Historic Nantucket, Summer 2008, Vol. 58 No. 3

tucket

A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

Summer2008 Volume 58, No. 3

BOARD OF TRUSTEES E. Geoffrey Verney, l'HFSIIJEC\iT Janet L. Sherlund, l ST Vl(T l'HESIIJENT Kenneth L Beaugrand, 2r-:1Jv1c1: PHL'illllc,1 Thomas J. Anathan, 'llU:1\SlJHl'R Melissa C. Philbrick, CJJ:HK

Historic Nantucket

A Publication of the Nantucket Historical Association

Summer 2008

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Vol. 58, No. 3

4 Baseball: Its Beginnings on Nantucket

BY ERIK INGMUNDSON

C.Marshall Beale Hoben H. Brust Nancy A. Chase Constance Cigarran William H. Congdon Nancy A. Geschke FIUENIJS 01 Tl lE NI lA Hl'l'HESl'i'ili\:l'IVE Georgia Gosnell, TRlJSTl'I' E:1-ll'HIH Nina S. llellman Hampton S. Lynch Jr. Mary D.Malavase Sarah B. Newton Anne S. Obrecht Elizabeth T. Peek Bruce A. Percelay Christopher C. Quick David Hoss FIUENIJS 01' Tl IE NI IA IUJ'HF.'il•:!\·li\l'JVE Melanie R. Sabelhaus NancyM. Soderberg BetteM. Spriggs Isabel C. Stewal1 JayM.Wilson

America's Gatne Comes to the Island

10 'Sconset-born

Charles Frederick Briggs

BY BETTE S. W EI DMAN

A New York Editor and Novelist with 'Sconset Roots

16 'Sconset Days:

Excerpts from a Life

BY ROBER T LONGL EY

Boats, Autographs, Odd Jobs, and Summer Days in 'Sconset

William J.Tramposch EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Mary H. Beman Thomas B. Congdon Jr. Richard L Duncan Peter J. Greenhalgh Arny Jenness Cecil Barron Jensen Robe11 EMooney Elizabeth Oldham Nathaniel Philbrick BetteM. Spriggs James Sulzer

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From the Executive Director WIL LIAM J. TRAMPOSCH

Museum Shop Anniversary

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PETER J. GREENHAL GH

covER:

P1669

'Sconset Baseball Club, 1890

Two Initiatives: Greater Light Restoration & Ric Burns Orientation Film

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NHANews

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Ben Simons EDITOR

Elizabeth Oldham COPY EDITOR

& ART

©2008 by the Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, l5 Broad Street, Nantucket,

Eileen Powers/Javatime Design DESIGN

Historic Nantucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Nantucket history. Original research; firsthand accounts; reminis­ cences of island experiences; historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of interest to our readers.

DIRECTION

Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554-1016 (508) 228-1894; fax: (508) 228-5618, info@nha.org For information log on to www.nha.org

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

'Sconset 02564 n May when it opened, and once again in July, we invited hundreds of members and friends to receptions to view our latest exhibition, 'Sconset 02564: A Celebration ofthe Patchwork Village. What impressed us most about these gather­ ings was that people stayed on, not because of the wine and cheese, but because of the depth of the exhibition. If you have not seen it yet, I urge you to come again and again. It will be in the Foulger Gallery throughNovember. Our own Ben Simons, Robyn and John Davis Chief Curator, conceived and developed this exhibition, working with a team of talented helpers and mem­ bers of a Working Committee of 'Sconset residents.

Not only did those who attended the gatherings stay, but when they left, it was always with the comment, "I need to come back again." The staff has dis­ cussed at length what makes this exhibi­ tion so successful, and we intend to employ what we have learned for future exhibitions at theNHA. So, here is why we think people are coming, staying, and coming again to see 'Sconset 02564.

There is a presence of the past in this exhibition. Many of our stories are told by residents who well recall the village's past and particular customs. The exhibi­ tion features thirty oral-history segments, and it is always a pleasure to watch those who are recorded actually seeing them­ selves on tape.

Finally, and most There is real important, the personality in people of 'Sconset this exhibition. who have con­ Humor pervades tributed time, the stories, and energy, memories, the very casual and memorabilia pace of life that to the exhibition this place has are what has made always revered is this a remarkable well-reflected.

BILL TRAMPOSCH experience. Here in And there is the Foulger, thanks pride of place. It to their help, one can connect not can be seen quite clearly in the eyes only with a place but also with the of those who recall that this little corner ofNantucket holds a long people who are part of the history of this real corner of the world. and deep appeal.

There is a pleasant blend of tech­ I have mentioned before in this col­ umn a saying that is common among nology and history. The oral histories are viewed on screen, while nearby a the Maori ofNew Zealand, where we lived before coming back to the States: twenty-seven-foot, detailed replica of theNantucket Railroad wends its way "What is the most important thing in from Steamboat Wharf to Codfish the world? It is people, people, peo­ Park, whistle and all! This replica will ple!" Thanks to all who have helped to become a permanent exhibition at make this exhibition a success. theNHA. We look forward to seeing visitors again and again between now and There are places to sit and rest.

Those who have supported this exhibi­ November. We are also delighted to offer the publication 'Sconset: A tion have now given theNHA an Hist01y as a companion piece to the opportunity to show movies in the exhibition.

Foulger Gallery on a new projection screen, and the exhibition includes several films: the 2007 Move ofSankaty Light; Susan Beaumont and Rob Benchley's Noreaster 1992, showing the devastation to Codfish Park and the beach; and, finally, a classic archival piece-Gibbs Penrose's walking tour of WILLIAM J. TRAMPOSCH 'Sconset in black and white.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Summer 2008

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waiLT WIIITMAill LOVED TIIE GAME or BAIEBAiLL.. Ill 1111 WANDERINGS ABOUT TIIE PAR[II or NEW YORII AND BROOBLYII IIE WITNESSED TIIE BIRTH or TIIE MODERN GAME AillD ITS RAPID GROWTll 111 POPULARITY..

He also anticipated its emergence as an integral thread in America's cultural fabric. When pondering the game and its sig­ nificance, he mused, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game-the American game. It will take our people out-of­ doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical sto­ icism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.

Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us." History has shown his observation to be prescient. In the late nineteenth century, baseball helped revitalize Nantucket's people, as the island struggled to reinvent itself.

The earliest evidence of Nantucket's interest in baseball

The town's first baseball diamond was created in the field behind the Oldest House, now known as Coffin Park.

A48-38a

appears to be an item in the July 8, 1871, issue of the Inquirer and Mirra,; reporting that "The annual base ball contest between Harvard and Yale came off on Wednesday afternoon, and was won by Harvard. It was the most warmly contested game for several years." Apparently, the college boys had intro­ duced the game to Nantucket and played here regularly.

Similarly terse and distant observations filled the newspaper that day. A man had invented a dishwashing machine in Connecticut; a dog from Vrrginia had been n-ained to transport mail between two towns. It seemed that all of the excitement was off-island, and the writers felt the world passing them by.

Whaleships no longer crowded the island's harbor, and the liq­ uid gold of whale oil had ceased to fuel the island's economy.

The seeds of a new tourist economy were being sown, but they were slow to germinate. Further evidence of the town's

Summer 2008

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BASEBALL BEGINNINGS ON NANTUCKET

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ON A &RM SA . RD& AFTERNOON IN JULY 182911 EIGHTEEN YOUNG· MEN PLAYED ONE or =;E EARLIEST RECOR- ED BASE­ BALL GAMES IN NANTUCKET'S HISTORY�

sluggish state appeared in a column discussing the recent passing of Independence Day, "almost without our knowing it and save for the blowing of horns by the rising generation, the town was even more than ordinarily quiet." The island's inhabitants craved something fresh and exciting.

On a warm Saturday afternoon in July 1875, eighteen young men played one of the earliest recorded "baseball" games in Nantucket's history. The contest was waged between "a nine composed of Nantucket boys and a picked nine." Most, if not all of them, probably did not own a glove. They likely shared a single bat and ball. We can only imagine what they used for bases, or home plate. The field's sur­ face was probably uneven and rough, a far cry from today's carefully manicured diamonds. Yet despite their humble grounds and gear, the players and spectators were filled with excitement. A new form of recreation had arrived.

The Nantucket Nine fell behind in the early innings, but ultimately battled back to win-29 to 25. The Inquirer and Mirror saw a bright future for baseball on Nantucket, noting, "Considering that the players had never been upon the field before together, the game was very well played; and with practice they would make exceedingly strong teams

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to beat, for the 'stock' is there, and it only requires practice to bring about good results."

Nantucket's aspiring ballplayers were diligent in practicing. By 1878, island schools were fielding teams of their own. One of the earliest doc­ umented contests between Nantucket schools occurred in June 1878, between the High School and the Coffin School. The High School pre­ vailed, 25 to 21. The Inquirer and Mirror continued to feel great enthu­ siasm for this new-found recreation, noting, "we would like to see other nines formed and think a little interest on the part of those interested would bring about favorable results."

By 1880, the hopes articulated in print were being realized.

Permanent teams from Nantucket and 'Sconset had been formed, and a rivalry had developed between the two clubs. On July 14, 1880, a game between them "drew forth the largest number of spectators ever seen upon a base ball field here." The large crowd witnessed an inter­ esting spectacle. Early in the afternoon, when the two teams assem­ bled, it appeared that the 'Sconsets would be most decidedly out­ manned. The Nantuckets had nine players, while the 'Sconsets could only manage six. Play commenced nonetheless, and in the early innings, the 'Sconsets were terribly disadvantaged. Mercifully, after two

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innings, they "were much strengthened by securing the services of Messrs. Whitney and Perkins, formerly of the Howards, of Brockton."

With an eight-man lineup, the 'Sconsets provided a brilliant display of offensive firepower, scoring twenty-one runs, while the Nantuckets man足 aged just eleven. In the top of the ninth inning, controversy arose.

Barnum, a pitcher noted for his "left-handed curving," was pitching for 'Sconset. He apparently committed what is known as a "balk." The "balk" rule is a bit complicated. Essentially, the rule limits a pitcher's ability to deceive base runners into making mistakes. The specific infraction com足 mitted by Barnum is unclear. Perhaps he pretended to start throwing the ball to home plate and stopped, or he may not have set his feet properly on the mound before throwing home. The umpire was proba足 bly doing his best to understand the game's rules, but in doing so, he made a curious, albeit entertaining, mistake.

The Nantuckets had a runner at third base. Upon the umpire's issuance of the balk call, the runner started casually walking toward home plate. The pitcher observed this, and decided to throw the ball home. The umpire immediately declared the base runner out. This led to an angry exchange between the two clubs and the umpire. Despite the controversy, the game was completed, and the Inquirer and Mirror tried to sort out the matter later.

An article summarizing the game declared "If our interpretation of the plain English ofSec. 7 ofRule 5, is correct, the 'Sconsets were decidedly in the wrong in their action. We shall wait to obtain the authority of those better versed in the matter before commenting further upon the subject."

The people of Nantucket had readily embraced baseball, but they were still trying to understand its rules.

The newspaper's colorful coverage in the preceding weeks provides fascinating reading. Some time after the game, the Inquirer and Mirror's staff read a letter from a man writing under the clearly impartial pseu足 donym of"'Sconset." He apparently took issue with their interpretation of the balk rule. Apparently quoting from a rule book, he noted that upon a balk being called, "every player running the bases shall take one base without being put out, and shall do so on the run." Since the Nantucket base runner was not running home, he was, according to

The games were wildly popular with the townsfolks.

DOUBLE-SPREAD! P12815, TOP! PH31-17-14, ABOVE! P12812

BASEBALL BEGINNINGS ON NANTUCKET

'"Sconset," most decidedly in the wrong.

The newspaper responded by stating that he "was correct in his opin­ ion of the controversy, in the recent Nantucket-'Sconset game, and we shall have to take the cucumber." [According to The New Partridge Dictionary ofSlang and Unconventional English, a cucumber is, in gam­ bling terms, "an ignorant victim of a cheat."-Ed.] They went on to say that he had "hinted at a little prejudice on our part in favor of the Nantuckets-a soft impeachment we modestly deny, for we always desire to deal fairly with all parties." This controversy likely fueled local gossip for at least several weeks.

The game continued growing in popularity among the locals.

Eventually, the Nantuckets and 'Sconsets faced more competition. The skating rink fielded a team, known as the Rinks. New teams with whim­ sical names kept popping up. Games were played in Surfside between the Cranks and the All Mightys. By the late 1880s, teams representing the northern and southern sides of Main Street would be competing as well.

Nantucket had a strong case of baseball fever.

As is often the case with any newly acquired talent or skill, Nantucket's ballplayers soon wished to test their athletic prowess against teams from the mainland. Early contests did not yield auspicious results. At the end of July 1880, the Nantucket nine traveled to Cottage City (Oak Bluffs) to compete against their local club. Apparently, they "came back after a Waterloo defeat." Cottage City pounded Nantucket's pitching for twen-

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ty-four runs, while the Nantuckets managed only five. Perhaps even more humiliating was the fact that the game lasted just seven innings, as the Nantuckets had to leave in order to catch the steamer home.

Despite this setback, the local press offered words of encouragement: "Don't feel discouraged, boys," the Inquirer and Mirror wrote.

"Strengthen the weak places with stronger players, if they can be found, and practice together, and we will warrant that the result will be different when the Cottage Citys call on you 'at home."' In time, local teams would face competition from New Bedford and Martha's Vineyard, among other places, with mixed results. However one of the greatest moments for Nantucket's ballplayers came at the end of the decade, in August 1889, when they tested their talents against a team from Yale.

Yale University's baseball program has a long and celebrated tradi­ tion, being among the nation's oldest, established in 1865. Some twen­ ty-three of their alumni have played in the Major Leagues. The team was a tough adversary, and most of the players probably walked with a confident swagger. They came to Nantucket ready to compete.

The island's players wanted to field the best team possible, for they did not wish to experience another "Waterloo defeat" in front of the home crowd. Therefore, it was concluded that the best option was for the two rivals to join forces. The Nantuckets and 'Sconsets pulled the best players from their lineups and created a new team, dubbed the

TIIE GAME CONTINUED G·ROWING IN POPULARITY AMONG· TIIE LOCAiLSii EVENTUALLY, TIIE NlliATUCKETS lliND 'SCONSETS FACED MORE COMPETITIONii

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CREDIT WIIERE CREDIT II DUE.... .. ..

ELIZABETH OLDHAM

'Scontuckets. Shortly thereafter, the contest was waged.

It was a warm Tuesday afternoon at the ball grounds near the Cliff, and large crowds were present. The 'Scontuckets did not disappoint, defeating Yale 10 to 4. The local pitcher, Mr. Highlands, baffled Yale's hitters, recording ten strike­ outs. It was, undoubtedly, one of the proudest moments for Nantucket's ballplayers. They had put aside their personal rivalry to represent their small island community.

However, just two days after their great victory, old rivalries were renewed. The 'Sconsets and Nantuckets played a tight game, which ended bitterly when Nantucket captain Echeverria "kicked at the umpire's decision and left the grounds with his men, thus forfeiting the game to the 'Sconsets."

In the decades that followed, baseball grew into an extremely popular summer activity. Many different clubs would be formed, and spirited rivalries continued to fuel local competition. Many notable Nantucketers, including Edouard Stackpole, readily embraced the game. After World War II, however, the game never recaptured the spir­ it of its early days. New sports, such as football, emerged as popular alternatives for the island's youth. Today, while spirited baseball and softball contests are still waged on local fields, the communal furor and excitement is proba­ bly not what it used to be. However, old-time baseball's legacy has certainly not been lost.

BASE BALL. The 'Seonset buylf pnt up II very r�.iec.l �!Ull"'-�i' '1all IRst Sata,:day, and the Nsn�t team won ',ow,'ltb -: eaoe.

The phi.yiR'g' of the winning team WRB not of tbe best hy any menns, and the game on the whole was a poor ex­ �iibitio11. The umpiring was a gre11t 11uprovcment ove1· previous game,;.

G1·ay n11d Williams wen, in the points fo1· Nnntuckct, and proved very effec­ tive, while Burns was hit rather hard.

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But few know that if it hadn't been for the son of a Nantucketer, America's ball game would not be what it is today. Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr.-the son of a Nantucket mariner-was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, in 1938. There, his portrait is captioned with the words 'Father of Baseball.' A more fit­ ting tribute is not possible for a man who lit­ erally created the game as we know it."

Hobson cites Peterson's book, The Man Who Invented Baseball, in which he states that turn-of-the-century baseball owners wanted to mask the game's origin as an English sport, so they created a story say­ ing that Abner Doubleday invented the game in a Cooperstown field. The story is wholly false, and, according to Peterson, "one of the most amusingly fraudulent pieces of manufactured history extant."

The issue of Nantucket Magazine that includes Hobson's article is available in the NHA Research Library.

In 1971, the NHA received a letter from Harold Peterson of Sports Illustrated, who wrote: "I am writing a history involving the Nantucket Cartwrights. If I could ask your help in finding out more about these partic­ ular Cartwrights while they lived on the island, that would be a great kindness on your part. As you may know, Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. was to a considerable degree the inventor of modern baseball."

Edouard Stackpole responded, writing, "I can understand why the Cartwrights appeal to you as they are a most interest­ ing family. There is little known about Alexander Cartwright on the island, although his part in developing the game of baseball is well known to the older gen­ eration."

Perhaps. But, as Hobson Woodward wrote in an article for the 1998 Early Summer edition of Nantucket Magazine: "Any fan will tell you that Abner Doubleday was the inventor of baseball.

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CK RIGGS:

EARLY NEW YORK NOVELIST AND EDITOR

BY BETTE S. WEIDMAN

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Historic Nantucket

AGAIN TO THEE, 0 SURF-ENCIRCLED STRAND, ENAMORED STILL MY THOUGHTS "VILL TURN ONCE MORE, DEAR SIASCONSET BY THY FOAl\il-CLAD SHORE, LEAVING IN THOUGHT THIS TREE-ENClTh'lBERED LAND, HOW WELL I LO VE TO TREAD THY ARID SAND, AND LISTEN TO THY WAVES' SONOROUS ROAR, OR vVATCH OLD POLLOCK'S BACK ALL CRESTED HOAR, AND THE WILD WATERS HISSING FIERCE AND GRAND! 01'.TE HUNDRED and sixty-three years ago, a novelist and magazine writer building a literary career in New York City wrote a poignant letter to his Nantucket cousin, Mrs.Martha Jenks: I do not know ifI have a reader in the Island. ...I have no claims, to be sure, on the sympathies of anybody in the Island and I fear that I shall never be able to accomplish anything to make my townspeo足 ple overanxious to claim me for one of their brethren. (New York Public Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts)

When Briggs wrote to Mrs. Jenks on March 4, 1845, he was at both a difficult and an exciting moment in his life.His first child, a son born after eight years of marriage, had just died in early infan足 cy. He told Mrs. Jenks, who must have also known his Nantucket足 born wife, Deborah Rawson, that his "whole nature underwent a change at the sight of [his] boy's face," continuing that "I have never

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Q 7006 "/\old Lang Svne" (oldes t hou)el .Siasconset, M 11 ss

Briggs would have been familiar with 'Sconset's oldest house足 Auld Lang Syne. PC-Broadway-44

The beach at 'Sconset, where Briggs heard "the waves' sonorous roar." SC612-18

Summer2008

CHARLES FREDERICK BRIGGS

AMONG BRIGGS'S FIRST CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE KNICKERBOCKER WAS A SERIES OF SKETCHES CALLED "GIMCRACKERY," A ONCE POPULAR TERM FOR FANCIFUL NOTIONS OR SHOWY, INSUBSTANTIAL ARTICLES.

since seen anybody in tears but I could sit and weep with them." But just at this tender personal moment, Briggs was also launching an ambitious editorial venture, The Broadway Journal, in which he set a high standard for intelligent political, artistic, and social commentary.

The Broadway Journal, a weekly, had a brief two-year life in the tumul­ tuous pre-Civil War period, as it sought to navigate a political alterna­ tive, a "broadway," between North and South.To this end, Briggs drew on ties of friendship with Northern abolitionists like his friend James Russell Lowell, but also enlisted as coeditor the talented, if trouble­ some, Southerner, Edgar Allan Poe. The Broadway Journal respected international copyright before there was such a law, publishing only original material: essays on art and literature, domestic and foreign correspondence, architectural commentary, engravings, reviews of books and magazines. Although it went aground on the rocks of national politics, The Broadway Journal engaged the major ideas of its time and place, from the annexation of Texas to the feminism of Margaret Fuller. It was Briggs's first powerful editorial contribution to the development of an American literature.

He had already established himself as a comic novelist with the 1839 publication of his double-decker satire, The Adventures of Harry Franco. A picaresque story of a rural boy who sets out for the big city to repair his family's fortune, The Adventures of Harry Franco recapitu­ lates, in part, Briggs's own history. His father, Jonathan Briggs (1768-1853), was a well-established Nantucketer engaged in the China trade, whose ships were seized in the War of 1812, resulting in his bank­ ruptcy and imprisonment for debt. The Nantucket Historical Association's genealogical records show several pages of related Briggs, Coffin, and Rawson family members, testifying to old and deep local roots. Like his brothers, Charles Briggs went to sea in his early youth, reflecting in his first novels his experience of two merchant voyages, one to South America and the other to Liverpool. We know he was still abroad in 1824, as he later reported to JamesRussell Lowell that he traveled from Liverpool to London to buy an early copy of the last canto of Byron's Don Juan. Evidently he was no ordinary tar, although he toldMrs. Jenks he had grown up "without a soul caring if [he] knew his letters."

Whatever his literary ambitions might have been, he put his efforts in the late 1830s into supporting a wife, Deborah Rawson, a first cousin he married on May 16, 1836, on Nantucket. Deborah Rawson's mother was Lydia Briggs, a sister of Charles's father, Jonathan. Lydia Briggs married Abel Rawson (1764--1840), who later moved to Brooklyn and then Princes Bay, Staten Island, where he was the keeper of the Beacon Light. In Charles Briggs's second novel, The Haunted Merchant (1843), a tale of moral and economic turmoil, AbelRawson is portrayed as the salty,

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Historic Nantucket

182

G-rimc-rack tl,e Sixt!,..

[March,

�inmaclt t1)e Ji:>iJ."tfJ. BY

HAR.RY

FR.ANCO.

.31/ISCONBE'l'; �lOW ilT {\R0 ..8£, AND WHAT IT Is..

THERE are numerous loveiy spots on this eaith, which occupy a large space in many hearts, although they make but an indifferent appearance on the map of the gr_eat world; ancl there are many names of places that would be looke.cl for in Yain in the chart of any country, which nevertheless makes "_conspicuous figlll'e in the world of letters. The )lame )Vhich graces .the bead of this paper belongs ,to that class which lives only in the hearts of a few; lmt it shall be no fault of mine, if it is J)Ot found her.eafter on ·the printecl page, by the side of others better ki)own to Fame, but not mol·e eRtitl.ed to regarcl and 1·emembrance.

shrewd old Captain Clearman, who lives in a Staten Island cottage with his daughter Fidelia, doubtless a literary tribute to Briggs's wife.

When he responded to Mrs. Jenks's letter in 1845, Charles Briggs had gained some recognition in New York City for his novelistic achieve­ ments and had regularly begun to contribute stories and sketches to the Knickerbocker or New York Monthly, a magazine that published Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper and the prestige of which was equivalent in its time to today's New Yorke,: With the addition of edi­ torial work and the placement of his articles in a wide variety of journals and newspapers, Briggs was able to leave his partnership in the wholesale grocer's firm ofRansom, Biiggs & Mather behind him. He later used a gro­ cer's metaphor when he claimed to have lost track of much of his early lit­ erary work, which he had "hidden under a bushel." If the infant mortality of the period robbed him of his first child, the growing city adopted him eagerly into its intellectual and literary life.

Among Briggs's first contributions to the Knickerbocker was a series of sketches called "Gimcrackery," a once popular term for fanciful notions or showy, insubstantial articles. This modest title identified a variety of ambitious prose pieces, fictional, autobiographical, or descriptive that appeared irregularly. "Gimcrack the Fifth" (December 1839) displays Briggs's wholehearted engagement with the world of the city. The narrator of ''ARide in an Omnibus" travels down Broadway to Bowling Green in a "long white carriage, drawn by four horses of as many colors, and with a figure of Minerva painted upon its central panel." Along the way the driver is challenged by a rival line and the journey becomes a wild Swiftian race past city landmarks, interfered with by old market women, pigs, charcoal wagons, butcher carts, and overloaded drays. By contrast, "Gimcrack the Sixth" (March 1840) is devoted to Siasconset, Briggs's beloved birthplace. Briggs retells the story ofThomas Macy's banishment from Salisbury, Massachusetts, for the crime of sheltering four Quakers in a storm, his founding of a set­ tlement on Nantucket, the hospitality of the native Indians, and the development of the whaling industry. The settlers established a sum­ mer retreat in Siasconset:

But how unlike all other summer retreats and watering places! It rises in the midst of ocean, with neither a green tree nor a towering rock to divide the attention, or entice the eyefrom contemplating the grandeur of the wild waste ofwaters spread out around it. The hoarse roar of the breakers continually dashing against the shore makes a nobler symphony than was ever heard within the walls of a cathe­ dral, and awakening within the soul a vague feeling of sublimity, rebukes and puts toflight all mean and trivial thoughts. One of those wooden gimcracks, with its Grecian porticoes and Venetian blinds,

that disfigure all other places of summer resort in the twenty-four states, would look like an impertinence here; and luckily no enter­ prising individual has yet seen proper to build such an incubus on the fair fame ofSiasconset. The little houses that are ranged along the cliff, with a green avenue running between them, are the most modest and unpretending edifices that civilized men ever reared for their accommodation. And here may be seen and felt all those gentle graces which adorn and distinguish cultivated minds, without any of those external affectations and incumbrances, which accompany them in other places. Pride and luxury are exotics that cannot take root where there is so little of the blandishments of Nature, or the achievements of art to distract the mindfrom the contemplation of its Make,: And here, by common consent, men and women throw aside all useless restraints and cold formalities and intermingle with each other like brethren appointed to one common lot, and who are joint heirs to one heritage.

Briggs's 'Sconset story ends with a paean to cod chowder, the correct recipe for which developed into a significant New York dispute with political and religious overtones. Briggs returned to the pages of the Knickerbocker in a letter signed by a fictional Nantucket Quaker, Hezediah Starbuck (July 1840), objecting to the chaudiere of a wealthy New York merchant. The eminent cultural historian Peny Miller disen­ tangles the threads of this Nantucket-centered quarrel in his book The Raven and the Whale: The War ofWords andWits in the Era of Poe and Melville (1956).

As he was establishing himself as a literary man, Briggs nurtured two important friendships. He came to know the painter William Page as a result of his eager support of American artists, reviewing them in Park Benjamin's New World. He joined in the founding of the Apollo Association in 1839, which provideded exhibition space and a forum for the discussion of American art; in 1839 it became the American Art­ Union and Briggs served on its Committee of Management, writing its annual reports in 1843 and 1844.

In the early 1840s Briggs moved to Staten Island, where his father-in­ law had preceded him. Page introduced him to James Russell Lowell, who went there to seek eye treatment from the renowned Dr. Samuel Mackenzie Elliott. Lowell became Briggs's most intimate friend and correspondent; the surviving body of correspondence among the three

men has provided biographers with many details of their lives. In those years, in addition to his fiction and his art criticism, Briggs helped found the Copyright Club in order to persuade Congress to enact legis­ lation that would protect American writers.

As he entered his forties, then, Briggs had established a pattern of creative work, the bread-and-butter literary labor of editing and reviewing, and the contribution of time and energy to social and polit­ ical activities. This pattern persisted throughout his life; when we look back at his achievement we see evidence of this three-part commit­ ment so valuable in the years of emerging national culture. As he observed the growing city, he drew on his self-education in eighteenth­ century satire and Dickensian narrative to write humorously, but criti­ cally, of social behavior. He reserved his severest criticism for the wealthy, whose false values result in imitative art and architecture. His second novel, The Haunted Merchant, was projected as one of ten sto­ ries to be told by bankrupt merchants. Briggs's concern with econom­ ic upheaval must be understood against the background of financial turmoil that stretched from the aftermath of the Revolution to the scandals of the post-Civil War period.

Fulfilling his intention to contrast the "soft hands" and the "hard hands" of this world, Briggs published a third novel in 1844, based on his boyhood experience as a merchant sailor. Working a Passage (1844,1846) tells of a wealthy youth sent abroad by his parents to avoid

AS HE ENTERED HIS FORTIES, THEN, BRIGGS HAD ESTABLISHED A PATTERN OF CREATIVE WORK, THE BREAD-AND-BUTTER LITERARY LABOR OF EDITING AND REVIEWING, AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF TIME AND ENERG Y TO SOCIAL AND P OLITICAL ACTIVITIES.

Lower Broadway in New York, as Briggs would have seen it; St. Paul's Chapel at left.

Summer 2008

13

I The North Bluff, "where there was nothing between me and the winds." P9982 the cholera epidemic in New York. When the financial insecurities of the period caused the withdrawal of his funds, the young man must work his way home from Europe, experiencing firsthand the "inequal­ ities of civilized life, where one portion of the people are privileged to live without work and the other portion are doomed to work without living." Briggs's description of the exploitation of sailors, highlighted at this time by the Somers tragedy (1842) when three sailors were hanged without benefit of civil trial, provided a model to his younger contem­ porary, Herman Melville, who later devoted White-Jacket (1849) to exploring some of the same themes.

In 1846 Briggs composed an autobiographical contribution to The Missionary Memorial, a fund-raising venture in which other literary fig­ ures also participated. "The Winds" takes the reader back to childhood in 'Sconset:

When a very small boy, I used to climb to the top of high hills for the pleasure of reveling in thefresh breeze as itflew by; and myfirst dream offreedom was the open sea, where there was nothing between me and the winds. Many a time have I wished myself one of the dwarf cedars thatfringed the bleak hill at the back of my father's house-the winds seemed to take such delight in rustling through them. Many a winter's night in my boyhood have I heard the nor'westers arousing in the forest, roaring and screeching among their dry branches, and wished myselfamong them.

There is even a recollection of family involvement in the China trade in this carefully composed recollection. Briggs writes:

A relative brought me from Canton, a few years since, a cage full of Java sparrows. There were a dozen of the beautiful creatures; and he had been at infinite pains to preserve them during a long voyage, sharing his water with them when he was on short allowance. I appreciated his kindness, but I could have killed him for his cruelty.

Poor little prisoners! I looked at them with tears in my eyes, and as soon as I got the cage in my possession, I took them upon the house-

14 I Historic Nantucket

WHEN A VERY SMALL BOY, I USED n) CLThIB n) THE TOP OF H[GH HILLS FOR THE PLEASURE OF REVELi JG [N THE FRESH BREEZE AS IT FLE\V BY; A:ID l\IY FIRST DREAl\I OF FREEDOl\1 \VAS THE OPEN SEA, \VHERE TIIERE \VAS NOTHING BET"TEEN ME Al� THE ,vINDS.

top and opening the door of their bamboo prison, let them go where they pleased.

In his verbal portrait of his friend in ''A Fable for Critics," Lowell sought to capture Briggs's mixture of tender-hearted feeling and satirical energy:

His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender And a sortie he'll make when he means to surrender.

With the loss of The Broadway Journal to Poe, his coeditor turned political rival, Briggs found employment at the New York Mirror in 1847, inventing a fictional foreign correspondent he named Ferdinand Mendes Pinto after a character in William Congreve's 1695 play Love for Love. Pinto's name, a play on its Portuguese origins, had become an epithet for liar. Briggs formed his character as a newspaper correspon­ dent modeled after his literary contemporaries Nathaniel Parker Willis and Margaret Fuller, both of whom were sending letters home from Europe to American newspapers, mocking Willis's veneration for

European aristocracy and Margaret Fuller's egotism, Briggs complicat­ ed the satire by introducing an antislavery theme. The original "ugly American," Pinto reveals his native racism as he repeatedly encounters Frederick Douglass in the great homes of European aristocrats. Finally, defending his country's "peculiar institution," he spends the night lost in a Scottish bog. Lowell thought the antislavery satire in the eighteen Pinto letters (1846---47) too good to be lost, but they were never pub­ lished as an independent volume.

His energies as a satirist aroused by Pinto's success in the Mirror; Briggs focused his energies on fiction again. His fourth and final novel, The Trippings of Tom Pepper (1847-50), is the story of an innocent Cape Cod orphan in search of his lost father. It follows Tom Pepper into a series of misadventures motivated by the admonition of his benefactor to tell the truth always, no matter how inconvenient. The cruelties and deceptions of social life shape the comic plot until it reaches its apogee in Tom's atten­ dance at a New York literary soiree. There, under transparent pseudo­ nyms, the New York literati are revealed as a group of posturing fools whipped into a fracas by ''.Austin Wicks," Briggs's stand-in for Poe. In Briggs's obituaries, commentators claimed that the harsh satire of Tom Pepper brought Briggs's novel-writing career to a scandalous end.

But this view fails to take in the scope of Briggs's literary ambitions.

Thinking of himself as a Swiftian satirist, he did not confine his creative work to the novel but developed vernacular forms like the fictional news­ paper letter for artistic purposes. This aspect of his literary production makes him a forerunner of the humorists Artemis Ward, Josh Billings, Petroleum Nasby, and Mark Twain, just as his novelistic material pre­ pared the way for that other lover of Nantucket, Herman Melville.

In the twenty-seven years left to him after he published Tom Pepper; Briggs continued to perform prodigious literary service to the emerg­ ing national culture of the United States. His greatest contribution was the editorship of Putnam's Monthly (1853-55), arguably the most out­ standing periodical of the nineteenth century. Today, Putnam's is known for publishing Melville's famous stories "Bartleby the Scrivener," "The Encantadas," "Israel Potter," and "The Lightning Rod Man"; and Thoreau's ''.An Excursion to Canada."

In the mid-1850s Briggs began to write the annual introductions to Trow's New York City Directory, summarizing his adopted city's growth for twenty-five years. He assisted Henry J. Raymond in establishing The New York Times and worked as financial editor of the Brooklyn Union.

In his last years, he returned to creative work as a valued writer for The Independent, which had a circulation of more than 300,000 in 1877. In his series of fictional letters by "Elder Brewster of Brewsterville, Massachusetts," Briggs comments on the political scene during the Hayes-Tilden election; he makes post-Civil War race prejudice the last target of his social satire, reintroducing Frederick Douglass here as the marshal of the District of Columbia thirty years after his appearance in the Pinto letters. Undoubtedly, Briggs kept his eye on the illustrious antislavery orator who began his career at an antislavery convention in Nantucket in 1841.

Briggs's eighth and last letter from Brewsterville, his paradigm for the postwar North, ran in The Independent on June 28, 1877, alongside its author's obituary. Briggs died of a heart attack, having put in a full day at his writing desk. He and his wife and daughter, Charlotte Briggs, are buried in the Moravian Cemetery at New Dorp, Staten Island.

Charlotte Briggs gave her father's letters to Lowell to the Houghton Library at Harvard. The disposition of Briggs's books and manuscripts is not known, but more information may be gathered as a result of next year's Verney Fellowship.

In 1853, at the zenith of his literary career and influence, Briggs pro­ vided three poems he had written earlier to an anthology entitled Seaweeds from the Shores of Nantucket. With contributors identified only by initials, three of the poems are by C.E B. "The Harper" is a charming refrain poem set on the beach at Coatue,

Broadway, not much changed since Briggs lived there.

GPN2463 following a Wordsworthian harper who celebrates the return of spring, with its flowers and fleece. Briggs remembers shearing and the folk associated with it on his native island:

Soon as the Harper old appeared, A ring was formed, a space was cleared; Three ladies, clad in spotless white, Three gentlemen, all dandies quite, Impatient for the dance, are seen On the brown-sward, some call it green.

No lightfantastic toes belong To any of the joyous throng, They're all prepared to reel it strong; The Harper rosins well his bow, His ve1y catgut's in a glow, With tu I can't and tu I can, All the way to shearing pen.

In a pair of sonnets, Briggs writes of his yearning, from "off island," for a return to childhood in "the fairest spot in this fair world of ours." The first eight lines of "Siasconset" serve as the epigraph to this brief intro­ duction to a writer/editor who made his way in the great metropolis without forgetting the beauties and values of his native place. Here are the final six lines, asserting his lifelong loyalty:

0 pebbly beach! 0 Sankoty! 0 Sea! And ye whose names are linked with these, how oft In mid-day musings and in midnight dreams, In visions bright, have ye been seen by me, When myfree spirit has been borne aloft!

And when I rhyme, shall ye not be my themes?

BETTE s. WEIDMAN teaches in the department of English at Queens College of the City University of New York and is the NHA's 2008 Verney Fellow.

Author's Note: This year, Charles Briggs's longing for recognition

from his kinfolk and neighbors has received a resounding response at the Nantucket Historical Association. The 2008 Verney Fellowship is devoted to researching Briggs's family roots in the island, his child­ hood in 'Sconset, and the trajectory that led to his discovery of New York City after a short period as a merchant sailor. In my research for the fellowship, I will follow his development as a well-known antebel­ lum magazinist and novelist, an editor of great importance, and a dis­ tinguished citizen of the metropolis, noting that throughout his life strong sailors knots kept him connected to his native island.

Summer 2008

15

EXCERPTS FROM A LIFE

BY ROBERT LONGLEY

AFTER COMING TO 'SCONSET

FOR VARYING LENGTHS OF TIME EVERY YEAR FOR SEVENTY YEARS, MAYBE IT'S TIME TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT MY SUMMER DAYS THERE. GETTING TO 'SCONSET: BOATS

The boats, ah, the boats. In those days, we took the Nantucket, the Martha's Vineyard, the New Bedford, and the Naushon to Nantucket. We spent the night in New Bedford, and boarded at 8 a.m. or so, and sailed four hours with stops at Woods Hole and Oak Bluffs. W hat a wonderful feeling to tie up at those ports, watch the little engines at work boarding luggage and other goods, smell the wonderful odors of the wharves, watch the people joyously (it seemed) meeting the boats, and know that we were going on to the end of the line. It was magical the way they loaded and unloaded all those cars at the side of the ship, not the stern and aft as today, with much backing and filling, and nary so much as a scrape of the paint. And make no mistake: they were great boats (never call them ferries). They had a comfortable welcoming feeling.

Staterooms with big varnished doors and large keys were like some­ thing out of nineteenth-century England, and, if memory serves, you could have a sit-down meal at tables on the New Bedford. Nothing like today's hulks. My parents took the Gay Head in, I believe, the teens, and my grandparents.. .. Lord knows what ships they took. I should know.

AUTOGRAPH COLLECTING

My teen years and even before were a time of my autograph-collecting days. I still have them, and the fun, of course, was meeting the people who kindly gave me their autographs. John Steinbeck was one, whom I called on when he rented the first house down from Sankaty, called Footlight. Paul Webb another, the cartoonist of "The Mountain Boys," who was a good friend of my parents-in-law to be. I bought a car from him for $25, fixed it up, and sold it for $100. A. J. Cronin, who rented a house off Cliff Road. Lucille Bremer, C..... ,4... )� '-J ( who stayed in the Sea Cliff Inn during a run, probably at the Straight Wharf Theatre.

Robert Benchley, Nat's father and Rob's and Peter's grandfather, was a good friend of my grandfather.

I remember vividly both of them sitting on the back porch of my grand­ parents' rented house without shirts on and eating raw clams dipped in butter. My grandfather was the Bishop oflowa. Two different people you couldn't imagine-the Bishop and Bob Benchley-and they had a wonderful time together. Strangely, I don't have Benchley's autograph.

But I have Clifton Fadiman's, and Patricia Collinge's, a lovely woman and much-respected actress who lived a few doors down from my par­ ents, and who was married to Jim Smith, or, as John Salvas always called him, Smit.

J

..· ....

Opposite: Inset Bob Longley as a boy; boarding at Woods Hole

I The Rogers family and other friends. SC658-12

SUMMER LIVING

What a wonderful place to spend summers. George Rogers taught me how to fish with a conventional reel, not a spinning reel. We played in the gully next to the A&P (now Claudette's). My family went to the beach faithfully, and kept our beach umbrella in the dunes from day to day, pitching it underhand into a valley between dunes. In those days there were showers and a dressing area at the foot of the steps leading down from the Beach House. We always had dinner in the middle of the day. We rode bikes, we played various games, and as my friends and I grew older and braver, we got into various sorts of troubles. Jesse Eldridge, the special policeman in 'Sconset, never quite caught up with us, but I think he knew who Danny Bixler, Wade Green, Mo and George Thomas, Roger Block, and I were. The late teens brought more sophis­ ticated parties among the "in" young people of 'Sconset. Beth Wagley, Janet Perdun, Pete Dalton, and others. And every once in a while I was invited to big doings at the Yacht Club, where I always felt uncomfort­ able and out of place with the Hulbert Avenue crowd.

'Sconset then was very much a family town. There were cocktail par­ ties, but they were low-key affairs. Houses cost $10,000. My parents bought their six-bedroom, fully furnished house on the south bluff for $5,000 in 1944. Dinner at the Chanticleer (no liquor license) was $3.95 or so. The long verandah at the Beach House played host to Clifton Fadiman and others of that ilk. Now and then a movie star would stay there, and the bright but spare dining room served delicious meals, and everyone wore their best informal clothes, of course. I learned to play golf, or play at golf, with my father at Henry Coffin's Old 'Sconset Course. My folks never belonged to Sankaty or the Casino, alas, and I have been heard to say what a big mistake I made in not joining Sankaty when it was possible.

COOKS, MA IDS, AND BUTLERS

The local maids, cooks, and butlers were beloved fixtures year after year, and I came to know them all. Will was Mrs. Lucas's butler, and a fine friendly gentleman. I can't remember the name of Mrs. Finnell's butler and chauffeur (she of the Peruna fortune; Peruna was a late­ nineteenth-century patent medicine of high alcohol content). They lived in what was then the grandest mansion in 'Sconset, and perhaps the only one built of brick. He was a proper Englishman, and came to the square each day dressed in his uniform, minus the jacket, but always with the butler's striped waistcoat. And in the crook of each arm was a Pomeranian. Pat Collinge's and Jim Smith's chauffeur and man­ of-all-works was Jim. It was a sad day when I discovered him in his car, dead, after he ran off the Milestone Road. It was my duty to tell the Smiths, who were heartbroken.

Summer 2008

17

'SCONSET DAYS: EXCERPTS FROM A LIFE

Robert Benchley, in high spirits. SC710-4.

Beth Wagley in costume for On-the-Isle at the Casino, 1950. SC678-3 BELow: John Salvas's 'Sconset gas station, 1950s. SC689-29

TOP LEFT:

BOTTOM LEFT:

AS A TEENAGER, I WORKED FOR JUST ABOUT EVERYONE THERE WAS TO WORK FOR IN 'SCONSET, AND SOME IN TOWN. I PUMPED GAS AND DROVE A CAB FOR JOHN THE BARBER

�C0

-, 0 ;:;C m u

WORKING

As a teenager, I worked for just about everyone there was to work for in 'Sconset, and some in town. I pumped gas and drove a cab for John Salvas, or John the Barber (because he was just that), for four years and met my wife, Nan Dempster, there when she came to call her brother (with whom I worked) for lunch one day.

I worked for John's daughter and son-in-law, Gordon and Aline Winslow, in the 'Sconset Market. It was fun to prepare orders for local customers' groceries, which they or their cooks had phoned in that morning. The orders would go in bushel baskets and be lined up on the floor, and were delivered to houses throughout 'Sconset, but mainly on the north bluff.

I worked for Ray and Catherine Wiley in the Chanticleer, busing and peeling potatoes. I worked for Lou Scagliarini in the Book Store, haul­ ing boxes up from the dungeon-like basement, and for Lou DeBarros in the Casino, sweeping up and listening to the story of his life as he reached into his bottom drawer for a strange bottle that contained what he called sustenance (what a character!). Mrs. Bulkley owned the Beach House and was another character. I bused, bellhopped, and did the same, as well as a little bar waiting, for Clem and Myra Reynolds in the Old 'Sconset Inn and Moby Dick.

Marty Finnegan (the New England accent changed that to Matty) yelled and screamed at me in his strange way of talking as I cut lawns, and Phil Morris hired me to make special deliveries. Now there was a postmaster of the old school! I know I worked for Clem Penrose, but 18 I Historic Nantucket

can't remember what I did for that tall, gaunt gentleman who was never without his cap with the long shiny peak. I helped Warren Rogers with his duties in the 'Sconset Chapel. I helped Albert Brock run the projector for the Casino movies. I worked for myself painting houses. I had conversations with Roy Larsen about what I might to do help his efforts on behalf of 'Sconset after I graduated from college.

And there were probably other jobs I can't remember.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

'Sconset was quiet. The friends of my parents in those days would hardly recognize the place today. They were quiet, distinctive, assured, thoroughly lovely people who were sure of their place in the world, and didn't need all kinds of outside activities beyond fishing, reading, walking, and dinner at Chanticleer to validate their exis­ tence. Their houses, while attractive, were anything but ostentatious.

The fun we had was, by and large, what I would call good clean fun.

As far as I know-and I would have-there were no drugs beyond alcohol.

What am I trying to say about those days vis-a-vis today? I'm not entirely sure, except they were halcyon, simple days suffused with warmth and joy.

One can live as one did in the old days, but it takes a lot more work.

It's still a wonderful and unique place, and I love it.

ROBERT LONGLEY

is a quintessential 'Sconseter.

I I

BY

TH E

WAY

Peter]. Greenhalgh

With thanks to Grace....

Celebrating the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Museum Shop

�useum Shop operated for

the support of theNantucket Historical Association," states a laque located within the shop, which opened on the July Fourth weekend in 1983. Perseverance, dedication, boundless energy, commitment. ...Twenty-five years ago, Grace S. Grossman used her well-known talents to develop a gift shop to complement theNHA's Whaling Museum and create additional revenue for its programs.

In the four years of her tenure, Grace worked on and oversaw every aspect and detail of the shop-including the development of building plans, the design and layout of the shop, con­ struction, and finally the selection of merchan­ dise--and in doing so began a tradition that remains strong to this day, affording a vital addition to the Nantucket Historical Association's annual budget.

For many years Grace and Bernard Grossman lived in Newton, Massachusetts, and summered on the island.During the win­ ter months, Grace worked tirelessly with Old Sturbridge Village as Chairperson of Merchandising and brought into being a gift shop that benefited the organization. Upon moving to Nantucket year-round, the Grossmans' passion for all things eighteenth century blossomed, and when she and Bernie became more involved with theNHA another idea was born.

The Grossmans' experience, enthusiasm, and monetary commitment ensured the cooperation and input of then NHA board chairman Walter Beinecke Jr.Grace's experi­ ence with Mottahedeh porcelain reproduc­ tions, her publishing contacts with Houghton Mifflin in Boston, and her business relation-

Grace Grossman Museum Shop interior

UPPER LEFT: LEFT:

>

"g­

f

ii: :a

!

� ]l 0 £

dollars!" All profits went directly to theNHA. Grace never expected anyone to do anything she wouldn't do herself, from scrubbing the floors to hauling and unpacking merchandise.She had her right­ hand helper in Waine, and volunteers helped throughout the shop, but Grace and Maria truly kept tl1e midnight oil burning for two full years, to assure the shop's success.

Although in today's hectic world of iPods, laptops, constantly ringing cell phones, and loud nonstop traffic, Grace's charming vision of handwritten sales slips and an old-fashioned metal cash register are things of the past, her dream of a beautiful shop witl1 an attentive, competent staff holds true.During this silver­ anniversary year, with Georgina Winton as manager, the shop remains a vibrant and pro­ ductive venue; tl1e proceeds continue to bene­ fit the NHA, and Grace's spirit still guides all tl10se fortunate to be involved in this wonderful "Keeping Room" environment.

ship with furniture mogul Eldred Wheeler ensured that exclusive and elegant merchan­ dise would fill the shop. The "Keeping Room," replete with working fireplace, was appointed with reproductions of classic eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century furniture, period fabric books, handwoven linens from Maine craftsmen, braided rugs, Colin Gray ship models, wildfowl decoys, bayberry and sper­ maceti candles-ordered exclusively from the island's only candle shop-as well as jams and jellies (some of the fruit was actually picked on Nantucket and sent off to be included in the cooking process). Many of these treasures were adaptations from Nantucket's earlier history.

"Grace didn't want people intimidated by going into a museum," said her close friend and Museum Shop coworker Maria Waine.

"Some people get nervous around history; PETER J. GREENHALGH is the NHA manager of Grace's vision was to educate people about the public re/,ations, publications, and membership. eighteenth century in a happy and informa­ tive way, not imposing or daunting. It was a Orders may be placed with the Museum simpler but more gracious time; everything Shop on our Web site (www.nha.org) was gift wrapped and eve1yone felt special. or by calling (508) 228-5785.

The first day we made close to ten thousand Summer 2008

19

NANTUCKET HlSTORlCAL ASSOCIATION THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION HAS EMBARKED ON TWO KEY INITIATIVES The NHA i,s grateful for the many members andfriends who have already provided generous supportfor these two projects. Fund-raising continuesfor both initiatives, with the goal to complete them in 2011.

Your continued generosity i,s greatly appreciated.

RESTORATION OF GREATER LIGHT

Opening a Window into the Nantucket Art Colony Greater Light-its very name elicits the spirit of the colony of artists that arose on Nantucket in the 1920s. Among them were Quaker sisters Gertrude and Hanna Monaghan, who lovingly converted a barn at 8 Howard Street into an eclectic sum­ mer home and studio.

The NHA is now beginning the timely and necessary restoration of this historic property to bring to life Nantucket's emer­ gence as an art colony and resort. In bequeathing the property and its furnish­ ings to the NHA, it was the Monaghans' intent that Greater Light would be used "in all ways possible to benefit the public."

With its restoration, the house and its charming garden will become a venue for lifelong learning in the arts and for small gatherings that extol the arts and culture-exhibitions, poetry readings, plays, musical performances, and garden parties-much in the way the Monaghans engaged the community.

The $2.4 million Greater Light project is being undertaken in two phases. Later this year, the NHA will begin the Phase I restoration work needed to make the building structurally sound and useable as well as

to create a much-needed basement apart­ ment for staff housing. In 2007, the NHA received the community's endorsement of the restoration with receipt of a $400,000 matching grant from the Nantucket Community Preservation Committee.

Through the generosity of its supporters, the NHA has already met the CPC match.

Naming opportunities remain available, and further donations of all sizes are wel­ come and will help the NHA raise the $438,000 needed to complete Phase I by spring 2010. At that point, the NHA will focus on raising the additional funding for Phase II-restoration and conservation of the interior, furnishings, and the garden; and development of interpre­ tative and educational programs, tours, and exhibitions. Completion of the Greater Light project is anticipated in 2011.

For more information about Greater Light, to schedule a tour of the property, or to make a contribution, please contact Judith Wodynski, director of external relations, at (508) 228-1894, ext.111, or jwodynski@nha.org.

A "GATEWAY' FILM

An Orientation to Nantucket History

Following the Nantucket Historical Association's key interpretive themes, the orientation film will create an overarching and compelling narrative that captures the essence of Nantucket, connecting this "elbow of sand," as Melville called it, to national and world history. In filmmaker Ric Burns's unique style, the production will use primary-source quotations and historic images coupled with a memorable musical accompaniment. Nathaniel Philbrick, author/historian and NHA research fellow, and William Tramposch, NHA executive director, will work closely with Burns. When it premiers in 2011, the NHA's "gateway" orientation film will become a must-see for residents and visitors alike.

20

I

Historic Nantucket

Over the past two years, Burns has been a frequent visitor to Nantucket, both to speak at the museum and to conduct research at the NHA Research Library for a major PBS documentary on the histo­ ry of American whaling, premiering at the Whaling Museum in 2011.

The NHA is just $125,000 away from meeting its $398,000 goal for the orientation film. The NHA is grateful for the generous support it has already received from members and friends; additional gifts in any amount are welcome, and will help the NHA reach its goal this year.

Donation levels from $500 to $50,C,00 and above will be included in the film's credits.

To learn more about the film or to make a donation, please contact Judith Wodynsk� director ofexternal relations, at (508) 228-1894, ext.

111, orjwodynski@nha.org.

•• News Notes & Highlights New Zealand 2009:

Join the NHA Down Under In February 2009, a band ofNHA explorers will head Down Under to explore the beautiful islands ofNew Zealand.

Aotearoa, or "Land of the Long White Cloud," is what this enchanted country is

called by the indigenous Maori. New Zealand is one of the last settled land mass­ es on earth, and its inhabitants have experienced what some historians call "fast history," moving from settlement to cell phones in about a thousand years!

The North and South islands of New Zealand are rich with a history that relates directly to Nantucket, especially-but not exclusively-whaling history.

Did you know, for example, that it was a Nantucketer who designed Auckland's biggest public park? Come along and find out who that was, while discovering so much more about one of the most beautiful and welcoming countries in the world.

Peggy and Bill Tramposch will be your hosts. Bill is the NHA executive direc­ tor. Peggy and he are dual citizens of the U.S. and New Zealand, having first vis­ ited in 1986 when Bill was a Fulbright Scholar. 1n the early '90s, Bill was one of those recruited to help build the new National Museum, Te Papa. Following its completion, he headed the New Zealand Historic Places Trust for five years. This tour will take you to places that even many New Zealanders have not seen­ places steeped in history, beauty, and story.

Take a look at what we have in store, and hurry! The list of available places is filling quickly.

TRIP DETAILS: Exploration New 7.ealand in February 2009 Join the NHA on a journey through maritime, whaling, Maori, and European history in New Zealand.

Travel includes sixteen nights of accommodations with stays in Wellington, Picton, Kaikoura, Christchurch, Bay of Islands, and Auckland. Package also includes daily breakfast, five lunches, seven dinners, transportation within New Zealand, sightseeing, and gratuities. Price is based on double occupancy, land only: $6,599 (per person). Supplement based on single occupancy: $1,500 additional (per person).* $1,000 per person is tax deductible.

A $1,500 deposit (of which $500 is nonrefundable) is required.

Rates are based on a minimum of twenty participants. Travel to and from New Zealand is NOT included. For add-on flight infor­ mation, please contact Swain's Travel at 508 228-201. For addi­ tional information, visit www.nha.org/nz.htrnl

Call Julie for more information or to make a reservation, 508 228-1894, Ext. 0

Summer 2008

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•• News Notes & Highlights

New Acquisitions Scrimshaw candlesticks and sterling ladle In early January, Christie's auctioned off items from the estate collec­ tion of Charles H. Carpenter Jr. of Nantucket. The Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association (established in 1986 to seek signifi­ cant acquisitions for the collections of the NHA and to provide funds necessary to make such acquisitions), with additional suppmt from Mr. and Mrs. Charles M . Geschke and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H . Gosnell, purchased a remarkable pair of period scrimshaw whale ivory and whalebone candJesticks, among the only authentic period candJe­ sticks to appear on the market within living memory. They were imme­ diately added to the displays in the Whaling Museum's Scrimshaw Gallery.

In the early spring, a sterling silver ladJe, presented to Captain Daniel E. Russell of the whaleship Essex upon his retirement from that vessel in 1819, was purchased by the Max and Heidi Berry Acquisition Fund, for the NHA collection. Daniel E. Russell was captain of the whaleship Essex between 1811 and 1817, and helmed its penultimate voyage before assuming command of the Aurora. The ill-fated Essex was stove by an eighty-ton sperm whale in November 1820; the few survivors were not rescued until February 1821. Very few artifacts relating to the Essex exist.

The sterling ladJe was made by the shop of Theophilus Bradbury, circa 1819, in Newburyport, MA., and is engraved at the top end of the coffin-shaped handJe: "Ship Essex to Dan1 Russell, April 1819." The ladJe remained in the Russell family, being passed down to George G. Russell in 1885, as noted on a subsequent engraving, until the owners of the ladJe, direct descendants of Captain Daniel E. Russell, made the item available for purchase.

Current NHA Exhibitions 'Sconset 02564:

A CELEBRATION OFTHE PATCHWORK VILLAGE AT THE PETER FOULGER GALLERY With support from the 'Sconset Trust and the Siasconset Civic Association, the NHA was pleased to present its 2008 major summer exhibition at a well-attended opening reception on Thursday, May 22, in the Peter Foulger Gallery. The exhibition includes a model of the Nantucket Railroad, oral history interviews with 'Sconseters, a movie chron­ icling the 2007 move of Sankaty Light, a digital 'Sconset Family Album, a model of the 'Sconset pump by Nelson "Snooky'' Eldridge, and much more. The exhibition will be on display through November 11.

22

I

Historic Nantucket

Nantucket Presidential Documents:

FROM WASHINGTONTO FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

AT THE W HITNEY GALLERY

The collections of the Nantucket Historical Association hold documents signed by almost every president from George Washington to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In recognition of election year, the NHA is presenting an exhibition highlighting some of the more remarkable items in the collection. The exhi­ bition was made possible by the generous support of Susan R. and L Dennis Shapiro.

NHA Wins Awards from NEMA and Cape Cod Life The Nantucket Historical Association received an award from the New England Museum Association (NEMA) in its 2007 publications competition for the "Annual Report" category. Second-place honors were given for the NHA's 2006 Annual Report. The project was directed by Cristin Merck and designed by Javatime Design.

The New England Museum Association Competition received 180 publications submissions from sixty-six museums in twenty different categories; major art and historic museums throughout New England were among the competitors. The awards recognize excellence in design, production, and effective communication in all aspects of museum publishing: "The judges were extremely impressed with the high quality of design and effective communication with the NHA submission."

Whaling Museum Winner in Cape Cod Life's "The Best of the Cape & Islands"

CURATORIAL

1n a reader's survey, for the second consecutive year, the NHA's Whaling Museum was voted Best Nantucket Museum, receiving the highest award (gold), as well as a gold in the category of"Best Rainy-Day Activity."

WeeklyTours of the Oldest House Kitchen Garden Garden tours, offered every Friday and Saturday from 3 to 4 P.M. are cur足 rently being offered through September 27 at the Oldest House, 16 Sunset Hill Lane.

According to the property deed from 1708, the Coffin family had a fenced garden located on the northern side of the property. NHA staff members Kathrina Pearl, along with other NHA grounds crew, have been working on enhancing the kitchen garden, adding new period plantings and appropriate seedlings. During the hour-long tour, guests learn about the herbs and plants and their uses currently growing in this replicated 1700s kitchen garden. 1n addition to the garden, the staff has planted a small apple orchard comprising several varieties of apples appropriate to the period.

Destination Days The NHA's Education Department was pleased to offer two week足 long children's programs during the February and April school vacations. "Passport to History: Vacation Destination Days" (for elementary-school children K 5-), were held in the Whaling Museum. These free hands-on programs were made possible by funding from the Nantucket Golf Club Foundation and featured a full week of activities and demonstrations that celebrated the connection between whaling, world cultures, and Nantucket Island. Topics included: Souvenirs of Worldwide Adventure; Islands of the World; South Pacific Explorers; Far East Traders; Under the Sea; Whales, Giant Squid, and Other Creatures; Peopling the Island; Living in the Light: Island Ideologies; W haling; Making a Living; and Art Colony/Resort.

New NHA Publications

Now available in the Museum Shop

The NHA has produced several books in the past year. The Commemorative Edition of Greater Light on Nantucket: A Memoir, written by Hanna D. Monaghan in 1973, is now available for $16.00.

Greater Light on Nantucket: A House History of Gertrude and Hanna Monaghan's summer home, written by Betsy Tyler, is available in hard足 cover for $40.00. We are also pleased to offer an illustrated companion piece to the current exhibition 'Sconset 02564: A Celebration of the Patchwork Village: 'Sconset: A History is made possible with support from the Judy Family Foundation and is now available for $19.95. For those who loved last season's summer exhibition, the exhibition cat足 alog The Nantucket Art Colony, 1920-1945, by Robyn and John Davis Curator Ben Simons, is also available for $29.95. For these gifts and many others, you may shop on-line by visiting the Web site, call (508) 228-5785, or stop by the shop, currently celebrating its twenty-fifth season.

Summer 2008

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(/he Nantucket Historical Association invites you to join forward­ looking donors who have included the Association in their wills.

Your gift will help build financial stability to continue the NH.A's mission for future generations.

Forfurther information, consult yourfinancialprofessional or contadJudith Wodynski.

508 228 1894, EXT. 111

Historic Nantucket P.O. Box 1016, NANTUCKET, MA 02554-1016

WWW,NHA.ORG

EMAIL: JWODYNSKl@NHA.ORG

PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT NANTUCKET, MA AND ADDITIONAL ENTRY OFFICES