Historic Nantucket, Summer 2000, Vol. 49 No. 3

NANTUCKET

Making Nastucket..

C nnections ,

~~

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES Dorothy Slover President

David H. Wood

Peter W. Nash

Alan F. Atwood

First Vice President

Second Vice President

Treasurer

Clerk

Bruce D. Miller Aileen M. Newquist Steven M. Rales Arthur I. Reade Jr. Alfred Sanford John M. Sweeny Richard F. Tucker Marcia Welch Robert A. Young

Barbara Hajim William A. Hance Julius Jensen m Arie L. Kopelman L. Dennis Kozlowski Jane Lamb Carolyn MacKenzie Albert L. Manning Jr.

Sarah Baker Rebecca M. Bartlett Patricia M. Bridier Laurie Champion Prudence S. Crozier John H. Davis Alice F. Emerson Mary F. Espy Thomas C. Gosnell

Virginia S. Heard

Frank D. Milligan Executive Director

ADVISORY BOARD William B. Macomber Paul Madden Robert F. Mooney Jane C. Richmond Nancy J. Sevrens Scott M. Stearns Jr. John S. Winter Mary-Elizabeth Young

Nina Hellman Elizabeth Husted Elizabeth Jacobsen Francis D. Lethbridge Reginald Levine Katherine S. Lodge Sharon Lorenzo Patricia Loring

Walter BeineckeJr. Joan Brecker Patricia Butler Helen Winslow Chase Michael deLeo Lyndon Dupuis Martha Groetzinger Dorrit D.P. Gutterson

RESEARCH FELLOWS Dr. Elizabeth Little

Nathaniel Philbrick

Patty Jo S. Rice

Renny A. Stackpole

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Mary H. Beman Susan F. Beegel Richard L. Brecker

Thomas B. Congdon Jr. Charlotte Louisa Maison Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham

Nathaniel Philbrick Sally Seidman David H. Wood

PROPERTIES OF THE NHA Oldest House Hadwen House Macy-Christian House Robert Wyer House Thomas Macy House 1800 House Greater Light Old Mill Old Gaol

Old Town Building Thomas Macy Warehouse Fire Hose Cart House Quaker Meeting House Nantucket Whaling Museum Fair Street Museum Peter Foulger Museum Museum Shop

Bartholomew Gosnold Center and Annex Folger-Franklin Memorial Fountain, Boulder, and Bench Settlers Burial Ground Tristram Coffin Homestead Monument Little Gallery Eleanor Ham Pony Field Mill Hill

Cecil Barron Jensen

Helen Winslow Chase

Elizabeth Oldham

Claire O'Keeffe

EDITOR

HISTORIAN

COPY EDITOR

ART DIRECTOR

Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research, first-hand accounts, reminiscences of island experiences, historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers.

Copyright ©2000 by Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association, 2 Whaler's Lane, Nantucket, MA 02554.

Second-class postage paid at South Yarmouth, MA and additional entry offices.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket Box 1016 • Nantucket, MA 02554-1016 • (508) 228-1894; fax: (508) 228-5618 • nhainfo@nha.org For a map of our walking tour and historic sites: www.nha.org

NANTUCKET VOLUME 49, NO. 3

Summer2000

4 From the Executive Director

by Frank D. Milligan

11

Literate Culture and Community in Antebellum Nantucket

The Nantucket Railroad

by Peter Schmid

by Lloyd P. Pratt

15 Nantucket in a New England Linguistic Atlas

by Frances Karttunen

18 Historic Nantucket Book Section Picturing Nantucket Reviewed by Jane C. Nylander

In the Heart of the Sea

20 NHANews

Reviewed by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards

On the cover: Engine "No. 1" leaving town via Easy Street on its first run on July 5, 1901.

Decked with flags/or the Independence Day celebrations, this engine replaced the aging "Dionis."

HISTORIC

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3

F R 0 M

THE

EXECUTIVE

DIRECTOR

"Part of the assigned task of museums • • ts to retntegrate people to wonder."

T

liE PROCESS OF DESIGNING AND CON-

structing a new museum center for the Nantucket Historical Association is going forward. Fundamentally, the NHA will Dnmztable swift operate its museum center in two distinct modes: c. 1815. during the day in a more traditional mode, emphasizing exhibits and the educational content of its artifacts; and Gift of at night, and at certain other times to provide a range of Frederick H. Gardner entertainment options (such as live performances, lectures, films, banquets) that will maximize use of facilities and increase revenues.

Both are important, but we must never lose sight of the fact that our new museum center should provide something that is-well, wonderful. In a fascinating little book entitled Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders, the central figure, one David Wilson, opened a private museum in Los Angeles after undergoing an intense "conversion experience" that revealed to him the course of his life and the meaning of life in general.

Pretty heady stuff and gripping in its emotion. "All at once," Mr. Wilson explains from the front desk of his cramped 1,500 square foot Museum of Jurassic Technology of Curiosities, "it was made completely apparent to me how my life would have to follow the course that has led to this. I mean running this museum as a setvice job, and that Service consists in-I can't believe I'm saying these things-in providing people a situation . . . in fostering an

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environment in which people can change. And it happens. I've seen it happen."

Instructors in college museological programs and architectural schools would do well by adding this book to their curricula. Their students would surely delight in its interpretation of museum development from the earliest sixteenth- and seventeenth-century museumsknown as Wunderkammens, or imply, wonder-cabinets where the object was king (or queen). In toc.lay's museological parlance, exhibition c.lesigners and visitor service specialists typically promote their "discovery galleries" and "edutainment-activity centers," which may in fact not contain even one historical artifact.

Those of us involved in the planning of our association's new mu eum center would also do well by keeping one foot rooted firmly in the pre-Enlightenment Wunderkammens where the spirit of wonder the astonishment of our world anc.l the things in it as seen through our collection -marked the true beginning of the learning process. Mu eums do it best when they are planting the seeds of further learning.

We must therefore recognize that the true spirit of the museum learning experience rests with the objects on display. Extensive, and expensive, "permanent" exhibitions, with their supporting stOtyline and the sin1ulation games in "hands-on" discovery galleries can most assuredly reinforce the learning proces ; but they can never be a substitute for a true museum learning experience. First and foremost we are an historical association with a wonderful collection of historic properties, artifacts, books, manuscripts, and other objects, each of which has a story to tell. ollectively and individually these objects and tho e object in the traveling exhibitions that will soon finc.l their temporary homes here "away off shore," will create a sense of wonder that will spur our visitors to learn more about Nantucketers and the world in which they have lived. How fortunate we are to be part of this wonc.lrous process.

- Frank D. Milligan UMMER

2000

Literate Culture and Community in Antebellum Nantucket

I

F YOU IIA VE SPENT ANY LENGTII OF TIME ON

Nantucket during the late winter months, you probably know the ambivalent pleasures of this in-between season. December and January are busier than they should be; April brings daffodils and their patrons. But for a few short weeks in February and March, it's a different island. The trees on Main Street, stripped of their summer leaves, reveal a geometry that either confirms your faith or makes you wish it would return. The slow boat over is a little bit less like a floating kennel, a little bit friendlier to meditation or even a nap.

The streets are so empty you could count the cobblestones. Given tl1e availability of street-side benches, you might even find yourself inclined to do so.

And yet the welcome quiet can also become unnerving, what with the short days and spare company of winter. The sound of tl1e wind as it catches, bends, and plays at the branches of those naked trees on Main Street encourages a kind of melancholy that can be hard to shake. House after house on Orange Street sits empty and unused. Walking by, you wonder if the owners are safe--if tl1ey will return in J w1e or maybe .JtJy to claim the doorknob, garden, steps, and forlorn mail basket. Maybe only I tllink these tlli.ngs: I am, after all, a visitor to tl1e island rather than a year-round resident. I have not had to weather an August trip to the Stop &Shop.

I have good reason, tl1ough, to dlink tl1at others have shared my experience of waking up on one of Nantucket's gray winter mornings feeling uneasy and alone. The time I spent on the island doing archival research in 1999-first as tl1e NHA's Visiting Research Scholar and then as the Atheneum's Scholar-inResidence--allowed me to discover tl1at late-eighteenthand early-nineteenth-century Nantucketers shared a sinlllar, but even more profow1d experience of uneasy pleasure in the island's isolation. I also found that literate culture--especially private reading, the company of literary societies, and public lectures-was for many the HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

saving grace of winter at the same time that it incarnated some of the island's less savory social mores.

The island's winter isolation before the age of air travel is well known; it was also moving enough to inspire a literary genre that I think of as peculiar to Nantucket: the winter lament. Here, for example, is one of the more lyrical of such pieces, taken from the 1817 journal of Obed Macy housed at the NHA. The winter of 1817 was particularly hard, and Nantucketers were at their wit's end. A frozen harbor kept them wimout company and wimout news for weeks. Reflecting on me peculiar circumstances of island living, Macy wrote the following:

by Lloyd P. Pratt

Jan 311817 The harbour being closed up with Ice displays a very dreary aspect to us who are confined to an Island; Strong walls, bolts & bars are quite unnecessary to confine us to this little spot; the natural fortifications which now surround us are stronger than all the art that the ingenuity of man can invent. - and was this all the inconveniency attending, it might be endured with patience; but on taking a view of the present situation of the Inhabitants generally, as to the staple commodities of life, it appears alarming to a conszderable degree, particularly on account of the scarcity of bread.

Like many antebellum islanders, Macy is at his most articulate when writing about tl1e isolating winter. He captures wim a short phrase-"tl1e natural fortifications which now surround us" -an experience so many island residents knew (and continue to know) in their bones.

Alongside these laments, though, there are also hopeful, creative, and even slightly arch responses to me season. Some of the best of mese can be found in me records of me Budget Society, one of several island literary societies that formed during the first three SUMMER

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5

Mouth ofColumbia River N.WCoast February 3AD zooo Dear Madam, In looking over some old manuscripts in my possession ajew evenings since, I came to adetached piece of writing, which, in these days, 1know not how to class.

The author is one unknown, ar1d as no allusions are made to him by contemporary writers, which throw any light upon the sulject, I must leaveyou, as 1 am myselfin corifecture. This much, however is certain, that up to the time ofhis writing the piece above alluded to, no production ofhis excepting asmall piece ofpoetry, had been published. And in this I conceive he acted awise part. We can look upon an old manuscript with emotiom ofpleasure, and even withjeelings ofawe and veneration, for its antiquity when its contents in print would on~ excite the smile ofridicule and contempt; as perhaps raise our wonder at the ignorance ofour ancestors. In the autograph ofany one, but more especial~ in that ofagreat man, there is something indescribab~ pleasing, a mingling ofsensation producing most hannonious results.

You will remember with whatjeelingsyou and I have examined the autographs ofWashington, Franklin, Napoleon, Byron, and Dary, 1 the autographs ofthe great, the learned and the good. But it was in the 19th century, as it is in our day, in regard to doingju.stice to our contemporaries, we leave posterity tojudge.

By the old manuscript above mentioned, it appears that our ancestors were possessed ofmeans and devices by which they bler1ded amusemetJt with instruction.

Among them, as with us, there were more worshippers at the shrine ofpleasure, (so called) than at the alter fsic J ofWisdom; but there were many who discovered that the ways of wisdom were the paths oftrue pleasure. It is even so in our times, and we can have no doubt ofthe advancement ofknowledge, nor that marl will ultimate~fill the station and perjonn the duties to which nature has unquestionab~ assigned him.

But it is proper that I should makeyou acquainted with the origir1 and preservatiatl ofthese manuscripts; and with the marmer in which they came into my possession.Some ofmy ear~ ancestors resided on asmall Island called Nantucket, situated h1 theArlamic Ocean, about 30 miles south ofCape Cod, and in the state of Massachusetts. This island still exists, but!f we may re~ upon the acwrmy ofobservations made at that time it seems that its position has been considerab~ altered: in 1830 its longitude was about7 • 20 'east ofwashington, it is now 7• 5'east ofthe same meridian.

These ancestors ofmine, like ourselves,fonned various plans, and used various meansfor pastime and instructim1. Among these was theformation ofaSociety called the"Budget Society."

This society appears to have been created and established by women. They met one evening out ofseven durir1g the winter season, and were usual~ all convened by 7 o'clock. Each one ofthem brought a kind of work cal/ed"knittingwork"that is to say, aslow and mechanical physical method ofmaking stockings by hand! How very strange this appears to us! It is real~ astonishing to behold to what shifts our ar1cestors were putjor the most ordinary conveniences ofl!fe! Making stockings by hand! Why I should have as soon thought ofmaking coats and pantaloons by hand! These women were employed afortnight in making asir1gle pair C?f stockings, and no doubt would have pronounced any one crary who should assert that in theyear 2ooo alittle girl would make ahundred pair oflong hose dai~.

"Think ofthat Master Brook!"-Yet they were acquairlted with many ofits ttstji<l applications ofsteam; and although they could notjly by steam many ofthe men were often renderedflighty by the vapour ofalcohol. They had however, even in these times pretty correct notions ofthe wonders steam would ultimate~ &"ect.

A son ofthe ancient Isle ofErinsaid he should short~ expect to see agerJtlemw hunting hares on his own tea kettle. It was customary ir1 the ciforesaid"Budget Society" for some one ofthe watnen to readfrom some book,for the berztjit ofthe whole, until the men (general~ their httsbands) arrived, which was conunon~from halfpast eight to nine o'clock. Conceming the books they read we have no knowledgefurther than that they were ttsual~ novels which are now extb1c~ with ajew exceptiO! IS. The beauties oftheir own unrivalled Franklin, and the d1asteness and argumentative strwgth oftheir Charminj were too much neglected. But collSidering the times in whid1 they lived the members ofthis society were singular~ exempt ofthe depraved taste wgendered by the sweetmeats ofephemeral literature.

It is acomoling rdfection to us modertlS that women l!f'olden times"were asfond ofnovelty as those ofthe preswt clay. Thisfondness seems to have come downfrom mother Eve. Bu~you ask, is not manfond ofnovdty? And is not the novelty ir1which woman delights more blameless than thnt ofman? I answeryes.Woman is a lovdy, man aconceited being.

I have stated that the men general~ arrived atjrom halfpast eight to nine o'clock. At 9o'clock"the Budget" was opened. This was made ofcompositions, moral, humorous and nondescrip~ in rhyme and in prose, which were contributed by the members male andfemale. These compositions were preserved, a/ld a large portion ofthem havingfallen into the hands ofmy ancestor, they have been trammitted down to me, and thisfrom these old papers that the above account has been drawn.

I would here observe that tifterthe contents ofthe"Budget'for the evenir1gwere read the members took something to eat.Ji'om atable lwtmt!ful~ spread, and for aught that I can discover their mouths were placed in their heads, like ours, and theirjaws had asimilar motion, a~~d,-I have lost the train ofthought, let us go and have something to eat, and to drink.

Yourssc Any name but the right one.

1

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was a distinguished English chemist and natural philosopher whose prose and poetical works were much favored by early 2 nineteenth-century readers on both sides of the Adantic. William Ellery Channing 0780-1842) was an American Unitarian clcrgym:m who wrote prolifical ly. His works would have been fervendy discussed by any group with literary pretensions such as those of the Budget Society.

decades of the nineteenth century. Conceived in 1829, the Budget Society's goal was clear: make winter easier to bear and learn a little about literature in the process.

The group's members, although few in number, accomplished this by gathering once a week during wi.n'ter at one of their homes. What makes the Budget Society uncommon is that at a time when gender segregation was still generally practiced in literary venues, this group was made up of both women and men. We can also surmise from the group's taste for racist doggerd that it comprised white women and men only.

The women of the Budget would gather at seven o'clock in the evening, bringing their knitting, which they would then take up, while one member began to read aloud from a popular novd of the day. After about an hour and a half, the men would begin to arrive and the group would shift gears. It is worth noting that the shadow of gender segregation tries to reassert itself here, with men absent from the reading that opened each meeting. We can speculate that this was tl1e result of a nineteenth-century ideology that associated reading novds with unrestrained emotion and femininity. This passage, penned by a member of the society and IIISTORIC

NANTUCKET

describing the group from the perspective of a historian in the year 2000, would seem to suggest as much:

A penal sketch (above) ofa Budget Sodety gatheni1gfound in the

Concerning the books they read we have no knowledge further than that they were usually novds which are now extinct, with a few exceptions. The beauties of [. . .] w1rivalled Franklin, and the chasteness and argwnentative strength of [. . .] Channing were too much neglected. [. . .]

It is a consoling reflection to us moderns that women of "olden tin1es" were as fond of novdty as those of the present day. Tlus fondness seems to have come down from mother Eve. (See opposite page for the full text of this letter.)

sodety's record book.

The letter on the fadng page is found in the record book of the Budget Sodety, an antebellum Nantucket literary sodety.

The dote of the leiter, Februaty 3, 2000, tells us that these

It would have been unthinkable for men to participate publicly in the pastime of novd reading, not to mention knitting.

If women and men could not stand as equals in their rdationsbip to the novds of the day or to yarn, they did see fit to share equally in the pastime of literaty composition. Once the men of the Budget Society joined the group, the knitting was put aside and men1bers would

Nantucketers were imagining what might be in our own I tine, and also imagining what we might care to know about them.

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produce short compositions in either prose or poetry that they had written prior to the meeting. These compositions were then dropped anonymously into a leather bag, or "budget," and were drawn one by one and read aloud to the group. After the meeting, a member of the group would transcribe these compositions in the record book of the society, which exists to this day in the NHA library.

One of the early Budget Society compositions parodied the inauguration speech of Andrew Jackson, casting Jackson as an illiterate, war-mongering tyrant.

Another "piece for the Budget" details the adventures of a quill put into service as a pen by a didactic preacher, and then adopted by his daughter, "a bloom -~ ing girl of sixteen" who wrote "billets filled with soft and tender expression." ¡ Perhaps the most popular topic, however, was the pains of writer's block. At least a third of the compositions reference late nights spent casting about for a subject worthy of attention and the skill to do it justice.

Running a close second to writer's block was beans: the joys of eating them, whose were the best, and the most appropriate accompanying dishes.

The members of the Budget were not alone in their inclination toward group readings and discussion. In fact, the records of the Budget Society's proceedings comment on one of their peer organizations: the Nantucket Philosophical Institute. The constitution of the Philosophical Institute, available at the NHA library, commits the group to the study and discussion of topics "expressly literary & philosophical," but those terms are interpreted rather narrowly. For the members of the institute, "the useful agricultural, mechanical and nautical arts" were enough, and "no political or religious controversy" was to disturb their meetings.

The Budget Society, always more fond of entertainment and arch commentary than of the hard sciences, recounts, again from the perspective of an imagined historical researcher from the year 2000, the exertions

I

Before the men amved.

Budget Society record book illustration.

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of their friends in the Philosophical Institute: There is also a tradition concerning [these philosophers of the age] that when they became old - nature, instead of pursuing her usual course transformed them into those materials which had been objects of so much interest to them during their lives. One became [. .. ] acid , another was petrified, having a forehead of quartz - eyes of jasper - [. .. ] and a nose of gypsum.

A third became a comet, and the bones of a fourth are now exhibited in the celebrated Museum of New South Wales, as those of a giant.

The members of the Philosophical Institute, for all the jokes they may have invited, appear to have been an influential group composed of prominent islanders. The institute sponsored lectures and discussions, many of which we find recorded in the island's period newspa pers, and it subscribed to a nw11ber of scientific journals available for loan to its members. For its first six years, the institute was also an organization restricted to white men who had reached the age of twenty-one. This seems to have been more a de facto practice than any¡ thing else: their constitution has no explicit prohibition of women joining the group.

In truth, though, this de facto practice and th e eventual "desegregation" of the Philosophical Institute highlights a truth about literate culture on Nantucketwhether at the Budget Society, the Philosophical Institute, or other groups like them-we might otherwise overlook. Six years after the institute's inception in 1825, William Coffin Jr. moved, at a meeting on 19 November 1831, that "ladies might be admitted as honorary members, not to be subject to taxes, also that the constitution of the Institute be so altered as for the Institute to be in character a Lyceum." At the 1 December meeting this proposal was finally taken up when a special committee that had been charged with considering the idea delivered its report. According to the Philosophical Institute's meeting minutes, the committee explained that, "in their opinion, the usefulness of the Institute will be extended, and the interests of the commwlity benefitted [sic] by such a modification of our constitution by laws as will afford a more free access to our association than has hitherto been presented." It then recommended that "females be admitted free of charge as members of the association" and that "males UMMER

2000

under twenty-one years of age be admitted to the same privileges until they are twenty-one years of age." At the next meeting, on 8 December, over fifty new members were voted into the group, most of whom were women.

Although this might seem like a rather easy transition from restricted to open access to the institute, we need to consider at least two more factors. First, the debate did not end here. The constitution of the institute had previously required that in order to approve new members, at least two-thirds of the standing members present at a given meeting vote unanimously in favor of the action. Shortly after the proposal to admit women and minor men to the group, however, a second proposal was made to alter the constitution so that a simple majority was necessary to elect a new member.

When this proposal eventually passed on 16 February 1832, the president of the institute "erased his name from the list of members." It seems that for the group's president, at least, the process of democratization had gone too far.

The second important factor to consider is that these organizations appear to have been restricted to white men and women: as far as I have been able to discern, black Nantucketers are conspicuously absent. These groups give us, then, the prehistory of some of the better-known racial conflicts that gripped the island in the 1840s witl1 the fallout from Eunice Ross's application to the white public school and the 1841 Nantucket AntiSlavery Convention, including Frederick Douglass's famous visit. The island's literary societies of the 1820s and 1830s were also the precursors of later literary institutions such as the Nantucket Atheneum. Although not literally the forebears of the Atheneum and the island's other literary institutions, they helped set the standards for how islanders would congregate around literate culture. That is, those groups were installing a practice of racial segregation that would have to be overturned in the late 1840s with the desegregation of Nantucket's schools. It was here, in these apparently innocuous social formations, that Nantucketers were learning to hoard literate culture, and to attempt to deny it to other islanders based on their race, gender, or social class.

A comment in the letter book of influential islander Nathaniel Barney highlights, for example, the relative novelty of tl1e school segregation that prompted Eunice Ross's application when he suggests that the precedent for segregation was, in fact, only ten years old. Barney, a HISTORIC

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prominent islander and antislavery advocate, writes to an island friend in 1845 that "[c]oloured children were educated with the whites when we were boys, & no 'hue and cry' was the consequence." Thus, while we might think that the segregation of islanders and their access to literate culture was an invention of the eighteenth century that was supplanted by the more progressive movements of the early nineteenth century, it seems that the story was slightly more complicated.

The Budget Society and the Nantucket Philosophical Institute might, in other words, appear to be simple antiquarian objects of interest, old-style literary societies we look to for entertainment and a sense of our difference from the past. And to some degree, they are just that. But they also illustrate a counter-intuitive lesson about the relationship between literate culture and our social existence . We often associate such culture with the most democratic possibilities and assun1e that progress toward the greatest good for the greatest number will follow from associations like those two literary societies. This is our hope, anyway . What's increa-singly apparent, however, is that we cannot expect that progress to happen naturally, of its own accord. The members of the Budget Society and the Philosophical Institute did use literate culture-books, lectures, writing, and reading-to progress toward a more sophisticated knowledge of the world. But knowingly or not, they were also laying tl1e groundwork for a system of segregation tl1at would have to be overturned by decades of political agitation.

I think it is in part my knowledge of those earlier organizations that colors my experience of late-winter Nantucket. In February and March, with tl1e tourists and the day-trippers absent, contemporary Nantucketers are, like any community, left more or less alone with themselves. I wonder what sort of social ties are made in those moments of winter quiet, what new ways of clustering around literate culture have begun to

I Budget Sodety partidpant.

Budget Sodety record book zllustration.

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emerge in the twenty-first century. And I wonder how much the public discussion of Nantucket's isolating geography and the incursions of the tourist economy mask internal processes of social inclusion and exclusion, processes of social di.fferentiation. For as quiet as it may seem, late winter on Nantucket has always been a very busy time.

Lloyd P. Pratt is currently working on his Ph.D. at Brown University. His dissertation is "Modern Community, National Community, and the Consolations ofAntebellum American Narrative."

He was the 1999 Nantucket Historical Association Visiting Research Scholar and 1999 Scholar-in-Residence at the Nantucket Atheneum.

Journals of Obed Macy Letter Books of Nathaniel Barney Minutes of the Nantucket Philosophical Institute Minutes of the Budget Society

Tales of the Sea

by Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793-1860)

Rare book in

I

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread a/Nationalism. Rev. ed., New York: Verso, 1991.

Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Baym, Nina. American Women Writers and the Work of I-listory, 1790-1860. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

- - . Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Brodhead, Richard H. Cultures a/Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America.

Sources Peter Parley's

Selected Bibliography: History of Print Culture, Reading, and Community

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Copeland, David A. Colonial American Newspapers: Character and Content. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997.

Davidson, Cathy. Revolution and the Word· The R/fe of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

All in the collection of the NHA lzbrary.

the collection of

- - , ed. Reading in America: Literature & ocial History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

the NHA !tbrary.

l'ETER PARLEY'S

TALES OF THE REA.

Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The CulturaL Work of American Fiction, 1790-7 860.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Zboray, Ronald}. A Fictive PeopLe: Antebellum Economic DeveLopment and the American Reading PubLic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

\\J'l'll ENCRA\'INGS.

nos·roN. CA!t1':r.R, IIEND£1:! , .~\1\'0 CO.

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The Nantucket Railroad L

ouGH PRECIOus UTTLE TANGIBLE

evidence remains of it today) Nantucket enjoyed rail service /or thirty-six years/rom 1881 until1917.

Along with the promise of pro/its /or investors) it was the distances of the south shore and eastern beaches and the cottages ofSiasconset that drove the effort to establish a railroati even on such a tiny island. By the 1880s Nantucket had already made the transition /rom whaling center to resort destzi1ation) so a conveyance that could provzde transportation to the charming cottages of Sconset and the south beaches without the dusty and jarring rzde ofa carriage made sense /or Nantucket's burgeoning tourist indust1J!.

The first surveys /or the railroad were made in August of 1879 and envisioned the road departing/rom the water/rant and going north along the clifi but a southern departure /rom town was decided upon) and roadbeds running out to Sur/szde were completed by sprz.ng of 1881. Rails and used rolling stock in the /arm of an engine) tender; and two open-air passenger cars were purchaseti the engine being named Dionis after the wife of settler Tristram Coffin. The road was a narrow-gauge with a threefoot distance between the rails.

To further entice people to ride the razh a depot and restaurant opened at Sur/side in July of 1881 and it was estimated that by the end of the first season the train had carried over 30 000 passengers and traveled nearly ~ 000 miles.'

1

Crowds turned out /or the

arrival of

new roll1ilg ~~-..¡J stock/rom

Woods Hole in May o/1910

1

1

BACKGROUND PHOTO:

The train leaving town, rounding the Easy Street boat basin, ca. 1885.

CLOCKWISE FROM NEAR RIGHT:

An early work crew on Washington Stree0 1880.

This carte-de-visite by]. Freeman is probably the earliest extant photograph of the Nantucket Railroad.

Engine No. 2 pulling the train back from Siasconset in reverse (note the direction of the steam), ca. 1910.

Due to a lack of turntables, the engines always returned to town backward. A szding did at least allow the engine to pull the cars rather than push them-which it did during the earliest years.

Crowds waiting/or a Tom Nevers land auction in the 1910s.

Connector ticket from the steamship Nantucket to the railroad.

Selectman John R. Killen drives a golden spzke to connect the newly replaced rails at Siasconset on June 22, 1909. This was reminiscent of the driving of the golden spzke to complete the transcontinental railroad in Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

Near left: The amous, gasoline-powered coaches dubbed the "Bug" and the "Bird Cage" operated year-round/rom 1907 until1913, when the Bug's brakes /ailed and it was literally squashed at Siasconset; no one was injured.

Below left: A strip oftickets for the Nantucket --Siasconset route.

Clearly, in spite of opposition from some of the town's businesses and the hack-drivers who feared a loss of business, Nantucket's swnmer visitors adored the train, and were more than willing to part with the 35-cent round-trip fare. In spite of two thwarted attempts by unknown parties to wreck the train, local boosters declared the opening season of the NRR a success.

The years 1882 to 1884 witnessed the development of the Surfside Hotel (it had been moved piece-by-piece from Providence!) and the incorporation of the Surf-side Land Company, which had a realty office in the depot and sold nearly 180 lots by the end of 1882. The railroad, along \vith willingly offered capital and speculation, had made Surfside a resort destination. But the railroad did not stop there. As originally planned, the rails had been extended along the south shore to the new terminus at Sconset by July of 1884.

By 1895, after posting losses and changing hands due to expensive repairs and the tracks washing out along the eroding south beach during winter storms, the Nantucket Railroad closed down and was reorganized as the Nantucket Central Railroad Company. The new overland route avoided the south shore and attendant washouts and instead ran from Agricultural Society grounds near Old South and Fairgrounds Roads directly to Tom Nevers Pond and thence to Sconset. Surfside, once buoyed by the tracks, is now left "out of the loop," and predictably, both the hotel and land company are left high and dry.

The hotel eventually fell into disrepair and the Surf-side Land Company sold out 900 acres of land, at a huge loss, for only $2.80 per acre.

The railroad changed its rolling stock several times. In 1885 another used engine, dubbed the Sconset for the new terminus, was added along with a new 1 4 111STORJC

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closed passenger car that could carry sixty-four passengers. To replace the aging Dionis, a new engine known only as "No. 1" was purchased in June of 1901. From 1907 until 1913 a tiny gasoline-powered car and its companion baggage car (affectionately known as the "Bug" and "Bird Cage," respectively) plied the rails to Sconset, including winter service. Encouraged by the performance of gasoline engines, the railroad company purchased a brand new, twenty-five-foot car that with its sixty-horsepower engine could carry twenty four people plus another passenger car. However, after sev eral derailments and failure of both the drive shaft and transmission, the car was returned to its maker in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1910, a new engine and two passenger cars were purchased, but the engine, dubbed "No. 2," was small and looked incapable of hauling the regular-sized passenger cars.

After sustaining accidents, further financial losses, and changing hands several times, the railroad finally succumbed to the ubiquitous automobile and in 1918 the rails, two cars, and engine No. 2 were sent to Bordeaux, France, for use by the Allied Expeditionary Forces. The railroad's fate was similar to that of many small, speculative narrow-gauge lines of the nineteenth century. Today, the Nantucket I-Iistorical Association is pleased to hold the original bell of the engine Dionis, a headlight, some manuscript material, and a good number of photographs graciously donated by Mrs. David Gray in 1976.

Peter Schnud is the Nantucket Historical Association's photo-archivist and if currently workti1g on cataloguing the association's 45,000-irnage collection and coordinating an oral-history project.

Sources Farson, Robert H. Cape Cod Railroads, Including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Yarmouth Port: Cape Cod Historical Publishers, 1990.

Lancaster, Clay. The Far-Out Island Ratlroad.

Nantucket: Pleasant Publications, 1972.

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Nantucket in a New England Linguistic Adas Tl LE EARLY 1930s n IREE NANTUCKETERS were interviewed to represent Nantucket speech for the Linguistic Atlas of New England. We know the name of the fieldworker, Guy S. Lowman Jr, but the identities of the three Nantucketers were concealed. Following the guidelines for the research, Lowm<m described the Nantucketers by life history but protected their privacy by not disclosing their names.

Given his descriptions, however, it has been possible to identify at least two of them. Reading the entries today, these Depression-era interviews reveal fascinating details on how Nantucketers lived and spoke.

Linguists then and even now designate the people who provide them \vith language data as "informants" even though the term sounds uncomfortably like "informer."

The first Nantucket informant was }an1es H. Gibbs, born in 1850. At the time of the interviews he was eighty-three years old; hence his speech patterns had been formed in the middle of the nineteenth century and represented the way Nantucketers spoke in the Civil War era. His father was born on Nantucket, but his paternal grandparents and his mother had all moved to the ishmd from Sandwich. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, he had been whaling in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Then he spent four years onshore but off-island as a horse-cart driver in Cambridge. Putting his peripatetic youth behind him, he settled down in Sconset, where he lived until age fifty, when he moved to town and took employment as custodian of public buildings and bellringer - ringing the "52s" in the Unitarian Church tower daily at seven in the morning, noon, and nine in the evening. His son Jay Gibbs took over the job from his father and was Nantucket's last bellringer, retiring in 1957 when an automatic system was installed.

Lowman enjoyed the interview with James Gibbs very much. He described him as "companionable, merry, energetic" with a "quick, bright mind" who

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"enjoyed every question." He characterized the elderly gentleman's speech as being rapid in tempo but \vith pauses and long drawn-out vowels for emphasis.

The second informant was a seventy-eight-year-old Sconset farmer descended on his father's side from Nantucket's first English settlers. This was idney B. Folger, whose farm lay just south of the Sconset road.

Many of his forebears had been Quakers. Concluding his education at age sixteen, he had lived in Middleborough for seven years before moving back to the island. According to the interviewer, Folger returned to live at ankary Lighthouse. He liked to talk about whaling and old tin1es on the island and wrote humorous pieces for the Inquirer and Mirror. Lowman found him "cordial, hospitable, intelligent," another fast talker who only slowed down for emphasis. The Inquirer and Mirror's obituary for Folger, who died two years after Lowman's visit, concurred, describing him as a person with a fine memory, who liked to talk and write about times past.

by Frances Karttunen

Cherry Grove Farm at 32 Vesper Lane, c. 1930s

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antucket group on Old North Wharf ca. 1930s.

Standing: Karl Adams Sr., Prisalla Lewis, Captain B. Whitford joy, llerbert offin, James Andrews, Peder Pedersen.

Seated: Benjamin \'Villiams, Austin Strong, Anne Donald, Phoebe Lewis, Kitty Adams, Johnny Cross.

Photo /rom the Edouard A. Stackpole Collection.

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Informant three was a seventy-nine-year-old woman who had spent most of her life in Quaise, although at the time of the interview she was living with her daughter in Sconset. Her parents and all her grandparents were born on-island with many generations of Nantucketers behind them. As a child she had been privately educated by a Quaker woman teacher but was herself a member of the Methodist Church.

Lowman found her "cordial, yet reserved; not garrulous" with a "quick and keen" mind. Her responses to his questions were "frank" and "unguarded." Unlike the men, she spoke slowly, often prolonging syllables.

It might appear from this that Lowman thought the best representatives of Nantucket speech were to be found in Sconset, although he listed them as one from Nantucket Town, one from Sconset, and one from Quaise. He did not talk to anyone from west of town.

Since the nineteenth century there had been no Nantucket Indians, but Lowman also did not interview anyone of Portuguese or Irish or African descent. Tllis reflects an interviewer bias and a broader bias about what sort of information was felt to be crucial for an atlas of New England speech.

In their traitling, the fieldworkers had been directed to interview an elderly descendant of an old local fan1ily and a middle-aged person with a high school education but no extensive travel or college education away from home. They were reminded that it was "of supreme importance" that the informants should be NANTUCKET

from "various generations and diverse social and racial" groups, but the editors of the fi11al report had to admit that several fieldworkers, especially Lowman, "showed a preference for the interesting old-fashioned local type." This was sanctioned by another of the traitling guidelines that stated that "the pronunciation of 'old-timers' is of the greatest interest. Your informants will often tell you how their parents used to speak and what new expressions their children use. All such information must be put down. It is very valu able." Focus on the "old-timers" was justified "in order that the earlier regional pattern might be accu rarely delineated and the oldest living fon11S of speech preserved as fully as possible for the historian of New England speech." The editors were confident that with the data they would be able "to establish the regionalism of the pre-industrial era of New England."

Between September 1931 and October 1933 nine fieldworkers conducted a total of 416 inten¡iews.

Following a carefully developed protocol, they asked 103 questions designed to elicit particular words and p hrases sue h as " twenty-seven, " "h aIf past seven, " "Saturday afternoon," "February," "just," "egg yolk," and "tomorrow," which tb y transcribed in f1ne phonetic notation. In addition to pronunciation, they recorded what specific words their informants usl'd for such things a wetlands, outhouses, types of fl'nces, foods, and utensil , greetings, and animal calls. This was an arduous undertaking for both informant and fieldworker. Getting tl1rough the entire questionnaire took <mywhere from six to twenty hours pread over several Jays.

Lowman, with his delight in clduly "local types," solidly set hi stamp on the results of the survey by interviewing 158 informants, nearly twice as many a the econd most productive ficldworkl'r and ten times as many as mo t of his c !leagues.

While the fieldwork was tiU going on, analysis and editing of the data began at Brown University under the direction of I Ian Kurath and several cocditO! , all distingui hed lingui ts of their time. The result was the

Handbook of the Lzi1guistic Geography of cw England, published by Brown with funding from the American Council of Learned ocietie in 1939, and the Linguistic Atlas of ew England, publi hed in 1941.

The Atlas is a multivolume ollection [ nearly eight hundred over-sized maps, a one-time effort intended for library reference only; copies can be found in major SUMMI:R

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university collections. The Handbook, on the other hand, is a conventional-size book that proved so useful that a second edition was issued in 1973. It is in the Handbook (pp. 183-84) that Lowman's description of the three Nantucket informants is to be found. In addition, there is a capsule history of the island that is, incidentally, longer and more researched than all the brief histories of the other communities surveyed, even longer than the history of Boston.

What did the linguists conclude from this huge Depression-era project? Their maps showed graphically that the major division in New England is between eastem and western speech. Within the eastern speech area, there are several focal areas, with marked contrast between Boston/Massachusetts Bay-area speech and Plymouth-area speech. There was less difference to be found between Plymouth-area and Narragansett Bayarea speech. For instance, throughout the Cape and Islands and arOLmd Narragansett Bay, the word quahog was pronounced with the same initial sow1d as (Jld:.een and the vowel of bQJ1ght, while spreading out from the Massachusetts Bay area was a competing pronunciation of cohog, with an initial hard k. sound and the vowel of soul. Nantucket stood solidly with the old pronunciation, but the informants on the Vineyard and people from a number of communities on the fringes of the cohog area apparently had made a compromise, keeping the (J1d:. pronunciation, but changing the vowel: quQhog.

Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were included in the designation of Plymouth area. For example, the word tempest was used for thunderstorm on the Cape and islands but not in the Boston area. In New Bedford, both tempest and thunderstorm were in use.

From the individual maps, however, one can see fine distinctions between the islands and the mainland and also between Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The Nantucket and the Vineyard informants had a different vowel in the word father from the vowel on the Cape, Boston, or New Bedford. The Nantucket informants and the ones on the Cape pronounced the word aunt just the same as the word ant, contrasting with the Boston and New Bedford informants, who had broad-a in aunt, while the Vineyard informants were inconsistent between the two pronunciations. On the other hand, the Nantucketers had broad-a in afternoon, while the Vineyarders pronounced it with the vowel of cat.

Nantucket and the Vineyard had the verb to gam, which was not recorded on the mainland at all. They HISTORIC

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also differed from the mainland in using singular fonns after nwnbers: the board was five foot long; there were five couple at the dance.

The Atlas records all sorts of vocabulary for Nantucket such as smurring up, going down, clearing away, all nerved up, best girl, Virginia fence, tilt (for seesaw), apple slump (contrasting witl1 apple grunt on the Cape). None of them is unique to our island, but they add up to colorful language that still hangs on todayover sixty-five years since three Nantucketers had their lively chats with Guy Lowman.

A gathering offriends, co. 1930s, including Alice Baldwin, Grace Welsh, Margaret Crosby, Everett Crosby, and Frank Baldwin.

Frances Karttunen is senior research scientist in the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. She is currently writing a book about Nantucket's "other islanders," people of various ethnic origins who were not interviewed for the New England Dialect Survey. In addition, Karttunen has been named the James Bradford Ames Fellow for the year 2000a fellowship established to stimulate and support research into black lz/e and history on Nantucket Island.

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Historic Nantucket Book Section Picturing Nantucket:

An Art History of the Island with Paintings /rom the Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association.

Works by Artists Born Be/ore 1900.

Edited by Michad A. Jehle with contributions by Peter Benes, Margaret Moore Booker, Patricia Hill , Stacy Hollander, Reginald Levine, Anthony Lewis, Charlotte Emans Moore, Virginia O'I lara, Richard Saunders, Paul Schweizer, and David Wood.

Nantucket: Nantucket Historical Association, 2000 Hardcover, $65, limited slipcased edition, $100

Review by Jane C. Nylander

F

AR MORE TI!AN AN ILLUSTRATED

ATALOG I.

of the Nantucket Historical Association' significant collection of paintings, this handsome volume includes a nwnber of masterworks from other public and private collections as well as a small number of carefully selected historical photographs. A detailed local perspective is provided in an excellent introductory essay by Michad Jehle and amplified by Margaret Moore Booker's discussion of the role of women in the arts on Nantucket.

The volume is amplified and enriched by well-illustrated essays by the offisland art historians Charlotte Emans Moore and Patricia Hills.

Moore's discussion of "Painters of Painted Faces, Promoters of Popular Art, and Daguerreotypists: Itinerants and Visual Culture on Nantucket from the Colonial Era to 1850" helps to place these early, often anonymous works in the contexts of both

Picturing Nantucket

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Quaker ft:clings <lbout rqm.:st:ntational an and the in1uhan<:ous dt:clint: of the isl.tnd's whal111g prosp<:rity and the ris<: of phowgr;lpll\. II ills'. • ay "Eastman Johnson on antuckt:t" documl'llts hoth tht.·local work .of this imponanr anist and his k~.·~ role hoth in l:srab lishing popular imag<:s of ;mtuch t in tfw t\mt:rican mind as wdl as his rolt: in a ttl ;tel ing nth~ r ,trt ists to th<: developing summ<:r colony. Eight addition.tl scholars have contribut<:d indi' idu,tl caJ;tlogue l'nt ries, thus expanding the scholarly pcrspectiw or thl· volum<: as a whole. All must have dr.t\\'n upon thL' r~ c.:tn:h work of local historians O\'er the years and cspedally that of Kate tout who is acknowledged for hl..'r work in reading fifty years of ;tntucket ne\\'SP<IJK'r~. till' results of which enrich man\ segments of thL' tl' t. l'inally, detailed and illustrated checklists of P<lintin •s by identi fied and unidentified ~111ists, expanst\ l' end not ·s, and a detailed index furth<:r enhanc<: the mtcn.:st ,md usefulnes of the book.

In many ways, this volume echoes themes developed in Picturing Old 1 C'll' I :ng,!tmd /map,< au: .\1< mory, the exhibition mounted last vcar at the altona! luseum of American Art. There~ too. the \\'Ork of artists was measured by the standards of both dmumcJH,Ition and interpretation. Most of the works selected depicted some element of ~m idyllic past and somehow ignored the cia! and economi pr ·ssures r ·sulttng from indus trialization and immigration, soci,tl and religious complexity, and the rich t<:xture and lhersity that have always chara terized New England cultur ·. In the cata Iogue of that exhibition, as in PtctllmtJ!, 1 tllllllcket, the scholars involved worked hard to understand the reality of hi torical ex1 crience and to separate it from the focu ed and enhanced images created by artists.

The result in each ca e i a book with rich subtexts and multiple themes, all of which serve to give a richer understanding of the subject than a more traightforward chronological presentation would have done.

In Picturing Nantucket, dozens of hand ome landscape paintings document both the historical development of the island community ~md the growing interest in its preservation. At the same time, they reflect the way in which perceptions of the pa t have been haped SUMMER

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by local antiquarians and by members of the artist swnmer colony that began to assemble after the Civil War. The images selected for this book show in a dran1atic way how artists enhanced the Nantucket scene in ways that promoted tourism and brought direct economic benefit to the community. Painters of genre pictures and portraits also served to develop popular images of an isolated, frugal, self-reliant, and proud people, those whom restless city people should seek out in order to come in touch with admirable values and a more meaningful way of life.

Perhaps inevitably, the authors of Picturing Nantucket err in crediting Nantucket residents with a singularity they do not deserve. The illustrations in this wonderful book make it clear that many, if not most, of the artists who worked on the island were indeed part of mainstream trends in American art, even from the earliest times. The rich assemblage of portraits in Picturing Nantucket may offer some documentation of the personality and clothing of both natives and summer people, but whether signed or not, the portraits of Nantucketers are more easily distinguished by the hand of their artists than they are distinguished as island residents.

Understandably, the inevitable isolation of island residents is celebrated in this book, yet one can also see in places the isolation of the catalogue-entry authors who worked on discrete topics without placing them in broader context or repeated information included by others. Island historians occasionally have missed the broader regional or national context within which their subjects worked and, as often happens, scholars who participated in this project reveal their overwhelming reliance on their own disciplines and occasional scholarly isolation. Consultation with a costume historian, for example, might have dispelled the notion, expressed on page 93, that Abram Quary's "melancholy expression" was underscored by "stooped shoulders"; most midnineteenth century men's coats reveal that sloping shoulder structure was normal for the tin1e and medical historians confirm this.

Such occasional errors of omission or commission do not spoil the rich feast of beautiful pictures and detailed information iliat are combined in this wonderful book. The significant story of painting on Nantucket by artists born before 1900 has been well told. The superb collections of the Nantucket Historical Association have been placed in a broader context and generously illustrated. Meticulous research has resulted HISTORIC

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in a compendium of information to be found nowhere else. Above all, the real and imagined world of picturesque Nantucket has been revealed to a broad audience in conjunction with thought-provoking ideas and a delightfully readable text. This is a book iliat will serve as an important reference volume for many years to come. At the same time it will provide many happy hours for those who choose to dip in to it for one reason or another. They will find themselves carried delightfully from one high point to the next, being introduced to one fascinating person after another and enjoying a beautiful world that seems so near and yet so far away in both space and time.

Jane C. Nylander is preszdent of the Society /or the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Her most recent publication is Windows on the Past: Four Centuries of New England Homes.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

by Nailianiel Philbrick Viking Penguin Hardcover, $24.95 Review by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards N 1820, A NANTUCKET WllALESIIIP ON A routine whaling voyage was rammed and sunk by a bull sperm whale. The twenty men on board dispersed into three whaleboats and set out for the coast of South America, over two thousand miles away. Of ilie twenty men, eight survived, including the captain, George Pollard, ilie first mate, Owen Chase, and the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson. Three were left on Henderson Island and later rescued, and the other five survived in ilie whaleboats by eventually resorting to eating ilie flesh of their dead companions.

It is this harrowing tale that Nailianiel Philbrick tells in his well-researched In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.

The sinking of the Essex is not the only occurrence of a whaleship being sook by a whale, but is certainly the most famous. Herman Melville used the Essex disaster as ilie basis for the ending of his 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Melville's knowledge of ilie story came from reading the Narrative of the Wreck of the Whaleship

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A drawing by Thomas Nickerson shows the whale ramming the Essex.

路,

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HIS T 0 RIC

is typical of his book as a whole.

Essex, written by first mate Owen Philbrick was traim:d as a journalChase and published a mere nine ist, and his approach to the story of months after his rescue. In the ensuthe Lsll'\ is that of an investigative I ing 180 years after its publication in reporter.

I k came to Mystic 1821, most of what was known Seaport to karn ,dl that he could about the Essex came from Chase's about whaleboats and whalcships.

Narrative. Then, around 1960, llc spoke with me to btrn what my an 1876 narrative of the disaster, eighteen years of rowing. paddling, written late in life by the Essex's and sailing whakboats, as well as cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, was my document based research, discovered. could provide. I k spoke with boatIn his book, Philbrick has done builders who have replicated what no one has done before him: whttlcboats. I k also spoke at length he has studied all the available with Roger !!ambridge, the museaccounts of the disaster and written um's most experienced shipwright, the first complete story of the sinking of the Essex and the survival of eight of its crew to learn what would happen to a ship of the E1sex's age members. What is especially valuable and original in and size if struck by a whale just fon\'ttrd of the Philbrick's work is his study of the events leading up to forechains. Ln addition, Philbrick studied the geology and history of l fendcrson Island, where the three men the whale's ramming of the ship.

Philbrick's focus on the men themselves is intriguing. were left ashore; the effects of star\,llion ,md dehydraThe Essex was George Pollard's first command, tion on the human system; and the sllldtes done of suralthough he had spent most of the previous four years vival cannibalism. 1 lis book is richer for ,tll his rescarch. aboard the ship as mate. Pollard's style of command The story of the E1se>.. is compelling. It is the firstwas almost democratic. As Philbrick notes: "Modern person accounts of men and boys (for Thomas survival psychologists have determined that this 'social' Nickerson was only fourteen years old when he shipped -as opposed to 'authoritarian'- form of leadership is out) who survived this most harrowing of ordeals that ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions make it so. Ultimately, Philbrick relics, as he should, on be made quickly and firmly." Nantucketers their narratives to write his talc. !lis book proudly joins I must approvingly called authoritarian captains "fishy men." The Perfect Storm anJ l111o 'J'hm Atr as an irresistible Mates, on the other hand, were to remain sensitive to account of the tc"Sting of the hum~m spirit. the crew's moods. "The Essex," Philbrick writes, "had ended up with a captain who had the Mary K. Bercaw Edwards /r a Vt\itmg Scholar in instincts and soul of a the Department of E11glt~rb a/ Con11ectimt College. mate, and a mate who Her field t~\路 American literature with spcaal empbttst~\' bad the ambition and on the works o/llerman Melville and other maritime fire of a captain." This authors~ leading to her first hook, Melville's Sources. odd reversal of roles She is a member of the Educ~11ion Depart men/ of led to striking differ- Mystic Seaport Museum and director oftbe lllli.\'C'llln's ences in the fate of demonstration squad. Edwards !Jf>ent her childhood each whaleboat's crew. sazling around the world in a 38-/oot ketch and has Philbrick's analysis now Logged 56,000 mtles under sllll of personality styles and his inclusion of the testimony of modern Both books are available in bookstores on Nantucket survival psychologists and at the Museum hop, (508) 228-5785.

NANTUCKET

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The Tragedy of theWhaleship Essex

W

ORKING

on the new exhibition,

The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, was

an exciting challenge for the staff of the Nantucket Historical Association. It gave us the rare opportunity to develop an exhibition in conjunction with the release of a highly anticipated book- In the Heart of the Sea. It is even more rare to have the advice and contact with the author and publisher of the work. Nat Philbrick and Viking Press not only provided advance proofs of the book and access to its illustrations, they also provided valuable suggestions on how to use the exhibition format to tell thisremarkable story.

One of the chief hurdles the NHA had to clear in developing the exhibition was to visually interpret the story of the Essex within the confines of the gallery space.

The highlight of this process was moving the seventeenfoot whale jawbone from Sanderson Hall in the Whaling Museum to the exhibition space in the Peter Foulger Museum. We must have been quite a sight: six staff members lugging the 800-pound lower jaw of a sperm whale up Broad Street at 7:30 in the morning. You couldn't help but imagine the immense size and weight of the live whale - captured in the Pacific Ocean in 1865.

You also couldn't help but wonder about the creature, of

HISTORIC

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almost the exact dimensions, that rammed the Essex in 1820.

The size and power of such a whale must have been horriPIIoro BY PETLR SUI\IID fying tO WitneSS. Imagine Thomas Nickerson, aged fourteen, at the helm of the Essex at the time.

It is a distinct pleasure to follow the success of In the Heart of the Sea. Nat has done a wonderful job telling one of the most riveting stories in whaling history. That the account is tied so closely to Nantucket Island has special meaning for us at the NHA. It is, in part, our mission to share such stories with the public by exhibiting artifacts from our collection. Whether it is the small piece of string that Essex survivor Benjamin Lawrence created during his ninety-day ordeal, or the enormous whale jawbone, objects tell a story - in this case an almost unbelievable one. At the NHA, we will strive to preserve such objects in order to tell stories such as these. We are thrilled to be able to complement Nat's work here on Nantucket, so that visitors who come to the island and visit the museum can see the objects and gain a tangible understanding of a legendary event that is quickly regaining its place in American history.

-Niles Parker

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From the Curatorial Department Curator of collections Aimee Newell was selected to present her paper, '"No Harvest of Oil': The Nantucket Agricultural Society's Annual Fairs, 1856-1890," at the twenty-fifth annual Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, held in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The Dublin Seminar is an annual conference, that explores everyday life, work, and culture in New England's past by choosing a different topic each year. This year's theme is "New England Celebrates: Spectacle, Commemoration, and Festivity."

Museum Shop

Clockwise /rom lop right: Museum Shop manager Georgina Winton; long shot of Whaling Museum wall repair; closeup of wall.

The Museum Shop has a new assistant manager.

Cathy Barnette moved to Nantucket from Alabama in May and right into her position at the shop. With a bachelor of science degree from the University of Alabama and a master's degree in environmental education from Lesley College, Cathy has previously worked in public relations and education for environmental organizations in Alabama. Most recently, she was the public education and outreach coordinator for the Alabama Coastal Area Management Program. She has also worked for the National Audubon Society and the Alabama Coastal Foundation. She is pleased to be joining the team at the NHA. She lives with her husband Larry and two dogs, Keji and Cain.

Members are invited to stop by to meet Cathy and see the changes that have occurred in the shop over the winter. Shop manager Georgina Winton has redesign-ed the space to focus attention on the expanding book department and on additional local artists who are represented in the shop, including Fairpoint Glass, Sandwich, Massachusetts; Nantucket Knotworks; Nantucket Tapestry; and Nantucket Tea Traders.

There are many handmade gifts including bowls, notecards, and ornaments. Please also ask to see the new scarf designs.

Historic Nantucket News Historic Nantucket was selected as a winner in this year's American Association of Museums Publications Design Competition. Judged

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with other institution s with budgets of more than $500,000, the Winter 2000 issue of I li1¡tortc Nantucket won Honorable Mention in the magazine category.

Oaire O'Keeffe of communicationDESIGN has been the magazine's art director since 1995.

The twentieth annual American Associatio n of Museums competition, which ackno\\'ledgcs excellence in the graphic design of museum publications, is the only national , juried event involving publications produced by mu eums of all kinds and siZ<.>s. This year's come t drew 1,237 entries. One hundred and sixty nine books, catalogues, posters, invitations, prt:Ss kits, magazines and other materials were selected as winners.

The first prize in the category of magazines went to the olomon R. Guggenheim Museum in cw York and second prize was awarded to the San Franci co Museum of Modern Art. The antuckct llrstorical Association shared llonorabl c Mention\\ it h the American enter for Wine, Food, and the Arts, Napa, California; Americas ociety, cw York, New York; and the Gilcrease Mu cum, Tulsa, Oklahom<t "It is a great honor for the antuckct I listorical As ociation to have received this award," S<lid executive director Frank D. Milligan. "The American Association of Mu cum publications competitions arc hotly contested; only the best of the best compete."

If you are interested in receiving addition<ll copies of the magazine, plea c call editor Cecil Barron Jensen at (508) 228-1 94. It would make a great gift for your guest .

Whaling Museum Wall The east wall of the Whaling Museum is currently being restored. There i both exterior and interior work under way to ensure that the 155 year old building remains tructurally ound. The work is funded by a donation from the Teresa and H. John Heinz Foundation to the association' capital campaign,

A Campaign/or the lslcmd of antucket: Starting with History; Starting Now. Recently, structural concerns about the museum' east wall (facing Nantucket I !arbor) had become evident. After lengthy con ultation with engineers and building consultants from Boston, working plans were drawn up. The Nantucket Historical Association is working with Cape and Island Waterproofing of Orleans, Massachusetts, to complete the masonry work.

Properties manager Jeff Pollock and propcrtie assistant Ed Boynton have been working alongside the engineers, consultants, and contractors to ensure the quality and longevity of the project. All of the work should be complete by the end ofJune.

SUMMER

2000

N H A

Annual Report Correction The bar chart on p. 16 inadvertently combined 1998 and 1999 membership figures.

Fair Street Update Work on the new research library has moved forward this spring. Toscana Corporation has completed backfill to rough grade around the meeting house and library building and interior steel framing has been completed.

The storage area beneath the Quaker Meeting House has really taken shape. The slab has been poured in a two-step process and rails for the compact shelving units have been embedded in the slab. The shelves will ultimately hold the library's collection of manuscripts, rare books, and glass-plate negatives.

The new floor of the Fair Street Museum basement has also been poured, and the floorboards for the second floor were custom milled to match the existing flooring. June saw the installation of the elevator-shaft wall and a new rCi>of. In July, rough mechanical and electrical work will begin.

Designers are focusing on the interior spaces, and the library staff is already planning its move. The collections will be carefully packed into special containers by

N E W S

staff and moved by Burkhardt Bros., Inc., in a two-day move this fall. There is still much to be completed, but it is hoped that the new building will be open to the public by Christmas.

Gifts to the Capital Campaign Since November, when the association completed the Heinz Challenge to raise $1 million, A Campaign for the Island of Nantucket: Starting with History; Starting Now has received a number of important gifts. These include gifts from trustees Thomas C. Gosnell and Mary F. Espy and I Top: Looking down into her husband Dr. John W. Espy. In addition, the associ- the elevator shaft. ation received gifts from Peter M. and Bonnie Bottom: First floor Sacerdote, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Clark, and a donation framing in progress. of $100,000 from an anonymous foundation. This brings the total amount raised for the campaign to Photos ofthe Quaker $11.3 million.

Meeting House by Stephen Paradis.

Fijian Visitor EWS OF THE RECENT TURMOil, IN

Elboume. Rosalind visited the library to

Fiji reminds us that last March a visitor to the library introduced herself as the great-great-great granddaughter of David Whippy (also spelled Whippey), the Nantucket mariner who in the early 1820s decided whaling was not for him and entered into maritime trading in the South Seas.

Whippey was especially drawn to the island of Fiji, where he earned the trust of the native population, married the sister of a king, and settled for the rest of his life. His reputation for fair dealings with the natives and helpfulness to the white traders as translator, interpreter, and general guide led to his appointment as vice-consul of the United States for Fiji.

Whippey descendants constitute the largest of several Euro-Fijian families in

fill in some of the blanks in the history of

N

HISTORIC

NANTUCKET

the islands. Rosalind Maude Elbourne, the lovely young woman pictured here, descends in the line from David Whippey's grandson Robert, whose daughter Salome married Simon

her Nantucket family. She is shown holding a copy of Wrecked on the Feejees, by William S. Cary, an account of another Nantucketer's adventures after his ship, the Oeno, went aground in the outer Fijis and the subject of last fall's article by Joseph Theroux for Historic Nantucket.

The two former Sconset schoolmates met by accident, and Whippey actually rescued Cary by asking his brother-inlaw, the king, to intercede for Cary with the natives who had captured and enslaved him.

Rosalind is a flight attendant on Fiji Airlines and hopes to make another visit to Nantucket. Let's hope nothing happens in Fiji to prevent her from doing so.

-Elizabeth Oldham

S U M M E R

2 000

23

NANTUCKET HISTORICAL AssociATION

The

has a fine collection ofhistoric properties, scrimshaw, maps, ships' logs, manuscripts, p aintings, decorative arts, and whaling tools ...

But, our collection is incomplete without you!

Renew your membership now and be a part of Nantucket history Membership benefits include: Unlimited free admission to the Nantucket Historical Association's museums, historic properties, special exhibitions, and the NHA Guided Walking Tour of Nantucket's historic town.

Free or discounted admission to Evening Programs- including illustrated lectures, concerts, and workshops- sponsored or cosponsored by the Nantucket Historical Association.

A subscription to Historic Nantucket, the au'tlrd-uoinning quarterly publicatimz that takes a lecmzed look at the island's history.

Free me of the research librmJ!.

A 10% discount on Museum Shop purchases.

Invitations to members-only fJreviews of special exhibitions like The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex tmd amwal events like the August Antiques Shou •and the Festival ofTrees.

Children of members nwy also tiff end the Living HistOIJ! progrtii/IS for discounted fees.

Voting privileges tit the t/11 /lllal meeting cmd listing in the Annual RefJort.

NANTUCKrJ:' G 0 LD I

Reciprocal free admission to participating historical mmeums nationwide.

Except for individual memberships, benefits apply to two adults and theh· children under 18.

Memberships are renewable ann11ally in Af~ril and are [11lly tax ded11ctible extFpl Thmnas Mary Associale ($97 5) and Mmy Gtii'C!ner Coffin Associale ($4,900).

NHA •

P.O. BOX 1016 • NANTUCKET, MA 02554-1016 •

(508) 228-189 4 • WWW.NHA.ORG