Saw a Comet Star Ablazing...

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES Peter W. Nash President

E. Geoffrey Verney

Barbara E. Hajim

Alice F. Emerson

Marcia Welch

John M. Sweeney

Patricia M. Bridier

First Vice Prestdent

Vice President

Vice President

Vice President

Treasurer

Clerk

Pamela C. Bartlett Rebecca M. Bartlett C. Marshall Beale Robert H. Brust Nancy A. Chase John H. Davis Mary F. Espy Nina Hellman

Julius Jensen Ill Arie L. Kopelman JaneT. Lamb Carolyn B. MacKenzie Bruce D. Miller Bruce A. Percelay Melissa D. Philbrick

Christopher C. Quick Susan F. Rotando Melanie R. Sabelhaus Harvey Saligman Bette M. Spriggs Isabel C. Stewart Jay M. Wilson Robert A. Young

Frank D. Milligan Executive Director

RESEARCH FELLOWS Pauline Maier

Patty Jo S. Rice

Nathaniel Philbrick

Renny A. Stackpole

FRIENDS OF THE NHA Pat & Thomas Anathan Mariano & Mortimer Appley Heidi & Max Berry Christy & William Camp Jr. Laurie & Robert Champion Dottie & Earle Craig Prudence & William M. Crozier Robyn & John Davis Sandra & Nelson Doubleday Nancee & John Erickson Marjorie & Charles Fortgang Nancy & Charles Geschke

Georgia & Thomas Gosnell Silvia Gosnell Barbara & Robert Griffin Barbara & Edmund Hajim George S. Heyer Jr. Barbara & Harvey Jones Kathryn & James Ketelsen Sara Jo & Arthur Kobacker Coco & Arie Kopelman Sharon & Frank Lorenzo Carolyn & Ian MacKenzie Phyllis Macomber Miriam & Seymour Mandell

Ronay & Richard Menschel Aileen & Scott Newquist Charron & Flint Ranney Gleaves & Thomas Rhodes Ellen & Kenneth Roman Marion & Robert Rosenthal Ellen & David Ross Linda & Harvey Saligman Charlotte Smith Genevieve & Richard Tucker Marilyn Whitney Yuriko & Bracebridge Young Jr.

ADVISORY BOARD Walter Beinecke Jr. Joan Brecker Patricia Butler Michael deLeo Lyndon Dupuis Martha Groetzinger Dorrit D. P. Gutterson

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

Patricia Loring Paul Madden Robert F. Mooney Jane C. Richmond Nancy J. Sevrens Scott M. Stearns Jr. Mary-Elizabeth Young

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Mary H. Beman Margaret Moore Booker Richard L. Brecker Thomas B. Congdon Jr.

Peter J. Greenhalgh Robert F. Mooney Elizabeth Oldham

Nathaniel Philbrick Sally Seidman James Sulzer David H. Wood

Cecil Barron Jensen

Elizabeth Oldham

Oaire O'Keeffe

EDITOR

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© 2004 by Nantucket Historical Association Historic Nantucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, 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 information about our historic sites: www.nha.org

NANTUCKEr VOLUME 53, NO. 1

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4 Foreword

by Frank D. Milligan

6

9 The Adventurous JohnEgle

"Saw a comet star ablazing...."

Log of the New Bedford whaling ship Washington, March 6, 1843

Excerpted /rom The Other Islanders

by Leslie W. Ottinger

by Frances Ruley Karttunen

15 Historic Nantucket Book Section

19

Margaret Moore Booker Reviews by Elizabeth Oldham <mJ Kirstin Freen1an Gamble

Heritage Society Research Project

by Betsy Tyler

20 Capital Campaign News

21 NHANews

On the cover: The Great Comet of 1843 by Charles Piazzi Smyth

Oil on canvas, 906.78 x 609.6 mm, 1843. ŠNational Maritime Museum, London.

An eyezmtness account, painted by the astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth. The earliest observation occurred on the evening of February 5, 1843, and Smyth recorded 1ts appearance at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, between March 3 and 6.

The comet formed a disk, and Smyth described its nucleus as "a planetary disk, from which rays emerged in the direction of the tazl."

He observed that to the naked eye it appeared to have a double tm% with the two streamers proceeding/rom the head in perfectly straight lines. The tail of the comet holds the record /or actual extent, and the sighting was notable because of the intensity of lightapparently outshining any comet seen in the previous seven centuries-as well as for the length of its tail.

Extract of description on the website of the National Maritime Museum, London.

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Foreword Preservation and Education: Nantucket)s Quaker Heritage Clockwise from top:

HE QUAKER STORY ON NANTUCKET IS A

$5,400.00, "the whole to be done in a good and work-

remarkable one, and as the NHA endeavors to preserve and present the architecture c. 1881. and stories of Nantucket, we hope students F2891 and visitors gain a fuller appreciation of the Society of Intenor, c. 1969. Friends and the impact they had upon Nantucket's Pll%2 cultural and economic development.

To that end, I am pleased to report that the associaNHA executive director tion has recently completed extensive preservation Frank Milligan and work on the Quaker Meeting House, 7 Fair Street, a board oftrustees building on a site that once housed a much larger president Peter Nash. meetinghouse. The story begins in 1833 when a contract was signed between the Meeting of Friends and James Weeks "to build a meeting house for said Friends to be seventy feet front and sixty rear, to be twenty eight-feet posts, to have thirty-eight windows . .. of quality white pine. The roof to be four pitch hip [and] the building to be of good seasoned lumber and shingled with first-quality pine shingles." For this the Friends agreed to pay Weeks the sum of

manlike manner. " This large building reflected the confidence with which the Quakers viewed their future .

Little did they know that their growth, like that of the then booming whaling industry, was about to end.

Just one year before the Friends contracted to build the large meetinghouse, Nantucket's population topped 8,000 and thirty-two whaling vessels were sent to sea.

Furthermore, eight out of every ten businesses on the island were directly related to whaling, and there appeared no limit to its growth. However, by 1833 only 450 of those 8,000 Nantucketers, slightly more than five percent, were Quakers, down thirty percent from just a few decades earlier when they numbered 2,000 out of 5,600 island residents. Many factors contributed to the decline, including a younger Quaker population that was growing restless under the strict codes of behavior, especially the restriction on marrying non-Quakers.

Those who remained within the fold became embroiled in bitter theological debates that tore Nantucket's Society of Friends apart and led to schisms and costly competing construction projects as each group desired its own meetinghouse. A majority, including those who worshiped on Fair Street, retained their conservative instincts and followed the entrenched teachings of John Wilbur, who maintained traditional Quaker adherence to both scripture and continuing revelation through the experience of "Inner Light." A smaller number, about eighty adults, adopted the teachings of Joseph John Gurney, who believed that scriptural authority outweighed personal revelation. In 1845, Nantucket became the only monthly meeting in New England to declare itself "Wilburite," but by then only 120 adult members remained at the Fair Street meetinghouse. Soon that number stood at 106.

In this same period Nantucket began a rapid economic decline, with forty-four business bankruptcies

QMH interior

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reported in 1844. Two years later the town was engulfed in the Great Fire, and in 1850 the California Gold Rush would deliver the knockout economic blow that ended the Nantucket whaling industry-and with it the economic livelihood of most Nantucketers, regardless of theological belief.

After the large Fair Street "South " meetinghouse was dismantled, an adjoining Friends school, a much smaller building appropriate for the reduced Quaker following, was moved to the Fair Street/Rays Court site and converted to a meetinghouse. Like its larger predecessor this building was "done in a good and workmanlike manner" anchored with six eight-inch-square posts, one at each corner and two at midpoints along the building's original twenty-two-foot length (nine feet were later added) . Horizontal supporting girts connected the six posts at their vertical midpoints and diagonal braces connected the corner posts with the girts.

Vertical studs running between sill and top plates completed the basic structure. The wood-frame exterior walls were sheathed with one-by-eleven-inch boards and covered with clapboard siding, and later, wood shingles on the south wall.

By 1894 the Society of Friends had ceased to exist on the island and the meetinghouse was sold for $1,000 to the newly formed Nantucket Historical Association to house and display the association's growing collection of artifacts and manuscripts. In 1904 the NHA built a new concrete "fire-proof" museum adjoining the meetinghouse, which was restored to its former appearance including the reinstallation of the original benches, which had been saved . Just three years ago , the

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Historical Association raised the entire building and installed a fully climate-controlled basement storage vault as part of the NHA's $2 million research library construction project. Today, that 1833 construction contract and thousands of additional architectural drawings, ships logs, historical photographs, and other important documents are securely stored in that vaultfor now and for the future.

In 2002, following the completion of an architectural and structural report on the building's wood framing, the NHA began above-ground preservation work on the meetinghouse. Two massive corner posts were replaced with rernilled historic timbers that duplicated the building's mortise and tenon features. A number of lateral members and braces were also replaced, as was the entry doorsill and sheathing; repairs were done to the windows, gutters, and downspouts; and the building painted in its original nineteenth-century color.

Today, the NHA is proud to welcome the small number of island Quakers to the meetinghouse for weekly meetings and to reopen the restored building to the public. While the Broad Street museums are under extensive restoration and renovation, the meetinghouse will be open weekends throughout the winter and daily beginning next spring. Once again , 7 Fair Street becomes the NHA's "downtown" museum, in which trained interpreters will use a sampling of whaling artifacts and lively personal anecdotes to convey to visitors the fascinating interconnected story of whaling and Quakerism on Nantucket.

Left: Quaker women leaving the Quaker Meeting House, c.

1887.

Right:

-Frank D. Milligan

Exterior, January 2004.

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"Saw a comet star ablazing... ."

Log of the New Bedford whaling ship Washington, March 6) 1843 by

T

HE COMET THAT JAMES G. COFFIN, CAPTAIN

of the Washington, took note of in the ship's Leslie W. Ottinger log was the Great March Comet of 1843. It proved to be the most spectacular comet of the nineteenth century. Its only possible rival was the Great August Comet of 1881, but though this later comet was of similar magnitude, its appearance was compromised by a short tail.

The Washington had sailed from New Bedford in 1842 and was then in the Indian Ocean, 1,200 miles south of Madagascar. Captain Coffin was an experienced mariner, and this was his third cruise as master of a Nantucket or New Bedford whaling ship. He had no 1997 photograph of doubt previously seen comets, but certainly nothing to equal this one, which may account for his choice of Hale-Bopp "ablaze" to describe the appearance. over the Old Mill "Great" as applied to a comet is not a specific term, by former but has been used to denote comets clearly visible properties manager to the unaided eye. Comets originate within the outer Rick Morcom. solar system and their incidence is , except for a few like Halley 's Comet, unpredictable.

A comet is not visible until its orbit loops near the sun where part of its mass becomes vapor and dust. The resulting envelope and tail become luminous and cause it to be visible.

The apparent brightness of a comet, as of other celestial bodies , is expressed as its magnitude. The scale for mag-

nitude was devised by Hipparchus, the great observational astronomer and mathematician of the second century B.C., who compiled a catalogue of 850 stars. The brightest stars were assigned a magnitude of 1, and the faintest stars detected by his unaided eye a value of 6.

Increasing numbers signified diminishing apparent brightness. In modem times astronomers have calibrated the scale. The numbers vary by a factor of 2.5. Thus a star with a magnitude of 4.0 is 2.5 times brighter than a star of magnitude 5.0. Negative numbers describe still brighter objects. For example, Venus presently has a magnitude of -3.0. Mars, during its recent close transit of the earth, reached a magnitude of -2.8, and then rather quickly faded to its more usual -1.0. The Great March Comet had a magnitude of less than -3.0. For a tin1e it was, excepting our moon and the sun itself, the brightest object in the sky. Two recent great comets are Hyakutake in 1996, with a magnitude of 1.0 to 2.0, and Hale-Bopp in 1997, with a magnitude of -D.7. Thus, the comet reported by Captain Coffin was more than twenty times brighter than either of iliose. It must, indeed, have presented a most remarkable sight.

The March Comet of 1843 was first sighted sometime in rnid-Februmy. It wa most visible in the hour or so after sunset, low in the southwest, and was also visible to some observers during the day, always very near the sun. The comet wa brightest in the first three weeks of March.

From Nantucket, a series of observations of the comet is recorded in ilie dimy iliat George H. Gm¡dner kept between January 1, 1841 , and March 3, 1844.

These are the entries: March 7:

A Phanomenon [stc] seen this eve in the W being a comet. Commenced showing about 7. Lasted one hour.

WfNTER

March 8:

Comet seen again in the SW

March 9:

Comet seen this evening in SW

March 10: The Comet was not seen this eve on account of the weather being thick.

March 11: Comet seen this eve at Q past 6.

March 19: Comet seen very plain until9 PM.

Another report by a Nantucket resident was written by Joseph C. Starbuck. This is in the form of a letter actually a short journal, that he wrote to his brother in' 1846.

In it was a description of his experiences as an officer on the brig Cayuga. The Cayuga was trading cargo between Mexico, Peru, Chile, Hawaii, China, and Hong Kong. He reported that in March of 1843: At 4PM passes out of the Ladrone channel into the China Sea with a fresh breeze. The next night we saw a comet to the South with a very bright tail. At 8 it set below the horizon. It was visible 7 nights in succession and then disappeared.

In the NHA manuscript collection there are twenty-five logs and journals of whaling vessels that were at sea in March of 1843. Observations of the comet are recorded in eight, including that of the Washington with its note of "Saw a comet star ablazing." Most of the entries are brief: From the log of the Indian Chief, south of New Zealand, on March 7; "Saw a large comet in the NW"; from the Navigator on March 10, "At 8 saw a comet bearing WSW," from the Rose on March 7, "Saw a comet"; from the Walter Scott on March 4, "Saw the comet very plain last eve"; and from the Charles Carroll on March 2, just "Saw the comet." One log and one journal offer more detailed observations. The whaleship Nantucket had been towed over the bar on the camels and had sailed for the Pacific Ocean on June 15, 1841.

Her master was George Washington Gardner Jr., and it was probably his hand that made the entries in early March of 1843: March 4:

March5:

Cruising on equator. Immediately after sunset saw something to the West that had the appearance of the tail of a Comet extending from the horizon up about 18 degrees and the comet appeared to be below the horizon but a short distance.

At dark saw the comet very plaina most beautiful one with a tail about 15 degrees long

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{

,,

With the March 4 entry, there is a little sketch of the tail of the comet streaming up from the horizon and beside it a sliver of moon, noted to be a three-day-old moon.

The most elegant description of the comet is in the journal of Reuben Russell, master of the Nantucket whaleship Susan. The Susan had sailed on Dec. 12, 1841. Captain Russell wrote in 1843 while off the coast of Rarotonga: March 4:

At half past 7 PM about 8 degrees above the horizon we saw a remarkable bright Comet bearing west of us the tail of which extended about 30 degrees upward ... at 8 it disappeared in the western horizon.

March 5:

We observed the Comet again last evening at about 7 o'clock which showed very brilliant ... the star itself was about 10 degrees above the horizon the tail of which extended about 20 degrees pointing upwards from the sun ... it bore west of us and south from the moon about 20 degrees .. . they set about 8 PM

Detail of comet sketch

I from the log of the whaleship Nantucket,

March 4, 1843.

There followed several days of stormy weather. Then: March 10: At 8 PM the Comet before mentioned shone with great Brilliance ... we measured the height of the tail with a quadrant and made it 33 degrees bearing west of us.

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"COMETS"

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ODAY, THE SIGHT OF A COMET FILLS US \X'ITH WONDER.

We know that the visitations of these heavenly bodies are rare so we seize every opportunity to see them and record every fact of their existence. We look up at the stars hoping for another chance to see the flashings of a comet. In days gone by, a comet was thought to be a sign that the end of the world was approaching.

In 1881 Maria Mitchell spotted a comet from her windows at Vassar College. Not wanting to miss a moment of the comet's visit, she had the night watchman cut down an apple tree that obscured her view. Below are drawings of the 1881 comet found in one of her journals. Also, bound in the journal is a lecture she had written titled "Comets." Following is an excerpt from that lecwre.

Comet Hyakutake over Prospect Hzll Cemetery.

Photo by Nicole Harnish/eger/ Inquirer and Mirror,

1996.

At present, using powerful telescopes at least a dozen comets can be seen. Almost none become bright enough for observation with the unaided eye or even with binoculars. Actually, during the twentieth century no comet with a magnitude below -1.0 was recorded, and so none even approached the brilliance and appearance of the Great March Comet of 1843. Still, the arrival of comets is unpredictable. No doubt, in time, there will be another such great comet , but for the present, Captain Coffin's "comet star ablazing" remains the most spectacular of modern times.

--Cecil Barron Jensen It is not strange that in earlier & ruder times, a comet was the cause of terror to nations; that popes used bulls against them and common people prayed and fasted. Even now, the suddenness of a comet is startling. We are accustomed to fixedness in the appearance of the stars, from night to night. Orion's beams are shining as brilliant now as at the beginning of creation, the pole star has kept its place for ages, so far as the unassisted vision can say - the Great ~md the Little Bear have marched around and around ... night after night & year after year presenting the same relative position. We change our country and the stars do not change -we may lose sight of some, but we never lose all and they look upon us with the same beaming light. The stars which peeped in at our window, when first in childhood we were left alone in the dark, tmd were ministering angels then are ministering angels now. Who ever heard of a child's being afraid of a star?

We involLmtarily start when a stranger unannounced comes into our presence ... but when, from regions of space, a blazing & fiety comet flashes upon us and for a short period n.ms a rare rivalry to the flashing meteor, it is not strange that a slight shudder comes to even an intelligent observer. For how much do we know of them?

Leslie W Ottinger, a physician, retired to Nantucket in 1996.

He has been a volunteer in the Research Lzbrary since 1999 and contrzbuted "Goodbye Mary Mitchell Hard Luck Craft "/or the fall2003 issue of Historic Nantucket. /..._ L..j

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Excerpt and drawmgs from the Maria Mitchell Manuscript Collection, courtesy a/the Maria Mitchell Association.

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The Adventurous John Egle Excerpted /rom The Other Islanders N 1978 LEEDS MlTCHELL JR. INTERVIEWED JOHN Egle and wrote down a summary of his life from school days in Latvia to old age in Nantucket.

Egle found the oral history project so interesting that he acquired a tape recorder and cassettes and continued recording his memoirs on his own. His family story leading up to several members' departure from Latvia is as thrilling in its details as Nikita Carpenko's stories of the Russian Revolution and flight from the Bolsheviks (Historic Nantucket, Summer 2003 ).

In nineteenth-century Latvia the land was largely in the hands of absentee landlords-Baltic Germans , Poles, and Russians whose large estates were worked by Latvian sharecroppers, renters, and contract laborers.

The local population was in the unyielding grasp of the estate owners, and the alternatives were revolution at home or emigration to other lands. Russian suppression of rising nationalism in all the Baltic countries was carried out through the garrisoning of Cossack troops in cities and towns and terrorist reprisals against the small farn1ers and their families.

As John Egle told it to Mitchell, before his older brother Max fled to America he had been subjected to a near-fatal whipping with the knout-a vicious punishment used to intimidate Russian subjects. As a teenager, John himself had been drawn into revolutionary activities , and in order to evade police interrogation he sought employment on an estate distant from his home village of Tukums. In the cow"Se of those early years he came to speak Gennan, Polish, and Russian in addition to his native language . Eventually, despite his best efforts to disappear, the authorities located him, and he had to take a last leave of his devastated parents and flee his home country. Members of the Latvian underground hid John Egle and his friend Charles Duce, who was also a fu gitive, in the coal hold of a Finnish freighter, and they sailed away, never to see Latvia again.

Men1bers of the Duce and Egle fanUlies had come away from Latvia by stages, preceded by the oldest man and followed by the younger men and women.

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Christopher Duce arrived in the United States in 1906, and his wife Katherine came the next year. In 1907 Max Egle and George Duce came. The year after that, Max sent tickets to his brother John and Charles Duce for passage to Boston from London, where the young men had arrived as stowaways. George's wife Lena got out that year with their daughter Alice, and Max's wife Pauline came with their son John. Max's future sister-inlaw, Alma Becker, was the last to arrive in the United States, in 1913. Although their in1mediate port of entry had been Boston, and they had quickly connected with the Latvian community in Beverly, Massachusetts, many of the Egles and Duces ended up in Nantucket.

The 1918 influenza pandemic staged a return visit to Nantucket in 1920 and carried off three members of the little Latvian community. Gohn Egle's own account of his family's tragedy is appended here.) Life had to go on, however, and John Egle's life went on for an exceptionally long time.

As a young man he simultaneously courted the sea and his bride Alma, whom he met among the Latvian community in Beverly. Having briefly tried working for . ÂŁarm m . uvermont an d domg . carpentry wages on a d auy in Nantucket, he learned that he could earn much more by shelliishing. Investing in a boat of his own and building himself a rent-free shanty on Muskeget, he soon learned the sea in all its moods as he took his quahogs and scallops in to Stean1boat Wharf and sailed in the other direction to the mainland to spend time with Alma. In the autumn of 1914 she paid a visit to Nantucket to meet John's extended family, and in May of 1915 they were married. The next year Erna, the first of their children, was born.

In order to spend less time on the water and more with his growing family, John had gone to work in his brother Max's shop doing engine repair for the island's fishing fleet, while augmenting his

I by Frances Ruley

Karttunen

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John Egle at age 50 standzitg at h h l .r t e em o1 a boat.

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John Egle at 100,

income seasonally by operating the boats belonging to Nantucket summer residents. In the summer of 1920, months after influenza took Max's life, John became of the Lzly Pond captain of a new vessel built for Leeds Mitchell Sr., a (also shown below). wealthy summer resident of Brant Point. For the rest of F3254; 1986.105.5 Leeds Mitchell's life and afterward, John Egle was in what Leeds Mitchell Jr. described as "a symbiotic relationship" with the Mitchell family.

After fifty-seven years of marriage, Alma's death left John a widower. He had never been a man to let others do for him. He maintained and repaired his own boats.

He baked his own bread. He grew his own vegetables and flowers. When he needed a house, he built one.

with his 1983 painting

When the walls of his house seemed bare, he painted landscapes on them. After Alma's death , he concentrated his time and attention on painting.

Over a dozen years, between the ages of 86 and 98, John Egle produced three hundred paintings, which were exhibited to local acclaim and shown in 1988 at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Even after the Nantucket Artists' Association honored him for his accomplishments at age 97, he continued on robustly until his death at 101, by then the holder of Nantucket's famous Boston Post Cane, which is awarded to the island's oldest resident.

"A True Story" Excerpt /rom NHA cassette CT-50: John Egle: Miscellaneous Stories, 1978 The year 1920 was not an easy year for my family.

I remember it as a really hard year. So let me start from February 9. It was an ordinary winter day. There had been a lot of snow, close to twelve, fourteen inches, and it was melting because of a warmer spell and was nothing but puddles and slush and most of the snow was gone.

I had my brother; we were -very close. There was really no day we didn't see each other to talk and laugh and any old way. We couldn't stay away from each other. ...

My brother had a shop, a repair shop where we repaired engines. At that time they were putt-putt engines .... When work was a little slack we used to go hunting. On February 9, 1920, we went out back to Hummock Pond to look for rabbits. We had a dog along, but somehow it wasn't very good weather-a lot of puddles, big bunches of drifted snow that had melted away. We didn't have much luck.

All of a sudden my brother says, "Well I feel kind of chilly." I said, "Well, Max, let's turn around. It's time to quit." Because there was a lot of sickness around then, the bad influenza that had started in town. People had it and it was very powerful, the Asian influenza. So I said, "Best thing we go down home."

So we were maybe a mile out of town. Walking back, we went by the cemetery, Prospect Hill Cemetery.

The road leads by there. Coming by, we kept joking and talking. And there's a valley in the cemetery, and that valley was filled up with water. And we joked and said, "Well, we wouldn't like to sleep in that kind of place,

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under water." But he pointed out that farther down there is a hill and a bush, and he said, "Do you know, I shot a rabbit there. " "Well," I said, "Is that so?"

Anyway, we went down home. But when he got home, he got real sick and he had to go to bed. In another day he contracted double pneumonia.

Everyone was sort of scared. They were afraid to go to visit. So he was sick, and on the 12th of February-it was a real cold day-my brother passed away.

My brother's wife asked me to come over, so I came over and went into the room where the undertaker had picked my brother up already, and he was laying in a casket in another room. And I went and stayed with him, and somehow, when I was with him, I felt so much better. My fear sort of disappeared, and I felt like he was alive yet. I felt like he was talking, and I felt so much better.

The undertaker-today we'd call him the funeral director-said in order to go to the cemetery, we had to have a lot there. He happened to have a lot where we'd fit in. Anyway, I didn't know what else to do.

I didn't know what to do about the funeral rites. I asked the undertaker, "Is it all right if I conduct the rites at the graveside myself?" He said, "Oh, it's all right if you would like to do it. It's really proper if you want to do it." So somehow I was my brother's-I guess you'd call it "keeper."

At the funeral there were about five or six Latvian families, so really Latvian that they hardly spoke much HISTORIC

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English at all. And that was one reason I wanted to conduct the rites in Latvian so they would understand.

There arrived the funeral hearse drawn by black horses. A carriage brought his wife, and we came in a carriage. All gathered at the grave, and I tried with a good heart to make the rites in Latvian. And so everyone understood, because when I was a kid, my father was often called to conduct the graveside rituals in Latvia. So it sort of came into my mind that I can do it in private for my own brother, and I think nobody could put more love in it than I could do for my own brother.

As you remember, we talked, my brother and me, by the cemetery. He pointed out the bush where he'd shot the rabbit. Superstition, much superstition, but it was just two weeks later that my brother was buried in sight of that bush in the same cemetery. That really suits well the people who hold superstitions about what you shouldn't do in the cemetery-disturb anythingbecause you will be punished. We try to be not superstitious, but it just happened. And that you can put in a true story.

John Egle's painting of TonySarg's seamonster, c. 1980.

1988.38.2

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Ethnohistorian Frances Ruley Ktzrttunen is the author a/The Other Islanders, a three-part history of the non-

English population a/Nantucket. Parts I and II are now viewable on-line at the NHA website, www.nha.org.

Look /or Part III on-line this winter. Fran is a frequent contnbutor to Historic Nantucket.

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Historic Nantucket Book Section

"Writing About Nantucket Architecture'' by \ An Margaret Moore Booker Photographs by

Cottages: The Architectural Heritage of Nantucket Island

Introduction to

Sea-Captains' Houses and RoseCovered Cottages: The Architectural Heritage of Nantucket Island

Jordi Cabre

N

ANTUCKET ISLAND, A FIFTEEN-MILE-LONG

and three-mile-wide "elbow of sand," as Herman Melville called it in Moby-Dz'ck, is home to an astounding 2,400 historic structures, including eight hundred pre-Civil War buildings. These houses and commercial buildings represent the character and charm of Nantucket's people and glorious past. While there are preservation-minded individuals and organizations on the island, including the Nantucket Historical Association, as well as preservation regulations, there is still a widespread need for educating the public on the merits of Nantucket's important historic architecture and the necessity of preserving it for future generations.

Thus, Rose Gonnella, Patricia Butler, and I joined forces to write a book called

Sea-Captains' Houses and Rose-Covered

in an attempt to meet the aforementioned needs, as well as to celebrate the island's extraordinary architectural gems. With an emphasis on preservation, the publication covers the wide range of building styles on the island, from the stark lean-to and typical Nantucket house to the balanced classical Federal and Greek Revival, to the eclectic Victorian, to the streamlined modern.

In these days of gut-rehabs and unsympathetic extensions, a book of this kind is more valuable than ever. Each house and building on Nantucket has its own story to tell, in the brick and mortar, in the trim and bracket, in the shingle and clapboard. This book is just a beginning toward spreading the word, and since its publication we have still seen pieces of American history destroyed on Nantucket. As Rose Gonnella said to me, "We can only pray that more people will read our book and grow to love the historic architecture enough to preserve it and the streetscape upon which it rests and is shared by the community."

When Rose, Pat, and I joined together to write this book, it was our passion for Nantucket architecture that served as our foundation and common ground. We each brought different talents, backgrounds, and areas of expertise to the table. Rose is an artist, writer, and educator; Pat is a historic preservationist and architectural historian; and I an1 a writer and museum curator.

As we divided up the chapters, we discovered that the division happened naturally as we each chose to write about subjects and time periods we knew the most about. The most difficult aspect in writing the book was the selection of the buildings to discuss-we had, as mentioned previously, more than 2,400 buildings to WINTER

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choose from! We did, however, make the first major cut by primarily focusing on domestic structures (with the exception of the chapter on the Greek and Federal styles).

We began the book by conductin g good, solid research and numerous site visits to historic hom es. It became almost a community event, as we involved many island homeowners, builders, architects, researchers, librarians, and archivists in our research process. We tried to bring this human element-the island's community spirit-into the book. This element, as Rose explains, increases the sense of connection between the past, the homeowners, house builders, and present readers of the book.

Sometimes we became so intimately involved in the research we began to feel ourselves slipping back in tin1e. Rose was surprised to discover that she felt emotionally involved with life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on Nantucket. "I was thrilled to peek into the lives of so many Nantucketers and draw into their lives through visiting historic homes, reading journals, notebooks, letters, and newspapers, and looking at their drawings and maps," she explained.

As Rose suggests, more often than not research entails working primarily indoors-in dimly lit libraries, in dusty old archives, in gloomy town record offices.

One of the joys of working on this architecture book for me was that it got me out and into the glorious Nantucket sea rur, looking intently upward at building details, wandering down sandy pathways to seek out hidden architectural gems, and exploring the nooks and crannies of many different neighborhoods. When I set off on my study excursions, I was equipped with my trusty spiral notebook and pen, and my old "point and shoot" camera. Sometimes I had unexpected adventures on these jaunts, like the day a sudden shower drenched me from head to toe and I was forced to retreat to a covered porch of a wonderful old summer HISTORI C

NANTUCKET

I

home on Hulbert Avenue. Boarded up for the season, the house's rickety but stylish porch provided me with shelter from the cool spring rain and a panoramic view of the earliest houses built in the Brant Point/Hulbert Avenue area.

Early on in the project we selected island photographer J ordi Cabre to join our team. His keen eye for detail, knowledge of the island's history, willingness to take on this man1illoth project, and his unbelievable patience, made him a perfect principal player in our project. The results of his efforts are the stunning and inspirational photographs that bring the story of Sea-Captains' Houses and Rose-Covered Cottages to life.

The process of gathering the photographs for the book was no small task for us, and sometimes led to unplanned escapades. Rose, Pat, and I were new at styling and art-directing in1ages and found ourselves in a pickle on a few occasions. At the end of June we realized that the roses in 'Sconset had been blooming for weeks and we might actually miss their flowering.

We were in danger of not getting photographs of "rosecovered cottages" for our book-and it was part of the title! Luckily, after a frantic early morning drive out to 'Sconset we located a few houses that did still have gorgeous pink and red roses still in bloom. We made a desperate call to Jordi and he rushed out to the village that day to capture the roses before they faded, crumpled, and dropped to the ground.

On another occasion Rose asked J ordi to take a photograph of 45 India Street when it was snowing out, because she wanted an atmospheric image. Well, the snowflakes turned into a howling storm, Rose and Jordi were both freezing (J ordi needed to use his camera wiiliout gloves), ilie snow was building up quickly, and cars were almost literally sliding into iliem as iliey tried to drive past. After all of this ilie photograph was so

Auld Lang Syne in 'Sconset with roses.

Photographs

Š ]ordi Cabri,

/rom Sea-Captains' Houses and RoseCovered Cottages,

published by Ri:a.oli International Publications, 2003.

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13

PERSPECTIVE VIEWS OF 'SCONSET COTTAGES.

Creative marketing: Drawings of fifteen Siasconset cottages /rom Edward F Underhzll's

snowy that the house was barely visible and the shot was unusable! Then, of course, there was the infamous day when Rose locked herself out of her car, in 'Sconset, in fifteen-degree weather! Jordi had already left and driven back to town, and AAA told Rose they were sure no one was available to haul a car "all the

pamphlet.

14

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way" from 'Sconset to town! So Jordi had to come to her rescue.

That same winter, on the absolutely coldest day-with subzero temperatures and roads and sidewalks glazed with treacherous ice, photographer Cabre and I stood in an unheated bungalow freezing our toes and fingers off, trying to set up the perfect interior shot. We maintained a sense of humor through most of the afternoon, but I felt genuinely distressed and inadequate when Jordi explained that Rose usually brought homemade hot chocolate and cookies when she met him for photo shoots in cold houses!

In the process of collecting information for our chapters, we had to act like detectives to ferret out new facts and details. We made new discoveries most often by delving into the Nantucket Historical Association's vast archive of original manuscripts and documents. Rose was particularly intrigued to learn about Edward Underhill, whom she calls the "imitation whale house developer" of 'Sconset, in the late nineteenth century. She unearthed that he was a comedic fellow, who hid behind pen names like "Knight Russ Oxside" for his fiction. His marketing and advertising techniques for his tiny 'Sconset cottages were innovative for the time.

In my rambles through the NHA's archival collections and in looking at island newspapers dating to the nineteenth century, I was amazed to learn that so many of the Victorianera buildings on the island were painted vivid colors. It was equally interesting to discover that not all islanders approved of this innovation. My favorite quote in Sea-Captains' Houses is from a letter in the NHA's collection written by Nantucket schoolteacher Elma Folger, in 1881, in which she says "The J ohnsons have painted their house a deep red, and the window-sills and doors etc. yellow. The Nantucket people shake their heads and wonder what it all means, and what everything is going to."

Pat made most of her discoveries on her "study strolls" around town. She was surprised to find interesting new architectural details that she had never noticed

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Snowstorm at

before, including a stained-glass window depicting Masonic symbols.

The research was the most fun, but the writing was painstaking and torture for all of us. With severe limits on the word count and images allowed by our publisher, we were forced to be frugal and cut back-which was difficult, as we realized that we could have easily written a whole book on each of the chapter subjects.

The only thing that got me through long bouts of writing and editing was a constant supply of M&M candies and the knowledge that there was indeed light at the end of the tunnel (and a vacation in Jamaica!).

We had a few other challenges to surmount because of restrictions from our editors. For instance, we were adamant that the book should reflect our scholarly research and include annotated footnotes and a bibliography. In an age when coffee-table picture books with little or no substance are common, we stood firm when it came to the overall scholarly aspect of the book. We were also firm about using both archival photographs and contemporary shots, which was the only way we could accurately tell the story of Nantucket's historic buildings. Most of the archival shots were drawn from the Nantucket Historical Association's enormous-and enormously important-image archive.

When we give presentations for our book, Pat loves to tell the story about her grandson, Dylan James.

When he joined Pat one day last summer, on a

HI STOR I C NANTUCKET

Nantucket Preservation Trust architectural walking tour 45 India Street. of Nantucket town, he quietly observed Pat as she pointed out structures and architectural details. Then, The authors, over the next few days, as Pat pushed him in his stroller /rom left to nght: or they walked together around town, Dylan would Pat Butler; stop, look up, and point to an architectural detail and Rose Gonnella, say "See, see!" From this Pat learned that you can never start too early in learning to appreciate the architectural and Margaret gems on Nantucket. And, furthermore, we must never Moore Booker. take for granted our irreplaceable surroundings, but continually look up and "see!"-and teach others to understand the remarkable heritage of which we are the caretakers.

I Margaret Moore Booker is coauthor of Sea-Captains' Houses and Rose-Covered Cottages: The Architectural Heritage of Nantucket Island (New York: Universe, a division ofRizzoli

International Publications, in association with the Egan Institute ofMaritime Studies, 2003).

The book is available at the Museum Shop, (508) 228-5786 or on-line at www.nha.org

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Review by Sea of Glory: Elizabeth Oldham America's Voyage of Discovery,

there with Magellan, Columbus, Prince Henry the Navigator, and James Cook. But we don't know that any of those intrepid Europeans were on the receiving The U. S. Exploring Expedition, end of the hatred and fear from their officers and crews 1838--1842 as was the commander of the Ex. Ex.

By Nathaniel Philbrick Thanks to his reading of an unofficial, private journal kept by a literate and sensitive junior officer (he kept two journals, one to be surrendered to Wilkes at HE VAULT IN THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL Association's Research Library contains the end of the voyage), Philbrick has been able to recremany wondrous things: some 50,000 origi- ate the cliurnal activities of this fantastic voyage. The six nal photographic images in various mecli- I ships set out from the Norfolk Navy Yard, sailed urns; more than 400 logbooks chronicling whaling around the Horn and up the western coast of the voyages, some successful, some not; hundreds of Americas to the Pacific Northwest; then south again account books dating back to Mary Coffin Starbuck's through Polynesia to the forbidding, newly cliscovered so-called "Account Book with the Inclians"; ancient continent of Antarctica. All the while mapping and maps and atlases, some from the sixteenth century; and charting, cliscovering islands and civilizations, creating a collection of rare books, among them the six-volume paths in the sea that the whalers and sealers of first eclition of Charles Wilkes's Narrative of the United Nantucket would follow.

1 States South Seas Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842.

Four years, two ships lost, a voyage under the comWho, you might ask? What expeclition? If there are mand of a man described by his officers and men as "an ten people on Nantucket who know who Charles ignorant and nervous seaman. " Then home, to New I Wilkes was and what expeclition that was, we'd be sur- York, where he was born, Charles Wilkes was court prised. Mark Twain was thrilled by it; Thoreau read martialed on charges of "illegally whipping his men, about it; Melville was inspired by it; but unlike the tale massacring the inhabitants of a tiny Fijian island, and 1 of the doomed whaleship lying about the cliscovery of Antarctica, and other outEssex, the Ex. Ex., as contem- rages." Wilkes was let off with a reprimand. poraries called it, is virtually If Charles Wilkes comes across as the merciless unknown today. However, tyrant he was, he is also revealed as a loving husband those days, years, decades of and father. Much of the rich, evocative writing in this ignominy are over, for Nat book is in the letters he wrote to his wife Jane. But it is Philbrick has written another Philbrick's own mastery of the language that weaves spellbinder. this extraordinary tapestry. Exploration by sea would Six U. S. naval vessels, 346 end with the opening of the American West. This new men including scientists and "narrative of the Ex. Ex." pulls it out of obscurity and artists who would collect spec- into the canon of maritime America. imens and artifacts that conSea of Glory has been named one of 2003's "notable tributed to the founding of the books of the year," by the New York Times Book Smithsonian Institution, the Review (as has Sea-Captains' Houses and Rose-Covered U. S. Botanic Garden, and the Cottages, introduced on page 12 of this issue). Sea of Naval Observatory. Philbrick Glory is available for purchase at the Museum Shop, describes it as "one of the (508) 228-5786 or on-line at www.nha.org largest voyages of cliscovery in the history of Western exploration," and places its commander, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (he would make himself a captain, and almost get shot for doing. so), right up

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Wmdmills of New England: Their Genius, Madness, History & Future

by Daniel Lombardo

0

N OUR I LAND, WHICH POINT TO THE

preservation of a revered working eighteenth-century mill as a matter of pride, visions of windmills of the future are stirring up controversy. Daniel Lombardo, author of Windmills of New England: Their Genius, Madness, History & Future, would no doubt be delighted by this juxtaposition of historic windmills and leek turbines, the past and future of a romantic invention linked in the local consciousn s. His well-timed book subtly underscores the irony of preserving historic windmills while potentially altering hi toric landscapes as a result of new technology-opinions hotly debated on the Cape and islands at the pre ent time. And while there is no doubt that Lombardo is all for preserving the region's industrial past, he is also drawn to the potential role \vindmills might play in the future.

In writing Windmills of ew England, Lombardo has set himself an ambitious task, saying that his "deepest hope is to revive the windmill as a living, churning, creaking part of both the physical landscape and of our imagination. " Frustrated that windmills come in a distant second to lighthouses in terms of public interest and presetvation dollars, Lombardo offers a brief history of the introduction and technological developments of windmills in the region, from the early-seventeenthcentury workhorses to twentieth-century miniature golf follies (where today tiny \vindmills are being replaced by adventure-themed structures). Principally, however, the book lovingly details storied New England windmills past and present.

Windmills of New England i a book as much about people as it is about buildings. We follow the author as he visits New England's mills and meets his fellow windmill-lovers. Lombardo seen1s equally plea ed to recount the story of his meeting with Art Miller, supervisor of the Sear burg (Vermont) Wind Power Facility, with whom he "spent a good part of tl1e afternoon talking about everything that seen1ed to be under the sun that day," or letting Barbara Townson Weller tell the story of her windmill, Chatham's Sur Mer, in her own words.

But perhaps no other vignette so wonderfully combines Lombardo's interest in mills and the people who love

them as does his take on the Nantucket Historical Review by Association's Old Mill, which he describes as "the most Kirstin Freeman dramatic working windmill in the northeast."

The last of five known windmills on Nantucket, the Gamble Old Mill is thought to have been built by sailor Nathan Wilbur, who had seen windmills in Holland and may have built his mill from the oak timbers of wrecked ships, despite being mocked by island residents.

Lombardo acknowledges what NHA interpreters have known for years: that this story has a few holes. First, there was an earlier windmill on Nantucket (the design of which supposedly came to Frederick Macy in a dream), so the invention would not have been foreign to Nantucketers. There is also evidence that Wilbur was murdered before he could begin construction on the project. But though the history of the Old Mill, constructed in 1746, is sometimes debated among island historians, the fact that it is a tangible and operable renlinder of Nantucket's agrarian past is invaluable and cherished by the association and the island.

Coming to Nantucket, Lombardo expected to see a static windmill sinlilar to dozens he saw during his travels in coastal New England, "a silent structure with a docent describing how it used to grind corn." Instead, he was astonished when the Old Mill "burst into view, sails flapping in the air, carrying its creaking old wood like a nineteenth-century whaling ship heading out to sea." Lombardo notes rightly that it is rare these days to see a windmill set with sails, grinding corn. It is also rare for the miller's craft and skill to continue to be passed down from generation to generation.

At the Old Mill, the NHA educates its staff as well as the visiting public.

The Nantucket Historical Association has had an informal apprentice miller program in place for as long as anybody can remember. Names of modern millers who have worked their way up through the ranks and begun to teach others are carved into the wall of the maintenance shed near the Old Mill. This tradition of experienced millers teaching apprenWINTER

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Clockwise from top left: author Daniel Lombardo.

Millers Amanda Nicholas, Patrick Prugh, and Emzly ChiswickPatterson.

Emtly giving the vanes a running start.

Justin Panseau and Patrick taking the sails down at the end of the day.

Photographs courtesy of the author and On Cape Publications.

18HISTORIC

tices, whether young or old, male or female, is one that has long been regarded as a special part of the NHA's interpretive program, and one w h i c h Lombardo dearly views as umque and important. He describes meeting the "enthusiastic young miller," Patrick Prugh, who started as an apprentice at the Old Mill at the ripe old age of fourteen. Training under miller Walt Garbalinski, Patrick quickly became one of the NHA's most ardent interpreters of the history of the Old Mill. Lombardo describes Patrick in action: "braced against the oak beams like a ship's pilot, he watched the speed of the blades, leaving his spot occasionally to keep the sails trimmed and to the wind, and to carefully regulate the millstones .... Patrick, like any good mariner, was alert to the weather and to every small change in the wind's strength, direction, and mood." Lombardo watches closely as Patrick, one of four master millers on the NHA interpretive staff, grinds com, educates visitors, and supervises the apprentices.

He even joins in the fun: "I asked if I might have a try. I grabbed a blade, ... pushed and ran. As the blade lifted into the air, I let go, spun out of the way of the following blade, and watched as the Old Mill caught the wind and gradually swept up to grinding speed."

It is obvious that the romance of the working mill and the tradition of the apprenticeship program made Nantucket's Old Mill stand out in Lombardo's experience. He devotes fully ten pages of his book I NANTUCKET

to Nantucket's Old Mill, including many wonderful photos of miller Prugh and apprentice millers Amanda Nicholas and Emily ChiswickPatterson in action.

Windmills of New England is best in moments like these: passages where Lombardo combines local lore with his personal stories and considered opinion.

Some chapters are weaker than others: the chapter on the role of windmills in literature and culture is particularly so, jumping from Cervantes to Puff Daddy with little context or analysis. However, Lombardo's take on the hotly debated issue of wind power is well balanced, and his appendixes-suggested driving tours of some of Cape Cod's and Rhode Island's more hidden mills-are detailed and well thought out.

For anyone who has visited the Old Mill when it was running, has stood inside its creaking hull and watched the blades spin while catching the air, this book is a wonderful reminder of that unique Nantucket experience.

Kirstin Freeman Gamble is the NHA's education and public programs coordinator. Windmills of New England is available at the Museum Shop, (508) 228-5786 or on-line at www.nha.org WINTER

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HERI!AGE SOCIETY RESEARCH PROJECT

Grace Brown Gardner This is an account ofa bequest made to the NHA by Grace Brown Gardner.

As part of the Heritage Society Research Project by island researcher Betsy Tyler, future zsmes of Historic Nantucket will include other such reports on bequests to the NHA made over the last century.

G

RACE BROWN GARDNER WAS

born on Nantucket in 1880 to Arthur H. Gardner and Mary Macy Brown Gardner, two fans of local history and genealogy who passed their love of island lore to their daughter. After retiring from a career as a science teacher in New Bedford, Fall River, and Framingham, Grace returned to her family home on Nantucket in 1941. There she created a pretechnological database of Nantucket history in the form of more than fifty scrapbooks.

The Q ueen of Clippings, Miss Gardner cut and pasted the old-fashioned way, with scissors and glue. She clipped articles from the Inquirer and Mirror of her day, as well as capturing the nineteenth-century issues reported in other local papers.

When word of her project got out, she was inundated with piles of newsprint from sympathetic history lovers.

The result is marvelous . If you are interested in any aspect of Nantucket's historyfarms , schools, wharves, housesthe Grace Brown Gardner Scrapbook Collection at the Research Library is a resource not to be overlooked . Miss Gardner donated this subject

guide to all things Nantucket to the NHA several years before she died in 1973.

In her wilL Grace Brown Gardner left to the NHA historical books, pamphlets, and papers, and a small assortment of artifacts. One of the items from Miss Gardner's estate is a beautiful spool holder and sewing box presented to her grandmother, Charlotte Coffin Gardner, wife of Capt. William B. Gardner, by the crew of the Sarah Parker in 1852.

The Sarah Parker had sailed from Nantucket to San Francisco in 1852 and was employed in the coastal trade between Puget Sound and the gold country for two years. Grace's father was born in San Francisco in 1854.

Grace Brown Gardner divided her monetary estate among the NHA , the Nantucket Atheneum , and the Nantucket Cottage Hospital. To those three organizations she also left a curious deed that is a historical document in its own right: equal shares in three sheep commons .

Once upon a time a sheep common enabled the owner to graze one sheep on the common and undivided lands held by the Proprietorship. Thank you, Grace, for reminding us that history is in the details.

- Betsy Tyler

At top: Grace Brown Gardner, c. 1915.

Several notable pieces from Grace's bequest to the NHA: sewing box; James Walter Folger painting; Windsor chair.

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TheNHA's finback whale skeleton leaves its longtime home at the Whaling Museum for ajourney to new digs.

Flying high in the Nantucket HighSchool.

Photograph by Rob Benchley, Nantucket Independent.

CAMPAI GN

Campaign Update Gifts and pledges of more than $18 million are moving The Campaign for the Nantucket Historical Association ever nearer its $21 million goal for the permanent endowment, new museums, and Research Library.

"Achievement from the leadership phase of the campaign provided the funds to complete the Research Library in 2001 and commence the new museum project this fall," according to Marcia Wdch, trustee and campaign chair. "In order to meet all of our objectives for the properties and education programs, it is essential that we reach our $21 million goal by expanding our fundI raising efforts throughout the Nantucket community."

The NHA launched this public phase of the campaign in late September, asking NHA members and community members to "Sign On to Support Nantucket History."

Gifts of all sizes are encouraged, and donors of $500 or more are invited to write their names in a log as a permanent record of their support. "We are very pleased with the membership and the community's initial response," said Rebecca Bartlett, trustee and public campaign chair. "We hope that everyone will take advantage to sign-on, and do their part. After all, the NHA's role in the community affects each and every one of us regardless of whether we are here for a month or are yearround Nantucket residents." To date, the Nantucket community has responded with gifts and pledges of more than $150,000.

A list of all donors to the campaign through December 31, 2003, will appear in the NHA's 2003 Annual Report.

Progress of Candle Factory Restoration The restoration of the Whaling Museum as part of the new museum construction project is proceeding rapidly. Built in 1847 as a candle factory by Richard Mitchell and Sons, the building has served as the Whaling Museum since 1930. The restoration project will allow the NHA to make important structural improvements to the building while revealing more of its original fabric. Several mid- to late-twentieth-century ch anges and materials have

20

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already been removed from the building. The enormous beam press, a wooden mechanism used for pressing whale oil, and the only one of its kind still in its original location, has been fully revealed for the first time in at least seventy-five years. The massive stone foundation for the tryworks, a large brick hearth used to heat the oil and purify it, has also been uncovered.

When the restoration is complete, these two artifacts, central to the important job of processing the whale oil, will be interpreted. Doing so will allow the historic fabric of the building to be exposed, better appreciated, and utilized to demonstrate oil processing and candle making, and provide a more comprehensive picrure of the whaling industry and its rdated trades.

Bring Home Nantucket's Whale!

With construction under way at the Broad Street site, the Nantucket Historical Association is one step closer to bringing home Nantucket's sperm whale. The new skeleton of the forty-seven-foot sperm whale that washed ashore in 'Sconset in 1997 will anchor the museum's Gosnell Hall, where the story of whaling will come to life amid whaling artifacts, lectures, and audiovisual presentations.

Campaign gifts designated for the new Whaling Museum will hdp bring home Nantucket's whale. Gifts of all sizes are encouraged, and there are many ways to support the campaign. For more information or to make a gift, contact Jean Grimmer at (508) 825-2248, Ext. 11, or jgrimrner@nha.org.

Moving the Finback Whale The skdeton of the forty-three-foot finback whale that washed up at Dionis in 1967 has been a principal exhibit of the Whaling Museum for the past thirty years.

Visitors touring the museum turned with awe to the skdeton-appreciating its size and complex skdetal system. In addition, the skeleton was the largest single object to be moved by the curatorial staff in preparation for the restoration of the Whaling Museum.

When plans for the restored Whaling Museum included installing the skeleton of the sperm whale, we wondered what to do with the finback . Then it occurred to us that it should go to the Nantucket High School, home of sports teams called the Nantucket Whalers. School administrators enthusiastically approved of the long-term loan and offered the soaring Hall of Flags as the space to install it.

Moving the skeleton required a team of planners (and heavy lifters) from the NHA and the schools.

Local business owners also donated time and equipment to the move. Whale-articulation specialists from Bar Harbor, Maine, led the project.

N A N T:-;-: U~C;:-::K--:E::-:: T------------------

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N H A

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Harvest Fair The fourth annu al Harvest Fair was held on O ctober 18.

Despite a clo u dy sk y and chilly temperatures, nearly 400 people turn ed o ut for the autumn celebration , which has become a new Nantucket tradition.

The NHA staff and volunteers led visitors in gam es including apple bobbing, relay races , and tug-of-war, and helped children paint pumpkins and roll beeswax candles.

Though the Old Mill did not run this year because of the weather, families enjoyed cornbread donated by the Nantucket Bake Shop and shook cream into butter to spread on top. The newly cleared Mill Hill land across from the Old Mill was the perfect spot for hoop rolling and the game of graces, an eighteenth-century pastime.

This year, the Nantucket High School's culinaty arts class, led by Bob Buccino, prepared delicious food for visitors. Sale of the chowder and sandwiches help support his students' purchase of cooking utensils and unifom1s. In addition, Bartlett's Farm and Grand Union both donated supplies to the Harvest Fair.

"It was won de rful to see so many familiar faces again at this fall's H atvest Fair," said education and public programs coordinator Kirstin Gamble. "However, this year's event also attracted many more off-island visitors than ever b efore. We are pleased to help the extended comm unity learn a bit about Nantucket's agrarian past through this entertaining event. "

Harvest Social and Square Dance To celebrate the harvest season and fall on Nantucket, the NHA hosted its first Harvest Social and Square

HISTORI C

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Above /rom left: The Old Mill was

Dance on October 18 at the American Legion Hall.

The evening featured caller and dance instructor Bill I White and attracted a diverse crowd of Nantucketers the place to be for willing to swing their partners and do-si-do around the the fourth annual hall. Chairs for the event, lrean Oakley Scheiber and Harvest Fair in October.

NHA trustee Nina Hellman, kept the decorations sim- 1 Middle. ple and the atmosphere informal. A barbeque dinner of . d''. . chicken an d n.b s Wl.th all of th e tnmrrungs was served Rollzng beeswax can teS with interpreter

by Jimmy Perelman.

Patty Frost.

Nightmare on Main Street

Right.

An eerie blue glow at the Old Gaol ... a ghostly sea Pipe cleaner curls chantey at Greater Light ... a roaring yowl from the Macy-Christian House. With the Northern Lights overhead, this year's Nightmare on Main Street event was spookier than ever.

Led by NHA interpreters bearing lanterns and telling Nantucket ghost stories, visitors were guided to five different NHA properties including Hadwen House, the Old Gaol, and Greater Light, where they heard extended tales of mystery, mayhem, and the supernatural. This year, new stories included the bloody tale of the pirate queens Anne Bonney and Mary Read, an investigation into the existence of the mysterious Tuckernuck Yoho, and a sea chantey about the green ghost of Alabama John Cherokee, a Native American pressed into service on a whaleship. Doug Burch provided a masterly retelling of the gory mutiny on the whaleship Globe, and the evening was capped with the crowd favorite, Betsy Pardi's interactive telling of Ichabod Paddock's encounter with a mermaid in a whale's stomach.

"Each year our interpretive staff becomes more and more creative with the stories they pull together," said education

at the pumpkin decorating table.

Below left: Square dancers in the A merican Legion Hall.

Right: Event chairs Nina Hellman and Irean Oakley Schrezber with caller BzllWhite.

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Installing the wreaths:

and public programs coordinator Kirstin Gamble.

"The maintenance staff did a wonderful job making all Reggie Levine, our properties look appropriately eerie, and everyone NHA membership had a good, spooky time!"

Creative designer

coordinator Virginia Kinney, Festival a/Wreaths chair Jo-Ann Winn, and husband Bob Winn.

Wreaths committee: Bob and Jo-Ann Winn, Nonie Slavitz, Sandy Taylor, Donna and Karl Schulz, Pam Waller, and Joan and Paul Clarke.

Ginny Kinney with red tickets generously donated to the NHA /or the annual Chamber of Commerce drawing.

Opposite page: Chairs Diane LaFrance and Sue Fine.

George Korn and Richard Kemble flank Kim Corkran and her parents, Bill and Lucile.

Past chairs of the Festival a/Trees: Jackie Peterson, Maraa Welch, Richard Kemble, Jeanette Garneau, Kim Corkran, George Korn, Judi Hill Judy Lee, Peggy Kaufman, Jo-Ann Wz¡nn, and Kathleen Walsh.

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H I S T 0 R I C

News from the NHA Research Library Visitor activity in the NHA Research Library reaches its peak in the fall months. It is also when the largest number of volunteers donate their services. This fall volunteers lent their skills to a wide variety of tasks with en¡.husiasm and dedication. Helen Didriksen has been processing and cataloguing the Bunker, Paddock, Brooks family collection, which relates to three generations of one Nantucket family. Doris Glazer and Peg Read helped to organize the duplicate book collection.

Donna Cooper continued to summarize the Whalemen's Shipping List; Joanne Polster lent her assistance with our photograph collection; and Nancy Tyrer worked to digitize and catalogue photographs from the Tony Sarg collection. Long-time volunteer Les Ottinger offered his time to read and summarize ships' logs. Several volunteers, including Penny Snow, Peg Read, Susan Kirk, and Trevor Lockley, entered the records of the New North Cemetery into the NHA Cemetery Database now found on-line at www.nha.org. The NHA Research Library also had a part-time, temporary employee, Holly Corkish, who demonstrated her skills as an archival assistant.

The 2003 Festival of Wreaths and Trees The Festival of Wreaths returned this year to Sherburne Hall, at the Preservation Institute: Nantucket, 11 Centre Street. Led by chair Jo-Ann Winn, the festival featured seventy-seven wreaths donated by members of the Nantucket community.

Now in its fifth year, the Festival of Wreaths has become a popular creative challenge for many island artists. No two wreaths are the same. "Every year I am astounded by the generosity of the community," said Winn. "It really is a super event." Other volunteers for the event included Reggie Levine, creative design; and committee members Joan and Paul Clarke, Donna and Karl Schulz, Nonie Slavitz, Sandy Taylor, Pam Waller, and Bob Wmn. N A N T U C K E T

The tenth annual Festival of Trees moved to the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies at the Coffin School, 4 Winter Street, because of the restoration of the Whaling Museum. Always a holiday favorite, the fifty-seven trees looked beautiful in the historic Coffin School, and the NHA is grateful for the opportunity to display there. Chairs George Korn and Richard Kemble recreated the winter-wonderland atmosphere in the building's three main rooms, hallways, and even stairs. "George and Richard did an amazing job of pulling together the show in the new space," said executive director Frank Milligan. "They are brilliant artistic leaders."

To recognize the tenth annual event, the NHA asked Kim Corkran to serve as honorary chair.

Inspired by her mother, Lucile Pierce Corkran, former NHA president Kim Corkran initiated the first Festival of Trees. "The festival is a wonderful, enduring community event and I have enjoyed being a part of it every year," said Kim Corkran. "It was humbling to be asked to be honorary chair and I was thrilled to say yes."

Always the highlight of the event, the Preview Party was organized once again by Sue Fine and Diane LaFrance, who recreated Restaurant Row in the reception tent. For the ninth year, Nantucket Bank was the lead underwriter for the Festival of Trees and Festival of Wreaths. Additional financial support was provided

by Bartlett's Ocean View Farm; Ken and Gussie Beaugrand; Cape Air/Nantucket Airlines; Christopher's Home Furnishings; Don Allen Ford; Grey Lady Marine; Hy-Line Cruises; James Lydon & Sons; Nantucket Magazine; Nantucket Storage; Pacific National, a FleetBoston Financial Company; and Woodmeister Corporation. All proceeds from the Festival of Trees support the NHA's educational programming.

Preservation Award At a gathering during the holidays, the Nantucket Preservation Alliance presented its 2003 Award for Individual Achievement in Historic Preservation to Libby Oldham, in recognition of her years-long efforts to get the town clock in working order.

The person Libby found to do the job is Alan WINTER

2004

N H A

NEWS

Androuais, president of Americlock, Inc., which has provided restoration services for historic d ocks all over the country. Mr. Androuais was subsequently engaged by the NHA to restore the mecha nism of the old town dock, donated to the NHA by the town in 1999.

The restored 1881 Howard dock will be prominently displayed, and functioning, in the n ew mu se um complex, thanks to the generosity of Barbara and Ed Hajim.

Jan.3-

QUAKER MEETING HOUSE

April18

Saturday and Sunday 1-4 P.M.

April22May 24

QUAKER MEETING HOUSE, HADWEN HOUSE, WALKING ToUR

Happy Birthday

Sept. 6

Members are invited to take part in the 110th birthday celebration of the NHA, which will take place in the H adwen House garden on Friday, J uly 9. The day-long event will offer hands-on activities for adults and children featuring crafts popular during the 1890s when the association was founded, including scrapbooking and decoupage. There will also be period refreshments and entertainment.

2004 HOURS OF OPERATIONS FOR NHA HISTORIC SITES

Thursday- Monday 11 A.M.-4 P.M. May27-

QUAKER MEETING HOUSE, HADWEN HOUSE, OLDEST HOUSE, OLD MILL, OLD GAOL, HOSE-CART HOUSE AND WALKING TOURS

Monday-Saturday, 10 A.M.-5 P.M., Sunday 12-5 P.M.

Sept. 70ct.ll

QuAKER MEETING HousE, HADWEN HousE, OLDEST HOUSE, OLD MILL, OLD GAOL, HOSE·CART HOUSE AND WALKING ToURS

Daily 11 A.M.-4 P.M.

Oct.l6-

QUAKER MEETING. HOUSE

Dec.19

Saturday and Sunday 1-4 P.M.

Members are admitted free to all NHA properties.

We Stand Corrected An ambiguous catalogue entry made some years ago led to the misidentification of a woman whose likeness has appeared in several NHA p ublications over the years, including the calendar recently produced for our Business Members . Identified as "Lillian Burgess, granddaughter of the proprietor of the Central Market in Siasconset," she is, in fact, Maria (Folger) Holden, daughter of Nellie T. (Coleman) and Frank W Folger.

Born in 1881 (the year of the d ock), Miss Folger was manager of the Central Market in 'Sconset when the photo was taken in 1907. She won the heart of H arry H . Holden, a wireless op er ato r from Orange , Massadmsetts, who had been hired to run the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Station established in 'Sconset in 1901. The Holdens lived in 'Sconset all their married lives, he passing on in 1940 at the age of 54. Maria lived in their house on Shell Street until 1967, and died in 1978, just short of her 98th year.

The image is in the NHA's G ardner MacDonald collection of glass plate negatives, and it was Gardner who called our attention to the error.

Apologies all around.

H I STORIC

NANTUCKET

SAVE THE DATES IN 2004 May 18-23

NANTUCKET WINE FESTIVAL

May20

NWF/CHAR:ITY GALA CELEBRATION

May 22

NWF/CELEBRITY CHEF DINNER & WINE AUCTION

July 9

NHA llOTH BmTIIDAY

Aug.5

26TH ANNUAL AUGUST ANTIQUES SHOW

Preview Party, Nantucket New School Aug.6-8

26TH ANNUAL AUGUST ANTIQUES SHOW

Nantucket New School Oct.l6

HARVEST FAm, OLD MILL

Nov.23

FESTIVAL OF WREATHS

Preview Party, Sherburne Hall 10 Centre St. Nov.26-28

FESTIVAL OF WREATHS

Sherburne Hall l OCentre St. Dec.2

FESTIVAL OF TREES

Preview Party, Egan Institute ofMaritime Studies at the Coffin School 4 Winter Street Dec.3-5

FESTIVAL OF TREES

Egan Institute a/Maritime Studies at the Coffin School

W I N T E R

2004

23

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uYanLuclud/ w~ 9Festioat May 19-23, 2004 The Nantucket Wine Festival and the White Elephant have named the NHA as Charity Partner of the week-long event featuring seminars and tastings with wine and food experts from across the nation.

~liS/ at; tlw Whire Blepluuw!

Charity Gala Celebration Thursday, May 20

Celebrity Chef Dinner & Wine Auction Saturday, May 22 (Net proceeds benefit the NHA)

For NHA event information: (508) 825-2248, ext. 20 or www.nha.org For more information about the Nantucket Wine Festival:

www.nantucketwinefestival.com