal, insulting and offensive manner, some of our most distinguished and highly-valued fellow-citizens, and spoken in the most ribald, aggravating, and Billingsgate terms, of some of our dearest and most venerated institutions.

As the anti-slavery convention and the riot progressed, events grew more and more personal. The mob hurled stones and

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The last move of the convention was to George and Reuben Coffin's Big Shop, lomted on the outskirts of town, now a private residence. rotten eggs and the assembled abolitionists hurled words. It's difficult to say which weapons were most effective. If Foster and other convention speakers denounced local segregationists, at least one island abolitionist had windows broken at his home and stones flung into a family group of women and children.

Many Nantucketers were scandalized that the police remained idle, and the selectmen did nothing to suppress the riot.

"The conduct of our town authorities," cried the abolitionist Islander, "has been in an eminent degree everything the smallest contempt would be wasted upon." "We deeply deplore the want of prompt and efficient action on the part of our Town Authorities," concurred the more moderate Inquirer.

The acquiescence of police and selectmen in a riot dangerous to public safety and destructive of property suggests their tacit approval, and the strength of ugly proslavery and segregationist sentiments in the community. At least one island abolitionist, David Joy, was relieved to move to Northampton, where "there is less bitterness and determined pro-slavery ... than at Nantucket." But if Nantucket was a house divided against itself, it was, of course, only a mirror of a nation moving inexorably toward a civil war that would leave 620,000 Americans dead on its blood- soaked battlefields.

The Nantucket riot left one constructive

legacy. Nathaniel Barney, concerned that the mob violence had damaged the abolitionist cause, urged Stephen Foster to publish his speech, that the public might "hear both sides," and appreciate "the true position" of anti-slavery advocates. Foster responded, and the resulting publication, The Brotherhood of Thieves; or, A True Picture of the Amerimn Church and Clergy: A Letter to Nathaniel Barney of Nantucket, is one of the most remarkable literary efforts of the abolitionist era. Today, a rare and valuable first edition of Foster's pamphlet resides, appropriately enough, in the vault of the Atheneum. His words still ring from the page, in a cogent and powerful denunciation of the support given to slavery by Northern hypocrisy and greed.

In our own year of 1992, as Los Angeles neighborhoods lie in blackened ruin, and the graves of that city's riot victims are still fresh, it seems appropriate to conclude with the final prayer of the 1842 AntiSlavery Convention-"God grant that the first mob at Nantucket may also be the last!"

Susan Beegel holds an appointment as Visiting Scholar at the University of West Florida .

Editor ofThe Hemingway Review, she has published widely on 19th- and 20th-century Amerimn literature.

Douglass's linking of the sea with freedom was no idle figure of speech, for his understanding of seafaring life enabled his escape from slavery in 1838.

"I Will Take to the Water": Frederick Douglass, the Sea, and the Nantucket Whale Fishery

By Nathaniel Philbrick

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s a slave on a landlocked Maryland plantation, Frederick Douglass would look longingly toward Chesapeake Bay and its sailing ships. For Douglass the ships represented everything that had been denied him by slavery, and in his Narrative (1845) he describes how he would "pour out my soul's complaint . . . to the moving multitude of ships": "You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!

You are freedom's swiftwinged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! . . . It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave.

I will take to the water."

Douglass's linking of the sea with freedom was no idle figure of speech.

Although he would never sail as a seaman, he worked for several years as a caulker in the shipyards of Baltimore where he gained an intimate understanding of seafaring life, and in 1838 he exploited that knowledge to effect his escape. After borrowing a seaman's protection certificate from a free black sailor, he put together the appropriate clothes: "a red shirt and tarpaulin hat and black cravat, tied in sailor fashion, carelessly and loosely about my neck." Even in the slave state of Maryland, the carefully calculated disguise enabled him to board a train bound for Philadelphia without arousing a

hint of suspicion. According to the histori- tied "The Exiles." In the final stanzas of an Jeffrey Bolster, who has shown how the poem, Whittier (whom Douglass labels Douglass's escape from Baltimore reflect- the "slave's poet" in his Narrative) speaks ed the presence of "a more tolerant work of the island's current reputation as an environment" for blacks in the maritime abolitionist stronghold: culture of the Atlantic seaboard, "free black seamen were then so common as to And yet that isle remaineth A refuge of the free, . . . cause few second looks."

Free as the winds that winnow Given Douglass's training as a caulker Her shrub less hills of sand, and the manner of his escape, it is not surFree as the waves that batter prising that he ultimately settled in the Along her yielding land. whaling port of New Bedford, a popular destination for runaway slaves, where he Just as Douglass's white-sailed ships tells us, "The sight of the broad brim and the plain, Quaker dress, which met me at "move merrily before the gentle gale," so every tum, greatly increased my sense of is Whittier's Nantucket buffeted by the freedom and security." If the cultural path- elements, providing a nurturing refuge way that led Douglass from Baltimore to within a wonderfully wild storm of liberaNew Bedford had a source, it was tion.

Nantucket-the birthplace of the Whether or not Douglass's evocation of American whale ,........,_..----,....-----=--------, fishery. Indeed, in the cosmos of the abolitionist movement, the island held an exalted, even central place. In 1841, the same year Douglass would speak before a white audience for the first time in the Nantucket Atheneum, the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier published what would prove to be a highly popular poem An African-American seaman aboard the Daisy whaling voyage in the about the island enti- early 20th century.

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the sailing ships in his Narrative was influenced by Whittier's description of the island, it cannot be denied that Nantucket helped to fulfill Douglass's determination to "take to the water" in his quest for freedom. After examining the island's historic association with the abolitionist movement, this essay will compare Nantucket's reputation as a Quaker refuge with the realities of its whale fishery at the time of Douglass's first voyage to the island.

In 1716 the Nantucket Friends became one of the first groups in America to take a stand against slavery, establishing a precedent that would help create what has been called "the enthusiastically abolitionist atmosphere of the whale fishery," in which sailors of all colors were well paid for their services. In 1770 Prince Boston, a black slave from Nantucket, earned a steersman's lay of 28 pounds for a threeand-a-half-month voyage, which, as the historian Daniel Vickers has pointed out, was equivalent (on a monthly basis) to the wages earned by the captain of a British slaver! A dispute over who should receive the wages-(Boston or his master, John Swain)-resulted in a decision by the Nantucket Court of Common Pleas in 1773 that granted Boston not only his wages but his freedom. When Swain threatened to appeal, William Rotch, one of the leading Quaker whaling merchants on the island, let it be known that he would enlist the services of none other than John Adams to argue Boston's case. "[D]iscouraged by the feelings of the people and the circumstances of the country," Swain let the matter drop, thus effectively ending slavery on Nantucket Island.

That Nantucket's combination of

Portrait of Absalom Boston, circa 1820.

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Quaker abolitionism and mercantile savvy was an inspiration to blacks throughout the region at this period is indicated by the life of Paul Cuffe (1759-1817). A black sailor from Westport, Massachusetts, Cuffe based his own highly successful business practices on those of the Rotches, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century he had become one of the wealthiest black entrepreneurs in America. On Nantucket, Absalom Boston (1785-1855), kinsman to Prince Boston, captained the black-owned and -crewed whale ship Industry in 1822, a historic voyage that inspired a crewmember to write: Here is health to Captain Boston His officers and crew And if he gets another craft To sea with him I'll go.

Given Nantucket's legacy as a land of opportunity for blacks, Douglass must have felt as if he were embarking on a special kind of pilgrimage when he boarded the paddle-wheel steamer Telegraph for Nantucket. In his Narrative, however, he tells us teasingly little about what the abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison described as "the commencement of his brilliant career": [While attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so. ... It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren ....

So ends his Narrative, with Nantucket Island (to which he would return four more times) providing the final stepping stone in his journey from the

fields of a slave-worked Maryland farm to a life as one of America's foremost orators-black or white.

The quest Douglass describes in the Narrative is a fairly straightforward one, in which the evils of Southern slavery are exchanged for the blessings of Northern freedom. But were the whaling ports of New Bedford and Nantucket in the 1830s and '40s as ideal as Douglass would lead us to believe? Even in his own account there are unsettling indications that New Bedford did not prove to be the paradise he had initially assumed it would be.

Soon after his arrival in the whaling port he discovers that he is unable to work as a caulker because whites refuse to work with him, forcing him to take a series of odd jobs throughout his three years in the city.

Although he does not mention it in his Narrative, we know that at the outset of Douglass's initial voyage to Nantucket the packet captain refused to leave New Bedford until the blacks on the saloon deck went below. And even though Nantucket was, in Whittier's words, "the refuge of the free," an abolitionist meeting that Douglass attended the following year sparked a violent riot, while attempts by Absalom Boston (who had captained the Industry in 1822) to integrate the island's all-white school system in the 1840s met with considerable resistance (see accompanying articles in this issue).

If Douglass does indeed view New Bedford and Nantucket through rose-colored glasses in the Narrative, it is so that he can keep the focus on the greater evils of Southern slavery. Given this thematic agenda, there is little to no place in his account for the darker side of life in the North, where racism flourished without the "peculiar institution" of slavery. Even on Nantucket during the heyday of Quakerism in the eighteenth century, the commitment to abolitionism was by no means island wide. Although the Nantucket Quakers took a stand against slavery early in the eighteenth century, it was not (as we have seen) until the 1770s that slavery on the island ceased to exist.

There were even Nantucketers who participated in the slave trade. In a letter written from Havre, France, on May 16, 1796, Benjamin Tupper wrote to his mother on Nantucket: I have bot [sic] a large ship of 5 hundred tuns and she sails this day for the west lndes [sic] .... She carries 5 hundred negroes, if she arrives safe I shall have money enough to

come home & live with my friends which I should like although I like france very much.

Despite Whittier's claims, a concern for "human suffering" was apparently not a top priority for all Nantucketers.

And as Ana Isabel KaldenbackMontemayor has demonstrated in her excellent study, "Black on Grey, Negroes on Nantucket in the Nineteenth Century," the presence of a significant number of blacks on Nantucket in the 1840s was more directly the result of economic and demographic factors than a strong ideological commitment to abolitionism . In the aftermath of a 1763 epidemic, which virtually wiped out the local Indian population, Nantucketers looked to blacks as an alternative work force in the whale fishery. In 1807 a contemporary Nantucketer noted that blacks were indeed taking the places of the Indians and observed : " The negroes, though they are to be prized for their habits of obedience, are not as intelligent as the Indians . ... " Contrary to some of the myths that have sprung up about the island, there is no evidence that Nantucket was ever a stop on the Underground Railroad . Although in 1820 the fugitive slaves Arthur and Mary Cooper were protected from the authorities by a group of island citizens, the vast majority of blacks on Nantucket were Cape Verdeans and Azorians who had arrived on whaling ships. Reflecting that trend, the number of men in the "New Guinea" section of town far outnumbered the women (435 to 155 in 1840).

If Nantucket was not the abolitionist haven for runaway slaves Whittier made it out to be, its whale fishery did employ a large number of sailors "of color."

However, the fishery of the 1840s had undergone some dramatic changes over the last decade, having grown to the extent that impersonal economic factors, rather than a few relatively high-minded individuals, had begun to determine the fishery's character. The inevitable result was a steady decline in working conditions and wages for the common seamen as profits for the whaling merchants increased. By the 1840s, the days in which a powerful and yet religiously devout Quaker whaling merchant such as William Rotch could insist upon a higher moral ground for the whale fishery (as he did in the Prince Boston case) were long gone.

As a result, the whale fishery evolved into what J. Ross Browne called a "coldblooded system of oppression." After a brief tenure aboard a whaler during this

period, Browne published Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (1841), in which he claimed, "I would gladly have exchanged my place with that of the most abject s lave in Mississippi" than serve another year on a whaler. The irony of the whale fishery's proverbial association with the abolitionist movement was not lost on Browne: "Massachusetts being largely interested in the whale fishery, has constantly before her practical demonstrations of the horrors of slavery. The philanthropists of that state will, it is to be hoped, make some grand efforts in behalf of the seamen employed in their whaling fleet, as soon as they dispose of the African race."

Although Browne, from the slave state of Kentucky, directed his indignation toward the treatment of white seamen in the fishery, there are indications that Nantucket whaling captains were by no means color blind in their abuse of offisland crews . According to William Comstock writing in 1841 : An African is treated like a brute by the officers of [the Nantucketers') ships. Should these pages fall into the hands of any of my colored brethren, let me advise them to fly Nantucket as they would the Norway Maelstroom [sic). To all who contemplate a whaleing [sic) voyage, I would say,---avoid, if possible, Nantucket and New Bedford; although the latter place is not so exceptionable as the former.

If Comstock's observations are correct, they indicate that the Nantucket whale fishery was no different from the American maritime scene as a whole, in which the shipboard opportunities that had once been available to blacks at the beginning of the century had begun to diminish dramatically. According to Bolster, "individual black sailors' fortunes took a decided turn for the worse in the 1840s"-just at the time when Douglass came to Nantucket.

Rather than leading the charge against oppression, Quakerism's influence in the whale fishery appears to have been decidedly negative at this relatively late stage.

In Comstock's view, many of the evils of the fishery could be attributed to the psychological effects of being what Herman Melville described as a "Quaker with a vengeance": "Unfortunately, the anger which they are forbidden to express by outward actions, finding no vent, stagnates the heart, and . .. the rancour and

Captain William Pinkney, the first AfricanAmerican to circumnavigate the world, in his 47foot cutter Commitment, 1990-92.

Photo: Diane Ucci intense malevolence of their feelings poisons every generous spring of human kindness." Melville also recognized how the tenets of Quakerism could be corrupted by the economic pressures of the whale fishery. In Moby-Dick (1851) his depiction of Captain Bildad, the Quaker who craftily uses his religious principles to exact "an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work," very closely resembles Douglass's portrayal of the "pious" slave owner in his Narrative: "For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst." In this context, at least, the differences between Southern slavery and the Nantucket whale fishery were not all that great.

This is not to say, however, that the island's Quaker tradition had completely lapsed into a sad, even vicious parody of its former self. Off-island Quakers such as Levi Coffin, president of the Underground Railroad, and Lucretia Mott looked with pride to their Nantucket heritage.

Through the efforts of those and others, such as the staunch Nantucket abolitionist Anna Gardner, the island maintained an important and vital link with the anti-slavery cause.

If Nantucket in the 1840s was something less than "a refuge of the free," the tradition the island had helped to foster in the eighteenth century was still very much alive. For an escaped slave by the name of Frederick Douglass in 1841, that was more than enough.

Nathaniel Philbrick is a sailing journalist and an independent scholar whose articles on Nmltucket history and literature have appeared in such journals as the New England Quarterly and ESQ. He is currently at work on a history of the island to be published in 1993 by Mill Hill Press.

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,.

',

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WE COULDN'T DO

IT WITHOUT YOU . ..

Antiques Show 1992

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legant, classy, outstanding ... " were among the words used to describe this year's Antiques Show headed up by Dorothy Slover and an exceptional committee. Entering the show guests were transported into an atmosphere of elegance and excitement as they were greeted by enthusiastic and welcoming committee members. Dealers gave daily lecture tours called "Through the Expert's Eye," which were fun as well as informative. The Nantucket Historical Association had an educational exhibit on restoration and preservation, with a live demonstration by a local art conservator Craig Kay, who drew a great deal of attention while working on the portrait of Walter Folger, Jr., done by Jerome Thompson in 1831.

When people needed a break from viewing all the wonderful pieces the dealers displayed, a delicious lunch provided by 21 Federal, India House, and Chanticleer to Go awaited them in the Atrium. Winners of the exquisite raffle prizes were from both on- and off-island.

Bill Sevrens's oak Nantucket Lightship baby-carrier basket was won by Gerry Fox. Eldred Wheeler's tiger maple decorated blanket chest, donated by the NHA Museum Shop, was won by Charles Noblit. The Nantucket Windsor Arm Chair, donated by Wayne Pratt, was won

by Maggi Hom Kohl, and the dinner for two at the Chanticleer Inn, donated by Chef-Proprietor Jean-Charles Berruet, was won by Clarissa Porter.

Beginning with the Preview Party sponsored by the Chase Manhattan Private Bank, our title sponsor, the evening events that accompanied the show were festive and entertaining, despite bad weather. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Doubleday graciously hosted a beautiful cocktail party for Benefactors at their home. A wonderful time was had by all who attended. Robert V. Matthews, Wayne Pratt and Company, and Chase Manhattan Private Bank invited all the Benefactors, Patrons, and Sponsors to a sunset party aboard the magnificent Pride of Baltimore II, but torrential rains drove guests to the Thomas Macy Warehouse. The more venturesome donned parkas over their party clothes, fighting the elements as they climbed aboard the ship to perhaps experience what old Nantucket sailors knew as a way of life. It was an unforgettable

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evening for those who braved the storm!

The 1992 Annual Antiques Show, managed by the Antiques Council, will be remembered for its new and unique additions, Dorothy's superb leadership, and her fabulous team. As with each show that has preceded this one, we will build on its strengths in the years to come. The NHA could not create nor learn from an event of this stature without the focus, time, and energy that each individual brought to it. Bravo, everyone!

Antiques Show Committee Chairman, Mrs. William L. Slover, busily engaged 0 11 opening day of the show.

Photo: Diane Ucci

NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION ANTIQUES SHOW COMMITTEE HONORARY CHAIRMEN MR. & MRS. THOMAS H. GOSNELL

CHAIRMAN MRS. WILLIAM L. SLOVER

COMMITIEE MR. & MRS. JOEL ANAPOL MR. & MRS. DWIGHT E. BEMAN MR. & MRS. MAX N. BERRY CHARLES C. BUTT MR. & MRS. ROBERT L. CHAMPION MR. & MRS. ALEX! US C. CONROY MR. & MRS. JAMES L. DUNLAP MR. & MRS. JOHN A. DUNNING MR. & MRS. NORMAN E. DUPUIS II MR. & MRS. GARDINER S. DUTTON MR. & MRS. JOHN W. ECKMAN MR. & MRS. BRUCE FARRER MR. & MRS. ROBERT H. FLINN MR. & MRS. ALAN M. FORSTER DR. & MRS. JOHN P. GIRVIN MR. & MRS. EUGENE GOODWILLIE MR. & MRS. JAMES GRIEVES MR. & MRS. ROBERT HAFT MR. & MRS. DONALD R. E. HARLEMAN MR. &MRS. HAMILTONHEARD,JR. NINA HELLMAN JOSEPHINE D'ROSSET HEYWARD MR. & MRS. HUDSON HOLLAND, JR MRS. ARTHUR JACOBSEN MRS. LAWRENCE JACOBSON MARYBETH KEENE MR. & MRS. EDWARD LAHEY, JR. MR. & MRS. JACK LAMPI, JR. MR. & MRS. ROBERT LARSEN MR. & MRS. RALPH A. LEE, JR. JOHN LOCKE

MR. & MRS. FRANCISCO A. LORENZO MR. & MRS. WILLIAM B. MACOMBER JOSEPH J. MCLAUGHLIN BRUCE D. MILLER MR. & MRS. CHARLES V. MOORE MR. & MRS. IAN W. MURRAY MR & MRS. PHILIP C. MURRAY LCDR & MRS. CHARLES NOBLIT MR. & MRS. MICHAEL PEACOCK MRS. RICHARD A. PRATEL MR. & MRS. JONATHAN T. RAITH MR. & MRS. H. FLINT RANNEY MR. & MRS. ARTHUR]. READE MR. & MRS. THOMAS RHODES MR. & MRS. LAWRASON RIGGS MR. & MRS. ROBERT M. ROSENTHAL MR. & MRS. JEFFREYS. RUBIN KATHIE RUSHFORD MR. & MRS. WILLIAM SEVRENS MR. & MRS. THOMAS F. SHANNON MR. & MRS. SAMUEL R. SIIIPLEY I!l MR. & MRS. RUSSELL A. SIBLEY WILLIAM L. SLOVER JOHN C. & JANIS ALDRIDGE SOWER MRS. GORDON SMITH MR. & MRS. CHARLES G. THEBAUD BRUCE CHARLES THIBODEAU MR. & MRS. EDWIN K. THROWER HARRIE WAGTENVELD MR. & MRS. JOSEPH F. WELCH MR. & MRS. JOHN K. WHITNEY MARLIE WILLIAMS

JUNIOR COMMITIEE MISS DA YNA BAILY MS. ELIZABETH ERBACH MS. JEANETTE THEROUX GARNEAU MRS. KAREN GOTTLIEB MR. ALEX HEARD MRS. MARTIN MCGOWAN

MISS TIFFANY MORTON MRS. MARY PARKER MR. ANDREW PARTRIDGE MISS HEATHERM. PAYER MS. LISA PENN MISS PAMELA E. RAITH

MR. GREGORY P. RAITH MISS ELIZABETH SLOVER MISS SARAH SLOVER MR. WHITNEY M. SPONG MISS MELISSA ST. JOHN MS. DEBORAH TROUTMAN

Brotherhood Lends a Hand

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wners of the Brotherhood of Thieves, a local pub, made a generous donation to this issue of Historic Nantucket. Due to their support and interest in Susan Beegel's article, "The Brotherhood of Thieves Riot of 1842," we were able to add four pages to our publication. The Brotherhood's generosity allowed authors more space for their material, which in tum increased what we can offer our readership in the way of education about Nantucket's history. If you stop by the restaurant, let them know how much you appreciate their gift; and while you're there enjoy one of their sumptuous and reasonably priced meals.

Hats Off to Kim! There are times when the biggest thank you in the world still doesn't seem to be quite enough. Such is the case with our board member, Kim Corkran, whose enthusiasm, creativity, and commitment are an inspiration to us all! Kim has spent over two years chairing the Museum Support Center's capital campaign and designing fundraisers and programs to increase the public's awareness of our mission. She was also involved with our glorious 1991 members' holiday party, the opening celebration for the "Changing Landscapes" exhibit at the Thomas Macy Warehouse, the Elisabeth Donaghy

Garrett lecture, the 1992 members summer party, the William Seale presentation, the benefit prizes for the Museum Support Center from the Artists Association Annual Art Auction, mailing invitations, and acting as liaison for a variety of other NHA-related activities. The list goes on and on.

As if Kim's volunteer work at the Historical Association weren't enough, she also holds a full-time seasonal job at Hills of Nantucket, teaches basketry workshops at the Artists Association, serves on their board, and chairs their annual ball. With whatever time she has

Thanks to the IRS and Others ...

This spring and summer, the NHA's collection continued to benefit from recent IRS regulations that allowed donors to deduct the full market value of their contributions.

Mr. and Mrs. George H. Spencer gave a beautiful Tiffany and Co., tea service that had been handed down in their family for three generations. Francis Reed donated a remarkable traveling dining set containing a whale ivory and silver folding knife, fork, and spoon that once belonged to Nantucket whaling Captain William H. Coffin, commander of the ship Eagle in 1818.

Several important paintings were added to the collection, the most noteworthy of which were a pair of eighteenthcentury portraits of Capt. Reuben Baxter

and his wife Love Briggs Baxter, which came to us from the California home of Edward Baxter Starbuck. Continuing their generous tradition of purchasing important works of art for the collection, the Friends of the NHA donated a beautiful late nineteenth-century painting by Philadelphia artist Margaret Lesley entitled "Nantucket Farmer." Martha Groetzinger donated several items relating to Nantucket illustrator Tony Sarg, and William Barney gave us the original frontdoor lock from the Hadwen-Barney Candle Works. The NHA extends its deepest thanks to those who in their generosity have helped build the NHA's outstanding collection.

left, Kim raises money and community awareness of the MSPCA. Whatever Kim becomes involved in is certainly an event that shouldn't be missed, and the NHA is extremely fortunate to have her on its team.

Unexpected Gifts Solicited gifts are wonderful to receive but often even more exciting are those that are unexpected. For example, a gentleman in California phoned the Research Center recently for genealogical information, which was provided. Then he said, "I am the three times great-grandson of Nantucket Captain Charles G. Chase, and I have the log of his 1836 voyage to the Pacific as master of the whaleship Henn;. I think it belongs there!" It is now an outstanding addition to our collection and we are most grateful, not only for his generous gift but especially for his understanding of the appropriate place for the precious volume to be available to researchers.

Sometimes, people have items they feel they cannot part with but will loan us for copying. This happened recently with a photograph of the area between the north and south bluffs of 'Sconset, taken around 1890 as if with a wide-angle lens. We were able to keep the picture long enough to have it reproduced. Now, although we don't have the archival photograph, we do have the important information shown in the original image. Many historians of 'Sconset will be as grateful as we are.

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In Recognition of Our Committed Supporters

FRIENDS OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Mrs. Thomas H. Gosnell -President Mrs. Dwight E. Beman- Treasurer Mr. Earle M. Craig, Jr. Chair of Acquisitions

Mr. & Mrs. Dwight E. Beman Mr. & Mrs. Max N. Berry Mr. Charles C. Butt Mr. & Mrs. Earle M. Craig, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. John W. Eckman Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Gosnell Mr. & Mrs. Seymour G. Mandell Mr. & Mrs. H. Flint Ranney Mr. & Mrs. Robert M. Rosenthal Mrs. Gordon Smith Mr. & Mrs. Joseph F. Welch Mr. & Mrs. John K. Whitney Mr. & Mrs. Bracebridge H. Young, Jr. The Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association

was formed in 1986. Its purpose is to acquire, through a pooling offinancial resources and coordinated erfort, significant historic artifacts, permitting the NHA to better record and portray the island's history. Recent acquisitions of the Friends can be viewed in the exhibition of the newly reopened Peter Foulger Museum, or in the Whalmg Museum's recently renovated Scrimshaw Room.

NHA LIFE BENEFACTORS

THOMAS MACY ASSOCIATES

Mrs. Loaine C. Arnold Mr. Michael S. Bachman Mr. & Mrs. Dwight E. Beman Mr. & Mrs. Max N. Berry Mr. Charles C. Butt Mr. Bruce A. Courson Mr. & Mrs. Earle M. Craig, Jr. Mr. Jerry Daub Mrs. Paul H. Dujardin Mr. Richard K. Earle Ms. Catherine G. Ebert Mr. Robert 0. Ebert Mr. John W. Eckman Mrs. Charles E. Englehard Ms. Nancy A. Martin Evans Mr. Mark W. Fortenberry Mrs. H. Crowell Freeman Mr. Fred Gardner Mr. & Mrs. Carl S. Gewirz Mrs. Lee B. Gillespie Mr. & Mrs. James K. Glidden Mr. & Mrs. Richard J. Glidden Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Gosnell Mr. & Mrs. Hudson Holland, Jr. Mr. Kris Larsen Mr. Joseph J. McLaughlin Mr. & Mrs. Alan Newhouse Mr. & Mrs. David M. Ogden Mrs. Edgar V. Seeler Mr. & Mrs. H. Flint Ranney Mr. & Mrs. John K. Whitney Andrew E. Wise, M.D. Mr. Kenneth A. Wise Mrs. Bracebridge H . Young Mr. Bracebridge H. Young, Jr.

Mr. & Mrs. Max N . Berry Mrs. Evelyn E. Bromley Mr. & Mrs. Bruce A. Courson Mr. Earle M. Craig, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. Drucker Mr. & Mrs. John W. Eckman Mrs. H. Crowell Freeman Mr. Robert A. Gambee CDR & Mrs. Maurice E. Gibbs Mr. & Mrs. Hamilton Heard, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Hudson Holland, Jr. Mr. Amos B. Hostetter, Jr. Mrs. Edward W. Lombard Mrs. Earle R. MacAusland Mr. & Mrs. William B. Macomber Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce Nantucket Electric Company Pacific National Bank Mr. & Mrs. William L. Slover Mr. & MrS". George A. Snell Rev. Georgia Ann Snell Sun Island Delivery Mr. & Mrs. Richard F. Tucker Mr. & Mrs. Robert C. Wright Mr. & Mrs. Roger A. Young

The members who have supported the NHA with unsolicited contributions of $2,500 or greater.

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Contributed $1,000 or more in response to the Annual Appeal, November 1991-Aug. 1992.

Each of Nantucket Historical Association's members is important to the Association and its commitment to preserve Nantucket's precious heritage.

We wish to recognize those who have been particularly generous in their giving.

HADWEN CIRCLE Mr. & Mrs. W. S. Archibald Mrs. Deborah J. Bryan Mr. Charles C. Butt Congdon and Coleman Mr. John H. Davis Mrs. John L. Ellicott Ms. Nancy A. Martin Evans Mr. & Mrs. George B.. Gibbons Mr. & Mrs. Bernard D. Grossman Mr. & Mrs. James J. Hagan Mr. George F. Heyer, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Thomas A. Holmes Mr. & Mrs. David S. Howe Mr. & Mrs. Robert B. Knutson Mrs. Roy Larsen Mr. & Mrs. John Lynch Mrs. Paul Mellon Mr. & Mrs. Richard L. Menschel Mr. & Mrs. Richard F. Miller Mr. & Mrs. Robert F. Mooney Mr. F. Bartlett Moore Mr. & Mrs. Carl M. Mueller Nantucket Bank Mr. & Mrs. T. Peter Pappas Mr. & Mrs. Charles W. Phillips Dr. & Mrs. Frederic W. Pullen II Dr. & Mrs. Albert L. Rosen tal Mrs. L. William Seidman Mr. L. Dennis Shapiro Ms. Susan R. Shapiro Mr. Richard F. Smith Mr. & Mrs. James M. Stewart Mr. & Mrs. John Sussek Mr. & Mrs. E. K. Thrower Mr. & Mrs. F. Helmut Weymar Mr. & Mrs. Arnold A. Willcox Mrs. Bracebridge H. Young Mr. Bracebridge H. Young, Jr.

CONTRIBUTORS Anonymous Mr. & Mrs. C. Marshall Beale Mr. & Mrs. Thomas R. Brome Mr. & Mrs. Raymond B. Carey, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Richard R. Congdon Mr. & Mrs. Martin F. Connor Mrs. Alexander M. Craig Mr. & Mrs. James L. Dunlap Mr. & Mrs. Gardiner Dutton Mr. & Mrs. Otis W. Erisman Mrs. Edgar G. Feder Mr. John P. Harcourt, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. William H. Hays III Mrs. Nina S. Hellman Mr. & Mrs. Arthur Jacobsen Mrs. Sidney H. Killen Mr. & Mrs. Robert B. Knutson Mr. John C. Lathrop

Dr. & Mrs. Jack M. Layton Mrs. Jill L. Leinback Mr. & Mrs. Francis D. Lethbridge Mr. & Mrs. J. Thomas Macy Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. McCullough Mr. & Mrs. Martin McKerrow Mr. Joseph J. McLaughlin Mrs. Richardson T. Merriman Mr. & Mrs. David B. Mosher Mrs. Henry A. Murray Mr. Daniel M. Reid Mr. & Mrs. William M. Silverman Mr. David G. Smith Mrs. Elizabeth S. Sanford Ms. Sue Ellen Stavrand Mr. & Mrs. William K. Tell, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Paul A. Wolf, Jr. Mrs. Joseph C. Woodle

Contributed $250-$499 in response to Annual Appeal, November 1991- Aug. 1992.

The Tupancy-Harris Foundation of 1986 generously provides total support of the Thomas Macy House (99 Main Street).

The Foundation also provides curatorial housing and additional funding assistance to the NHA.

Contributed $500 to $999 in response to the Annual Appeal, November 1991 -Aug. 1992.

We believe the above lists of significant donors to the NHA to be accurate for the period 11/91 through 8/92. We apologize for any inadvertent omissions. Please report discrepancies to the Executive Director.

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MUSEUM SUPPORT CENTER CAPITAL CAMPAIGN The Nantucket Historical Association wishes to recognize the extremely generous pledges or gifts we have received to build and endow the Museum Support Center as Phase One of its 1991-93 Capital Campaign. $300,000 or more Mrs. Thomas H. Gosnell $100,000 to $299,999 Allegheny Foundation* $50,000 to $99,999

$25,000 to $49,000

$5,000 to $9,999

Friends of the NHA Osceola FoundationTrustees: Mrs. C. Marshall Beale Mrs. C. Hardy Oliver Mrs. Barbara Beinecke Mr. Walter Beinecke III

Mr. Charles C. Butt Mr. and Mrs. Max N. Berry Mr. & Mrs. Hudson Holland, Jr.

Mr. & Mrs. William B. Macomber Mr. & Mrs. H. Flint Ranney Mrs. Edgar V. Seeler

$10,000 to $24,000 $1,000 to $4,999 Mr. & Mrs. John W. Eckman Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Welch Tupancy-Harris Foundation of1986

Gifts of $250 to $999 Mr. & Mrs. John F. Akers Mr. & Mrs. W .S. Archibald Mr. Bruce B. Bates Mr. & Mrs. Robert H . Bolling Mrs. Martha A. Carr Congdon & Coleman Ins. Agency Ms. M.J. Levy-Dickson Mr. Joseph Starbuck Freeman CDR Maurice E. Gibbs Mr. Walter Hayes Mr. & Mrs. William H. Hays III Mr. & Mrs. Richard H. Hoff Mr. & Mrs. DavidS. Howe Mr. & Mrs. Robert B. Knutson Mr. & Mrs. Francisco A. Lorenzo Mr.JosephJ. McLaughlin

Mr. Edwin E. Meader Mrs. Paul Mellon Mr. Leeds Mitchell, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Norman Lac Olsen Mr. H. Flint Ranney Ms. Karen C. Schwenk Mr. & Mrs. Robert M. Scott Mr. L. William Seidman Mr. & Mrs. Thomas F. Shannon Mr. & Mrs. Robert B. Shetterly Mr. & Mrs. James M. Stewart Mr. Stephen Swift Tonkins of Nantucket Thomas Turner Chapter, S.R. Mrs. John H. Wallace Mrs. Richard J. Walsh

Mr. Walter Beinecke, Jr. Mr. Earle M. Craig, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Peter A . Goldstein Mr. & Mrs. Arthur Gosn ell Mr. & Mrs. Walker Groetzinger Mr. & Mrs. William H. Hays III Nina and Robert Hellman Nantucket Rotary Club Mr. & Mrs. Scott C. N ewquist Mr. & Mrs. V. Henry O'Neill Mrs. Richard A. Prate!

Mr. & Mrs. Daniel M. Reid Mr. & Mrs. Thomas M. Taylor Mr. & Mrs. F. Helmut Weymar Mr. & Mrs. Paul A. Wolf, Jr. Mrs. Bracebridge H. Young Mr. Roger A. Young

*The Allegheny Foundation has generously provided funds for all interior storage equipment.

We believe the above listed donor record to be accurate through August 1992. Please report any discrepancies for update in future issues. If you want more information on this important effort to correct the serious problems of collection preservation and storage, contact the Executive Director.

58

The trouble began in 1840 when Eunice Ross, a student in the African School, was denied admittance to the high school after passing the entrance examination.

The Integration

of Nantucket Public Schools

By Barbara White

N

antucket is resp on sible Town to establish a public for what is thought to be school system. The African the first civil rights bill in the School was one of the five U nited States guara ntee in g schools established. equal access to education . The Mosr island children were law, passed in 1845, en sured educated in private schools, the right to s u e shou ld an y and public school was child in the Commonwealth of regarded as suitable for the Massachusetts be "unlawfully poor only. During that first excluded from any public year 180 pupils were supportschool." The legisla tion was ed at public expense. But a the result of a dramatic series of system educating the poor ev ents on N a ntucke t that only was not what a public included riots, a school boycott, school system was intended to lawsuits, and petitions to the do, so Jenks filed a complaint with the state's attorney genState House.

On the surface, it seems natera! stating that Nantucket u ral that Nantucket, with its continued to violate the law .

Quaker roots, would play a role An indictment was brought in pre-Civil War integration against Nantucket and the struggles and be responsible legislature put new muscle fo r such a law . Nantucketer into the law by fixing fines for Elihu Coleman ' s 1729 tract noncompliance. Sensing a losagainst slavery was the second ing battle, Nantucket set up abolitionist treatise to be pubfully funded public elemenlished in the colonies, and seatary schools in 1827. They man Prince Boston was the first Portrait of Reverend Arthur Cooper, runaway slave from Virginia who later included the African School, slave freed in Massachusetts as became a minister on Nantucket. which educated up to fifty a result of jury verdict when he - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - students during its existence. successfully sued for his whaling lay in throughout the next decade. Most blacks However, a public high school did not 1770. In 1822, town officials dramatically lived in a section called "New Guinea" in open until1838. protected runaway slaves Arthur and the vicinity of lower Pleasant Street. New The trouble began in 1840 when 17Mary Cooper when slave catchers arrived Guinea had its own churches, stores, year-old Eunice Ross, a pupil in the with legal documents to take them back to graveyard, and anti-slavery society.

African School, passed the high school Virginia. Prominent white citizens, such By 1825 there was a segregated public entrance examination along with sevenas Olivia Gardner, hid the fugitives for a elementary school in the African Baptist teen white pupils and asked for admitweek. Anna, Olivia's daughter, would Church, located on York Street at Five tance. She had undoubtedly been encourCorners. This was the first year that aged by her teacher of four years, Anna play a major role in the upcoming drama.

Despite the evidence, abolitionists were Nantucket complied with the 1789 state Gardner. Eunice was denied entry to the in the minority and Nantucket was a seg- law requiring towns to provide public school. regated community. By 1820 African- schools. It took the agitation of editor In June 1840 the first formal move Americans numbered 274 in a population Samuel Jenks of the Inquirer and his broth- toward admitting her was made on the of 7,266. Those statistics remained stable er-in-law Cyrus Peirce to persuade the floor of Town Meeting when Edward

59

closed to AfricanAmericans. In response, Obed Macy opened a library and reading room for them over his Main Street store. The Women's Anti-Slavery Society refused to meet at the North Congregational Church when the church barred black women from its premises. In the summer a three-day AntiSlavery Convention, held at the Atheneum Hall, attracted off-island speakers such as William Lloyd Garrison.

Here Frederick Douglass made his stirring first speech to a white audience and was hired as an anti-slavery lecturer.

Local abolitionists who addressed the convention included Anna Gardner, Nathaniel Steel Engraving of Wendell Phillips, off-island abolitionist who Barney, Andrew and attendee[ the HT42 Anti-Slavery Convention. Reprinted from Life Peter Macy, Isaac and and Times of Frederick Douglass, by Himself, 1881.

Photo: Michael Galvin Charlotte Austin, and David Joy. Gardner moved, "To see if the Town will In 1842 the integration issue heated up instruct the School Committee to permit considerably. On the second day of Town coloured children to enter all or any of the Meeting a motion made by out-going public schools of this Town." The motion school committee chairman Nathaniel failed.

Barney to integrate the schools was In the school committee's report to the passed. This would have allowed Eunice town the next year, it was reported that Ross to enter the high school. It was a brief the "typical progress" of a pupil was victory because the next day the town "through the Introductory Schools ... to reconsidered its vote and it was overGrammar, and thence to the High School, turned. by an access available to every scholar Both integrationists and segregationists who has ability and perseverance." This tried to get their advocates on the new was, however, a pattern open only to school committee; 59 people ran for 13 white students. The school committee positions! An unprecedented six blacks conceded as much by recommending that ran as well, but only one, Edward J. the next school committee establish "some Pompey, garnered more than two plan, whereby the higher branches of edu- votes.(He received 55 votes, not enough cation may be communicated to the chil- for election.) Most of the prominent abolidren of the coloured population, as fully tionists, including Andrew and Isaac and as satisfactorily, as to those of the Macy, David Joy, and Isaac A us tin, lost white citizens." No plan was specified their positions in town government. John and education remained segregated.

H. Shaw and Nathaniel Barney narrowly Meanwhile, Anna Gardner vacated her retained their seats, whereas outspoken teaching post at that controversial junc- segregationist William Starbuck received a ture, and there is no record of a successor hefty 600 votes. or why she resigned . However, four Shortly thereafter a group of angry months later a newspaper advertisement blacks met at Zion Church to discuss the solicited males only to apply for her job. results of the Town Meeting, which had The year following Eunice Ross's denial briefly voted in favor of integration and of admittance to the high school was an then changed its mind. Two motions were active one for island abolitionists, but it passed. The first said, " .. .it is the judgewas also a year in which segregation ment of the oppressed portion of the citibecame more entrenched. The Atheneum, zens of Nantucket, that it is their right, and both a meeting hall and town library, was they ought to claim, and do desire to

60

enjoy, among other rights, the right of having their youth educated in the same schools which are common to the more favored members of this community."

The second thanked those who had spoken on behalf of equal education.

The black integrationists also wrote to the school committee and to the citizens of Nantucket a remarkable and lengthy address that was printed in both newspapers. It said that the vote to continue segregation of the public schools was not "a recent wound .. . but a wound of some years standing." They reminded the town "We are by the Constitution and laws acknowledged to be citizens and consequently entitled to all rights and privileges in common with other citizens, and then that for a mere accident, the difference of complexion, we are denied the right of privilege of education .. . ." The address was never answered.

That summer, emotions exploded during the August Anti-slavery Convention, called for August 10. Again, it was well attended by influential off-island abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Stephen S. Foster, C. Lenox Redmond, and Frederick Douglass.

To the issues of segregation, public education, abolitionism, and desegregation Foster added his denunciation of America's churches, several of them existing on Nantucket, which further inflamed local residents and the clergy. Convention sessions, interrupted by riots, dissension, stones, brickbats, and rotten eggs, moved from the Atheneum Hall, to Franklin Hall, and finally to Town Hall, as well as to boatbuilders George and Reuben Coffin's Big Shop on the outskirts of town. On the evening of August 15 the abolitionists canceled what remained of their agenda.

They left the island and returned the following June to sessions calm and unremarkable. However, the tensions they had raised would surface over local issues.

The following year, 1843, was equally explosive. At Town Meeting, Nathaniel Barney repeatedly moved to integrate the school system, but was thwarted by an amendment to one of his own motions made by William Starbuck "that the African School be continued as heretofore," which passed. Two days later the issue was brought up again. This time the abolitionists, hoping to shift the debate to fiscal ground, persuaded the voters to delete the African School's funding. That led to a reading of the "Minority Report to the Financial Report" of the town, which dealt almost exclusively with the issue of the African School. It claimed that the appropriation was wasteful and contrary "to the spirit of the law" and called for its closure with the students redistributed

among the other public schools. The report's recommendations were not accepted, although the town had already voted to withdraw the African School's appropriation.

Not willing to accept defeat, however, abolitionists quickly drew up six articles requiring a Special Town Meeting several days later. They attempted to draw attention to the foolishness of segregation by asking "To see if the town will establish a School for all Children having Red Hair."

Several days of motions and countermotions followed, including one to allow qualified students to be moved to other schools at the school committee's discretion. However, William Starbuck persuaded the town to continue the status quo and successfully moved to postpone further discussion of school matters for the duration of the meeting. That left the African School without funding, which then had to be voted at yet another Town Meeting.

At that meeting the radicals had enough school committee support to integrate the schools, regardless of Town Meeting votes. It resulted in a contentious five-day Special Town Meeting in March as the segregationists tried to block their efforts. William Starbuck, also on the school committee, moved that members of

the school committee who would not comply with the town's wishes should resign.

But the school committee had no intention of resigning and proceeded to integrate Nantucket's schools as if the meeting had never occurred. The African School was renamed York Street School and designated for primary school children in the neighborhood. Fifty-one children, regardless of color, were placed there in September. Other black children were admitted to primary schools in other parts of the island, based on proximity to their homes.

Presumably, Eunice Ross took a seat in the high school, but it is not documented.

According to that year's school committee report, fifteen African-Americans were placed in predominantly white schools in their neighborhoods. The committee reported that the placements had been successful and victoriously pronounced that segregation was "swept away into the great sea of bygone follies .... " They could not have been more wrong.

Reaction came in no uncertain terms during the Town Meeting of 1844.

Abolitionists were swept from positions on town committees as citizens expressed their anger at having been ignored.

Segregationist William Starbuck was re-

elected to the school committee, this time with people who supported his views. The town refused to accept the school committee report of the previous year and made it clear that integration would come to an end. The new school committee chose Monday, April 21, as the date to remove "colored children from the public schools to that in York Street." A special Town Meeting was called on the Friday before the removal date as ardent abolitionists, white and nonwhite, made passionate pleas to stave off the plan. But they failed and the town instructed "the School Committee to place the exclusion on the grounds of color and make their record to that effect."

Rather than send their children back to the segregated school, a boycott was organized by the African-American community. There is some evidence that a few whites also withdrew their children from the public schools in support of the boycott. The boycott was so successful that the school committee was forced to send white children to the York Street School in order to keep it open. Interestingly, it became an integrated school attended by a handful of black children.

At the same time, legal counsel was sought, but the African-American commit-

The Old Atheneum, from John W. Barber, Historical Collections Related to the History and Antiquities of ... Massachusetts, Worcester, 1839. (Atheneum Collection)

61

tee was told that it had no redress through the courts.

As the boycott dragged on from the end of the 1844 school year and into 1845, several petitions to the State House were made in hopes of changing the law. The first was presented by Edward J. Pompey and 104 other black citizens of Nantucket.

Without mentioning skin color or Nantucket, the petition claimed that children in the Commonwealth were being deprived of public education and that the legislature should ensure all children "their equal right to the schools."

Two weeks later, the State House received two petitions in support of Pompey's petition, signed by Peter Macy and 252 white citizens of Nantucket.

Shortly thereafter, two more petitions arrived, 350 white Nantucketers who defended the African School as "excellent," stating that the only reason for the segregation on Nantucket was proximity to the school. It asked the legislature not to pass "untoward legislation." A sixth petition arrived written and signed by Eunice Ross. In firm and legible handwriting, she told how she had heen refused admittance to the high school, despite being "amply qualified."

The result was House Bill No. 45, which was passed in less than a month.

Nantucketers had changed the law.

That should have put the matter to rest,

but it did not. A few weeks previously the town had reaffirmed its segregation stance and re-elected most of the school committee. The lone dissenter of the prior committee, George Folger, was unseated. The new law was simply disregarded, as the abolitionists had ignored the town vote of two years before. The schools were not integra ted and Eunice Ross was still denied entry to the high school. The boycott continued.

Meanwhile, Phebe Boston,seventeenyear-old daughter of Absalom Boston, was also denied entry to any but the African School. Her father filed suit and a Special Town Meeting in September was convened to decide how the town would respond. John Shaw and Andrew Macy attempted to persuade the town to integrate to avoid the suit, but the town voted to fight the case. While everyone awaited the outcome, the case was delayed for over a year by a jurisdictional switch from the Court of Common Pleas to the Supreme Judicial Court.

The legislation so joyously received had done nothing to resolve the situation.

Black children steadily trickled back into the African School as parents worried about depriving their children of education for so many months. The school committee's report to the town in January 1846 criticized those who kept their children out of school and accused the abolitionists

of loving colored children more than their own. In overtly racist language it defended segregation and opposed offensive "social amalgamation." It praised itself for protecting the majority "from the odium" of mixing the races.

Few motions were offered by the abolitionists at the 1846 Town Meeting. There was a strange silence as they waited, certain of victory, for the Phebe Boston case to settle the matter. Surprisingly, however, a motion by John Shaw to strike three of the most inflammatory paragraphs from the school committee report passed.

More important, all thirteen members of the prior school committee lost their reelection bids and at least nine known integrationists were elected, including George Folger and Obed Barney. The new committee took this as a mandate to put the matter to rest, to comply with the new law, and to integrate the schools.

Integration was immediately implemented, and the report to the town the following year reflects their success. Children "who had for some time been deprived of educational privileges, applied for admission into the several public schools in the section where they severally resided, and were duly admitted."

The public schools on Nantucket were integrated. Six years of frustration had elapsed since Eunice Ross had applied for entry to the high school. The African School was closed, deemed too small to maintain. The Boston case appears to have been dropped, as it disappeared from all court records as of July 1846. Eunice Ross, 24, was finally admitted to the high school along with Phebe Boston. She completed her schooling there, where, according to her obituary, she excelled in French.

She lived the rest of her life on Nantucket and died in 1895 at the age of 72. Sadly, Phebe Boston died of dysentery at age 21.

They are both buried in the segregated cemetery on Mill Hill, behind Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

Barbara White has taught Social Studies at the Nantucket High School for over twenty years.

She received her M.A. at Boston University in African-American Studies. Her thesis on "The African School and the Integration of Nantucket Public Schools 1825-1847," was published in 1978.

Anna Gardner, circa 1877.

62

Space requirements necessitate omitting footnotes and bibliographies for the feature articles; the original and complete papers have been placed in the NHA Research Center for reference.

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Garrett Lecture

Historian at Work

In cooperation with Winthrop Hotels & Resorts, on June 18th the NHA presented Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett, vice-president of Sotheby's, as part of our monthly lectu re series. Mrs. Garrett d iscu ssed "Domestic Details: Life at Home in Early America," and her audience tho roughly enjoyed the subject matter. Presented as a ben efit for the Historical Associati on ' s M u seum Support Center, w e w ish to thank not only Mrs. Garrett, but also Mr. and Mrs. C. Marshall Beale for their prelec ture cocktail party, and F . Ba rtl ett Moore, managing director of Winthrop Hotels & Resorts, for generously donating thei r Meeting House for the lecture and the s umptuous reception for those w ho attended.

This summer NHA Hi s torian Helen Winslow Chase was busy writing the "Historic Tour #1," a guide sponsored by the Nantucket Civic League, Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce, Nantucket Visitor Services, Rotary Club of Nantucket, and the Nantucket Historical Association.

The walking tour begins and ends at the Pacific Bank on Main Street and includes Ve s tal, Bloom, Howard, Gardner, and Liberty streets . The pamphlet will be available at the NHA, the Chamber, Information Bureau, the ferries, airport, hotels, and guest houses on island. Two other self-guided tours are in the works.

In August Helen also gave an informal presentation with NHA trustee Reverend Georgia Snell on "Island Church History."

Former Historical Association Research Librarian Louise R. Hussey also had valuable input into the program.

ABCDErGHIJKLlv'INO pqRSTUV~WXY'Z'ti "1 >-~t u ol<u Fr..,.<ts Soh.>ol '3~ S&.:m.d ~~

Summer Party for Members With over two-hundred members in attend ance, the second annual summer party was held at the Thomas Macy Warehouse in July. Along with good food, drink, and conversation, members had an opportunity to see the new exhibit on the second flo o r, " Changing Landscapes." Once aga in we are grateful to the Artists Association for setting up the patio off the Little Gallery for our guests. It is this cooperative effort, and others like it, that create and bind the fabric of our nonprofit community in Nantucket. Other contributors to the success of our party were: Larry Whelden of the Lobster Trap; Jack Bangs and Michael Molinar of Flowers at the Boarding House; Brian Cronan, manager of the First National Supermarket; and NHA's own Sheila Cabral. In addition to serving as the NHA secretary, Sheila arranged all of the flowers for this event. If you were there you know why we are worried she may be lured into a horticultural career.

Corrigenda In the 1992's summer issue's article "The Day the President Came to Nantucket," on page 34, center column, line 14 should read: " ... where she served as the yacht club's flagship for many years." The word " flagship" was omitted.

In the centerfold, the caption should be "Three Sloops off Brant Point circa 1936," not "Jetties Beach." Thanks to Roger A .

Young for pointing out Coatue in the background and the information about the underwater cable from Brant Point to Coatue. The cable came out at the beach at the shack where it was fed into power lines that extended to Coskata Coast Guard . In the photograph you can see the telephone poles fading off into the distance.

The NHA would like to clarify any misunderstanding generated from the precis of the Annual Financial Statement carried in the centerfold regarding the Museum Shop revenues. What is listed is end-of-year working capital after transfer of $80,000 in funds from the Museum Shop to the general operating fund. The 1991 figure was further reduced by "write-down" of longstanding inventory. The Museum Shop has averaged $100,000 per year in fund transfers to support the important preservation work of the NHA.

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DATES TO REMEMBER October 12 Houses close (Whaling Museum and Thomas Macy Warehouse stay open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.)

October 16 Lecture on "Nantucket Needlework," by Elizabeth Gilbert at the Whaling Museum at 7:30 p.m. Elizabeth Gilbert, owner of the Crafts Centre on Nantucket and skilled textile restorationist, will give a scholarly presentation on Nantucket textiles and needlework from the Historical Association's collections.

October 19 Thomas Macy Warehouse open weekends only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

November2 Whaling Museum open for one-hour guided tour, Monday to Friday. Doors open 22:15 p .m. Lecture at 2:15p.m. Open weekends 11 a.m. to 3 p .m.

November '1:7-29 Whaling Museum and Thomas Macy Warehouse open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

December 5-6 Whaling Museum and Thomas Macy Warehouse open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

December7 Thomas Macy Warehouse closes for the season.

December 25 Whaling Museum Christmas!

closed.

Merry

January 1, 1993 Whaling Museum closed for the season.

63

THE MUSEUM SHOP

Whaleboat model and photo by Rick Fortenbmy

A new addition to the Museum Shop's fine collection of historical and museum reproductions is the whaleboat model built from scratch by Rick Fortenberry of East Dennis, Massachusetts. Rick's models are unique because of his insistence on working from existing full-size boats to create realistic and historically accurate vessels in miniature. The models are constructed out of hardwoods in the same manner as the original whaleboat, with planking and frames laid over molds.

Rick researches, photographs, and measures the actual boats he uses for his replication. The result is a miniature vessel, faithful in all respects to the actual craft. Full documentation and construction notes accompany each replica. The object of this artisan's work is "to fool the viewer, if only for a moment, into believing he is looking at a full-size boat rather than a model."

Stop by the Museum Shop and see if Rick's model can briefly capture and transport you back in time to Nantucket's whaling heritage. It's worth the trip.

The Museum Shop Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Reproductions and Adaptations Featuring Fine China, Furniture, Brass, and Silver Adjacent to the Whaling Museum, Nantucket (508)-228-5785 Members of the Historical Association are entitled to a 10% discount upon presenting their membership card.