Sometimes THink of Me

NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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The Nantucket Historical Association gratefully acknowledges the generosity of the following supporters for the second edition of “Sometimes Think of Me”: Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries.

BENEFACTORS

CONTRIBUTORS

Melinda and Paul Sullivan

Gussie and Ken Beaugrand Anne DeLaney and Chip Carver

PATRONS

in memory of Catherine Taylor Helen Lynch

Janet and Sam Bailey

Catherine Ebert

Jane and John Loose

Susan and Bill Boardman

Caroline and Douglass Ellis

Nantucket Looms

Susan R. and L. Dennis Shapiro

Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth

Franci Neely

Janet and Rick Sherlund Happy and Sam Shipley

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in memory of Catherine Taylor

Victoria McManus and John McDermott

in memory of Catherine Taylor

Kathryn and Roger Penske

Carl and Nancy Gewirz Fund

Bonnie J. Sacerdote

Barbara and Ed Hajim

Daisy M. Soros

Tyrrell Flawn and John Howe

Michelle Alexander and Carter Stewart

Mrs. Arthur Jacobsen

Phoebe and Bobby Tudor

Carol and Kenneth Kinsley

Kim and Finn Wentworth

“SOMETIMES THINK OF ME”: NOTABLE NANTUCKET WOMEN THROUGH THE CENTURIES

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Produced as a companion piece to the Nantucket Historical Association’s exhibition “Sometimes think of me”: Notable Nantucket Women through the Centuries, 2010 Second edition, revised and enlarged, 2018

Cover: Embroidered Narrative Created by the Artist for the 2010 Exhibition and Catalog Except where noted, all images are from the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association.

Betsy Tyler, Editor, 2nd edition Elizabeth Oldham, Copy Editor

Eileen Powers/Javatime Design: Design & Production

Embroidered Narratives ©2010, 2018 Susan Boardman Narratives Photography: Jack Weinhold Publication ©2018 Nantucket Historical Association ISBN 978-1-882201-04-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means without written permission of the publisher.

Published by the Nantucket Historical Association 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts 02554

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508 228 1894

nha.org

“SOMETIMES THINK OF ME”: NOTABLE NANTUCKET WOMEN THROUGH THE CENTURIES

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CONTENTS FOREWORD vii

CHAPTER 6 | Nineteenth-Century Autodidacts:

INTRODUCTION

A Self-taught Sisterhood

x

91

Maria Mitchell (1818–89) 92 CHAPTER 1 | Seventeenth Century:

1

Wampanoag and English

Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937) 98 Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938) 104

Wonoma 2 Mary Gardner Coffin (1670–1767) 6

CHAPTER 7 | Twentieth Century

110

Gertrude Monaghan (1887–1962) and CHAPTER 2 | Eighteenth Century

11

Hanna Monaghan (1889–1972) 111

Kezia Folger Coffin (1723–98) and

Edith Folger Andrews (1915–2015) 116

Kezia Coffin Fanning (1759–1820) 12

Jane Stroup (1920–2011) and Joan Manley (b. 1933) 118

Phebe Folger Coleman (1771–1857) 18

Grace Swig Grossman (1924–2004) 121 Edith Scott Lynch Bouriez (b. 1926) 122

CHAPTER 3 | Nineteenth Century: Whaling Wives

27

Elizabeth “Libby” Oldham (b. 1927) 124

Susan Austin Veeder (1816–97) 28

Nancy Chase (1931–2016) 126

Elizabeth (Betsey) Morse Morey (1810–93) 37

Esta-Lee Stone (b. 1938) 128

Eliza Spencer Brock (1810–99) 44

Isabel Carter Stewart (b. 1939) 130

Charlotte Coffin Wyer (1824–1905) 52

Caroline Ellis (b. 1942) 132

Mary Ann Morrow Winslow (1820–1900) and

Susan Rootberg Shapiro (b. 1942) 134

Susan Sprague Winslow (1827–68) 56

Patricia “Pat” Egan Butler (b. 1944) 137

Azubah Bearse Handy Cash (1820–94)

Molly Anderson (b. 1947) 138

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Mary “Mimi” Havemeyer Beman (1948–2010) 141 CHAPTER 4 | Nineteenth Century: African Americans

71

Elizabeth “Liz” Wade Winship (b. 1951) and

Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814–1904) 72

Deborah “Debbie” Pixley Fraker (b. 1954)

Eunice Ross (1824–95) 75

Janet Leef Sherlund (b. 1954) 144

142

CHAPTER 5 | Nineteenth-Century Home Front:

79

CHAPTER 8 | The Artist

A Main Street Mansion and an Outlying Farm

Susan Ruckstuhl Boardman (b. 1946) 146

Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864) 80

Materials and Techniques

150

Martha Burgess Fish (1844–1916) 87

Elements of Construction

153

Endnotes 156 About the Author

160

Bibliography 161 NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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Eliza Spencer Brock (1810–99) COLLECTION OF NANCY & DOUGLAS ABBEY

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Foreword B Y K E L LY W I L L I A M S , N H A P R E S I D E N T

THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION has

creating a virtual quilt and providing a deeper under-

a long history of producing fine works of scholarship.

standing of the important responsibilities and accom-

Susan Boardman’s and Betsy Tyler’s book falls into that

plishments of the women over four centuries.

category. “Sometimes think of me”: Notable Nantucket

Susan immerses herself in each narrative, making

Women through the Centuries is an expanded edition of

poignant personal statements with each piece. Al-

a 2010 publication, featuring the exquisite embroidered

though based on the craft of embroidery, the pieces are

narratives by Boardman, a celebrated island needle-

not constrained by its traditions. Indeed, her work is

work artist. Showcasing the colorful lives of women

replete with bits of bone, gold leaf, colored beads, and

from four centuries of island history, each is accompa-

other materials that might be germane to a particular

nied by a biography by Tyler, a noted author, historian,

story. Her work is an enthusiastic visual expression of

and NHA Research Fellow. Each work pertains to an

words and memories, creatively using images to form

accomplished woman of Nantucket, and the narratives

a whole. Embarking on a project, she listens to the

provide rich supplemental material including images of

individual’s story, filters and structures an accumu-

relevant art, documents, and artifacts that give greater

lation of island memories, and then lets those words

depth and meaning to the artwork.

form images in her mind and brings them together in a

The book brings us chronologically through a history of the island, beginning in the seventeenth century and continuing to the present day, and it allows us to

visually coherent manner— none without a little touch of humor.

We, the trustees, are grateful to Boardman and Tyler

look through the lens of history in a refreshing female

for pursuing this endeavor and congratulate them on

point of view. This focus weaves each story together,

their excellent accomplishment.

NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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Introduction

BY BETSY TYLER

THE ISLAND OF NANTUCKET has been home to many remarkable women

farm wife who would probably be surprised to find herself in the company of

over the centuries. Hundreds who were certainly admired and recognized

some of the other women in these chapters. Each of the women spoke in her

by their peers have left no trace of their lives and accomplishments, while

own way to Boardman, who walked past their houses, read their prose and

others, whose families treasured a letter, or diary, or portrait, have formed the

poetry, examined their handwriting and turns of phrase, their sketches and

community of historic women who live on in the collections of the Nantucket

paintings, and felt a kinship that enabled her to stitch the stories of their lives

Historical Association. The tangible evidence of these women’s lives is pow-

in commemorative embroideries.

erful, especially their personal writings, which have an intimacy that cannot

The featured twentieth-century women are a select sampling of our

be captured by any other form of literature. The immediacy of reading the

friends and neighbors. Each of us might choose a dozen different women for

description of a personal joy or tragedy in the handwriting of the participant,

myriad good reasons. Boardman has chosen women she admires, who have

on the day it happened, in a letter or journal held in your own hands, is pow-

made a contribution to the Nantucket community through volunteer service,

erful. The magnetism of their personal stories is what attracted needlework

business, art, and science. It is their accomplishments rather than their words

artist Susan Boardman to the women showcased in this book. For a com-

that have secured them a place in this company of notable women.

munity of its size, Nantucket has been home to an extraordinary number of accomplished and intriguing women, many more than could be exhibited and

•

•

•

discussed here. The women we have chosen are representatives of times and themes that are important ingredients in the stew pot of Nantucket history,

NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN lived on the island for centuries, and although

which, as we all know, is far more than men and whales.

we can do little more than generalize about them, their heritage is embodied

That said, seven women who went on whaling voyages with their husbands

in the spirit of legendary Wonoma, a courageous and compassionate healer

in the mid-nineteenth century form the heart of this book. They wrote about

whose story is set in the seventeenth century, in the years just before En-

their experiences in journals or letters, and their exotic journeys spark the

glish settlers arrived with their very different ideas about how to live on this

imagination. But included also are Nantucket women who are better known,

isolated acreage at sea. The first English women who ventured here with their

like internationally recognized astronomer and educator Maria Mitchell, and

husbands bore children, tended their gardens and chickens and families, spun

those who are not generally known at all, like Martha Fish, a hard-working

and wove by the fireside, and were completely ignored by those who erected

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a monument in 1881 to the early

the original cause that has introduced in this primitive society so

settlers buried on the knoll above

remarkable a fashion, or rather so extraordinary a want. They had

Maxcy’s Pond. Twelve men are listed

adopted these many years the Asiatic custom of taking a dose of

on the Founders Monument, as if

opium every morning, and so deeply rooted is it that they would be

they had existed alone. It was not

at a loss how to live without this indulgence; they would rather be

until December 2009 that a second

deprived of any necessary than forego their favourite luxury.

monument was placed beside the first, listing the hardy wives of those first Englishmen.

No other documented evidence of opium use on the island has ever been found. It is curious that it was Dr. Benjamin Tupper, Crèvecoeur’s host on the

The first off-island observer to

island in 1772, who suggested that opium use was prevalent, perhaps because

remark about the female popula-

the good doctor himself took “three grains every day after breakfast.” He may

tion of Nantucket was J. Hector St.

have prescribed the drug to women who could not handle the stress of wor-

Mary Elizabeth Coleman Brock (1832–1901)

Jean de Crèvecoeur, a French-born

rying about absent husbands and sons at sea, or he may have suggested that

by William Swain, oil on canvas, circa 1845

American farmer, whose Letters from

the use was widespread in order to justify his own habit.

GIFT OF FRANCES ELDER, 2003.19.1

an American Farmer was exceedingly popular in Europe, where it

Crèvecoeur’s description of the capabilities of the island women seems more realistic than their suggested drug dependency:

was published in London and Dublin in 1782; in Paris, in 1785; and finally, in Philadelphia, in 1795. Although the book appeared after the American

As the sea excursions are often very long, their wives in their

Revolution, Crèvecoeur conducted his travels before the war, visiting Nan-

absence are necessarily obliged to transact business, to settle

tucket in 1772 and devoting several letters, or chapters, to Nantucket: Letter

accounts, and in short, to rule and provide for their families. These

IV is a general description of the island and its history; Letter V discusses

circumstances, being often repeated, give women the abilities as

local education and industry; Letter VII describes manners and customs at

well as a taste for that kind of superintendency to which, by their

Nantucket, which Crèvecoeur found so interesting that he devoted Letter VIII

prudence and good management, they seem to be in general very

to Nantucket’s “peculiar” customs. And in the chapter on peculiar customs,

equal. This employment ripens their judgment and justly entitles

Crèvecoeur describes the women of Nantucket. He met the leading families

them to a rank superior to that of other wives.

of the island and observed the lifestyle of the seafaring, predominantly Quaker community. The “peculiarities” he noted included the Quaker traditions of

What Crèvecoeur does not mention in his description of the education of

plainness of dress, an idiomatic language, opium use among women, and the

Nantucket boys is that Quaker girls also attended school on the island, and in

capability of the wives of Sherburne (the original name of the town) when it

their religious meetings both men and women were respected speakers and

came to business matters. It would seem that the last two peculiar attributes

ministers. It was a combination of circumstances that produced the capable

are contradictory, but Crèvecoeur says:

wives of the eighteenth century, who were mothers and grandmothers of the movers and shakers, travelers, teachers, scientists, and poets of the nine-

A singular custom prevails here among the women, at which I

teenth century.

was greatly surprised and am really at a loss how to account for NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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Wonoma (fl. mid-1600s) COLLECTION OF CHRISTINE AND HENRY W. HARDING

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CHAPTER 1

Seventeenth Century: Wampanoag and English NANTUCKET WAS AN ISLAND of Indians in the mid-seventeenth century, with

a tiny scattered settlement of English families west of the Great Harbor that is now the site of the town. Indians had lived on the island for centuries, and were part of a larger community of Wampanoag that populated southeastern New England. A number of ruling sachems were on the island when the English arrived, and they were gradually persuaded to sell their lands to the settlers, who had purchased an English title from Thomas Mayhew in 1659; he had acquired his rights from King Charles II’s representative, the Earl of Sterling, in 1641. The two cultures had an uneasy alliance that ultimately resulted in the decimation of the Indian population by the late nineteenth century, through disease and other factors too complex to enumerate here.

The Wampanoag who inhabited Nantucket before the arrival of the English did not leave a written or built record of their existence here, and are remembered today primarily by place names— Wesco (white rock), Siasconset (place of great bones), Miacomet (the meeting place), Shawkemo (middle field of land), and scores of others that impart a sense of the natural landscape well known to the natives. Their legends and mythology provide expla-

Map of New Belgium and New England by Nicolas Visscher, Amsterdam, first published 1656

nations for the creation of the island and for natural phenomena and reveal a

MS 1000 1.1.2

rich culture that thrived on isolated Nantucket when mainland Wampanoag communities declined in the early seventeenth century.

Wonoma, the Wampanoag woman represented in the following pages, was

CHAPTER 1 | SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: WAMPANOAG AND ENGLISH

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born on Nantucket before the arrival of the English. She is remembered for her talent as a healer, for her bravery, and for her love of her father’s enemy.

Daughter (or granddaughter) of a powerful sachem, she would have enjoyed certain privileges of status and wealth. She probably learned about local medicinal plants from a grandmother or mother, as was traditional, and as her skills grew, her reputation was known islandwide throughout the Wampanoag community. Mundane details of her life, including birth and death dates and children born to her are not known—wrapped in the cloak of legend, she is remembered as a pivotal force for change, healing a rift between the eastern and western tribes of the island and bringing peace to a fractured community.

We know a little more about Mary Gardner, who moved to Nantucket with her parents in 1672, when she was two years old. Her father, John, was one of the “half-share men,” tradesmen who had been invited to live and work on the island by the governing proprietary of landholders in exchange for a half-share of privileges. Mary witnessed the evolution of the island from a seventeenth-century agricultural community to a burgeoning whaling center in the mid-eighteenth century, and she saw the Wampanoag population dwindle. Like Wonoma, who married her father’s enemy, Mary Gardner married Jethro Coffin, grandson of Tristram, her father’s longtime rival in island politics. A bit of nostalgic legend surrounds this

Sketch for Wonoma, Daughter of Wauwinet

woman, too, although the facts of her life, her house, and even her portrait exist. Like Wonoma, she had wealth and status within her community,

Wonoma

but was not governed or restricted

What we know about the Indians of Nantucket who occupied the island

in her actions by the alignments of

before English settlers arrived in the mid-seventeenth century is limited

her father. These two women set the

to legends that speak more to a community mythology—creation myths,

stage for later generations of inde-

explanations for natural calamities, veiled descriptions of ancient wars—

pendent Nantucket women.

than to specific individuals. Legend tells us that the giant Maushop on Cape Cod shook the sand from his moccasins and created Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, while the smoke from his pipe made the heavy fog that so

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Indian basket, nineteenth century

often envelops the islands. From late-seventeenth-century recorded deeds

GIFT OF CHARLES E. SWAIN, 1991.2.1

we know the names of the important sachems of Nantucket’s Wampanoag

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people from the time of English contact—Wanackmamack and Nickanoose in the east, and Attapeat (also known as Autopscot) in the west—and tradition tells of the historic conflict between the eastern and western tribes.

The first in Boardman’s series of embroidered narratives depicts a scene from the story of Wonoma, the daughter of Wauwinet (and granddaughter of Nickanoose), a young woman with knowledge of medicinal plants and their healing powers. The story of Wonoma’s contribution to the end of the rift between the warring factions on the island was passed down in the local Indian community, and remembered and retold by generations of Nantucketers. In 1876, more than two hundred years after the event, Wonoma’s tale was memorialized in a poem written by island poet Charlotte P. Baxter, who chose to replicate in her verse the meter used in Longfellow’s Hiawatha, lending a familiar rhythm to the tale of the local Indian.

Charlotte P. Baxter was twenty-three years old, living with her parents, David C. and Mary, at their grand home at 28 India Street

28 India Street

when she wrote the poem in anticipation of an excursion with the

GPN4476

Nantucket Shakespeare Club to Wauwinet, where she read it to the assembled crowd. Although there is not much information about Charlotte available in local repositories, we know that she was one of a group of talented young island women whose well-heeled fathers and grandfathers made their mark, and their money, during Nantucket’s whaling heyday in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Like her contemporaries, Susan Emma Brock and Mary Eliza Starbuck, whose stories are told in embroideries discussed later, Charlotte received a sound education through high school, but after graduation and one year at Vassar, she was left to her own devices. A sisterhood of autodidacts emerged on island, forming classes for the study of botany, art, foreign languages, and Shakespeare. Although The Legend of Wauwinet is Baxter’s only extant poem, its finesse and lyrical strength suggest that she was an experienced writer. Baxter retold the legend of Wonoma, whose skills as a healer were known

Charlotte P. Baxter

even among the western people, who lived beyond the tribal dividing

P124

CHAPTER 1 | SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: WAMPANOAG AND ENGLISH

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line of Madequecham Valley. When a terrible sickness befell the people of

Hear me speak, O mighty father!

Autopscot’s village, she was summoned to assist them, and willingly did so.

For the love I bear Wonoma,

There she met him, and fell in love with him—her father’s enemy. As Baxter’s

For the love she bears her father.

tale relates, Wonoma returned home and shortly thereafter learned that her father’s warriors had plans to attack Autopscot’s village in retaliation for

She it was who gave me warning;

transgressions by the western tribe on their hunting grounds east of Made-

Told me of your plan to conquer.

quecham. Alarmed that her secret love would be harmed, Wonoma set out on

“O my father! O most noble!

a mission to alert Autopscot:

For the love we bear Wonoma, For the sake of both our people,

When her people all were sleeping,

May there not be peace between us?”

Forth she stole from out her wigwam, To the water quickly sped she, Launched her boat, and in the darkness Rowed with greatest skill and caution Toward the people she was saving.

Very dark the night seemed to her, And she prayed the mighty Father That He would in safety guide her To the people she was saving: Then, as if her prayer were answered; Slowly up from out the waters Rose the moon in all its beauty, Giving light unto her pathway, To her heart the needed courage.

Boardman’s narrative highlights this part of the poetic adventure: Wonoma paddling alone down the moonlit harbor on her secret mission, a shooting star adding to the illumination of the scene. Her wigwam, or wetu, is on the shore, where fish are drying on a rack. The scene is bordered with shellfish and plants native to the island: lobsters, scallops, whelks, and humpback whales (carved from ivory); and sprigs of cranberry and cedar.

Forewarned by Wonoma, Autopscot was able to defend against the attack, and to make a plea to Wauwinet for peace:

Excerpt from The Legend of Wauwinet by Charlotte P. Baxter from original pamphlet printing

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Not only did Wauwinet and Autopscot make a pledge of peace, they agreed to unite their people with an intertribal marriage: Old Wauwinet gave his daughter, Gave the dearest of his treasures, To the young and brave Autopscot.

The union of Wonoma and Autopscot, as told in Baxter’s poem, preceded the English arrival on Nantucket in 1659. Scholars have since puzzled over the genealogy of the sachems, and determined that if such a marriage did take place, the key players were more likely Askammapoo (daughter of Nickanoose) and Spotso, a minor sachem of the western tribe. Perhaps Baxter chose Wonoma and Wauwinet for the alliteration, and familiarity, of their names. It hardly matters, since the poem is a nostalgic depiction of a quasimythical event, not a history lesson. The idyllic story, with young love healing old strife, is the stuff of Romeo and Juliet, as is the story of our other seventeenth-century woman, Mary Gardner Coffin.

As the English began to expand their settlement on Nantucket in the late seventeenth century, there were frequent interactions with the native population, and it did not end well for the local Wampanoag. Their lands were gradually acquired through a succession of deeds to the English; many of their able-bodied men incurred debt with the settlers and were forced to work on whaling voyages to pay it off; and their scattered villages were eventually consolidated into one location at Miacomet.

Disease decimated the local population in 1763, when an illness took the lives of two-thirds of the island’s 358 remaining Indians. No white people died from the disease, due to a natural immunity.

Charlotte P. Baxter, who memorialized the story of an intelligent, skilled, compassionate Indian woman, remained single until she was thirty, in 1883. Then she married Henry P. Starbuck, older brother of her friend Mary Eliza Starbuck, in what was described in the Inquirer and

Color illustration of the Sachem Wauwinet from The Legend of Wauwinet

Mirror as the social event of the season. Henry, unlike his bride, had

INQUIRER AND MIRROR PRESS

enjoyed the privilege of a college education, and graduated with a law degree from Harvard.

CHAPTER 1 | SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: WAMPANOAG AND ENGLISH

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Mary Gardner Coffin (1670–1767) The English settlers living on Nantucket in the seventeenth century were a hardy group of families undertaking an experiment in survival and independence on an isolated island inhabited by more than fifteen hundred Indians, possibly as many as three thousand by some estimates.

The English population was a tiny fraction of that number, a mere few hundred by the end of the century. The first families settled west of the present town in an area around a series of ponds—Washing Pond, Maxcy’s Pond, and Hummock Pond—that extended southward

of clothing, and in many cases spinning and weaving cloth as well. Women assisted at childbirth, tended the sick, and laid out the dead. In other colonial settlements in New England, religious observances and church services were of great importance and provided at least a weekly diversion, but Nantucket was slow to conform to that model, and the influence of Quakerism had not yet been felt on the island. Schools did not exist, and although young boys served apprenticeships to learn trades, girls were bound tightly to the home.

When she was sixteen years old, Mary Gardner

from what was then Capaum Harbor (now closed in)

married Jethro Coffin, the twenty-three-year-old

on the north shore. When the twenty purchasers

grandson of her father’s former arch rival, Tris-

of the island, or proprietors, realized early on that

tram Coffin. Jethro’s father, Peter, had interests in

they needed skilled help to make their community

Exeter, New Hampshire, where he owned a sawmill

viable, they invited men who were adept fishermen,

and timber business. Tradition tells us that Peter

weavers, millers, and mechanics (the contemporary

Coffin supplied the lumber for a new house for

term for tradesmen) to move to the island with their

the young couple, built on land that John Gard-

families in exchange for a half-share of the island,

ner provided at the top of Sunset Hill. Six children

in contrast to the whole share owned by each of the

were born to Mary and Jethro in their new house in

original investors. The importance of the half-share

the twenty-two years of their occupancy there. Board-

men to the success of the Nantucket venture led them to demand the same representation as those with whole shares, resulting in a political battle known as the Half-Share Revolt.

The enmity between Tristram Coffin, one of the original proprietors, and half-share man John Gardner, was an offshoot of that revolt.

Mary, the daughter of John Gardner and Priscilla Grafton, was born in

man’s embroidery evokes the rural, agrarian setting of the Jethro and Mary Coffin House, featuring the weathered dwelling, kitchen garden, apple orchard, chickens, and sheep, bordered by a berry-laden vine.

According to family legend, in 1693 or thereabouts, when Mary was a young mother and Jethro was away at sea, she was startled by a loud crash

1670 in Salem, Massachusetts, two years before her family relocated to

in the house. An intoxicated Indian, who earlier in the day had entered the

Nantucket, where Gardner promised to provide a vessel and the expertise for

house while she was out, fell through the attic floorboards and landed in

cod-fishing in exchange for a half-share grant. His land was near the Great

the closet next to Mary’s bedroom on the second floor. He frightened her,

Harbor and the north cliffs, at quite a distance from those families near

but she managed to grab her baby and escape to the nearest house. The

Capaum Harbor. Life for a young girl on the island at that time was one of endless domestic work and care of younger children. There was the necessary

Mary Gardner Coffin, circa 1720, The Pollard Limner (active 1720–21), oil on canvas

gardening, cooking, and preserving of food; knitting, sewing, and mending

GIFT OF EUNICE COFFIN (GARDNER) BROOKS 1924.3.1

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The Oldest House 1686 COLLECTION OF SUSAN ZISES GREEN

CHAPTER 1 | SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: WAMPANOAG AND ENGLISH

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“Indian in the closet” story has several versions, some more terrifying than others, but at the basis of the tale is the unnerving truth that Mary was in an isolated location, her husband was oftentimes absent from home, and there was an uneasy relationship between the English settlers and the Indian inhabitants of the island.

In 1708, Jethro and Mary sold the house on Sunset Hill and moved to Mendon, Massachusetts, where Jethro owned a large tract of land given him by his father. He worked as a blacksmith there until he died in 1726.

A portrait of Mary Gardner Coffin was painted sometime during her residency in Mendon, between 1708 and 1726, by a Boston artist identified as the Pollard Limner. Mary may have traveled the thirty miles to Boston for sittings, but more likely the itinerant decorative painter had work in Mendon, perhaps in Mary’s own home. The fact that she commissioned Oldest House

MS 35-13-23

a painting suggests that she was a wealthy woman, and the beautifully detailed amber wrapper she is wearing in the portrait, if hers and not a creation of the artist, reinforces that assumption. The portrait of Mary was handed down through the generations, and in 1924, her greatgreat-great-great-granddaughter gave it to the Nantucket Historical Association, a year after the NHA acquired the house built for Mary and Jethro on Sunset Hill, now known as the Oldest House. Mary’s portrait is the earliest in the NHA collection, and most certainly would not exist if she had lived on the island her entire life, since no portrait painters are known to have worked on Nantucket until the nineteenth century.

In 1726, Mary moved back to Nantucket to live with her son, Josiah, lending a hand in his rapidly expanding household; he and his wife, Elizabeth Coffin, had welcomed twin daughters in November 1725, joining two other daughters under the age of five. They would have eight more children in the next eighteen years, and Mary, who had raised her own large family, was more than likely of invaluable help to the young couple. They lived at the house Josiah built in 1724 at the corner of Cliff Road and North Liberty Street, a large, two-story saltbox, facing south as did Mary’s first house on Sunset Hill, not that far distant. Mary lived to

Sketch for The Oldest House 1686

be eighty-seven years old, a grandmother to forty-three grandchildren and scores of great-grandchildren.

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Mary Gardner Coffin Fleeing Indian, collotype on paper by Janet Ball, 1986 GIFT OF JANET BALL MCGLINN, 1998.71.2.

CHAPTER 1 | SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: WAMPANOAG AND ENGLISH

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Kezia Folger Coffin (1723–98) and Kezia Coffin Fanning (1759–1820) “God Save George the King” COLLECTION OF CAROLINE AND DOUGLASS ELLIS

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CHAPTER 2

Eighteenth Century ALTHOUGH THEIR BIRTH DATES were fifty years apart, eighteenth-century

Life on Nantucket on the eve of the American Revolution was described in

Nantucket women Kezia Folger Coffin and Phebe Folger Coleman were both

detail by visiting travel writer J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, who singled

born before the American Revolution, and they were distant Folger cousins.

out the elder Kezia as an example of a “superior wife” in his Letters from an

Blessed with intellectual powers and common sense, the two women led very

American Farmer. He was impressed by the local women’s skills in managing

different lives, but both were responsible, through hands-on management, for

their maritime husband’s affairs, and by the general prosperity of the island,

their family’s financial successes, whether mercantile or agricultural, on and off

which was presented as a sort of agrarian/whaling utopia, with simple but

the island.

comfortable homes, well-supplied tables, and with neighborliness and indus-

Nantucket was very much a Quaker community in the eighteenth century. In

triousness abounding. Although women led traditional lives, there were local

1702, islander Mary Coffin Starbuck, an influential leader in the young commu-

perks. The absence of a large portion of the male population at sea for long

nity, converted to the faith after listening to the sermon of a visiting minister.

periods of time provided the women with independence and responsibility,

Her acceptance of Quakerism opened the floodgates of conversion, and by

and the Quaker belief in the education of daughters as well as sons produced

midcentury the English population of the island was predominantly Quaker.

educated women entirely capable of thinking for themselves and taking care

A meeting house that could hold hundreds of people was built at the corner

of their families. Closely interconnected by generations of intermarriage,

of Quaker Road and Madaket Road in 1732, and it was enlarged several times

geographical isolation, and a common dominant industry, Nantucket was a

over the next few decades, testifying to the number of members who attended

tightly knit interdependent community that relied on men and women alike

Quaker meeting. Both of our eighteenth-century women were Quakers, but the

for success.

effect of that religion and associated lifestyle on them was decidedly different.

Kezia Folger Coffin managed the finances of her family, securing a power

Kezia Folger Coffin and her daughter, Kezia Coffin Fanning, were both dis-

of attorney from her husband that enabled her to conduct business on island

owned by the sect for transgressions relating to music and dress, while Phebe

and abroad. Phebe Folger Coleman studied mathematics and navigation with

Folger Coleman toed the Quaker line and even taught in a Quaker school.

her well-known intellectual and inventive brother, Walter Folger Jr., and

CHAPTER 2: | EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

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taught her husband navigation so he could become a ship’s captain. These

novel, Miriam Coffin, or the Whale

two eighteenth-century Nantucket women, although similarly blessed with

Fishermen. Hart’s depiction of Kezia

talents and abilities, have been treated differently by history. Kezia Folger

tarnished her earlier prewar repu-

Coffin has been reviled as a traitor, and lampooned as a pushy, merciless

tation, and the real Kezia has been

black-market scoundrel, while Phebe, who painted, wrote poetry, designed

confused with the greedy, remorse-

and taught needlework, and managed a family, farm, and mill, has been largely

less Miriam of Hart’s imagination.

ignored. Phebe who gives us the title of this exhibition and book, Sometimes

To make matters worse, Kezia

Think of Me, from a poem she wrote when leaving Nantucket in 1809.

was again fictionalized in Diana Gaines’s novel, Nantucket Woman, published in 1976, wherein she is

Kezia Folger Coffin (1723–98), and her daughter Kezia Coffin Fanning (1759–1820)

portrayed as a conniving nymphomaniac.

Crèvecoeur observed that long sea voyages often left the island women in charge of their hus-

Kezia Coffin Fanning (1759–1820), anonymous copy

BORN IN 1723 TO DANIEL FOLGER and his cousin Abigail Folger, Kezia received

band’s affairs and they showed

of earlier portrait, oil on canvas, circa 1835

an extra dose of the remarkable Folger intellect and ability—her father was

“the abilities, as well as taste for

BEQUEST OF FRANK B. HOWARD, 1952.23.1

the great-grandson of the original Peter Folger and his wife Mary Morrill, and

that kind of superintendency, to

her mother was their granddaughter; Benjamin Franklin, son of Abiah Folger

which, by their prudence and good management, they seem to be in general

and Josiah Franklin, was her cousin. Kezia was the second of seven children;

very equal. This employment ripens their judgement and justly entitles them

her older brother Elishai was lost at sea in 1740 when he was eighteen, and

to a rank superior to that of other wives . . . .” Among those superior women

both her father and younger brother Peter were lost at sea in 1744, when Peter

was the most remarkable Kezia Folger Coffin:

was eighteen. In between those tragedies, sixteen-year-old Kezia married mariner John Coffin, who, at thirty-two, was a well-established mariner and

The richest person now in the island owes all his present prosperity

merchant twice her age. Their one child, Kezia (hereafter referred to as Kezia

and success to the ingenuity of his wife; this is a known fact which

Jr.), was born nineteen years after the couple married, a remarkable occur-

is well recorded, for while he was performing his first cruises, she

rence on an island where women generally had lots of children, or none at all.

traded with pins and needles and kept a school. Afterward she

Kezia’s three younger sisters—Judith, Abigail, and Mary—had seven, eight,

purchased more considerable articles, which she sold with so much

and ten children respectively.

judgment that she laid the foundation of a system of business that

Kezia is notable in the annals of Nantucket history because she was first

she has ever since prosecuted with equal dexterity and success. She

singled out as an example of the good wife by Crèvecoeur in his Letters from

wrote to London, formed connections, and, in short, became the

An American Farmer—a considerable portion of which describes Nantucket, its

only ostensible instrument of that house, both at home and abroad.

prosperous whale fishery, and its industrious people—and then later fictional-

Who is he in this country who is a citizen of Nantucket or Boston

ized as the heartless she-merchant smuggler, Miriam, in Joseph C. Hart’s 1834

who does not know Aunt Kesiah?

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Crèvecoeur met Kezia when she was in her late forties, the mother of a

advice on that matter, marrying Phineas on April 5 of that year. Whether she

thirteen-year-old daughter and wife of a sixty-four-year-old husband. The

heeded the committee’s advice not to dress “so fashionable” is not known, but

family lived on the west side of Centre Street in the block between India and

she did note the previous year that her spinet was moved to Esq. Hussey’s house

Hussey Streets, in a house that was considered a mansion; their store was ad-

because “the Friends were displeased with it being at Father’s”; her mother had

jacent (the buildings burned in the Great Fire of 1846). Facts about the Coffin

left the Society of Friends over the same spinet controversy in 1773, when

family come from public documents—deeds and probate records—and from

the Women’s Monthly Meeting “treated with Keziah Coffin for keeping a

a remarkable series of diaries kept by Kezia Jr. beginning in 1775, when she

Spinnet in her house & teaching her daughter or causing her to bee taught to

was sixteen years old and the Revolutionary War was imminent. During the

play thereon contrary to the advice of Friends.”

course of her lifetime, she was a diligent journalist, filling fifty small book-

Kezia Jr. records that Phineas helped transport materials needed for

lets with minuscule script describing island events and family activities. The

the construction of her father’s house at Quaise in the summer of 1777,

diaries were passed down in her family, and extracts and notes about them

and it appears that the young couple resided there for a time. In the diary

were recorded by her great-grandson, Thomas Fanning Wood, in the late

transcripts there are few comments about her parents, only an occasional

nineteenth century. Afterwards, he loaned the original diaries to his brother,

mention of her father’s ships, and, on June 9, 1775, “Dada gone to Tucker-

Alfred Wood, who in turn loaned them to a relative, and that is where the

nuck to wash sheep.” She notes that her mother sent “necessaries” to Mrs.

trail ends. The diaries have all disappeared, except for a few of the original

Ascough—turnips, eggs, butter, cranberries, cherries, etc.—when British

pages that are now in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association,

Captain Ascough’s man-of-war was anchored off the island in November that

along with a typescript of Thomas Fanning Wood’s extracts, made by his

year, which gave rise to a new regulation noted March 1776: “No Nantucket

daughter, Margaret H. Wood, in 1936.

vessel to be supplied with provisions unless they have a permit signed by

Although incomplete, what remains of Kezia Jr.’s observations is a unique

three Justices of the Peace at Barnstable.” Kezia Jr. was very soon the mother

and personal record of Nantucket, a rare firsthand view of island life. Her

of a rapidly expanding family (she would have eight children between 1778

diary begins almost immediately with the words “God save George the King!”

and 1799), and many of her journal entries refer to births and deaths on Nan-

She describes the drumming and fifing of a group of patriots near Mill Hill,

tucket during the forty-five years she kept records; her comments on politics

referring to them as “sons of Balael,” or villains, more than likely sentiments

and the business activities of her parents appear to be less frequent.

expressed by her mother as well. Kezia Jr.’s future husband, Phineas Fan-

In 1780, Kezia Folger Coffin—along with other wealthy Nantucket loyal-

ning, is mentioned for the first time in November 1775, after “going through

ists William Rotch, Timothy Folger, Benjamin Tupper, and Samuel Starbuck—

everything but death” to bring provisions to Nantucket from Long Island,

was accused of high treason by Thomas Jenkins, a Nantucket merchant

where his family lived. Phineas was a young, Yale-educated attorney who had

whose goods had been seized by the British in 1779. She was summoned

recently moved to Nantucket and, from evidence in the diaries, was closely

to Boston, and took her attorney, son-in-law Phineas Fanning, with her.

associated with Kezia’s family. He made several dangerous trips in vessels

The case was dismissed for lack of evidence—“Mamma and husband home;

belonging to John Coffin during the Revolutionary War years, bringing

the House of Representatives have put a stop to the matter, as Jack Jenkins

much-needed provisions to an island that was at the mercy of both British

witnesses fail him, and not one of them know anything relative to the sundry

and American privateers.

charges”—but John and Kezia’s financial situation deteriorated after the

On January 13, 1777, Kezia Jr. writes that she was advised by a committee of Friends not to be courted by a Presbyterian,” but she did not heed their

war ended. A number of suits were filed against them by creditors, and on December 27, 1783, their house and goods were seized. Although John left CHAPTER 2: | EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

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the premises quietly, Kezia refused to leave, and, according to her daughter,

debtors prison—put there by the butcher and baker who supplied her while

was carried out in a chair. Kezia Jr. then lamented: “No family I am certain

she was keeping house in Halifax—and that she had been very sick. A little

was ever treated as ours are and have been. . . . I am fearful that my beloved

over a year later John Coffin died, and although the transcriber of the journal

parents will die in the street.”

notes that there is a lengthy and loving notice of his sickness and death, he

In an attempt to alleviate the family’s financial straits, Kezia Coffin left for

does not record it. Kezia finally returned to the island on October 3, 1788,

Halifax, Nova Scotia, April 19, 1786, hoping to meet a May 1 filing deadline

and her daughter seldom mentions her after that in the transcript that

for damages the British government was paying to those “friends of govern-

exists. Not until 1797 does she comment on her mother’s activities, when

ment” who lost property during the war. She arrived too late. Although it may

Kezia traveled with a great number of Nantucket people to the trial of those

seem unusual that Kezia, and not her husband, John, pursued this matter, it

accused of robbing the Nantucket Bank. Phineas Fanning was attorney for

must be remembered that John Coffin was seventy-eight years old. Kezia was

one of the accused, Randall Rice, who was convicted but later exonerated. On

sixty-three and had been running the family mercantile enterprises for years.

March 25, 1798, Kezia Folger Coffin fell backwards down her cellar stairs and

John gave her a power of attorney in 1746, although it was not recorded in the

was found senseless and speechless. She died four days later.

Registry of Deeds until 1762. It was the third such document from husband to wife recorded on the island, and it was never withdrawn or superseded. In

The picture of Kezia Folger Coffin that emerges from her daughter’s diary is one of a capable woman who was involved in the politics of the time, and

fact, Kezia Jr. mentioned in 1783

chose to support the losing side in the American Revolution. A professed

that her “father alias mother” had

supporter of King George III, she lost everything when the war ended. There

to go to Hyannis to answer charges

is no evidence, however, of smuggling, or price-gouging, or any treasonous

about being part owner of a boat

offenses, but there were suspicions. Her cousin, Jane Mecom, sister of Benja-

that was seized by an American

min Franklin, wrote to him in 1789 about Kezia, who had been “like a sister

privateer: “My Mother being

to me and a great friend to my children.”

impowered, has gone off to answer to the case, my Mother positively

She Took to the wrong side and Exerted Her self by Every method

denies having any concern in the

she could devise Right or rong to Accomplish her Designs, and

boat.”

Favour the Britons, went in to Large Traid with them, and for them,

Traveling to defend her busi-

and by mismanagement and not suckceding in her Indevours has

ness was nothing new to Kezia,

sunk Every Farthing they were Ever Posesed of and have been in

but her experience in Halifax was

Jail both Her Husband at Nantuket and her self at Halifax. She

devastating. Kezia Jr. wrote only

was allway thought to be an Artfull Wooman, but there are such

that her mother “talks of going to

Extraordinary stories tould of her as is hard to be leved.

England,” and then recorded on April 28, 1787, that her mother

The Quaise house, which figures so largely in Hart’s novel as the center of

had been in Halifax for twelve

black-market activity, was in fact the home of Kezia Jr. and Phineas Fanning,

Chippendale side-chair owned by Phineas and Kezia

months. On June 10, Kezia Jr.

and the only account we have of a smuggling tunnel, other than the fictional

Coffin Fanning, eighteenth century

noted that she received a letter

one, was recorded in 1895 by eighty-seven-year-old Eliza W. Mitchell, who

BEQUEST OF FRANK B. HOWARD, 1952.23.1

from her mother, who was in

heard the story from Benjamin Franklin Folger (1777–1859). Folger, a noted

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genealogist and island historian, is the person with whom Hart discussed Nantucket history prior to writing his novel, and in his fictional account Hart suggests that Folger gave him the manuscript of the tale about Miriam (a.k.a. Kezia) Coffin.

Sifting the grains of truth about Kezia from the sand heap of rumor, fiction, and speculation is difficult. Blessed with intelligence, aptitude for business, a single child (eight or ten children would have left her with little time to pursue matters outside the home) and a rich husband, Kezia had opportunities that most of her peers did not, and she was not content to sit by the fire and sew. Her loyalist sentiments during the Revolutionary War were not shared by the majority of islanders, but she certainly was not alone.

It is Kezia Jr., largely ignored by historians except for those who glean information from her diaries, whose life is revealed in her writing. Married at eighteen to Phineas Fanning, she was the mother of six sons and two daughters born between 1778 and 1799. Her youngest child, Phineas, was born three months after his father died at the age of forty-eight on December 21, 1798, just nine months after her mother, Kezia, died. The extracts from her diaries were copied by her great-grandson, Thomas F. Wood, who was intent on culling items of general interest, and neglected the mundane record of her domestic activities that would be so enlightening. In a letter to historian Alexander Starbuck, written in 1877, Wood says that “the little books number about fifty, written in a fine hand, no day being omitted scarcely.” Unfortunately, Wood did not transcribe the diaries word for word, but omitted thousands of days. What we do know is that Kezia Jr. had a new child to care for every two years or so up to 1791, followed by a gap of eight years before her youngest was born. After her father died in 1788, she and Phineas moved into the “north part of Esq. Hussey’s house; Dr. Bartlett lives in the south part.” Every couple of years thereafter, the family moved again; in 1793 they were paying $40 a year for rent. The family fortune was gone.

John Coffin did not leave a will, possibly because Kezia already had a power of attorney to manage his affairs, and Kezia did not write one either. The Judge of Probate appointed Phineas Fanning the administrator of Kezia’s estate, which was

Tea caddy owned by Kezia Folger Coffin, eighteenth century

appraised at $94.96. Once the richest woman on the island, she died with eigh-

BEQUEST OF FRANK B. HOWARD, 1956.33.1

teen dollars cash, an easy chair, various articles of clothing, a Bible, and a chamber pot. Perhaps she did not write a will because she had nothing to bequeath.

Phineas Fanning, often referred to as the first attorney on the island, also died without a will.

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Abiah Folger Franklin (1667–1752) Abiah Folger is one of the most obscure, and at the same time one of the best known, Nantucket wom-

Abiah was born in that house on August 15, 1667.

en—revered for bringing Benjamin Franklin into the

Although it is no longer standing, the location off

world and endowing him with a goodly portion of the

Madaket Road is marked with a monument erected

famous Folger intellect. She was the youngest child

in 1900 by the Abiah Folger Franklin chapter of the

of Peter Foulger (who spelled his name in the old

Daughters of the American Revolution, and in 1959

style) and Mary Morrill, whose romantic story takes

the Nantucket Historical Association added to the

us back to the earliest days of the American colonies.

homestead site a bench carved with the names of

In 1635, fifteen-year-old Mary sailed from England

Peter and Mary and their children and a boulder inset

on the Abigail as an indentured servant to Reverend

with a commemorative plaque.

Hugh Peters; eighteen-year-old Peter Foulger was

Little is known about Abiah’s life on Nantucket, or

on the same voyage, and he was smitten with Mary.

how she met her husband, Josiah Franklin, a tallow

Seven years later they married, after Peter paid off her

chandler from Boston, recently widowed, with five

service contract with a hard-earned twenty pounds.

children, but on November 25, 1689, they married

Later in life he declared it was the best expenditure

and she left the island. Abiah was twenty-two years

he had ever made. He and Mary eventually settled on

old, and would have ten children over the next two

Martha’s Vineyard, in 1642, as part of the first English

decades; her eighth child, and youngest son, was

colony organized by Thomas Mayhew; six daughters

Benjamin Franklin. In his autobiography, Franklin

and two sons were born there. In 1662, the family

remarked that his mother had an excellent constitu-

moved to Rhode Island, but was there only a year be-

tion: “. . . she suckled all ten of her children” and was

fore Peter was offered a half-share at Nantucket, if he

never sick a day in her life until she died at the age

would settle with his family and serve as “interpreter

of eighty-five. He does not elaborate on her other

Abiah Folger Franklin (attr.), 1707 Attr. Gerrit Duyckinck

between the Indians.”

talents and redeeming qualities, although as mother

(1660–circa 1713), oil on canvas

to fifteen children and a frequent assistant in her hus-

COLLECTION OF MELISSA WILLIAMS FINE ART

Familiar with the island from the 1640s, Peter had

16

Field,” where he built a house for his large family.

made many trips there with Mayhew. He had learned

band’s trade, she must have brought multitasking to

the native language and helped survey the island before

new heights. Nantucket historian Alexander Starbuck

the first settlers arrived in 1659, and his mechanical

wrote that it was said that Abiah made frequent trips

abilities were in demand. He was formally accepted

to Nantucket, but there is no local record of her visits.

by the town meeting in 1664 as a tradesman, surveyor,

Like so many women of her era, she was indispens-

interpreter, and miller and was granted land in “Rogers

able, but anonymous.

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Kezia Jr. began keeping a school in 1805, and her estate inventory fifteen years later reveals that she was in the business of selling shoes (more than three hundred pairs listed), books, toys, and stationery, but like her parents she owned no real estate. She did write a will, however, leaving a dollar to each of her children, and also to her granddaughter, Adeline, daughter of her oldest son, John, who died in 1819. Her clothing was bequeathed to her two daughters, Mahitabel, known as Hitty, and Caroline, and everything else was left to twenty-one-year-old Phineas, who was probably living at home with her and helping in the store.

Like her mother, who was disowned by the Quakers in 1773, Kezia Jr. had been disowned when she married Phineas in 1777. She became a Methodist in 1799, and in a diary entry dated December 14, 1805, describes what must have been a chilly excursion, especially for the women being baptized: “After the meeting this afternoon the congregation went down to the shore. Mr. Bishop baptised Mrs. Huston, Bathsheba Chandler, by immersion, more than 1,000 present.”

In 1805, she had her “likeness” taken by Mr. Weaver of Boston. She went to the new Second Congregational Church on Orange Street to see Mr. Swift

Sketch for God Save George the King

ordained in 1810, and she suffered through the deprivations of the War of 1812, expressing sorrow and distress, but no political opinions. When Kezia Jr. died in 1820 at the age of sixty-two, she was the grandmother of twenty-three children. Her daughters Caroline and Hitty married brothers

us hopeful that someday her complete set of fifty journals will be discovered.

In her narrative embroidery of the Kezias, Boardman focused on the

Daniel and Jeremiah Wood; the sisters eventually moved to Wilmington,

financial interests of Kezia Folger Coffin, who was, above all, a business-

North Carolina, around 1840, after both were widowed. Two of her sons died

woman, devoting her extraordinary energy to accumulating and protecting

single; two had one daughter each; and Robert and his wife, Phebe, for whom

her investments. Her domain was managing the purse, so, fittingly, Board-

we have portraits, had two daughters. Oldest son, William, father of three

man has created an embroidered purse featuring Kezia’s world as drawn by

daughters and three sons, did not reside on the island.

James Tupper in 1772. His map is in early editions of Crèvecoeur’s Letters;

Kezia Folger Coffin and Kezia Coffin Fanning were not exactly typical Nan-

her mansion and shop in town and the Quaise house are shown on the map,

tucket women, if there ever was such a thing. They were, for a time, wealthy

with a British man-of-war anchored offshore and Kezia’s little skiff scudding

and politically outspoken. Kezia the elder appears to have been fearless and

across the waves to deliver supplies to Mrs. Ascough, wife of the captain. One

unfettered by the social expectations and constraints of her native town,

of John Coffin’s sloops is poised to make a dangerous run to Long Island for

while Kezia Jr. led the more traditional life required by the needs of a large

provisions, and a protractor measures the miles of Kezia’s various maritime

family, supported herself when circumstances forced her to, and vented her

endeavors. Laughing gulls hold up a banner, surmounted by a gold crown,

opinions, observations, lamentations, and joys on the diary page, becoming

that reads “God Save George the King,” a sentiment expressed in Kezia Jr.’s

our faithful correspondent from an era of upheaval on the island, and leaving

diary, voicing a loyalty that would be her mother’s undoing.

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Phebe Folger Coleman (1771–1857) BORN IN 1771 TO WALTER FOLGER and

Elizabeth Starbuck, Phebe was one of eight children in a remarkably talented and well-educated family, whose home was at the northeast corner of Liberty and Winter Streets (it is no longer standing). A close companion to her brother, Walter Folger Jr., she was his intellectual partner, studying mathematics, history, French, and other subjects. In 1797, she became schoolmistress of a Quaker school on the island, and the same year compiled a book of miscellany—copies of poems and illustrations—that included Phebe Folger Coleman

two original watercolor sketches of views from

Phebe Folger, A Perspective View of Part of the Town of Nantucket Taken from a North Window

P271

her brother Walter’s house at 8 Pleasant Street,

in the House of Walter Folger, circa 1797, watercolor on paper

the earliest color scenes of a Nantucket neighborhood. Other examples of

COURTESY OF THE HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Phebe’s artwork, needlework, and poetry have been preserved, showcasing her multiple talents.

Phebe married Samuel Coleman in 1798. His parents, Elihu and Elizabeth

pation that required shop or warehouse space, which he acquired in 1806 on

(Macy), had removed to Hudson, New York, in 1779 with a group of Nan-

the south side of “Middle Wharf,” now known as Old North Wharf. Samuel’s

tucket families, and Samuel had grown up there. The connection between

success as a mariner and trader was in large part due to his wife, who taught

Hudson and Nantucket remained strong, and there was much travel back and

him navigation. In 1885, Maria Mitchell’s “Committee on Science Report” in

forth by members of both communities. It appears that Samuel relocated

the 13th Annual Report of the Association for the Advancement of Women

to Nantucket by 1798, when he and Phebe made their marriage intention

notes her admiration of Phebe:

known to the Nantucket Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends. Their first child, Eliza, was born in 1800, followed by Lydia in 1802 and Phebe Jr. in

. . . Studying by herself and with her brother [she] became an expert

1805. In 1802, Samuel and Phebe bought a piece of land and a dwelling house

in mathematics. She taught navigation to her husband, and he

at the corner of Milk Street and New Dollar Lane from Phebe’s father, Walter,

became, in consequence, the captain of a ship. There is a tradition

who had purchased the property in 1800. Like the house where she grew up,

that she surveyed lots in the western parts of the island, but no

the house she and Samuel bought is no longer standing. In the deed of sale

records of these surveys can now be found. She added to these

from his father-in-law, Samuel is referred to as a mariner, and in 1805, when

acquirements the womanly attributes; she wrote a fine plain hand;

he purchased a tract of land in Miacomet, he was known as a trader, an occu-

[and] she dresses with nicety and neatness.”

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Sampler, 1797, silk on linen, Polly Coffin (b. 1786) NHA PURCHASE, 1987.10.1

Family Record and Memorial by Phebe Folger for Zaccheus Coffin and Thankful Joy, after 1788, watercolor on paper GIFT OF GRACE BROWN GARDNER, 1927.28.1

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It seems there was nothing that Phebe could not do, and if her circumstances had been different—without a husband and family to care for, and perhaps living in another century—she might have made history as a scientist, inventor, poet, or artist. She used all of her skills and talents for the benefit of her domestic situation, however, and was more than an equal partner in her family’s various enterprises. Quaker records show that Phebe taught school through the first quarter of 1800; she may have continued to teach privately after Eliza was born in October that year.

What we know about Phebe beyond the bare facts of vital statistics and other public records has been culled from letters and poetry she wrote, fortunately preserved by her family and later entrusted to the Nantucket Historical Association. Two of her letters to Samuel at sea are extant. In the first, dated February 2, 1800, she mentions her fatiguing occupation teaching thirty scholars days and evenings, but adds that she is “willing to contribute my mite to accelerate that happy period when we shall not be obliged to separate.” Eight years later, another letter to Samuel conveys a similar sentiment: “Is the acquisition of wealth an adequate compensation for the tedious hours of absence? To me it is not.”

Phebe taught needlework and other subjects. Three samplers made by young girls in 1797 and 1798, in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association, have similar motifs that suggest they were made under the supervision of the same teacher, almost certainly Phebe, who wrote “Lines for a Young Lady’s Sampler:”

Queen-stitched letter case, circa 1800, Susan Folger, wool and silk, with watercolor in compartment attributed to Phebe Folger Coleman

How blest the Maid whom circling years improve

GIFT OF CHARLES H. TODD AND MISS ELLA F. PELL, 1909.14.1

Her God the object of her warmest love Whose useful hours successive as they glide The Book the Needle and the pen divide Who sees her Parents heart exult with joy

at sea. At a meeting of Women Friends held 31st 8mo 1809, a Certificate of

And the fond tear stands sparkling in their eye.

Removal was granted to “Samuel Coleman and Phebe his wife with their children viz Eliza, Lydia, and Phebe,” who would be under the compass of

Perhaps financial considerations led to the Colemans’ decision to leave

the Hudson Monthly Meeting. In a poem she wrote in 1809, “The Farewell,”

Nantucket and move to a farm near Hudson, New York, or maybe Samuel

Phebe lamented leaving her elderly parents, her brother Walter, sisters, and

wanted to be near his family, safe on shore after many years earning a living

friends.

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Friends of my heart, what words are fit to tell

And may I hope for sure some joy ’twill be,

My pangs of bidding you a last farewell?

That you far distant sometimes think of me.

When fix’d to go, but dreading still to part,

But thou, dear friend, or by what tenderer name

A thousand tender ties, will wring my heart;

For whom I felt sweet friendship’s earliest flame

A thousand cords will draw me back to you,

A flame that did our infant hearts engage,

And make me lingering bid the last adieu.

Grew with our growth and ripened with our age;

Tho’ blest with all that makes it joy to live;

Whose converse charm’d me thro’ the live long day,

All that domestic happiness can give,

Or stole the glowing hours of night away;

These comforts now all veil them from my view,

Where in the mantle of sweet friendship’s ties

And leave my heart alone, possessed of you.

Our thoughts transpired without the least disguise.

Thou more than sister so well tried, so true,

You who first form’d my infant mind to truth,

How can I think of thee and bid adieu?

Guides of my life and guardians of my youth;

Oh may some kinder fortune yet portend

And must I leave you now in life’s decline,

That we may still our lives together spend.

When every care to soothe you should be mine.

I would not add one pang, nor take much less One drop of comfort from your draught of bliss; May every blessing in your train be seen, And be the evening of your day serene.

And you with whom my youthful days were past, Days which we might with reason wish to last With whom I’ve turned the philosophic page, Or traced the manners of each distant age, Or sought the realms of science to explore, Or cull’d from fancy’s works her richest lore; Oft will kind memory bring those days to view, And fancy’s pencil paint the scenes anew; And while the pleasing traits so fresh remain,

Matilda Coleman Howland,

I’ll live those happy moments o’er again.

watercolor on paper by

Tho’ far I go, and far from you reside,

her mother, Phebe Folger

No distance can congenial souls divide.

Coleman, circa 1815

Each look, each word will bring you to my view

GIFT OF DUDLEY BELL, 1973.62.1

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Phebe’s older sister, Elizabeth, wife of Richard Worth Jr., had already settled in the Hudson Valley, which must have been a comfort to Phebe, and Samuel had numerous brothers and sisters in the area. It is remarkable that four of his siblings married four Macy siblings, sons and daughters of another Nantucket family that had relocated to Hudson. In 1809, Phebe and Samuel sold their Nantucket house to Gilbert Coffin for $3,000, a considerable sum for that time, and in 1818, when the island had recovered from the losses of the War of 1812, Samuel Coleman, described in a deed of sale as a resident of Ghent, New York, sold his wharf property to Alexander Ray 2nd for $1,000.

The Coleman family increased to seven when two more daughters, Laura and Matilda, were born to Phebe and Samuel in Ghent. There are only two surviving letters from Phebe to her family on Nantucket during her first twenty years in New York. The first, written at Chatham, July 22, 1810, was addressed to her “Honoured parents.” In it she mentions that her oldest two

Phrenological study of Phebe Coleman from The Illustrated Phrenological

daughters [Elizabeth and Lydia] are at boarding school at Nine Partners: “Our

Almanac for 1852 by L. N. Fowler

MS107 F17 1

children were not only willing but earnest to go.” She and Samuel were raising sheep that first year in Chatham, a town located just north of Ghent.

The second letter, addressed to “respected brother” Walter, was written

ten days ago to take care of Phebe till they could get another girl. She is quite

at Ghent December 3, 1820, a decade later. Phebe remarks that Samuel was

unwell with her old complaints, a violent cough.” Phebe’s daughter, name-

pleased with the new shaving brush Walter sent him, and she alludes to the

sake Phebe, married Willett Marshall when she was eighteen or nineteen.

“sorrowful subject” of Rebecca, her sister Lydia’s daughter, whose woes are

She was the mother of three children in 1829, and was probably pregnant

not revealed. She fears that the river will soon ice up and they will receive no

with a fourth, born in 1830. Her fifth child, Phebe, was born in 1831, and

mail until spring. Samuel and Phebe owned a gristmill and a sawmill, erected

Phebe, the mother, died in 1833, at the age of twenty-eight. The name Phebe

soon after the settlement of the village of Ghent, and Phebe mentions that

was a popular one in the family: Phebe’s sister Elizabeth’s daughter, Phebe,

they have hired a new miller, who lives in one of the houses on their property.

had married Robert Bunker and died when she was only seventeen, leaving a

Samuel died in Chatham, New York, in 1825, he was fifty-two years old;

daughter named Phebe who had recently died:

Phebe was fifty-four, oldest daughter Eliza was twenty-five, and the youngest, Matilda, was thirteen. Two years later Phebe gave a power of attorney to

I have heard a shocking account from there, their granddaughter

her younger brother, Gideon Folger of Nantucket, so he could handle es-

Phebe Bunker, the child that their daughter Phebe left, has

tate-related business after the death of their father, Walter Sr., who had died

committed suicide! She got a great cold last winter and was taken

September 30, 1826.

deranged. She was taken at Richard’s [Richard Worth, Elizabeth’s

Another letter from Phebe to her brother Walter, dated July 5, 1829, men-

husband] but was carried home to her father’s; she remained

tions family on Nantucket, and relates that she and youngest daughter Laura

delirious all winter and then sunk into a melancholy state, to rouse

are well and “that is all the family I have now. I let Matilda go to Kinderhook

her from that they carried her abroad amongst her friends; and

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Phebe Folger Coleman (1771–1857) COLLECTION OF BETSY TYLER

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rode about with her from one place to another and it seemed to

know of Phebe’s life is piecemeal: letters every five or ten years embellish the

have the desired effect, she appeared to be well and wanted to go to

bare facts and hint at the multitude of domestic responsibilities, the family

her uncle Alexander Bunker’s to weave, I believe that was her home

joys and tragedies, and the financial vicissitudes of the farm and mill.

when she was weaving. She warped a piece and got it in and went

The next surviving letter concerning Phebe and her family was written by

to weaving and any one would not have discovered from her work or

William C. Folger to his “respected Uncle” November 1, 1836, from Ghent,

her conversation that anything was the matter.

where he was visiting Phebe. William C., a well-known Nantucket genealogist, was Phebe’s nephew, the son of her sister Rebecca, who had married a

Phebe goes on to describe the sad event—young Phebe had hanged her-

Folger cousin. In his letter he mentions that he had just been in New York

self in the attic with a skein of yarn. In parentheses, Walter Jr.’s ever scientific

City and had stopped by Joseph C. Hart’s office. (Hart was the author of Miri-

Folger sister proved that her analytical mind was still sharp when she wrote: “I

am Coffin, published in 1834). Then, following his passion for vital statistics,

suppose linen yarn.” In this same letter, the Colemans’ mill is mentioned again:

William C. provided information about Phebe’s family, including names and birth dates of all of Phebe’s grandchildren, who by 1836 numbered twen-

I have got another run of stones in the mill. They prove to be very

ty-two. Phebe was sixty-five years old. Her household, according to William

good ones, and make good work. We had to add a little piece on to

C., included two of Phebe Marshall’s (the daughter who died in 1833) chil-

the building to make room. If I could have had this done last fall

dren, and one of Eliza Collins’s (her oldest daughter, whose husband had

it would have been very advantageous for me, for we have been so

been sick in 1828). He adds that “Laura has Matilda Marshall. They live at

crowded with custom all winter that we have not been able to grind

present with Aunt Phebe.” (Laura had married Jonathan Nye, and her infant

our own as fast as we could have sold the flour while it commanded

daughter, Susan, had just died in October.) Another of Phebe Marshall’s

a good price and now we have got about 200 bushels of wheat on

children was living with Phebe Coleman’s youngest daughter, Matilda, in

hand and the flour will not fetch so much as the wheat cost. But in

Fairhaven, Massachusetts. William describes Phebe’s farm:

the fall I could not do it for I had Wm. Collins here sick and almost in a state of distraction and no one to assist me.

The Hudson and Berkshire Rail Road is going to be made through the meadows of Aunt Phebe’s farm on the west side of the turnpike

William Collins was the husband of Phebe’s daughter Eliza, who had six

and will cut up the lots so as to be an injury to the farm. . . . Aunt

children under the age of eight, and would have a ninth child, named Phebe,

Phebe’s corn was not ruined by the frost although the crop was not

in 1830. It is likely that she was unable to care for a sick husband.

so great as some years, wheat about a middling crop, apples slim—

These two letters, dated 1820 and 1829, tell us a little about Phebe Folger

potatoes a good crop.

Coleman’s life in Ghent, and we can imagine how busy she must have been, especially after Samuel died in 1825. She and Samuel had property that

William C. had visited Phebe at least once previously, in 1833. His auto-

included farmland, a mill, a house where their daughter Lydia and husband

graph book includes a page in her fine hand, signed and dated “Ghent 7th Mo

William Bunker had lived, now housing their new miller, and their own

7th 1833:”

house. By 1829, four of her five daughters were married and she had twelve grandchildren. Her daughter Phebe was not well, and she had spent the

Say, who can cast a meditative eye,

previous fall nursing her daughter Eliza’s husband back to health. What we

To the vast concave of th’ethereal sky,

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Survey those bright chronometers of time,

Keeping track of all the Phebes in the family is almost impossible; this

And not be touched with thoughts and views sublime;

granddaughter was either Phebe Collins (Eliza’s daughter, born in 1830), or

Or who behold those shining orbs with care,

Phebe Marshall (younger sister of Clarinda, born in 1831). Another grand-

And not adore the power that plac’d them there.

daughter, Phebe Bunker (Lydia’s daughter, born in 1821), was probably already married.

From 1836 to 1850 we have no information about Phebe, but a number

Although most of her life was spent away from Nantucket, Phebe Folger

of her letters written between 1850 and 1857 survive. Nine of them are to her

Coleman’s ties to the island were of the linen-yarn variety: unbreakable. By

granddaughter, Clarinda Marshall, whose mother, Phebe, died in 1833. Clarinda,

her own admission, she preferred active employment most of her life, but her

born in 1830, was probably one of the Marshall daughters living with her

poetry reveals a reflective nature, full of emotion and faith, encouraging us

grandmother in 1836. The first of this series of short letters was written at

to “sometimes” think of her. Phebe Folger Coleman died in Fairhaven, Mas-

Hudson, New York, March 24, 1850, and relates family news. The rest of the

sachusetts, at her daughter Matilda Howland’s house, February 5, 1857, aged

letters are from Fairhaven, where Phebe moved to live with her daughter,

85 years, 2 months, and 26 days. The namesake for a host of Phebes, she was

Matilda Howland. In a letter dated December 10, 1854, eighty-three-year-old

loved and admired by her extended family.

Phebe writes:

The twinkle in her eyes in the photographic portraits that we have of Phebe reveals the lively energy of this Nantucket-born artist, poet, teacher,

I love to receive letters tho it is not so easy for me to write as it was

wife, mother, miller, and farmer. Susan Boardman has made Phebe’s portrait

once; but I love to read as well as ever I did and read a great deal

the center of her tribute, inserted in an embroidered frame that was inspired

more than I did many years ago when I was more fond of active

by elaborate seventeenth-century English tapestry frames of similar shape.

employment.

At the top of the frame, Phebe’s Chatham, New York, orchards are represented, and she is shown wielding a hoe among her crops of purple-flowering

Two letters written by Phebe to her nephew, Edward R. Folger, and his

potatoes, wheat, and corn. Emblems from samplers designed by Phebe dec-

wife, Mary Ann, also survive. Edward was the son of Phebe’s favorite brother,

orate the sides of the frame: blue birds atop trees growing from elegant urns

Walter, who had died in 1849. In the first letter, dated October 20, 1852, Phebe

and pairs of black dogs, common motifs in Quaker samplers. A whaleship,

mentions a visit to Nantucket: “My visit was so agreeable and satisfactory

symbolizing Samuel’s years at sea, centers the bottom of the piece. Lines

that I think it may be the last. . . . The comfort I took in my brother Gideon’s

from Phebe’s 1809 poem, written around the photograph and decorated with

company will not soon be forgotten.” All of Phebe’s sisters had died previous

garlands of silvery green leaves, provide a frame within the frame:

to 1852, and of her seven siblings, only her younger brothers, Gideon and Aaron, were left. In a second letter to Edward and Mary, dated February 25, 1853,

Tho’ far I go, and far from you reside,

Phebe describes her household the year before she moved to Fairhaven:

No distance can congenial souls divide; And may I hope for sure some joy ’twill be,

My new married couple keep house in my house and I board with

That you far distant sometimes think of me.

them which I find is much easier than to keep house myself. My new grandson makes a very good husband, but Phebe has been sick the most of the winter.

This, of course, is the source of Boardman’s title for the 2010 exhibition and companion book.

CHAPTER 2: | EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

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Susan Austin Veeder (1816–97) “As Seen from Ship Nauticon” COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

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CHAPTER 3

Nineteenth Century: Whaling Wives ALTHOUGH VESTIGES OF seventeenth-century agrarian culture and eigh-

enced whaling masters, with numerous

teenth-century Quaker lifestyle, if not religion, were still apparent on Nan-

successful voyages under their belts,

tucket, whaling was the primary industry and all-consuming passion of the

and the idea of taking a wife and family

islanders for the first half of the nineteenth century. The population of the

along on a voyage may have been their

island grew rapidly, with a consequent increase in houses, shops, warehouses,

attempt to share the experiences and

tryworks, candle factories, and cultural institutions—churches, schools, and

form the memories of what they knew

libraries. Census records show that almost ten thousand people called the

was a fast disappearing way of life. Or

island home in 1840, a number that would not be equaled again until the end

maybe they were just lonely, tired of

of the twentieth century.

being separated from their families as

New Bedford had eclipsed Nantucket as the major whaling port of North

voyages increased from three years to

America by 1830, but the island’s fleet was still active and productive until

four, five, and even six, as they searched

Scrimshaw doll’s bed and bisque doll,

mid-century, when it became apparent that circumstances were conspiring

for an increasingly scarce prey.

made after 1847 by Captain David Folger

against the local industry, which collapsed due to a series of calamities: the

It is the journals kept by these wom-

(1822–97) for his daughter Lydia

Great Fire of 1846 destroyed the wharves and most of the downtown; the

en at sea that give us a glimpse of an

discovery of gold in California attracted hundreds of Nantucket men in 1849;

exotic world of coasts and islands they

and the scarcity of whales, inadequacy of the harbor for large ships, and

visited around the globe. We also get a glimpse of shipboard life, and a sense

the discovery of new illuminants all signaled the end of an era. Nantucket’s

of the personalities of the women, sometimes exemplified in a recurring

whaling women rode the last wave of that golden sea. Susan Veeder, whose

phrase, like Betsey Morey’s “it was a green spot in my life,” or Eliza Brock’s

journal in the Nantucket Historical Association collection is the earliest kept

“I awoke to find myself a wanderer on the wide ocean.” Their observations,

by a woman, went whaling with her husband, Charles, in 1848, and five other

poignant or practical, provide the basis for the needlework portrayals that

women followed suit in the early 1850s. All of their husbands were experi-

include themes and icons of their lives.

2003.2.1A-B

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Susan Austin Veeder (1816–97) “She was a fine child too good to live.”

Susan Veeder is the first of the Nantucket whaling women to keep a journal, and hers is a stunning example, filled with intricately detailed watercolors of islands, harbors, and ships seen during a five-year voyage from Nantucket to the South Pacific and Arctic Oceans, with stops along the way at Tahiti; Pitcairn; the Sandwich Islands; Valparaiso and Talcahuano, Chile; and Callao, Peru. She was not the first Nantucket woman to accompany her husband on a whaling voyage, however. Three decades before she sailed with Captain Veeder and two of their three sons on the Nauticon in 1848, Nantucket-born Mary Hayden Russell joined her husband, Laban, on the Hydra, out of Plymouth, England, and sailed with him again, in 1823, on the Emily, out of London. Mary wrote two letters from sea to her sister on Nantucket, providing us with a record of her voyage. But it was the intrepid Susan Veeder who charted the course for the nine mid-nineteenth-century women who went to sea from Nantucket. During the voyage, she met other captains’ ladies, including Nantucketer Azubah Cash, who arrived at Maui on the Columbia

Susan Veeder, circa 1850s, unidentified

Captain Charles A. Veeder, circa 1845,

Chinese artist, oil on linen

James Hathaway, oil on canvas

GIFT OF BARBARA JOHNSON, 1994.28.1

GIFT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 1999.30.2

October 29, 1851, a day before the Nauticon left the harbor after a two-week stopover. The women were able to spend the day together on board Veeder’s ship, and Azubah, who had left Nantucket in 1850, undoubtedly recounted all

of valuable sperm whale oil. One can also imagine the elder son begging to

the island news of the past two years to an eager audience.

go whaling with his father, and Susan stepping up to declare that if he was

It is not clear why Susan Veeder decided to go on a whaling voyage with

going, she would, too. Charles Junior did not join the family, however, but

her husband. Charles had probably met, or heard of, sea-faring women from

for unknown reasons stayed on Nantucket with Susan’s parents, George and

other whaling towns when he was on one of many previous voyages, and

Susan Austin; he is listed at their residence in the U. S. Federal Census for

he certainly must have felt the need to spend time with his wife and young

1850. Whatever the family dynamic, they set sail September 13, 1848, and

sons, who had seen very little of him over the years. Oldest son, George, was

two months later Susan recorded in her journal, “The captain is all attention

fourteen in 1848, Charles Junior was twelve, and David was six. The boys

and says he is very happy to think I am here and encourages me by saying

were destined to be mariners, and what better experience for them than to

that he thinks I get along first rate.” In early January the Nauticon arrived at

go to sea with their successful father, who, on his first voyage as captain, re-

Talcahuano, Chile, where the family went ashore to stay at American Consul

turned from four years in the Christopher Mitchell with a record 2,700 barrels

William Crosby’s house for a month, while the first mate, Mr. Archer, took

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the ship out cruising for whales. On January 29, Susan wrote, “nothing of any

Title-page illustration and selected

note occurred until the 29th, and then I was confined with a fine daughter

watercolor illustrations from the

weighing 9 lbs which was very pleasing to us both.” It becomes clear to the

Nauticon journal, the inspiration

journal reader that Susan was five months pregnant when she left Nantuck-

for Susan Boardman’s first

et, although she never mentioned the fact until her baby was born. Reading

embroidered narrative.

between the lines is not always easy, and the women who kept sea journals

GIFT OF THE FRIENDS OF THE

often provide tantalizing glimpses into their personal lives that are rarely

NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION,

elaborated upon.

MS 220 LOG 347

Susan’s journal includes elements of a traditional ship’s logbook, such as frequent weather reports, occasional recording of latitude and longitude, and a running commentary on whales seen, chased, captured, cut-in, and boiled.

She also includes descriptions of places she visited and mundane occurrences that would not have been noted in an official logbook, and that is what makes her record so valuable. One wishes she had been more forthcoming about daily life on board the ship, her care and schooling of youngest son, David, and her reactions to exotic places and people. Susan’s journal is not CHAPTER 3 | NINETEENTH CENTURY: WHALING WIVES

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Captain Charles A. Veeder, circa 1860s, platinotype

Nauticon journal watercolor illustrations

A86-29

a daily record; many entries state simply “I have not written these past days

together. The first sperm whale they sighted was a dead one floating on the

because nothing of note occurred.” Little did she know that later generations

ocean, and Susan remarked, “This is the first I have seen. I am in hopes they

would love to know how she filled her days on board the ship and what sort

don’t all smell quite so bad as that did.” The Nauticon headed to the Galapagos

of relationship she had with her husband, the mates, and the crew.

Islands to load the ship with tortoises, a food source that required little care

After their daughter was born, Charles and the boys went to sea and Susan

since the creatures could exist for months without sustenance. While the men

was left at Talcahuano. On February 18 she wrote, “I feel quite feeble to be left

were wrestling the turtles, Susan was busy in the galley: “Some of the men

among strangers,” and four days later lamented, “I think Talcahuano is a bad

brought prickly pears and while they was on shore I did them up in molasses

place the longer I stay here and the more I see of it the more disgusted I feel.”

for the people. Another day while here I made ginger bread and sent it on shore

Her mood improved after a three-mile horseback ride with Mrs. Crosby in early

to them, about 150 cakes.” After witnessing the natural marvels of the Galapa-

March, and a packet of letters from home arrived a few days later, the first she

gos, the Nauticon stopped at Tumbes, Peru, where they found the ship Peru of

had received since they sailed six months earlier, which must have lifted her

Nantucket, with Mrs. Fisher, wife of Consider Fisher of Edgartown on board. The

spirits. On March 16, the ship Globe of Mystic, Connecticut, arrived at Talca-

two families gammed on the Nauticon and had tea, with cakes, melons, orang-

huano, with Captain West, his wife, and a sick thirteen-month-old baby who

es, and tamarinds, and went ashore together for a local feast day that featured

died four days later—a tragic event that would foreshadow her own voyage.

“plenty of music.” Susan noted that she saw “a few bamboo houses and a lot of

Charles and the boys returned on March 23, and the family sailed away

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half naked children.”

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The newest member of the Veeder family was thriving. “Sis grows like a pig and is very cunning,” wrote a proud mother on September 26. Three months later, on New Year’s Eve, Susan noted that Mary Frances (named for the first time in the journal) was eleven months old, had seven teeth, and “creeps all about the ship and is very cunning. She is now on deck taking a ride in his wagon.” Captain Veeder crafted a whalebone toy cart on board the Nauticon, and it may be the little wagon mentioned in the journal; in 2010, the cart was in the collection of the Toy Museum in Winston Salem, North Carolina. With doting parents and older brothers, little Mary Frances must have been the darling of the Nauticon.

Arriving in Tahiti on February 21, the Veeders rented a house: “I like the place very much, some very fine buildings,” wrote Susan, who indicated that much of their time was spent socializing with other captains and enjoying a respite from the confines of the ship. Two weeks later Susan

Scrimshaw toy cart made aboard the Nauticon by Capt. Charles Veeder, circa 1850, ivory, whalebone, iron

described a tragic event that is made even more immediate because it is

COURTESY OF THE OLD SALEM TOY MUSEUM

recorded in her own fine script immediately afterwards: Tuesday morning our babe did not seem very well and as we

This is the longest and most heartfelt entry in Susan’s journal to date.

expected to go to sea the next day we thought we would call in a

Such a tragic event might have overwhelmed a lesser woman, but Susan was

physician as she was teething and have her gums lanced. So we

stalwart. A little over a week later the family went ashore on an uninhabited

called in a Dr. Johnson. He came and said nothing was the matter

atoll called Lazareef where they gathered coconuts and “caught a nice mess

but a little cold, and he gave her a powder to take then and left one

of fish as we all went prepared with hooks and lines. I caught as many as

for me to give her at bed time which I did and put her in a warm

anyone in the boat.” A bereft woman in a man’s world, she could still out-

bath but at 3 o-clock in the morning she was taken convulsed and

fish them all. On April 24, 1850, the Nauticon arrived at Pitcairn Island, and

we very soon see that there was no hope for her recovery, we sent

visited descendants of the mutineer residents:

immediately for a physician and everything was done that could be done but all in vain she was poisoned no doubt by taking the second

We landed on the opposite side of the Island from where the village

powder. What can be done, what can be done, was all that we could

is on account of its being so rough. We landed on the rocks and had

say. The threat of losing our babe was more than we could bear to

to go up a presipiece almost perpendicular. Two of the residents

think of. She was a fine child too good to live, and at 11 o’clock am

assisted me in getting over carrying me part of the way. We arrived

she breathed her last. What shall be done with our darling was the

at the village about 4 p.m. we went to the house of Fletcher Christian

next question with us both. Could we think of burying her at Tahita

and there we stopped. We had not been there many minutes before

no we could not we must take her with us away, so we have had a

the house was full of people; everyone in the place came to see me. I

lead coffin made and the corpse embalmed to take home with us.

think they are the kindest people I have ever met with.

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Sketch for Susan Veeder (“Tahiti as Seen from the Harbor”)

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Susan Austin Veeder (1816–97), “Tahiti as Seen from the Harbor” COLLECTION OF CHERYL AND JOSEPH ROMANO

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The Veeders stayed in the village three days and the gracious treatment continued:

surrounding sea; there they killed their largest whale, a bowhead that yielded more than two hundred barrels of oil.

While in the Arctic, two canoes carrying about thirty natives came along-

They all called to see me every day while there, and when they

side their ship one day, bringing fish, teeth, and skins to trade. Susan re-

found we was a comeing away they all got together and collected

marked, “They appear to be very harmless and honest. All they wanted was

many things, some fowl, others oranges and coconuts, and some

tobacco, needles, and knives.” Whaling was treacherous in the far north, and

other things, they all followed us down to the boat and waited our

the bowhead whales that lived there learned to dive under the ice when they

departure. We had the pleasure of naming a little one while there,

were pursued, and ice was all around them. On June 27 Susan wrote, “We are

son of Henry and Albina Young. The number of residents is 164.

surrounded by floating ice and don’t know how to get out of it.” Three days later she recorded, “this morning we have had the misfortune to get our ship

It was Nantucketer Mayhew Folger who had discovered the mutineer

in the ice.” For thirteen days they were stuck fast in the Arctic Ocean, where

enclave on Pitcairn in 1808, eighteen years after their mutiny on the English

Susan spied “a white bear close to the ship.” Finally freed from the frozen

ship Bounty, under the notorious Captain Bligh. Other Nantucket whale-

water, they sailed for the Sandwich Islands. Susan celebrated her thirty-fifth

ships had stopped there in the intervening years, so Pitcairn was known as a

birthday “steering south.” In mid-October, the Nauticon reached Maui, where

hospitable English-speaking island. Just six months after the Veeders’ visit,

the family went ashore for two weeks. Susan and Charles were “unprepared” to

Eliza Swain Palmer, wife of Captain George Palmer of the Nantucket ship

attend a ball there, but they must have regretted their decision; two weeks lat-

Navigator, died on the island, and on December 24, 1850, the son of Captain

er they attended one in Oahu, and had a fine time. They also went to a circus!

and Mrs. Charles Grant, of the Nantucket vessel Potomac, was born there.

In 1852 the Veeders began their long journey home, first cruising for sever-

Four months after their visit to Pitcairn, Susan went ashore on Cocos Island

al months in the Tuamoto Group, an area of tropical islands that would seduce

to do the laundry, and painted the view of the island with white sheets spread

Charles Veeder on a later voyage. In one of her rare descriptions of domestic

among the bushes.

activity on board, Susan remarked on April 7 that she was sewing a pink calico

In February 1851, the Nauticon was once again at Talcahuano, where

shirt and Charles was making a pair of shoes for their son David. By July they

Susan visited with the wives of Captain Burgess of the Robert Edwards, and

had reached the coast of Chile, and went ashore in Talcahuano again, to stay at

Captain Elihu Russell, master of the Peri, both out of New Bedford, in voyages

Consul Crosby’s house, where Susan had given birth to Mary Frances two years

of 1849–51. It was not uncommon for women on whaling voyages to meet

earlier. This time Susan did not describe her visit. They left on August 6, bound

other “petticoat whalers,” but only a few of them appear to have kept personal

around Cape Horn, and entered the Atlantic Ocean on September 12. By No-

journals (or they may have been lost), so we learn about them only from the

vember they were cruising off the La Plata River, which empties into the Atlan-

women who did record their activities, and who always noted the welcome

tic between northern Argentina and southern Uruguay, and was a rich whaling

meetings in the maritime oilfields.

ground. There they were lucky to get two large sperm whales, although the sec-

After reprovisioning, the Nauticon cruised toward the Arctic Ocean, catch-

ond mate was injured during the chase when a rope became tangled around his

ing a sperm whale or two along the way; the previous year they had harpooned

feet and he was dragged underwater for several minutes. Luckily, he survived,

one large ninety-barrel sperm whale, but most of their prey were small, and

although Susan noted that he was “quite exhausted, and vomited considerable

made only twenty barrels each. By June of 1851 they had reached the Kam-

blood.” The voyage had opened her eyes to the dangers of her husband’s trade,

chatka Peninsula of Russia where they saw more than fifty whaleships in the

highlighted against days of boredom, when nothing of note occurred.

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Charles was on shore for two years before taking command of the Ocean Rover on a very successful voyage. He returned to Nantucket in 1858, the same year their middle son, Charles, was lost at sea at the age of twenty-one. Young David, too, would meet his fate at sea, although the circumstances of his death, like his brother’s, are unrecorded. They are two of the many Nantucket men simply noted in family records as “lost at sea.”

Marianna Veeder was born to Gravestone of Mary Frances Veeder, “died at Tahita/

Susan and Charles in 1860, and

Society Islands/6 March, 1850,” Newtown Cemetery

they were surely delighted to have another daughter, even though Susan was forty-four years old and

91 Orange Street, with people on stairs

P6541

Charles was fifty-one. Marianna was a contemporary of her much older brother George Veeder’s children, Charles and Mary Frances, born in 1861 and 1863,

The crew of the Nauticon threw the tryworks overboard on March 14,

and named for his siblings who had died young. Susan Veeder had begun keep-

signaling the end of their pursuit of whales. They entered the Gulf Stream

ing a journal again in 1858, but after a few days put it down and did not pick it

on March 22, and Susan’s last entry was written March 23, 1853: “Light wind,

up again until Charles left on his fifth voyage as a whaling captain in 1868, on

one sail in sight, all well, quite cold.” The Nauticon arrived in Nantucket four

the William Gifford, a New Bedford ship. He did not return from that voyage.

days later.

The Veeder family had spent four and a half years together in close

What happened to Charles Veeder? Local death records note that he died in the Society Islands in 1878, but the William Gifford was sold in Panama

quarters on the Nauticon. They returned to their home at 91 Orange Street, a

in 1873. There is no obituary notice for Charles Veeder in Nantucket papers,

dwelling that Charles had purchased in 1837. They were undoubtedly happy

which seems odd, since they were prone to publishing accolades of the well-

to see friends and family again, although one of their first responsibilities

known whaling captains who had been part of the golden age of a now-dead

was to bury little Mary Frances in the Newtown Cemetery, where her grave-

industry. It is clear that something happened that no one wanted to talk

stone still stands.

about. A journal now in the collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum

One wonders if Susan missed sailing from one new place to the next, sam-

library, kept on board the William Gifford by young seaman Edward J. Kirwin,

pling the exotic fruits of a South Pacific island, or standing at her husband’s

records the daily activities on board ship from April 1871 to 1872, and pro-

side on deck as they scanned the moving surface of the sea for whale spouts.

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point Kirwin simply states, “I could not tell if the Captain was drunk or crazy.”

Kirwin’s journal begins just a few weeks before Susan Veeder’s onshore Nantucket journal ends, but there is just enough overlap to highlight the alternate universes inhabited by Charles and Susan. Kirwin writes on July 27, 1871, “Capt. is still stopping ashore burying a child in a flour bag the kanakas say, which belongs to him.” Susan Veeder writes in her journal four days later, “A fine day, all well, have been washing. Marianna out to Sconset. It is three years today since my husband sailed.” On Monday, August 21, Susan records, “A splendid day, all well. Marianna gone off this morning with Mrs. Chase to camp meeting for a few days. This afternoon Susie and myself been away to tea to Mrs. Olive Meader.” Two days later Kirwin reported, “The ship

Detail of Susan Austin Veeder (1816–97), “Tahiti as Seen from the Harbor”

came near going ashore while the officers were playing with the women and

COLLECTION OF CHERYL AND JOSEPH ROMANO

the mate half drunk.”

Captain Veeder had become so smitten with a Polynesian woman that he

then acquired a third captain for a whaling cruise on the homeward journey.

had abandoned all interest in whaling. His mistress, who is never named by

The ship did not return to New Bedford, but was sold in Panama in 1873.

Kirwin, was on board the ship much of the time, often accompanied by other

According to local death records, Captain Veeder died in the Society Islands

villagers from an atoll known as Barclay’s Island, or Tolly Island—named

in 1878, a notation that is written in at the top of the page of 1878 deaths,

after Russian general Barclay de Tolly—but now known as Raroia. Kirwin

suggesting that the information was received some time, perhaps years, later.

reports that the captain and his officers were frequently drunk, and all were

Whether Susan Veeder ever knew the extent of her husband’s wanderlust

consorting with the island women. His descriptions of the noisy on-board

is not known. The American consul in Tahiti would have notified Charles

shenanigans, fueled by rum and lust, are a rarity in the annals of whalemen’s

Gifford, owner of the William Gifford, about the crew’s accusations and the

journals. South Pacific island dalliances were probably not rare occurrences,

subsequent change of captain, and other whalers in Tahiti would certainly

but Charles Veeder appears to have fallen in love with his native paramour,

have heard of Veeder’s removal and refusal to return home, but that infor-

and completely forgotten why he was at sea in the William Gifford. The

mation might have been considered too scandalous to repeat to his wife. If

drunken debauchery reached a crisis when Veeder struck his steward in the

other whaling captains participated in similar behavior, or allowed their crew

face with a gun, and then had him taken to an island and abandoned. The

to frolic with the native women, then under the guise of protecting Veeder’s

crew rose up and relieved the captain of his duties, informing the other offi-

reputation they may have saved their own.

cers that they planned no further interference as long as Veeder was handed

Someone knew that Charles Veeder died in the Society Islands in 1878,

over to the American consul in Tahiti. Although Veeder pleaded mercy and

however, and the information made its way back to Nantucket; we just don’t

asked to be taken back to Barclay’s Island with his mistress and one hundred

know when. Perhaps Veeder never left Tahiti, the largest of the Society

barrels of oil, the crew refused. After testimony was considered by the consul,

Islands, where he was relieved of his duty in 1872, or perhaps he returned to

Veeder was relieved of command of the ship in May of 1872. Refusing the

Barclay’s Island, or Raroia, with his mistress.

consul’s offer of transportation to San Francisco, he then literally fell off the map. The William Gifford sailed to San Francisco under a new captain, and

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Susan Veeder survived her husband by almost twenty years. She remained on Nantucket, in her house on Orange Street, with daughter, Marianna, and

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niece, Susan, daughter of her sister Eliza Austin Foster, who died in 1856. The

Nukahiva Island—the setting for Melville’s first book, Typee, published in

journal that Susan Veeder kept at home from 1868 to 1871 records the events

1846—Edward J. Kirwin, disgruntled young journal keeper wrote, “Captain is

of a peaceful household of sociable females, constantly visiting and receiving

still ashore drunk for the last four days and no signs of his ever coming off.”

visitors, which seems to have been the Nantucket custom: “This afternoon

The journal kept by Susan Veeder on board the Nauticon inspired Susan

Phebe [her brother Edward’s wife] and myself have been out making calls.

Boardman to create her first “embroidered narrative” commemorating a

Have made nine, also met different ones that was coming to see me.” Susan

Nantucket woman, in 1998. Other pieces about Veeder followed, including

went to entertainments and lectures at the Atheneum; she attended the girls’

the scene of the harbor at Papeete, Tahiti, where Veeder was eager to spend

school examinations, which were public events; she made rag rugs and quilts;

time ashore with her family in 1850, although their visit there ended with the

and she mentions squantums and camp meetings. In the summer of 1870 she

tragic death of their daughter. Boardman’s embroidered scene pays homage

and the girls spent several weeks in Siasconset, first at Captain Cash’s house,

to Veeder’s lovely watercolor and to their ship, the Nauticon, featured in the

then at Captain Joy’s. Her record of letters sent and received from Charles

foreground. The ship Susan, also in the harbor, is a reference to both Veeder

runs throughout her journal; she refers to good long letters, wherein Captain

and Boardman. An entry from Veeder’s diary two years later provides the text

Veeder reports that all is well, and the hold is filling with oil. Her journal ends

for the action represented in the border: whale sighted, boats lowered, the

September 30, 1871, on the last page of her small book: “All well, nothing

chase, and kill. The brutality of the hunt is clearly depicted, from the crew-

of any note.” On that same day, thousands of miles away in Typee Bay on

man entangled in the line and the stove boat, to the whale spouting red.

Elizabeth (Betsey) Morse Morey (1810–93) “It will ever be a green spot in my life.”

BETSEY MORSE WAS BORN in Thompson, Connecticut, to Arnold Morse of Brighton, Massachusetts, and Sally

Hunting of Watertown; she may have met her future Nantucket husband, Israel Morey, when her brother, Arnold Morse Jr., married Israel’s older sister, Maria, in 1825. Another Morse brother, Arthur, had married Nantucketer Sarah Folger in 1822, so there was a connection between the Morse family and the island for more than a decade before Betsey’s marriage to Israel Morey in 1835, when she was twenty-five years old and he was twenty-three.

Israel was the ninth of eleven children of Sylvanus and Lydia Morey, an island farming family. He came of age during Nantucket’s whaling heyday and sought his fortune at sea, but he and Betsey were also invested in agriculture. They bought a farm in Squam the year they were married, and in 1850, after Israel’s first voyage as captain of a whaleship, they bought the farmhouse and land at One Somerset Road. Betsey’s brother, Arnold Morse Jr., owned Brighton Farm, next to their newly purchased farm, and the two families lived as close neighbors and friends. Betsey and Israel had no children, but Arnold and Maria had nine, so there were abundant nieces and nephews for Betsey to indulge. That she had a tender heart and a fondness for animals, children, and all living

Detail of “Moona” from Historical Map of Nantucket by the

creatures is a fact gleaned from the journal of her voyage with Israel on the Phoenix, from 1853 to 1855.

Rev. Ferdinand C. Ewer, D. D., 1869

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Elizabeth “Betsey” Morse Morey (1810–93), “Rustian Beauty” and “Sea Queen of Rusia” COLLECTION OF ELLEN AND DAVID ROSS

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The Phoenix sailed from Nantucket on July 19, and Betsey made her first

And as this is the first sperm whale I have seen I think I will call her

journal entry a month later when they hailed the ship Tiger of Stonington,

name Mercy, for we have seen so many and could not catch them.

Connecticut:

She has had so much mercy on us I thought it would be a proper name to give it.

We were invited on board what they call at sea going a gammin.

However we had a pleasant time with Capt. Lot and Lady, took tea

Betsey continued her naming of the whales, a practice she began when

with them. We had baked chickens stuffed and nice bread and cake

they caught their first right whale, Jonah, the previous November. Often the

and ginger root preserved.

inked whale stamp in her journal, with whale name and number, would be followed by a short description or poem, like the following homage to Mercy:

On September 2, Betsey flipped back to the first page of her journal and wrote the following:

Lovely Mercy we do love thee, Now your Voige of life is o’er

My husband has presented me this book for the purpose of writeing a

You was the first discovered by me,

journold but I feel intireley incompetent to the task. It is gest nineteen

I shall never Behold you More.

years today since we were marraid, and I thought I would commence from this date. In the first place it is of no use for me to describe my

During the course of the voyage Betsey named all thirty-three whales tak-

feelings previous to my leaveing my dear friends on that dear Isle of

en, among them Queen Victoria, Napoleon Boneypart, Little Poggy Bowhead,

the Sea where I had spent twenty three years of my life, and my dear

and Lovely Lucy Neal—“Now we have got you, how happy we feel.” One of

friends can better immagin then what I can write. We left that dear

Boardman’s embroidered narratives depicts two whales harpooned in the

spot in July the 19, 1853. Wednesday morning I went up on deck and

Okhotsk Sea in early June 1854, christened Rustian (or Russian) Beauty, and

took my last view for the present of that dear spot and my husband

the Sea Queen of Rusia [sic], who merited one of Morey’s poetic tributes: “ It

and the pilot stood by my side and observed there is the old sand heap,

was cruel to disturb thee, lovely monster of the deep, when I saw them thus

take one more look and I did so which caused the tears to flow. . . .

approach thee, it caused me for to wail and weep.” Below the vivid whaling scene in the embroidery, Morey’s poem is accompanied by a ghostly ivory

She soon adapted to shipboard life, however, and took pleasure in all the new places she visited and people she met. On shore on the island of Fayal in the Azores, she remarked:

whale and a golden wreath fit for a Sea Queen.

Betsey Morey may have been the first person on a whaling voyage to record a sincere respect and sympathy for the prey. When whale number twenty-seven, Lady Montigo, was captured October 9, 1854, Betsey felt com-

I must say Fayal was the most romantick place I ever saw. Oh dear

passion for the plight of an orphaned whale, and wrote:

those little children I shall never forget how they appeared to carry buckets of water on there heads and the little donkeys troting along with

Oh she is a beauty. They found her little calf with her Poor Little

heavy burdens on their back. We left them at six P. M. God bless them.

Creature. It was cruel to take the Mother from him, but I suppose he will soon forget her, and remember her miseries no more.

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“The Sea Queen of Rusia,” June 1, 1854

“The Queen of Sheba,” July 27, 1854

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Betsey also expressed pity for a hog brought on board from Pitt’s Island, and months later slaughtered by the crew: He has numbered one of our family 8 months and in that time I have got very much attached to him. I would go up on deck at any time and if he heard my voice he would come to me and ask for his corn and if I did not take the hint he would pull my dress or shawl until I noticed it and then I would say to him “Does Mr. Hogg want his corn?” He would answer me ugh ugh.

The demise of Poor Billy the hog elicited another of her poetic tributes: Poor Mr. Hogg is dead and Gone I never shall see him more, “Mr. Hogg,” October 2, 1854

Or hear him beging me for Corn, His loss I do deplore.

Many of the women who went on whaling voyages with their captain husbands had children with them, and some gave birth during the time they were at sea, so their time was taken up with child care, schooling, and endless laundry. Whaling wife Charlotte Coffin Wyer wrote about her laundry with a regularity that revealed just how time consuming and laborious it was, but Betsey never mentions any chores or duties in her journal. It is filled with religious musings, bright observations of the world opening up around her, and lists of the gifts given her by gamming ladies and captains from other ships, from people they met at various ports, and from her husband’s own crew, who often brought her shells and flowers when they went ashore to fetch wood, water, and supplies. Each new token delighted her, and she loved each new friend.

A particularly memorable visit to an unnamed island near Tahiti in February 1855 reads like a Homeric tale of strangers being welcomed and revered. She and her husband went on shore, visited a mission church, and met with the villagers who gave them fruit, banana cake wrapped in green leaves, and other tokens. They spent the day with the minister and his wife and reveled in the exotic scene. Betsy remarked that “it will ever be a green spot in my life.”

Several months earlier, in a dramatically different environment in the Okhotsk Sea, she used the same phrase to describe a walk in the forest on Shantar Island, when they picked berries and drank icy clear water from a river: “It will ever be a green spot in my life.” The lush South

“Napoleon Boneypart” and “Josephine,” September 23, 1854

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Elizabeth “Betsey” Morse Morey (1810−93) “Napoleon Boneypart and Josephine” COLLECTION OF CHERYL AND JOSEPH ROMANO

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most of her life on an often gray island, and endless days on board the ship;

another whaling voyage in 1857, in the Catawba, one of only four whaleships

she treasured those intense verdant moments in foreign landscapes.

that sailed from Nantucket that year. New Bedford, for two decades or more

Sperm whales were scarce in the South Pacific in the 1850s, so Captain Morey made a second trip to the Okhotsk Sea, or “bowhead country,” in June 1855. They traveled in fog through ice fields and were stuck fast in ice for ten

the new king of the industry, sent out ninety-six ships. Israel had great success, returning in 1859 with over two thousand barrels of whale oil.

Like many Nantucket whaling masters, Israel bought land on the island

days in July, fearing their ship would be destroyed, but escaping relatively

with the proceeds of his successful voyages. Before sailing on the Phoenix, he

unscathed. On July 24, Betsey met Eliza Spencer Brock when she came aboard

bought a seventy-one-acre farm in Squam that he later sold to his nephew,

the Phoenix with her husband, Peter C. Brock, captain of the Nantucket ship

Sylvanus Morey, who named a son Israel. Unfortunately, Israel had little time

Lexington. Although the women lived on the same small island and were the

to enjoy life on shore. On November 1, 1860, according to an account in the

same age, it appears they had never met. Betsey noted in her journal, “I think

Weekly Mirror, “He came in from his residence, just outside the compact part

she is a good woman and a Christian.” The next day the Moreys had tea with

of the town, and was about the streets attending to his business. Late in the

the Brocks and their young son on the Lexington, and two days after that they

forenoon he went in to the store of Mr. Joseph B. Macy, and while there, fell to

met on shore for a walk in the woods:

the floor in a fit. He soon revived a little, just enough to say that he felt that he should not recover, was carried home, and died at about one o’clock in the

We had a pleasant time. We did not walk far into the forest for fear

afternoon.” Israel was forty-eight years old. He was lauded as “an energet-

the bears would discover us for we have heard that they are very

ic and successful shipmaster, a thrifty farmer, and an upright man. His fine

numerous and wolfes also and rain dear.

genial manner, springing from a heart overflowing with good will to all men, made him a universal favorite.” One imagines that Israel and Betsey were a

In August, the Phoenix filled her hold with the addition of the last two whales, the Russian Ranger, and a final, unnamed bowhead. Betsey Morey had run out of paper in her journal, and exhausted her supply of whale names.

good match; her heart was likewise full of compassion, and she made friends wherever she went.

The U. S. Census for 1870 shows Betsey Morey living with her brother,

Her last entry was written on August 12, 1855: “So ends this book and a poor-

Arnold Morse; his wife, Maria; and their children, Mason, twenty-one; and

ly written volume it is but I have mainly written it for my own Amusement.”

Susan, twenty. Betsey’s sister, Mary Morse, wife of William T. Swain, had

The Phoenix returned to Nantucket May 13, 1856.

died in 1866, and her two children, Israel, nine, and Andrew, six, lived in the

Betsey Morey may have written her journal for her own amusement, but

household as well. Betsey had sold her homestead at One Somerset Road to

it provides a unique window on the whaling world of the 1850s. Her attitude

her nephew, Timothy Morse, a shoemaker, in 1863. A decade later, Betsey was

toward the marine mammals that she first refers to as Monsters of the Deep

living in a household with her nephew, Mason, the youngest child of Arnold

is a modern one; she does not view them dispassionately, but as sentient

and Maria Morse. They were the only occupants. Mason’s occupation was

creatures who have a right to life. Not that she argues the point. As the jour-

listed as “laborer.” The last record we have of Betsey Morey is a brief notice of

nal progresses she is as excited about the next whale as anyone, knowing that

her death published in the Inquirer and Mirror in 1893. We know fewer details

with each kill they are closer to a return voyage home. It’s easy to imagine

of Betsey Morey’s life than we do of the other whaling wives: no extant let-

her as a farm wife. She undoubtedly named each chicken and composed dit-

ters to or from her, no obituary notice, no photographs or portraits, not even

ties about the cows.

a gravestone—but her journal is infused with her spirit, and she is uniquely

Betsey settled into her home at One Somerset Road, but Israel left on

memorable.

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Eliza Spencer Brock (1810–99) “ A wanderer on the wide ocean” ELIZA SPENCER WAS BORN the same year as whaling wife Betsey (Morse) Morey,

and went to sea with her husband, Peter C. Brock, in the Lexington in 1853, the same year Betsey sailed in the Phoenix with her husband, Israel Morey. Both women revealed their Christian convictions in the journals they kept during their voyages, and both wrote poetry, but there the similarities end. Even their poetry is very different. Morey’s charming little ditties were akin to nursery rhymes, and exhibited her frequent spelling errors, while Brock’s verse was sophisticated, polished, and replete with appropriate punctuation. The sentiments expressed were also polar opposites. While Morey lauded the recently slaughtered Mr. Hogg, a ship pet, Eliza bemoaned her situation: While on the seas, my days are spent, In anxious fears, oft discontent, No social circle here is found Few friends, to virtue here abound.

I long for home, sweet home denied, With those I love near, by my side.

[April 16, 1855]

The two women appear to have been unacquainted on Nantucket, but met during a gam in the Okhotsk Sea July 24, 1855. Brock records: “At 3 PM I went with the Capt. on board the Phoenix and made Mrs. Morey a visit found her well and very glad to see me. Stayed and took tea with them.”

Morey was a little more effusive about the encounter, calling Brock “a good woman and a Christian,” and recording her appreciation of a gift of ten yards of calico: “I was exceeding glad to have it and a thousand thanks to her for it. She has treated [me] like a sister, she invited husband and me to come on board to tea and we were happy to excepting the invitation.” Perhaps it is Peter and Eliza Brock’s home at 5 Step Lane (right), 1880s

not so surprising that Brock and Morey were previously unacquainted. Betsey

PH52-6-12

Morey did not live in town, and more important, she did not have the multigenerational, intertwined Nantucket connections that the old families of the island shared.

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Eliza Spencer Brock (1810–99) COLLECTION OF HONEY KURTZ

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Eliza and Peter lived at 5 Step Lane, a house they purchased in 1851, near the First Congregational Church where Eliza was a faithful member. Al-

I would not leave my home again, to wander o’er this watery plain, though India’s riches, I could gain, or sorrow flee. [May 3, 1855]

most every Sunday at sea she reminisced about hearing the sweet toll of the church bell and attending services, as in the journal entry June 5, 1853: “A lonesome day to me, Oh how I miss my meeting and Sabbath school where I

Although she records her feelings and observations, her journal is much

spent so many hours.” The couple had four children: Oliver S., born in 1834,

more like a traditional first mate’s logbook than the other women’s journals,

who went to sea in the ship Carver of Westport, Connecticut, in 1851; Lydia

so one imagines that she spent considerable time learning about the ship,

G., born in 1837; William H., born in 1846; and Joseph Chase, who accom-

navigation, and weather from her husband, although she rarely mentions

panied them on the voyage, born in 1848. It is understandable that sixteen-

him. She makes an entry in her journal every day, records latitude and longi-

year-old Lydia would not be joining her parents, but it is a little less clear

tude, and begins with wind and weather:

why they would not bring their seven-year-old son William with them, unless they felt strongly that he should be in school. Eliza missed her children

Begins with fine wind at SE, Ship headed N by W; at 6 PM took in

terribly, and did not hear any news of her family or friends until she received

the mainsail and light sailes, at 9 AM double reafed the Topsails

a packet of letters on August 10, 1854, more than a year after she left home:

and hauled the Foresail up; and lay too, by the Wind.

[March 9, 1854]

Boat returned from the Massachusetts, with a lot of letters for me, the first that I have received since I left my dear children and friends. There have been some changes round among my kindred and friends, some dead, and others married, but I feel rejoiced to know that my own immediate family were in the best of health.

Oh how I long to see them all, but that dear privilege is at present denied me, I will not murmur or repine but look forward if my life is spared to that far distant day when I shall meet them again.

One wonders why Eliza ever set foot on the Lexington. Her husband had essentially retired from the sea seven years earlier, after successful whaling voyages in the Ann, 1833–36 and 1837–41, and the Young Hero, 1842–46.

Captain Brock was aware that whaling out of Nantucket was in a steep decline and he had already made his fortune, but seven years on shore must have made him restless and perhaps insecure about his financial future. He was forty-eight years old, a seasoned salt, and determined to try his luck again. Eliza was a reluctant companion; she makes it perfectly clear that she would never again be persuaded to undertake such an adventure:

1852 view of the whaleship Lexington at wharf, George G. Fish, pencil on paper GIFT OF THE ARTIST, 1895.143.1

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Perhaps she and her husband spent time together each day writing their respective accounts; he, too, kept a log of the voyage, but it was unfortunately used as a scrapbook by his granddaughter, Ella Brock, in 1888. She pasted newspaper and magazine clippings over almost every page, a common fate of old logbooks. Although Eliza often remarks how much she misses her children at home, she infrequently comments on Joseph Chase, whose care must have been her primary concern, since he was only five years old when they left Nantucket. She records when he goes on shore with the captain, but when she spends weeks on shore in Lahaina, or the Bay of Islands, or Talcahuano, he is not mentioned.

Eliza was miserable throughout most of the voyage; it was stormy and frightening, and seemingly endless. Rather than sailing around Cape Horn and into the South Pacific on the western whaling route, Captain Brock took an alternate course, sailing across the Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope, heading to New Zealand. On August 23, 1853, Eliza remarked, “this may well be called a stormy place, I never have any wish to go round the East Cape again.” Less than two weeks later she stated, “I never wish to cross the Indian Ocean again.”

The Lexington took its first sperm whale on December 21, 1853. Eliza did not wax poetic about the occasion, as Morey had, but observed in a more practical vein, “have been on deck all day seeing others work; a hundred barrel whale is a great sight.” The only pleasurable moments for Eliza in the

Title-page to Eliza S. Brock’s Lexington journal.

early months of her voyage were startling glimpses of natural beauty: clear,

MS 220 LOG 13

calm, moonlit nights when she could walk on deck and admire the heavens, or the half-frozen Okhotsk Sea, where she saw icebergs that looked “beautiful in the rays of the sun, as white as alabaster or snow, in all shapes, some

the Lexington, Eliza’s unloved home at sea, surrounded by turbulent scenes of

of the pieces remind me of Italian images or marble statues.” She often

her husband’s perilous occupation, including an “upset” whaleboat and the

dreamed of home, and a litany runs throughout the journal, “I dreamed last

thrashing tails and open jaws of sperm whales.

night of my fair distant home, of being there and seeing my dear children

Eliza Brock’s journal has become one of the best known women’s whal-

and many friends; my sleeping hours were pleasant, but alas, when I awoke,

ing journals because of a poem included at the end, where there are several

I found it all a dream, a wanderer upon the wide ocean, far away from friends

pages of poetry. Some of it might be Eliza’s own work, but the particular

and sweet home.” That poignant comment is the basis of Susan Boardman’s

poem that has created a stir among students and scholars of women’s history

narrative embroidery of Eliza Brock, which features her much-missed home

is “The Nantucket Girls Song,” dated February 1855, and attributed by Brock

on Step Lane. In a pictorial border surrounding the peaceful dream home is

to “Martha Ford, Bay of Islands, Reefside, New Zealand, Russell.” Brock spent CHAPTER 3 | NINETEENTH CENTURY: WHALING WIVES

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“The Nantucket Girls Song” (February 1855) and whale stamps from the Lexington journal.

MS 220 LOG 136

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time at the Bay of Islands in 1855, arriving there on February 13, and observ-

in sentiment, extolling the good fortune of the whaling wife who remains

ing the Maori people when boats came alongside the ship, trading peaches:

home and enjoys considerable freedom. Often, on Nantucket, this meant that the wife held a power of attorney, and could make the kinds of decisions

Men, Women, and Children with their Faces all Tatooed and for

usually reserved for the man of the house, like buying and selling real estate.

an ornament a Whales Tooth tied round the neck, . . . their Dresses

Kezia Folger Coffin held one of the first powers of attorney granted by a Nan-

made Lose and very Short, all Barefooted and Headed. it is quite

tucket seafaring husband to his wife, in 1746, and the tradition continued.

amusing to see them and hear them jabbar and see them go up and

The poem, written just a few years after the first women’s rights convention

down the Side of the Ship just like cats . . . One Large Canoe paddled

in Seneca Falls, New York, is humorously disrespectful of a husband’s control

by eight Ladies. They seem to manage them as easily as our Sailors

over his wife, and refreshing in its celebration of female independence.

do their Boats.

Eliza noted in her journal that she “found many friends at the Bay of Islands: I never expect to see them again, but shall ever cherish their love to

She went on shore the next day and settled in the Russell Hotel, where she

me in my memory.” She then penned the following lines:

had tea with Mrs. Ford, wife of the American doctor who lived at the Bay of Islands. Eliza credits Martha Ford as the author of “The Nantucket Girls’ Song”:

Still my fancy can discover, Sunny spots where friends do dwell,

I have made up my mind now to be a sailor’s wife,

Darker shadows round me hover,

To have a purse full of money, and a very easy life,

Isle of Beauty, faretheewell.

[Feb 28, 1855]

For a clever sailor husband, is so seldom at his home, That his wife can spend the dollars, with a will that’s all her own.

The Lexington left the Bay of Islands, and Eliza’s poetic musings became

Then I’ll haste to wed a sailor, and send him off to sea,

more frequent in her journal; perhaps she was inspired by Martha Ford. On

For a life of independence, is the pleasant life for me,

May 10, 1855, she wrote a paean to their elusive adversary, the whale:

But every now and then I shall like to see his face, For it always seems to me to beam with manly grace,

Oh the Whale is free; on the boundless sea

With his brow so nobly open, and his dark and kindly eye,

He lives for a Thousand years.

Oh my heart beats fondly towards him whenever his is nigh,

He sinks to rest on the billows breast,

But when he says Good bye my love, I’m off across the sea

Nor the roughest tempest fears.

First I cry for his departure, then laugh because I’m free, Yet I’ll welcome him most gladly, whenever he returns

The Lexington had been at sea a little more than two years when Eliza

And share with him so cheerfully all the money that he earns

wrote on July 16, 1855, “This is Lydia G.’s Birth Day, eighteen years of her life

For he’s a loving husband, though he leads a roving life

has passed away; twenty-six months have passed and gone since I last saw

And well I know how good it is, to be a sailor’s wife.

her, and my dear little William; but though absent from them; their images are vivid in my fond heart; in one year I hope from now to meet them.” A second visit to the Sandwich Islands provided some relief from the months

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on board ship, as did another stop in Talcahuano, Chile, at Consul William Crosby’s house, before rounding Cape Horn and sailing to Nantucket, where they arrived three weeks before Lydia’s nineteenth birthday. One can imagine Eliza’s delight when she stepped ashore.

The family reunion was followed by Lydia’s wedding a year later, and oldest son Oliver’s safe return from a whaling voyage on the Governor Carver, but Peter C. Brock became restless, again. An 1860 U. S. Census shows Peter, Eliza, and their three sons in Rootstown, Ohio. What they did there, and how long they stayed is not known, but by 1870 Peter and Eliza were back in Nantucket. Sometime within the next few years the couple moved to Quincy, Massachusetts, where Peter became the superintendent of the Sailor’s Snug Harbor, a home for destitute sailors, and Eliza worked as matron, “not only helpful to her husband, but ever so kind to the inmates she was; so faithful to her delicate trust, that she was universally beloved in that institution.” No wonder Eliza exhibited such tender care; she knew firsthand the arduous nature of the sailor’s work. When the Lexington was searching for bowhead whales in the Okhotsk Sea on July 22, 1855, she wrote: “This is a place to try men’s patience they toil early and late, and almost live in their Boats, pulling about from morning till night in thick fogs, wind and rain, often out all night, and once in a long time they get a whale. Those that come up here amongst the Ice, and for a voyage dearly earn their money.” Eliza and Peter were at the Sailor’s Snug Harbor until 1878, when Peter died at the age of seventy-three. Eliza returned to her home on Step Lane, where she lived

Sketch for Eliza S. Brock (1810–99), “I Dreamed Last Night”

with her youngest son, Joseph Chase, companion of her sea voyage. Having visited the Pacific Ocean when he was a child, he was eligible for membership in the Pacific Club, and served as president of the venerable group for many years. Known as “Uncle Joe” to summer tourists and islanders, he was chosen by the telephone company to make the first call to the mainland in 1916, after the submarine cable was installed, a momentous occasion for the island. Joseph never married, but was devoted to his mother, who lived to be eighty-nine years old.

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Eliza S. Brock (1810–99), “I Dreamed Last Night” COLLECTION OF SUSAN ZISES GREEN

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Charlotte Coffin Wyer (1824–1905) “I am perfectly happy.”

THE YOUNGEST OF THE SIX CHILDREN

of Asa Coffin and Phebe Morselander Jr., Charlotte Coffin married Samuel C. Wyer (1810–72) on August 27, 1844, when she was twenty years old and he was thirty-two. Captain of the whaling ship Alexander Coffin, Samuel had been at sea four years and had just returned to the island on June 23 after a successful voyage that brought home almost two thousand barrels of sperm oil. Charlotte probably knew Samuel before he sailed in 1840, and may have pledged her affection then,

Charlotte Coffin Wyer, circa 1850, daguerreotype

23 India (Pearl) Street, circa 1870s

unless a whirlwind romance of two

C181

P1129

months led to their summer marriage.

The couple enjoyed a little over a year together before Samuel took

Chile, in 1853, to meet Samuel’s ship and accompany him on the rest of his

command of the Enterprise on December 28, 1845, six weeks after the birth

whaling voyage. The journal of her passage to Chile on the Harriet Irving is in

of their first child, Charlotte Elizabeth. While Samuel was at sea, mother and

fact a long sea-letter written to her sister, Nancy Coffin Swain. She does not

daughter lived at 23 Pearl (now India) Street, a house built in 1795 by John

mention the recent tragedy, which comes to light only after piecing together

and Perez Jenkins, who also built the house at 25 Pearl. The Wyer home sat

the family genealogy; her reference to her thinness and the desire to fatten up

on a high basement, and had a side entry with a small Greek revival portico,

on the journey suggests that perhaps she had not been well. She was probably

a fancy modification probably made after one of Samuel’s voyages, and later

grief stricken and eager for the companionship and comfort of her husband.

removed. Samuel returned to his home and family January 3, 1850, and Char-

Charlotte sailed from Boston on March 16, 1853, with seven-year-old

lotte gave birth to their second daughter, Harriet Amelia, later that year. Once

Charlotte Elizabeth, and endured more than a week of squalls and storms

again, Captain Wyer left Charlotte with a newborn daughter while he took the

that kept her seasick and below deck. Her daughter was more resilient,

Young Hero to the Pacific, on his third whaling voyage as captain.

adjusting to the ship after a couple of days, and, according to her mother,

Harriet Amelia was not as hardy as her older sister and succumbed to a

never losing her appetite. After Charlotte gained her sea legs, the two were

“canker rash” in 1852, when she was two years old. That event precipitated

often on deck, where Charlotte Elizabeth recited her lessons, played with her

the journey of Charlotte Wyer and daughter Charlotte Elizabeth to Valparaiso,

“paper babies,” and painted while her mother knitted or sewed. The seven-

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thing, and together with the carpet, and rocking chairs, makes us look comfortable, and I am perfectly happy. [June 26, 1853] The Young Hero spent the next several months at sea in a fruitless search for sperm whales, but it was a happy, social time for Charlotte, who enjoyed gamming with other ships in the vicinity, two of which also had wives on board: the Courier of New Bedford, with Captain and Mrs. Howland and their little boy, and the Enterprise of Nantucket, with Captain Swain and his wife, Mary. Charlotte remarked after visiting on board the Courier that “their ship is much larger than ours, but I would not exchange accommodations, because she has no house on deck.” [July 6, 1853] Dinners of roast turkey or chicken stew were served to the gamming parties, and when Charlotte’s uncle, Cromwell Morselander, captain Captain Samuel C. Wyer (1810–72), attr. Sanford

Samuel C. Wyer (1810–72), 1860s,

of the William Rotch, came on board for a gam, he played the fiddle; on another

Mason (1798–1862), 1840, oil on canvas

platinotype

occasion, Charlotte Elizabeth sang songs to entertain the adults. The frequent

GIFT OF CHARLOTTE E. MORRISSEY 1909.54.1

A86-16

parties led Charlotte to remark, “There are three ships in sight and I anticipated another visit, so took a nap for the occasion. . . .” [July 21, 1853] That journal

year-old was a favorite of the captain and mate, who made a swing on deck

entry was the inspiration for Boardman’s fan-shaped embroidered narrative,

for her. Charlotte noted in her journal on April 12 that “C.E. is keeping Capt.

which depicts Charlotte’s own ship, the Phoenix,

Spavin and Mr. Brown to school; and has sport enough, they think she will be

second from the left, with her little deck house

spoilt before she gets to her father.”

visible. The three gamming ships are in full sail

It was another two months before the family was reunited. Samuel obviously doted on his young wife and daughter, bringing them two canaries, and surprising them with remodeled shipboard living quarters:

with their flags flying, while underneath them all swims a behemoth sperm whale.

When they weren’t gamming, Charlotte spent hours in her deck house doing laundry,

I should admire for you to see how beautiful my accommodations

ironing, sewing, and listening to her daugh-

are, they worked all of last season to get ready for us, built a house

ter’s lessons. Her journal entries are written

upon the deck, with a wet sink where I wash, and I have a [stove]

with a reader in mind, one of her sisters, most

Whalebone food chopper made

that I burn charcoal to heat my water, also flat irons, and do not

likely; when the captain of the Archer gave her a

on board the Young Hero by

have to go to the galley for anything. I have a stairway by myself,

pail full of tamarinds, she wrote: “I wish I could

Samuel Wyer, 1853

that leads up into a house upon deck and our stateroom – it is so

reach you all a few.” [August 7, 1853] On Sep-

GIFT OF JAMES BROWN, 1896.34.1.

much larger than Harriett’s [probably referring to her quarters

tember 11, when the Young Hero finally took its

on the Harriet Irving]. Enough, that it seems as if we had got home,

first sperm whale, mother and daughter took seats in the starboard boat (car-

and I certainly feel at home, we have Charlotte E. in a berth in one

ried on the side of the ship) to watch the whale being hauled alongside, and

room, Samuel has built a nice sofa in the transom, which is just the

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Charlotte Coffin Wyer (1824–1905) COLLECTION OF STEPHEN BOARDMAN

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cutting-in that first whale was not enough to keep Charlotte from commenting two weeks later, “I have been wishing to Samuel, that we might have some company. I can’t think where all the ships are.” Neither ships nor whales were evident for months.

In mid-December she remarked, “The floors upon deck are making their familiar noise.

The birds have been tuning their notes, and all that seems to be wanting is the pleasant cry: ‘There she blows!’ ” During January and February Charlotte wrote that she was not feeling well, but by

Charlotte Coffin Wyer (1824–1905)

Sketch for Charlotte Coffin Wyer (1824–1905)

Albumen print cabinet card, 1890s. P943

the end of February she noted that she felt

in Talcahuano with her daughters or what it was like to have a newborn

“really bright, and my appetite is improving, so that I feel quite encouraged.”

on board the ship. The Wyers returned to Nantucket in June 1855, to their

She was expecting another child. In April, the Young Hero arrived at Talca-

house at 23 Pearl Street. Samuel Wyer’s voyage in the Young Hero was his

huano so Charlotte could move to shore accommodations with her daughter

last whaling venture, bringing in a respectable haul of 1,275 barrels of sperm

in the midst of a community of expatriates, some of them from Nantucket,

oil. He remained happily on shore as the owner, in 1856, of the Sea Ranger,

including the American consul, William Crosby, and his wife, who had hosted

which completed a four-year whaling voyage under the command of Henry

Susan Veeder in 1849, when she awaited the birth of her daughter. Charlotte

W. Davis, and brought home more than 1,700 barrels of oil. Samuel, who was

and daughter began studying Spanish together, and they were caught up

described in a genealogy of the Wyer family as “a distinct character, very

in the social life of the city, while Samuel took his ship back out in search

short, very stout,” died in 1872, when he was sixty-two.

of whales. One of the last entries in Charlotte’s journal, and the end of the

Charlotte and her older daughter remained at the family home when

paper trail that reveals her daily life, observations, and aspirations, is dated

Harriet married Edward B. Hayden of Plymouth in 1882, and left the island.

August 29, 1854:

When she was forty-two, Charlotte Elizabeth married John Morrissey Jr., in 1888. He, too, had been at sea, serving in the Navy during the Civil War.

We have had a fine day and Mrs. Crosby and the children have gone

Charlotte Coffin Wyer and her daughter and son-in-law lived together at 23

out to improve it. I did not feel able to join them. The Independence,

Pearl Street until Charlotte died in 1905, at the age of eighty-three. In 1919,

Capt Choate, arrived a few days since. Yesterday morning about 4

Charlotte Wyer Morrissey bequeathed the family home to her young cousin,

o’clock we experienced a slight shock of an Earthquake.

Bessie Chadwick Winslow, wife of Addison S. Winslow, who was the grandson of whaling wife Mary Ann Morrow Winslow and her husband, Captain Perry

Harriett Amelia Wyer was born in Talcahuano September 27, 1854, and

Winslow. Addison’s father, John M. Winslow, had gone to sea with his par-

although the Young Hero was at sea for eight more months, journal-keep-

ents in the Edward Cary at the same time that little Charlotte Elizabeth was

ing was no longer Charlotte’s priority. We don’t know how long she stayed

sailing with her parents in the Young Hero.

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Mary Ann Morrow Winslow (1820–1900) and Susan Sprague Winslow (1827–68) “ Wifely devotion better than rubies” THE DAUGHTER OF IRISH IMMIGRANT Thomas Morrow and Mary Ann Mont-

gomery, whose birthplace is unrecorded, Mary Ann Morrow was the oldest of three Morrow children born on Nantucket. She married Perry Winslow (1815–90) July 12, 1843. Like so many Nantucket men, he came from a seafaring family, and was soon to make a voyage as captain of the Phoenix, 1844–47, his first command, nine days after the birth of the couple’s first child, John M. Winslow. Perry missed the early years of his son’s life, return-

Mary Ann Morrow Winslow and son John

Captain Joseph Winslow (1819–89), tintype,

ing to sea again from 1848 to 1853. Mary Ann and young John lived with her

C180.

1860s

P8771

parents, who purchased the house at 47 Centre Street in 1848. She was a near neighbor of Eliza Brock, who moved in just around the corner at 5 Step Lane

But while Susan and Joseph were cruising in the Constitution they met up with

in 1851. Eliza was one of three Nantucket women who sailed with their hus-

Perry, who was again at sea—in the New Bedford ship Elizabeth—and had a gam,

bands on whaling voyages in 1853, and her example may have encouraged

catching up on news of family and friends. Susan (writing as if she were one of

Mary Ann to accompany Perry on his next voyage, in the Edward Cary, sailing

her girls) remarked in the letter to Mary, April 12, 1860:

from Nantucket in May 1854. Ten-year-old John Winslow accompanied his parents on board the Edward Cary, and in December 1854, they were joined

As the time draws near for us to be going in I thought I would try

by Sarah B. Winslow, born at sea. Mary Ann did not keep a journal on the

and write a few lines to you, and only think Aunty we have seen

voyage, and the two logbooks that do exist, kept by the captain, and by boat

Uncle Perry, it was very unexpected for we did not know that he was

steerer Joseph E. Ray, make scant mention of her and the children.

coming around this way, but we were delighted to see him. He came

A letter written to Mary after her return to Nantucket is the only indication

on board and stayed three days. We had one of the best times that

we have of her feelings about life at sea. Her correspondent, sister-in-law Susan

ever was, all we wanted was you here with us and then we should

Sprague Winslow, was on the Constitution with her husband, Joseph Winslow

have been made. He says he is dreadful lonesome without you.

Jr., Perry’s younger brother, in 1860, when she wrote, “Perry said you like being at sea first rate and so do I, it is a great deal more pleasant than being at home.”

Over the course of the next couple of weeks Perry continued to find time

The circumstances that prompted the comment are extraordinary: Susan

to gam with his brother and family, and Susan joked that he was “looking as

Winslow had sailed from Nantucket in 1857, a year before Mary returned home

pretty as ever.”

and the two women were apart nine years due to their overlapping voyages.

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Title-page illustration from the log of the Edward Cary (1854–58).

MS 220 LOG 73

“Bound to New Zealand” illustration, November 11, 1856.

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“A View of Karataka Beach Bay of Islands,” February 9, 1854.

of the happy wives at sea. Her father, John, from Newfoundland, had married a Nantucket woman in a scenario similar to Mary’s own off-island ancestry, and the women appear to have been close friends. Joseph Winslow took his first command of a whaleship in 1852, sailing from Nantucket in the Constitution September 2, 1852, when Susan was six months pregnant with their second child, soon to be named Susan. Their son George was three years old, but would not live to be five, dying of typhoid fever two years before his father returned home in July 1856. A second daughter, Clara Ann, was four months old when the reunited family boarded a newly built ship, also named the Constitution, and set off on a five-year voyage, from 1857 to 1863. Susan wrote two letters to her sister-in-law, Mary. Busy with two small daughters, she was the mother of four girls before the voyage ended, and would hardly have had time to write in a journal even if she so desired. Her letters are informative and poignant. On December 20, 1858, she wrote news of the children: We are all well and get along first rate—as for Susie she has grown up a great girl and one of the greatest talkers your [sic] ever see.

Clara is twenty-one months old and does not talk but a very few “Edward Cary walking into about 100 Barrels,” undated illustration

words. She takes her baby and goes out on deck and walks with her and feels as big as any body. I wish you could see her, she does not

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Carte de visite of Emily “Emmie” Winslow, 1860s.

Carte de visite of Ida Defrieze Winslow, 1860s.

Carte de visite of Clara Winslow, 1860s.

Carte de visite of Susan A. Winslow, 1860s.

P8861

P1524

P1530

P1525

look like Susie a bit – her hair is dark and her eyes very dark. I think

Winslow picked up a boat with nine survivors from the wrecked Italian mer-

she looks very much as dear little Georgie used to.

chant ship Mia Madre of Genoa. In a letter to Charles G. and Henry Coffin, owners of the Constitution, Winslow described what had occurred:

A little over a year later she announced the birth of Ida: Their Ship foundered in the Lat. of 26.42 Long. of 98.30 and they Well I suppose you have heard of our baby before this, born on

had come 1000 miles in their Boats. They were just alive when I

board of the ship. I could not think of Staying on shore five or six

picked them up. They were forced to eat their dead as fast as they

months and I got a girl to come out with us and I have got along

died. There was two died the morning that I picked them up. There

first rate, just as well as if I had been at home, but she is here and

was five died in this boat. They were in their Boat twenty-two days

most four months old and just as cunning as can be … well sister

and for the last seven days they had no water or anything else to eat

you don’t know how much I want to see you only think how long it

or drink except the blood and flesh from the dead men.

is since we have meet [but] time is fast slipping away and if nothing happens shall be with you one of these days.

It was a tale horribly reminiscent of the 1820 tragedy of the Nantucket ship Essex, a calamity well known on Nantucket. Imagine the scene when nine

The first voyage of the new Constitution was remarkable not only for having

crazed and starving Italian sailors were brought on board the Constitution,

so many little girls on board, or for bringing home 1,600 barrels of sperm oil,

with Susan and her daughters witness to their dire condition. The captain of

but because of a discovery made in August 1862, three months after the birth

the Mia Madre was one of the men recovered, and he praised Captain Winslow

of fourth daughter, Emily Joy. While cruising in the South Pacific, Captain

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“Ship Edward Carey of Nantucket off Norfolk Island December 8th 1856”

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Capt. Winslow wisely endeavored by furnishing us with water and broth to restore life nearly gone; and in proportion as strength returned he increased the nourishment, depriving himself and his family who were on board, of food and delicacies. . . . Ah! Always shall I revere the excellent qualities of this able and experienced captain, and I wish thus to give him my sentiments of thankfulness and gratitude, which will forever fill my heart.

The Winslow family returned to Nantucket in 1863. Susan and her sisterin-law Mary must have marveled at each other’s children and spent many happy hours comparing notes about life at sea. Joseph and Susan purchased the gracious house at 19 India Street in 1864, and had photographs of their four girls taken that year, all decked out in plaid satin dresses for the occasion.

Fifth daughter, Isabella, was born in the new house in June 1864, but died of scarlet fever when she was seven months old.

Letters written by Perry Winslow to Mary Ann from the Elizabeth, 1859–64, reveal the sad state of the whaling industry; on December 18, 1862, he wrote that he was “three years out with 620 of sperm and have not seen a whale since last August.” He then mused “I suppose brother Joseph is at home now enjoying himself gunning etc. I wish I was there to have some cruises with him, we would enjoy them I know. Doubtless he will be off on another voyage before I return.” Perry had left Nantucket just a few weeks after the birth of their third child, Perry, and he was distraught by the separation from his family: Oh Mar this is a hard life after we were together seven years to be parted for so long a time it almost sets me wild to think of it to be where I cannot see you nor hear from your nor our dear dear children.

He then proceeds to caution Mary against breast-feeding the new baby for too long, suggesting that fourteen months should be enough (advice that Mary probably did not need) and he offers an opinion about the trade soon to Views of unidentified island

be chosen by their older son, John, “Don’t let him go to sea on no account for it is a dog’s life at the best.”

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Mary Ann Morrow Winslow (1820–1900) and Susan Sprague Winslow (1827–68), The Ship Edward Cary of Nantucket PRIVATE COLLECTION

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It is babie’s birthday Saturday, she is a year old and Aunt Mary is going to celebrate it; she is going to have company and is going to let me have my girls and Emmie hers. I think we will have a nice time . . . we have such jolly times here in the Winter. . . .

Joseph Winslow became the keeper of the first life-saving station on Nantucket, built at Surfside in 1874 (now the Star of the Sea Youth Hostel); he had already proven himself adept at saving lives at sea in 1862. He died in 1889, and Mary survived him by four years.

When Perry Winslow returned from his last whaling voyage, he became one of the first skippers of a local “pleasure-boat,” the White Cloud, taking tourists on short sea excursions, but he retired from that occupation in 1872, when he became ill and blind, a condition that lasted for eighteen years. He died in 1890, a year after his brother Joseph. Mary Morrow Winslow lived another decade, and saw the turn of the twentieth century. She was lauded in the Inquirer and Mirror as belonging “to that ‘goodly company’ of sea-captains’ wives, whose nobility of character has illuminated the pages of our Sketch for Mary Ann Morrow Winslow (1820–1900) and Susan Sprague Winslow (1827–68)

island’s unwritten history.” Her care of her invalid spouse was also noted: Her husband, the late Capt. Perry Winslow, was totally blind during

Perry’s brother did not head back to sea immediately; he and Susan en-

the last eighteen years of his life; while she, during those darkened

joyed two years together in their new home before he set sail in the Amy on

years, was a cheerful, patient and helpful companion; being literally

a voyage that lasted from 1866 to 1870. He had a chance to spend time with

“eyes, feet and hands” unto her husband. Fondly she sat and read

Perry, too, and chances are they went gunning a few times before Joseph

to him chapter after chapter of book after book, and never wearied

departed. Once again, Joseph was at sea when tragedy struck. Four years after

in her gentle service. Surely she has left an example of wifely

her return from the voyage on the Constitution, Susan Sprague Winslow died

devotion that is better than rubies.

at the age of forty, and ten-year-old Ida died two years later, in 1870. Susan’s younger sister, Mary Sprague Folger, widow of Francis M. Folger, a mariner

Boardman’s embroidered narrative of the Winslow wives pays homage to

who was lost overboard from the ship M. E. Simmons of Provincetown in

the beautifully painted title page of the log of the Edward Cary, kept by boat-

1869, moved in to help her bereaved brother-in-law with his household of

steerer Joseph E. Ray, replicating the columns, banners, and emblem that Ray

young girls. The two were soon married, and had one daughter, Isabel, born

depicted, along with the ship, whaleboats, and a whaling scene. A line from

in 1872. From the midst of all the terrible losses, the Winslow household on

Susan Winslow’s letter to her sister-in-law, Mary, creates a border for the

Pearl Street appears to have been a happy place, as evidenced in a letter from

piece: “Perry said you like being at sea first rate and so do I, it is a great deal

fifteen-year-old Clara Winslow written to a cousin in 1873:

more pleasant than being at home alone.”

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Azubah Bearse Handy Cash (1820–94) “ Life on the ocean waves”

TYPICALLY, LITTLE DOCUMENTATION of the lives of whaling women exists in

the sources that provide details about their husbands’ careers and even mundane activities. If the women are remembered at all, it is because they kept a journal that has survived. Azubah Cash is mentioned only twice by name in Nantucket newspapers during her lifetime, and both listings are for premiums she won at the annual agricultural fair in the years after her husband’s death: In 1887, she produced an award-winning knitted mat and she won a

Azubah Bearse Handy Cash, 1882

Captain William Cash, 1870s

prize for pears and apples she grew in 1894. Her husband’s name is found

GPN1537

GPN1536

in local newspapers 130 times during the same period and even when the information printed includes her, she is merely designated “wife,” as in: “On

tucket had a longstanding relationship, the village supplying Nantucket with

Tuesday evening last a grand reception was tendered to Mr. William Murray

lumber and other necessities delivered by regular packet service between the

Cash and wife by his parents (Capt. William Cash and wife) at their residence

two seaports. According to maritime historian Edward Rowe Snow in Women

on Orange Street.” Eighty guests, piano music and dancing, and a “bounti-

of the Sea, Azubah was a seamstress in a Cotuit Port shop when young Nan-

ful collation” surely had Azubah’s efforts behind them. As a famed whaling

tucket mariner William Cash came in to be measured for a suit. According to

captain, of course William deserved mention for his maritime accomplish-

his tale, she put a note in one of the pockets of the finished suit that read: “I

ments, but never is there any indication in the contemporary public record

hope I meet the dashing young man I made these clothes for.”

that Azubah accompanied her husband on a whaling voyage in the Columbia.

Her ploy was successful, and the couple married several years later, in July

The Nantucket women who sailed with their husbands were not viewed as

1839, when William was twenty-three and she was nineteen. Their son, Alex-

newsworthy in the 1850s, when they set off from home. One wonders what

ander G. Cash, was born May 9, 1840, six months after William sailed as sec-

the general sentiment of their neighbors was—was this considered a scandal-

ond mate on the ship Ganges of Fall River. That ship burned in Talcahuano,

ous thing to do? Was it admirable? Was it foolhardy?

Chile, soon after rounding Cape Horn, but William immediately signed on as

Azubah Bearse Handy, born June 6, 1820, was named for her father

second mate of the Milton of New Bedford and continued whaling in the Pa-

Bethuel’s first wife, who died in 1819. Bethuel Handy was one of five broth-

cific until 1844, returning home a day before Alexander’s fourth birthday. He

ers who in the early 1800s established a shipbuilding yard on Handy’s Point

was offered command of the Milton on her next voyage, and on July 1 he left

in the maritime village of Cotuit Port (known simply as Cotuit since 1872),

his young family again for almost three years. Alexander G., now seven years

on Cape Cod, across Nantucket Sound from Nantucket. Azubah’s mother,

old, probably had a vague memory of his father, who appeared again on Nan-

Bethuel’s second wife Mary Carsely, was stepmother to the elder Azubah’s

tucket in April 1847, only to leave in July on the whaleship Gideon Howland of

two children, and mother to Azubah and her five siblings. Cotuit and Nan-

New Bedford on yet another three-year-long voyage.

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Azubah Bearse Handy Cash (1820–94) COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND PAUL MEISTER

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Azubah was fittingly named—in Hebrew, the name means forsaken.

William’s voyages were successful on all counts and his services were in de-

with Susan Veeder on the Nauticon, which was in port at Talcahuano, Chile.

In April, the Cash family arrived in Hilo, Hawaii, where Azubah and

mand, but Azubah had spent little time with her husband in the first eleven

Alexander would spend six months while William took his ship on the first

years of their marriage—barely six months—and her family was not expand-

of three summer forays to the Arctic for whale oil and baleen. Azubah does

ing as rapidly as she wished. In an era when large families were the norm,

not state the reason for separating from her husband, but writes on May

Alexander had no siblings and hardly knew his father. So it isn’t surprising

11, 1851: “I am well contented to be here at present, but a life on the Ocean

that Azubah decided to join William at sea when he took command of the

wave, a home on the rolling deep with my husband is preferable than being

Columbia, a ship owned by the Nantucket whaling firm Charles G. & Henry

on shore without him, unless as in the present case it is very necessary.” She

Coffin. The Coffin brothers had added the ship to their fleet in 1846, and

was six months pregnant.

she had one whaling voyage to her credit when William Cash signed on as captain in 1850. In October, he set off on another multiyear whale hunt, this

Hilo was an idyllic place for eleven-year-old Alexander, and Azubah enjoyed the company of missionary Titus Coan and his wife, Fidelia, plus

time with Azubah and Alexander G. at his side.

No official logbook of the Columbia exists, but fortunately, Azubah kept her own record of the voyage and her journal is preserved, as is a twelvepage “baby book” describing the early life of William Murray Cash, born at Hilo, Hawaii, in 1851. Azubah begins her account of the voyage of the Columbia with an observation of wreckage in the sea that may have caused her to reconsider her decision to join her husband: “They call it a Brigs foremast and one of the spars I believe. It looks as though some of our brother sailors had fared hard. I could not help shedding a few tears to see it.” [October 9, 1850] The passage to the Azores, their first stop, was extremely rough and Azubah was often seasick, but she admired Fayal, where they visited the consul’s house, rode donkeys, and feasted on chicken, tarts, and apple pie.

They loaded the ship with pumpkins, oranges, eggs, chestnuts, and apples,

Hilo from the Bay by James Gay Sawkins, 1852

COURTESY OF THE HONOLULU ACADEMY OF ART

as well as six recruits to complete the necessary crew. From the Azores they sailed to the Cape Verde islands where they acquired fifteen hogs, and then

two other American families—the Pitmans and the Lymans— who had young

south to Cape Horn. No whales were spotted along the way, and William

children. Alexander rode donkeys at the Lyman house, and he and his mother

suggested there might be a Jonah on board: “he says it is not his luck and I

hiked and explored:

do not take it for my luck. I do not think there is any Jonah about me.”

[December 11, 1850] In early February, Azubah was fortunate in meeting another woman at

“We both (AG) took a walk down to the Wiluku [Wailuku] River in an opposite direction as I had not been there, and there were

sea off the coast of Chile, when they spied the Robert Edwards of New Bed-

a plenty of rocks in the river which made quite a fall of water,

ford, with Captain Nathaniel Burgess’s wife Ann and two children on board.

which was noisy enough. We slipt [sic] about from rock to rock

During a most welcome gam, Azubah learned that Ann had recently visited

and come to a plank and walked across that then over more rocks

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and another plank and we were across the river. The people (not

gale first commenced the bowboat give

natives) think it a bad place to cross but I thought it very good.”

way and one man that was in her fell

[May 13, 1851]

overboard our blacksmith (so called) but the ship not going ahead they soon

In early August, Azubah and Alexander G. moved from their rented house

got him again. . . . This is a hard country

to Mrs. Coan’s more accommodating residence, and there William Murray

for whaling and it is an anxious life.

Cash was born on August 20, 1851. Two months later, the family went back to

[September 4, 1852]

sea, where the challenges of caring for an infant on board a whaleship began.

Azubah was completely smitten with her new baby, the long-awaited broth-

Keeping a child safe in heavy seas was

er of Alexander. She kept a “baby book,” separate from her whaling journal,

nearly impossible. In October, when he was

noting the arrival of each tooth and the rather precocious development of

fourteen months old, Murray fell and broke

her little one, who was sitting up at five months and crawling at six months.

his collar bone, and although Azubah ban-

His mother believed he would walk quite early, “if we have moderate weath-

daged his arm to keep it still and bathed it in

er.” By the end of May he could crawl up the stairs to the deck, with Azubah

spirits “the bone sticks up quite large.” For-

right behind him, but it was impossible to monitor his every move about

tunately, they were heading south to Hawaii,

the cabin. On April 28 Azubah wrote in her whaling journal: “Little Murray

arriving in November and going ashore in

seems as smart as a bird and requires a great deal of care this rough weather;

Honolulu where Alexander broke his collar

because if we put him down, he gets up by every thing that he can get hold of

bone and dislocated his shoulder on Christ-

and gets many falls, although he understands the motion of the ship better

mas Eve, Murray was unwell with teething,

Kahili or feather wand brought

than I do sometimes I think.” [April 25,1852]

and both boys had dysentery. “I was unwell

from Hawaii by Wiliam Cash, 1850s

for the most of the time” writes Azubah, and

62.236.1

Azubah and boys were on the Columbia in the Arctic in the summer of 1852, chasing bowheads for their valuable baleen, the long strips of fiber that

one can understand why. Her commitment

hung from their upper jaws and filtered their food from the sea water. Susan

to her journal began to wane.

Veeder had been in the Arctic the previous summer, and both Eliza Brock and

The family settled back into a house on Hilo in May 1853, to stay the sea-

Betsey Morey would venture as far as the Okhotsk Sea in 1855. Arctic whaling

son while William set off for another summer in the Arctic. The little expat

was treacherous. In August, they encountered rough weather, which Azubah

community created a nice social circle, with outings and teas, and a luau:

describes in detail:

“a dinner cooked in native style. We had a pig, turkeys, chickens, kalo or tao pudding made of taro and cocoanut and I cannot tell what else there was

In 2 minutes from the time the wind struck us there was a very

for dinner. We did not eat as natives, with our fingers, but the table was the

heavy sea on and our having so much [oil] on deck we were in great

ground and fern leaves for a cloth and we sat on the ground.”

danger of capsizing; it increased so fast that before dark they had

Azubah’s last journal entry, on October 9, 1853, lists a number of ships

to let out all the oil on the lea side to light her up a little which it

that arrived in Hilo, but the Columbia was not among them. She ends her

readily did, although she was down enough at that. They let out

three-year record with: “I feel thankful that God has spared them to return

about 40 bls of oil that they had worked hard for. . . . When the

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in our expectations of meeting those we love, and whether in prosperity or adversity may we have grateful hearts. I have a headache and cannot write much more. ABC (Azubah Bearse Cash)” A little more than nine months later, on May 28, 1854, the Columbia sailed into Nantucket. The oil and baleen they shipped home was valued at $22,000, or more than $600,000 today, and William had a sizable cut of the profits. He was not yet ready to invest in a family home, however, and it is unclear where on Nantucket the family lived. Nor is it clear when Azubah first moved to the island. Although there are conflicting accounts of the place of Alexander’s birth, it appears that he was born in Cotuit Port in 1840. Azubah and her son may have resided there up to the time William signed on with the Coffin brothers in 1850. The U. S. Federal Census that year shows William, Azubah,

48 Orange Street

GPN2257

and ten-year-old Alexander living in Nantucket in the household of carpenter William Jenkins, whose wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren also

were rather grand testaments to the success of both captains. George Palm-

lived there. Most likely it was a temporary residence of a few months, while the

er’s first wife, Eliza, went whaling, too, and died on Pitcairn Island in 1850,

Columbia was being outfitted. Perhaps they returned to the Jenkins household

just as Azubah was beginning her journey in the Pacific.

in 1854, or leased a house of their own—the family was in residence on the

Orange Street was chock full of whaling captains and their families,

island when daughter Fidelia was born on September 9, 1854. She was named

including Charles and Susan Veeder at 91 Orange. Azubah must have been

for Fidelia Coan of Hilo, where Azubah had spent two memorable summers.

happy to finally have a home of her own, but William may have been at a

William Cash took a break from whaling, remaining with his family until

loss for activity to fill his days. He was unaccustomed to the rhythms of life

the Coffin brothers persuaded him to take their ship Citizen to the Pacific a

on land, and at forty-five years old, the veteran captain was not ready to

year later, in October 1855. He was at sea when daughter Mary was born on

retire, so he seized the opportunity to purchase his own whaleship in 1861,

March 31, 1856; she and her sister Fidelia, who was only one when Captain

when the Islander came on the market. Built in 1856, the vessel had made

Cash departed, would meet their father three years later. Azubah now had

one whaling voyage. Cash invested $8,800 and now had a ship of his own—if

a house full of children in her husband’s hometown, where she had the

he had a good voyage, all the profits would be his. Azubah, in her stately

company of a number of whaling wives recently returned from their own

home with three young children (Alexander G. was twenty-one, married,

sojourns. She and the captain would put down firm roots in 1859, when he

and living on the Cape) bid her husband goodbye yet again. Four months

returned and they purchased the house at 48 Orange Street. An imposing

later, she took the Power of Attorney he had given her in 1847, and recorded

Greek Revival-style building, the house was built by Hezekiah Barnard, a

it at the Nantucket Registry of Deeds. She didn’t buy or sell property during

prominent citizen—president of the Commercial Insurance Company, Mas-

his absence, but she had the legal authority to do so, or to conduct any other

sachusetts state representative and one-time state treasurer—who died in

business in his name.

1849. His widow, Mary Barnard, sold it to Cash for $1,750 in 1859. The house

The 1860s were a time of severe economic depression on the island, but

was built sometime after 1834, as was the house next door at 50 Orange

the Cash family was financially secure, and even more so when William

Street, home of another whaling captain, George Palmer. Those domiciles

returned from a highly lucrative voyage in 1865 with a ship full of oil. He

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also brought back the mandible of a

on Nantucket with her parents. In 1882, sixty-six-year-old William Cash died,

large sperm whale, teeth intact, that he

after “suffering from a secret internal malady, which has baffled all the skill of

exhibited in the barn behind their house

the best medical science.” His obituary notice in the Inquirer and Mirror not-

and in downtown shops for a number of

ed: “Capt. Cash leaves a widow, who has shared some of his perils on the sea.

years, before selling the curiosity to the

. . .” Azubah Cash lived for another dozen years. She was a longtime friend of

Atheneum for its museum. Captain Cash

Susan Veeder, who mentions Azubah dozens of times in a diary she kept from

was now officially retired, after a career

1868 to 1871, and both women remained on Orange Street into the 1890s.

of more than thirty years whaling. Like

Late in life, Azubah decided to build a cottage on her property at the end of

many other retired whaling captains, he

Cash’s Court on the edge of the bluff. She had a rather large house, with more

bought a cottage in Siasconset. He and

than enough room for her and daughter Mary, who remained single, but she

Azubah named their little getaway on the

was planning for the future. Mary would inherit the cottage and her choice

east side of Broadway Columbia Cottage.

of the furnishings in 48 Orange, and the family home and remainder of the

The tiny rooms and the noise of the surf

estate would be equally divided among all her children.

below the bluff must have reminded them

Although sources of information about Azubah are scant, the journals, public

of their shipboard quarters, but the cot-

Mandible, or jawbone, brought to

records, and stories about her paint a picture of a determined woman. She was

tage sat firmly on ground and neighbors

Nantucket on the bark Islander, 1865

not shy about her interest in young William Cash; she was willing to go on a

were all around ready to gam. The cottage

P14982

whaling voyage to keep her family together, and she did not consider herself to

suited them for a decade or so, but in 1876

be a detriment to the endeavor—she was not a Jonah. She could hop from stone

they sought a little more excitement, as reported in the Inquirer and Mirror:

to plank to stone across the Wilukai River when pregnant, something her peers

“Captain William Cash has purchased a cottage at Oak Bluffs, where he will

in Hilo considered risky. But the characteristic that stands out most dramatically

spend the greater part of the summer. He will thus be enabled to enjoy the

in her story is her devoted motherhood: William Murray Cash is probably the

festivities at the cottage city, ‘under his own vineyard fig tree.’” Cottage

most thoroughly documented infant ever on a whaleship, and daughter Mary

City had originated on Martha’s Vineyard as a Methodist tent-revival-meet-

was provided with a home of her own so that she could live an independent life.

ing site in the 1860s, and from tents participants transitioned to a tightly

Susan Boardman’s narrative embroidery of Azubah Cash’s voyage de-

packed village of little multicolored gingerbread cottages. Religious activities

picts the Columbia in rough seas off the coast of a small tropical island. Two

continued, but the community had become more of a social gathering place

whaleboats, each with a harpooneer poised in the bow, are in pursuit of a pair

by the 1870s, with parties, illumination nights, concerts, and all kinds of ac-

of humpbacks—mother and calf—spouting rainbow sprays into the sparkling

tivities—just the sort of entertainment absent from ’Sconset, which had not

blue day. The sea is rough and the sails and flags are taut with the wind as

yet become a popular resort. The local newspaper noted that the Cash family

three red-billed tropicbirds flash their long tails above the ship. A passage

spent several summers on the Vineyard—perhaps the first Nantucket family

from Moby-Dick is on the back of the frame: “. . . The mighty, misty monster . . .

to choose the sister island as a retreat.

behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head

Fidelia and William Murray both married in the 1870s, and, like so many

overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contem-

Nantucketers of their generation, relocated to the mainland. Both young fam-

plations, and that vapor . . . glorified by a rainbow, as if heaven itself had put

ilies settled in Brockton, Massachusetts, but youngest sibling, Mary, remained

its seal upon his thoughts.”

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Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814–1904) COLLECTION OF STEPHEN BOARDMAN

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CHAPTER 4

Nineteenth Century: African Americans A VITAL COMMUNITY OF COLOR—residents of African descent, Azoreans,

Cape Verdeans, and an occasional South Sea island mariner—developed south of Nantucket town in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Called New Guinea, the neighborhood’s hub was at what is today known as “Five Corners,” at the juncture of York and Pleasant Streets and Atlantic Avenue.

The African School was built at the corner of York and Pleasant in 1826, and an African Zion Church stood on the south side of York Street, near the windmill. Shops, other businesses run by local entrepreneurs, and a boarding house for people of color were tucked in among the houses. Many of the men who lived in New Guinea were mariners, and the community boasted one whaling captain, Absalom Boston, who sailed the Industry with an allblack crew in 1822. Some of the women worked as domestics in the homes of wealthy ship owners, but others managed their own homes and employed their own help.

Slavery had been abolished on Nantucket in the eighteenth century, when the predominantly Quaker population took a united stand against that institution. Although Nantucket was too remote to be a part of the Underground Railroad, fugitive slave Arthur Cooper and his family made it to the island in 1820 and lived here peacefully, until they were sought by slave-catchers in 1822. They were hidden and protected by sympathetic Quakers, who later formed local antislavery societies, and spawned nationally known advocates of

Sketch for Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814–1904)

abolition, including Lucretia Coffin Mott, who bent the ear of President Lincoln, and Anna Gardner, who, as a child, had witnessed the terrified faces of Arthur CHAPTER 4 | NINETEENTH CENTURY: AFRICAN AMERICANS

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Cooper’s family hiding in her attic. Frederick Douglass was brought to the island

facility, whose first qualified student was denied entrance to the town’s new

by Gardner and others in 1841 for the first Nantucket Anti-Slavery Convention,

high school on the basis of her color, in 1838.

and at the Atheneum he rose and spoke to a white audience for the first time, beginning a career as a powerful antislavery orator.

Boardman’s embroidered narratives of Eunice Ross, the talented student of Anna Gardner who was prevented from attending advanced classes at the

Despite the work of many black and white Nantucketers for an end to

high school, and of Mary Ellen Pleasant, a young servant girl who worked in a

discrimination on all levels, Guinea was a separate community, whose citizens

Quaker-owned shop and was denied even an elementary school education, are

did not have equal privileges. The African School was an ungraded one-room

tributes to the struggle for equal opportunities for people of all races and colors.

Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814–1904) “I was sent to Nantucket Mass., to live with a Quaker woman.”

ALTHOUGH NOT BORN ON NANTUCKET, Mary Ellen Pleasant spent her formative childhood

years on the island, working as an assistant in a shop run by a Quaker woman she referred to as “Grandma Hussey,” the grandmother of Phebe Gardner, wife of whaling captain Edward W. Gardner. The circumstances of Mary Ellen’s early life are obscure and infused with myth because she rose to be a person of mythic proportions: a wealthy, black, female abolitionist and entrepreneur in San Francisco in the last half of the nineteenth century. Of the women whose lives are memorialized in Susan Boardman’s needle art, Pleasant is second only to Maria Mitchell in national fame, and in the number of articles and books written about her. She was a clever woman who had to use her skills to maneuver in a society that offered little opportunity to people of color, particularly women, and she told various stories about her birth and parentage to please her audience or justify her behavior.

What we do know about her early life is what she wrote in her Memoirs and Autobiography, published in 1902: “When I was about six years of age, I was sent to Nantucket Mass, to live with a Quaker woman named Hussey. I never knew why I was sent there, and about all I know is that my first recollections of life dated from Nantucket.” If Mary Ellen was born in 1814, as she claims, she would have arrived on the island in 1820, when the economy was flourishing during the golden era of Nantucket whaling. She did not live in New Guinea in a neighborhood of people of color, and her contact with that community may have been slight. She lived in a Quaker household, and her support

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Mary Ellen “Mammy” Pleasant, ca. 1901

of abolitionist causes later in her life was probably influenced not only by her racial heritage but by

COURTESY OF THE BANCROFT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

the Quaker position on slavery that she would have learned from the Husseys and their friends.

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Mary Ellen worked in the shop run by Mrs. Hussey “un-

mere blackness alone does not explain.”

der the hill” on Union Street. She describes herself as smart,

Mary Ellen Pleasant made her mark as an abolitionist, and

quick-witted, attractive, and able to make change and talk to

in her later life when she gave interviews and wrote her mem-

a dozen people at once. What she learned about business in

oirs, it was her antislavery work that she emphasized. In 1858,

Hussey’s shop would serve her well later, but she regretted

she and her husband traveled to Chatham, Ontario, a center

not being sent to school, and blamed Grandma Hussey for not

of abolitionist activity in Canada, where John Brown and his

providing her with an education. She had people skills, how-

supporters were developing a plan to end slavery in the United

ever, and could talk her way out of a corner. When she was in

States. Pleasant’s exact role in the raid on the armory at Harpers

her early twenties, Mary Ellen moved to Boston and married

Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859, is not known; she claims to have

a man named Smith who was involved in abolitionist work

disguised herself as a jockey and traveled through the south

and soon left her a well-to-do widow. Returning to Nantucket,

from plantation to plantation organizing slaves for the upcom-

she stayed for a while with her friend Phebe Gardner—grand-

ing revolt, and she claims to have funded Brown’s activities.

daughter of her former employer, Grandma Hussey—and Phe-

There is some support for her story: When Brown was arrested

be’s husband, Edward W. Gardner, both active in local antislav-

May 7, 1899 edition of The Call, “Mammy

he had on his person a letter promising more money and help. It

ery societies, and there her connection with Nantucket ends.

Pleasant: Angel or Arch Fiend in the House of

was signed “W. E. P.” If indeed the note was from Mary Ellen, her

Mystery”

poor handwriting, thanks to that lack of education on Nantuck-

Sometime after 1847, Mary Ellen married her second husband, John James Pleasants, whom she may have met

COURTESY OF THE BANCROFT LIBRARY,

et, made the “M” look like a “W.”

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Back in San Francisco in the 1860s she worked to inte-

in New Bedford where he was working as a waiter. They subsequently settled in California at the height of the Gold Rush; he

grate the streetcars, whose drivers often refused to pick up black passengers.

worked as a sea-cook and she as a domestic, but soon she used some of

She sued the North Beach and Mission Railroad Company in 1866, and made

her first husband’s money to open a series of laundries, much in demand

a number of court appearances over the next two years until that case was

by the thousands of grubby miners in the area. Eventually she opened a

resolved in her favor. Mary Ellen built a grand mansion for herself in the

boarding house, then acquired others, and was well-known as an accom-

heart of San Francisco, where it took up two city blocks, and she lived there

plished chef and hostess. Her establishments catered to the white elite of

the last twenty years of her life. Today, the site of that estate is now the Mary

San Francisco—businessmen, politicians, investors—and she was quick

Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park, and although her mansion has been demol-

to benefit from the discussions she overheard, investing her own mon-

ished, a memorial plaque installed on the site by the San Francisco African

ey wisely. She has been called a madam, and historian Lynn M. Hudson,

American Historical and Cultural Society calls her the “Mother of Civil Rights

whose biography The Making of Mammy Pleasant, is the primary source

in California.”

for this depiction of Mary Ellen, suggests that she may have functioned

The embroidered homage to Mary Ellen Pleasant is a collage of places

in that role. She has also been called Mammy Pleasant because of her

important to her. Nantucket is represented by an ivory sperm whale, and Mary

domestic work, and she has been portrayed as a voodoo queen in works of

Ellen’s thirty-room mansion in San Francisco, a symbol of her success, is the

fiction. She was stereotyped as a way to diminish her power, but accord-

central icon; a blackbird hovers nearby. The raid on Harpers Ferry and a San

ing to Hudson, “the knowledge about white men’s secrets that Pleasant

Francisco streetcar are images that honor Pleasant’s antislavery and antidis-

controlled, combined with her wealth, made her threatening in ways that

crimination efforts.

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Eunice Ross (1824–95) COLLECTION OF MICHAEL BOARDMAN

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Anna Gardner (1816–1901), 1860s CDV1209A

Eunice Ross’s cover letter to petition presented to the Massachusetts State House on January 29, 1845, signed by Edward J. Pompey and 104 other African Americans on Nantucket

COURTESY OF MASSACHUSETTS STATE ARCHIVES

Eunice Ross (1824–95) “ Refused admittance on account of her colour” A YOUNG WOMAN WHO GREW UP on Nantucket to a father born in Africa,

York and Pleasant Streets. She benefited from the instruction of Anna Gardner,

Eunice was the catalyst for the integration of the Nantucket public schools

who was hired as teacher of the African School in 1836. Anna was an ardent

in 1846. Although little is known about the Ross family, brief details can be

teacher and abolitionist who had studied at famed educator Cyrus Peirce’s

culled from deeds and other public documents. James, who may have come to

private school on Nantucket. As a young child she had witnessed her parents’

Nantucket from West Africa as a mariner, married Mary Sampson, a descen-

role in hiding escaped slave Arthur Cooper and his family when southern

dant of a slave named Sampson, on Nantucket before 1807, when the birth of

bounty hunters arrived on the island in search of them, and the experience

their first child, James, was recorded. James and Mary were free blacks, living

had a profound effect on her. She became a subscriber to William Lloyd

in New Guinea.

Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator when she was a teenager, and

James and Mary’s youngest child, Eunice, was a student at the African School, which was established soon after her birth and located at the corner of

at twenty-one helped organize the first Nantucket Anti-Slavery Convention, which brought Frederick Douglass to the island. Her heartfelt efforts for the CHAPTER 4 | NINETEENTH CENTURY: AFRICAN AMERICANS

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emancipation of slaves and the integration of schools took her to the South during the Civil War, and afterwards during Reconstruction, to teach former slaves in the Freedmen School’s established for that purpose.

Anna’s teaching career began on Nantucket, however, and Eunice Ross was her star pupil at the African School, excelling in her studies there, and passing the examination to enter the new high school that was built on Academy Hill in 1838. Of the seventeen scholars who qualified for admission to the high school, she was the only one denied entry, and the only person of color. At a town meeting in June 1839, a motion to “see if the Town will instruct the School Committee to permit coloured children to enter all or any public schools of the Town” was not carried. Students of color were allowed to attend only the African School, an ungraded one-room establishment that did not offer an advanced curriculum.

Local abolitionists were dismayed by the vote of the town, and worked valiantly to change the minds of the populace, but it took years of effort before change came to the local system. There were battles within the School Committee, and frequent point-counterpoint letters and editorials in local newspapers. Finally, in 1845, petitions were sent to the state legislature asking for a new law that would guarantee an equal right to public education for all children. One of those petitions was written and signed by Eunice F. Ross, then twenty-one years old: The undersigned respectfully requests that the prayer of the petition of E. J. Pompey and others may be granted. The undersigned has good reason to feel on this subject, as she was examined in 1840 by the School Committee and found amply qualified for admission into the High School at Nantucket and was refused admittance by a vote of the Town, instructing the School Committee not to admit her, on account of her colour.

The petitions were successful, and an act was passed by the Common-

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Signatures on petition submitted to the Massachusetts State House on

wealth of Massachusetts that allowed parents or guardians to sue their

January 28, 1845, by Edward J. Pompey et al.

towns for damages if their child was unlawfully excluded from any pub-

COURTESY OF MASSACHUSETTS STATE ARCHIVES

lic school. Unfortunately, it all happened too late for Eunice, who never

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photograph by john w. mccalley

enrolled in the local high school.

Eunice remained on Nantucket the rest of her life, unmarried. Historian Barbara White, who conducted extensive research for her book A Line in the Sand: The Battle to Integrate Nantucket Public Schools, 1825-1847, found information in the records of the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society indicating that Eunice was offered a teaching

The African Meeting House, 1970s.

position in the Freedmen’s

P20107

Bureau schools during recon-

Gravestone of Eunice F. Ross (1824–95), Nantucket

struction, but was unable to go to

Colored Cemetery.

Maryland in 1865 to pursue that opportunity. Incidents of her life on Nantucket after 1846 were not recorded in the local newspaper or elsewhere. A U. S. Census for 1860 lists her, aged 37, in a household with a thirteen-year-old boy, William A. Miller, son of William Miller, a black seaman, and his wife, Elizabeth. Eunice, who died on Nantucket March 2, 1895, had not been entirely forgotten by her community, however. An obituary in the Inquirer and Mirror stated that she was “an apt scholar, and Miss Gardner had advanced her until she was qualified for entrance to the High School, where she made application for admission. Public indignation was aroused at this (as then termed) ‘outrage.’”

Susan Boardman’s tribute to Eunice Ross was inspired by “Blackbird,” a Beatles song written by Paul McCartney to encourage and empower a black woman during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It features the African schoolhouse, blackbirds, and text from an antislavery alphabet printed for the Anti-Slavery Fair in Philadelphia in 1847.

The African Meeting House restored by the Museum of African American History, Boston,

by Frances Karttunen, 1999 SC448AMH

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Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864) THE ARTIST DONATED THIS EMBROIDERED NARRATIVE TO SUPPORT THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

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CHAPTER 5

Nineteenth-Century Home Front: A Main Street Mansion and an Outlying Farm MOST WOMEN IN NINETEENTH - CENTURY NANTUCKET were keepers of the

Newport born, but married to Eunice Starbuck, daughter of a whaling dynas-

home: either their own, or someone else’s. They baked the bread, sewed the

ty. The life she and her lady neighbors lived on Main Street was privileged,

curtains, managed their family budgets, raised children, and quite literally

but they were just a small percentage of the female population of the island.

kept the home fires burning. Depending on their financial situations, they

Beyond the elegant houses of the wealthy were simple dwellings that

may have employed domestic assistance for the most odious chores, freeing

supported an entirely different kind of life, where hard work was the or-

up their own time for artistic pursuits and philanthropic work, or they may

der of a woman’s day, from stirring porridge at dawn for a half dozen or

have taken in sewing or sold farm produce to augment the family coffers.

so children, to sewing by lamplight at night after a day of domestic labor.

What had been a close-knit island of cousins in the eighteenth century

And on the cold, windy, treeless outskirts of town, farming was a challenge,

gradually became more diverse, but whaling money tended to stay in those

demanding cooperative labor from the entire family, and an extra dose of

old families who had a multigenerational hand in the business. The gracious

hardiness and determination for all. That many of the women in these island

homes that line residential Main Street today were built or remodeled in the

homes were the sole providers and managers of their households while their

1830s by the island’s prominent citizens—Starbucks, Macys, Coffins—and

mariner husbands were away at sea is a testament to their independence

crowned in the 1840s by the Greek revival mansions of William Hadwen,

and abilities.

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Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864) “Having no child of her own”

THE DAUGHTER AND WIFE of wealthy ship owners and whale oil merchants,

Eunice Starbuck Hadwen was a privileged woman whose life exemplified the maxim “well-behaved women seldom make history.” There are only a few scraps of historical record for Eunice: two letters she wrote in the 1850s, an oil portrait and several studio photographs, and an obituary notice. The Nantucket Historical Association owns a silver dessert spoon engraved with her name, fashioned by her husband, silversmith William Hadwen; but what reveals more about Eunice and her place in Nantucket society than any other artifacts are the houses she lived in: all are part of the historic architectural record of the town. A fixture of Main Street, Eunice Starbuck Hadwen was a genteel woman who sewed, tended her greenhouse flowers, entertained, and mentored select young women in the art of being a lady.

Eunice was born in 1799 to Joseph Starbuck (1774–1861) and his wife, Sally Gardner (1773–1842); she was their second child and second daughter.

Joseph, a Quaker, had married Sally, who was not a Quaker, “out of Meeting” in 1797, and was disowned by the Society of Friends for that transgression.

The story of their union and the growth of Starbuck’s whale-oil business is told with considerable imagination by Will Gardner in his 1945 book Three Bricks for Three Brothers, which does not explore the lives of Starbuck’s four daughters—Sarah, Eunice, Eliza, and Mary. The girls were followed by three younger brothers—George, Matthew, and William—who would later live in the “Three Bricks,” at 93, 95, and 97 Main Street, and eventually take over the management of their father’s extensive business interests.

When Eunice was ten years old her father built the house at 4 New Dollar Lane where all her younger brothers were born. The family compound there included a candle house and tryworks, and was bustling with the activity associated with a successful whale-oil manufactory. The record of the education of Eunice and her three sisters does not exist, except for a scrap of a workbook from 1815 belonging to her sister Mary, but they would have received the best instruction available in the subjects deemed appropriate for young ladies of their time, which would have included needlework, and

Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864), carte de visite, 1864.

A68-35B

perhaps even music and art, since they were not Quakers.

Eunice met her future husband at the wedding of her eighteen-year-old sister, Eliza, to Nathaniel Barney in 1820. Nathaniel’s cousin, William Hadwen,

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a young silversmith from Newport, Rhode Island, attended the Nantucket wedding and decided to stay on the island. He and Eunice were married two years later, and William established a jewelry and silver business on Nantucket. Eunice and Eliza and their husbands set up housekeeping together at 100 Main Street in 1829, the same year the men went into business together as Hadwen & Barney, whale-oil merchants and candle manufacturers.

It was not unusual on the island for two families to live in the same house, but the long-term, close relationship of the Hadwen and Barney families was extraordinary. They shared the house at 100 Main Street from 1829 until 1846. Eunice and William had no offspring, but Eliza and Nathaniel were the parents of three children—Joseph, Sarah, and Jethro—born between 1827 and 1831. Jethro died when he was less than a year old, but Joseph and Sarah grew up at 100 Main Street with their parents and their aunt and uncle, who were remembered by the Barney children when they named their own

Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864),

William Hadwen (1791–1862),

offspring: Joseph, who married Malinda Swain, named a daughter Eunice and

watercolor on paper

watercolor on paper

a son William; and Sarah, who married Malinda’s brother, Alanson Swain,

GIFT OF CHARLES E. SATLER, 1995.316.2

GIFT OF CHARLES E. SATLER, 1995.316.1

marriage. When William Hadwen wrote his will in 1861, Nathaniel and Eliza

Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864),

William Hadwen (1791–1862), William Willard

Barney were living at 94 Main, and Eliza was bequeathed the use of the house

anonymous, circa 1820, oil on panel

(1819–1904), oil on canvas, circa 1850s

for as long as she desired to live there, after which the real estate descended

GIFT OF EUNICE BARNEY SWAIN, 1915.23.1

GIFT OF P. B. HADWEN, 1964.16.2

named one of her sons Hadwen.

What remain to give us some idea of the kind of life Eunice Hadwen led are the houses known as the “Two Greeks,” built by William Hadwen in 1846 and 1847. The Hadwens’ new home at 96 Main Street, at the corner of Pleasant, was just a short walk from the home they had shared with the Barneys at 100 Main Street, and was situated across from Eunice’s brothers’ houses at 93, 95, and 97 Main, built 1837–38. Tradition says that 94 Main was built for the Hadwens’ niece, Mary G. Swain, daughter of Eunice’s sister, Mary. Sometimes referred to as the Hadwens’ adopted daughter, Mary G., the second of ten siblings, was certainly a favorite niece. She was four years older than Eliza Starbuck Barney’s daughter, Sarah, and the first daughter born to one of Eunice’s sisters, so she undoubtedly received special attention from her aunt.

Mary G. married George Wright in 1844 and the couple moved to California in 1849. Wright was elected to Congress, and later practiced law in Washington, D. C., so he and Mary G. spent little time on Nantucket after their

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to Eunice Hadwen Wright, daughter of George and Mary G., a grand-niece named for Eunice.

What led William Hadwen to build such opulent houses in a style that was dramatically different from the ubiquitous shingled Quaker houses and the sedate Georgian bricks of the neighborhood can only be surmised. His personal taste was obviously incompatible with the local aesthetic, and Eunice, if she had so desired, was not successful in talking him out of his architectural experiment. Perhaps they wanted to upstage the Starbuck brothers, whose homes were built for them by their father, Joseph, who had not extended the same generosity to his daughters. Hadwen was certainly wealthy, and he and Eunice may have wanted a house large enough to entertain neighbors and visitors, and to assert their status. They employed local self-taught architect Frederick Brown Coleman to design and oversee the building of their houses, and his achievement is the prototype of the Greek Revival style on the island.

Coleman was from a family of carpenters and fine craftsmen: his older brother, William Brown Coleman, was one of the first local builders to add Greek Revival elements—porticos, columns, and other details—to large clapboard-fronted homes that sported end chimneys and central hallways, in a style much grander than the traditional Nantucket house. Frederick continued what William had begun in the 1830s, and by the mid-1840s he had designed the Baptist Church, remodeled the interior of the Unitarian Meeting House, and added the portico to the Methodist Church. Hadwen’s houses were more in the style of Greek temples than the churches Coleman designed, but the interiors were fashioned for gracious domestic living, with curved staircases, double parlors, and elegantly carved woodwork.

The first floor of Eunice’s new home, sited on a slight rise of land at 96 Main Street, featured a double parlor on the west side, a dining room and kitchen on the east side, and a central hall. Four bedrooms on the second floor were situated over the first-floor rooms, and each of the eight rooms had a fireplace. A high basement allowed for a summer kitchen, and records Hadwen House at right, albumen print, 1871

show that Joseph Barney, who inherited the house from his aunt and uncle,

P6515

had a dining room in the lower level as well. A cupola, accessible from the attic, offered a view of town and beyond it the harbor to the northeast. A letter dated December 23, 1847 describes one of the first parties in the new home:

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Last evening I was at the sewing circle at Mr. Hadwen’s (William Hadwen) new house. We had a very pleasant time and they have a very beautiful house. There were about one hundred persons there to tea and about double that number in the evening, the later part of the evening we had an auction and Mr. Barrett was auctioneer and you know he is a good hand to make sport anytime.

Eunice had probably doted on her niece and nephew at 100 Main, but in 1847 Joseph was twenty and about to marry, and Sarah was eighteen. Her favorite Nantucket niece, Mary G. Swain, had married in 1845. We know that Eunice imparted her domestic and social skills to at least three young girls, offering a very personal “finishing” school to those she took under her maternal wing, as evidenced in a letter she wrote in 1855 to “my dear Dorcas,” (Dorcas Hadwen

The Three Bricks, postcard by M. W. Boyer, 1920s

Lee, daughter of William’s brother, Charles).

Anna has continued her exertions to improve herself and has

Oh! What a very sad bereavement is yours. How sudden! And how

succeeded very well so far. She was looking very handsome last

unprepared you must have been for such an afflictive event. . . .You

evening, being dressed very becomingly in black silk trying to make

have a great deal left to you to be grateful for. Those dear pledges

herself agreeable and very useful, when a lady said to me, after

of your love must be a great source of consolation to you, and you

admiring her, “I think you will feel well paid for all you have done

have a great many kind and sympathizing relatives and friends,

for her.” I observed, that I should feel amply paid for ever thing I

who are suffering with you in your great affliction.

had done for her if she would in any degree compare with two very superior women whose characters I had had some hand in forming

Daughter of Charles and Amy Hadwen, Dorcas was born in Providence,

and whose society I have had a great deal of enjoyment from. She

Rhode Island, in 1826, and married Samuel Palmer Lee of Chatham, New

thought, I could hardly expect to make her equal to Mary G. or

York, in 1846. The “dear pledges” Eunice referred to were her two sons,

Dorcas. I do not expect her to be great, but if she is good I will be

George and William Hadwen, and daughter, Mary, who would marry Nan-

satisfied and should feel rewarded.

tucketer Richard Mitchell in 1876.

The agreeable Anna in black silk was Anna C. Ray, who was fifteen years

Dorcas Hadwen’s husband died of smallpox in 1854, eliciting a letter of sympathy penned by Eunice on February 12:

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Hadwen-Barney family descendants at a gathering at 96 Main Street , 1905.

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Anna was living with William and Eunice in 1855, along with another young woman, twenty-five-year-old Alice Garrity, probably a servant. Thanks to Eunice’s tutelage, Anna “married well” in 1860. Her husband was Oliver Ames of North Easton, Massachusetts. After a career in shovel manufacturing—a

Sketch for Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864)

business that benefited greatly from the discovery of gold in California and the Civil War—he entered politics, serving in the Massachusetts State Senate, as lieutenant governor, and as governor from 1886 to 1890. Anna’s early

of his own, yet he has brought up and started in life a much larger

instruction at the grand home of her mentor, Eunice Hadwen, prepared her

than an average family, who ought not, and perhaps will not, to

for her role as wife of a powerful and influential man. Her one-year-old son,

their latest day, forget their kind and fatherly benefactor. This he

William Hadwen Ames, was remembered in Hadwen’s will, as were all the

could not have done, to be sure, without the cheerful assistance

other boys named after him: William Hadwen Starbuck, William Hadwen Lee,

and cooperation of his noble and devoted partner who lives to

Hadwen Draper, Hadwen Swain, and William Hadwen Barney. In an obituary

mourn his loss.

notice, the generosity of William Hadwen is lauded: Many a family, both here and abroad, will remember his benevolence, and miss his annual donation. He has had no children

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Eunice survived her husband by only two years, and she, too, was remembered for her kindness:

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Having no child of her own to call forth a mother’s sympathy and

the latent and stronger faculties of the soul, and yet, when the

care it was her pleasure to select from the deserving ones of others

exception to this equable and placid current of life became her

in whom her affections might centre; and these still remain to bless

allotment, in the death of her beloved husband, she sustained the

the memory of their lamented benefactress and friend.

sad bereavement with an equanimity and fortitude, scarcely excelled by those who had been nerved to such an event, by previous severe

Eunice’s influence was personal and individualized, rather than public.

discipline.

She demonstrated her domestic skills in her home in town, and also in her summer retreat at 20 Main Street in ’Sconset, where in one of the two extant letters she describes her activity preparing the cottage for the season:

Eunice’s life spanned the golden era of Nantucket’s greatest prosperity, and she experienced the benefits of a genteel upbringing and a life of privilege. Although Nantucket’s fortunes were falling rapidly by the mid-nine-

I have busied myself during the week, in quilting for Siasconsett.

teenth century, the Hadwens were secure in their fortune, and were philan-

I have made two bed spreads and covered the old quilt and two

thropic to many within their circle of family and friends. Eunice faded from

comforters.

the Nantucket scene before the scene changed so dramatically in the last decades of the century; her nephew Joseph Barney inherited the house at 96

Eunice’s passion was for greenhouse flowers, so it may be assumed that she had a greenhouse at 96 Main; it is known that Thomas Macy enjoyed his

Main and lived there for many years with his family.

The Hadwen House was Eunice’s domain, and Boardman’s narrative of

hot house at 99 Main, and other wealthy homeowners in the neighborhood

Eunice features the imposing Greek Revival mansion as the central image,

may have had their own small conservatories. Amid the accolades of “great

surrounded by varieties of greenhouse flowers popular in the Victorian era:

strength of character,” and “singleness of purpose,” in an obituary notice in

pink roses, hydrangeas, white laurestines, and wild geraniums. A whimsical

the Inquirer and Mirror, January 5, 1864, a more personal side of Eunice is

bird is perched on the roof of the house.

revealed: Her admiration of nature, and her interest, particularly, in the cultivation of greenhouse plants continued to the last. On the day previous to her death, and, at the moment forgetting her own suffering, she was still so particular in her directions for the care of these that she entered even into the minutiae consequent upon their wants.

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Martha Fish (1844–1916) COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

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Martha Burgess Fish (1844–1916) “ Did not get up till 8 o’clock loafed around all day” IF EUNICE HADWEN, the daughter and wife of whale oil mer-

chants, was the consummate mid-nineteenth-century Nantucket lady of leisure, then Martha Fish was pretty much her opposite. While Eunice taught worthy young women how to move in genteel society, Martha performed strenuous domestic work in order to help support her family during the lean years on Nantucket, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. She was the daughter and wife of farmers. The youngest child of Charles A. Burgess and Mary Worth, Martha was born during the turning point of Nantucket’s prosperous whaling years, to a family not connected to the sea for their livelihood.

Her grandfather, David Worth, had been a mariner early in his career, but turned to agriculture, owning a large acreage in Shawkemo. Martha’s two older brothers, David and Richard, were business partners in a slaughterhouse and meat market for many years before they each set up a market with their

Detail of Quaise Asylum (Alms House) from 1830 Map of Nantucket drawn by Lucy Macy (1812–75).

MS 1000 3 4 1

own sons across from each other on Main Street in a friendly rivalry for local business.

Martha became a farmer’s wife when she married Abner G. Fish in 1863;

well as those of Abner, keeping track of

he was fifteen years her senior when the two wed in Boston in 1863, when

fields plowed, potatoes planted, lambs

Martha was nineteen. The difference in age and wedding in Boston suggest

born, and butter churned during an

that the couple may have eloped. Abner was the second of eight children of

endless cycle of work. From her sparse-

Lemuel and Martha Fish of Falmouth, Massachusetts; although listed in the

ly worded diary entries we get a sense

U. S. Census as Fish, his last name in local records is sometimes recorded as

of the diversity of labor that Martha

Fisher, and Martha occasionally signs her own name as Martha Fisher. Their

was willing to perform in order to earn

daughter, Martha (known as Mattie), was born in 1864, and son Freddie was

money, from selling eggs, wallpapering

born in 1871.

and cleaning, sewing coats, and nursing

Martha kept an almost daily journal of her life during the years 1875 to

or “watching” the elderly and infirm. At

1913, although there are gaps of entire years in the 1880s and 1890s, sug-

times her record seems callous because

gesting that some of her diaries have been lost. She records her activities as

it is unadorned with sentiment, as in

Abner Fish, 1887

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the entry of October 26, 1883: “Called to Edward Morse to see how his wife was and found her dying, made arrangements with him to lay her out if she passed away.”

Martha rarely had an idle moment, but when she did, she made the best of it, usually stopping to play Parcheesi with her father and daughter and anyone else who would join in, as evidenced in the entry of March 17, 1884: “Did not feel very well, took some whiskey and played parchesi.” She was interested in local and national politics, commenting on Town Meeting as well as the Spanish American War in her diary, and when she had the time and energy she attended programs at the Atheneum. Her will, dated February 2, 1916, bequeaths books to her grandchildren: to Reginald Hussey, Mattie’s son, she gave a History of the United States, and to his sister Harriet, Views of the World’s Fair. The titles of her prized volumes show that she was a woman interested in facts and accomplishments. Totally void of philosophical musings or emotional reactions, her sometimes cryptic and hastily written journal entries are full of misspellings and careless, probably rushed, script.

Martha has left us with a one-dimensional self-portrait; a record of tasks accomplished, money spent and earned, and small pleasures that only hint at the character of the hard-working woman.

Where the Fish family lived and farmed on Nantucket has been the source of some confusion; they have been associated with Cherry Grove Farm on Hummock Pond Road, but local deeds make it clear that the farm where most of the activities of the diary took place was in Polpis, on her father’s farm, where the family may have had a house. They also purchased a farm in the area of the island known as the South Pasture. Referred to by Martha (in her will) and others as the “Myrick Farm,” it had once belonged to George Myrick, and before him, Thomas Macy of 99 Main Street. On the Historical Map of Nantucket, surveyed and drawn by the Rev. F. C. Ewer in 1869, is an area labeled Moona, a Wampanoag word that is thought to mean “deep well”; it is the site of the 216-acre Myrick Farm purchased by Abner Fish in 1879.

It is possible that Abner was an employee of Martha’s father, Charles, on the Burgess farm before their marriage in 1863; many of the entries in the first diary refer to Abner and “father” working together. Cherry Grove Farm

January 19–25, 1877, from Martha Fish’s diaries.

was owned by Oliver Clinton Hussey and his wife, Mattie Fish, daughter of

MS 380

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Abner and Martha, who purchased it in 1897; it was a much smaller farm than those at Shawkemo and Moona, with only ten acres of land.

In 1884, Abner became keeper of the Asylum, or poorhouse; it was both, but functioned primarily as a geriatric center and hospice. Located originally in Quaise but moved in 1854 to lower Orange Street, it is now known as Landmark House, providing apartments for seniors and the handicapped, but in the 1880s it was a town-supported facility of last resort for those who could not take care of themselves. The work there was grueling. The staff included a cook and a couple of women to help Martha, who kept the place clean, did laundry for the inmates, and provided care, including laying out the dead, which was a frequent task. Abner was the official keeper of the Asylum, but it was Martha who performed much of the labor that kept the facility running smoothly. For almost eight years, Martha and Abner ran the Asylum, but on May 1, 1891, they left and “started their new life” in a house at 94 Orange Street, which she purchased for $900 that year. Martha even took a rare day off: on May 3 she wrote, “did not get up till 8 o’clock loafed around all day.”

Abner, seventy-one years old and suffering from an affliction referred to in his death record as “senile gangrene” died in 1901. Martha, fifteen years younger, survived him by fifteen years. She was living with her daughter and son-in-law, Mattie and Clint Hussey, their two children, Reginald and Harriet, and four others in a house on Hussey’s Road in 1910, when the census was taken. The location of Hussey’s Road is not known.

Like Kezia Folger Coffin, whose primary occupation was filling the family

Sketch for Martha Burgess Fish (1844 –1916)

purse, Martha Fish worked in a variety of ways to help support her family.

The purse, its drawstring tassels decorated with American flags, is the object on which one of the rare recreational scenes from her diary is embroidered, an excursion “down street” with her mother on July 4, 1879, to view the fireworks from the pier at Hayden’s Bath House, which stood where the Nantucket Yacht Club building is today. A Fourth of July parade of children, American flags in hand, travels down North Beach Street in front of the figures of Martha and her mother looking toward Brant Point, with the fireworks flashing on the night sky.

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Maria Mitchell (1818–89) COLLECTION OF CLARISSA AND BILL PORTER

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CHAPTER 6

Nineteenth-Century Autodidacts: A Self-taught Sisterhood BEFORE COLLEGE EDUCATION was widely available to women, those with

Mary Eliza Starbuck remarked in her memoir, My House and I, that Nantuck-

active intellects and a quest for knowledge were left to their own devices,

et’s chief industry after the demise of whaling and the end of the Civil War

studying subjects of interest on their own—as in the extraordinary case of

was the raising of schoolteachers, a notion seconded by Nantucketer Anna

Maria Mitchell, reading her way through the Atheneum collections—or with

G. Fish, who wrote in a 1924 article titled “Nantucket’s Principal Exports”

groups of like-minded aspirants, in study clubs. In the last decades of the

that teachers and other talented souls, like herself, who left the island for

century, Nantucket had a fair share of autodidacts who formed a variety of

careers in the wider world, were the chief exports of the island.

societies for personal enlightenment, including Sorosis, the Botanical Soci-

Those who were not exported languished at home unless they did some-

ety of Nantucket, and the Shakespeare Club in order to pursue their interest

thing about it. Maria’s diligent, solitary scanning of the night sky led to the

in topics that their brothers were studying formally at Harvard and other

discovery of a comet, which brought her recognition in a male-dominated

colleges.

scientific community, and the opportunity, twenty years later, after years of

Nantucket in the late nineteenth century was a shadow of its former

unflagging study, to teach at Vassar. The other autodidacts of this chapter

dynamic self. The loss of its major industry and consequent decrease in pop-

made a less dramatic impact on history, but did their part to find meaning-

ulation made it a small town indeed, and those daughters of educated, well-

ful lives and work, devoting themselves to literature, music, and preserving

to-do whaling families found themselves with few prospects for marriage or

Nantucket’s heritage by helping to found the Nantucket Historical Associa-

employment unless they looked somewhere else, which many of them did.

tion, in 1894.

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Maria Mitchell (1818–89) “ The intellectual culture of women” WITHOUT A DOUBT Nantucket’s most famous woman, Maria Mitchell was a

librarian, astronomer, and teacher, an achiever of “first” status in all of those fields of endeavor. At the age of eighteen she became the librarian of the newly founded Nantucket Atheneum, a post she kept for twenty years; she may have been the first professional female librarian in the United States in an era when men dominated the field. She was the first to discover a telescopic comet in 1847, when she “swept” the skies from the top of the Pacific Bank, and that achievement led to her appointment as first professor of astronomy at Vassar in 1865. Always a staunch defender of women’s intelligence and abilities and advocate for their rights, she had benefited from the tutelage of her father, William—mathematician, scientist, master of a Quaker grammar school—and her well-read mother, Lydia.

Maria was born in 1818 in the house at 1 Vestal Street that is now part of the Maria Mitchell Association campus. The middle child in a family of

1 Vestal Street, 1895, birthplace of Maria Mitchell (1818–89)

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GPN4262

Carte de visite of Maria Mitchell, 1860s

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Mitchell sisters (left to right): Ann, Maria, Phebe, Kate, and Sally

P11796

five girls and four boys, she came of age during the height of Nantucket’s

telescopes. William Mitchell was acquainted with many illustrious men, and

prosperity, when whaling dollars created a segment of the community that

both scientific and literary luminaries of the age, including Nathaniel Haw-

could afford excellent private education and whose intellectual, cultural,

thorne and Herman Melville, were visitors in the Mitchell home.

and scientific interests could be pursued through institutions, societies, and

By the time she was sixteen, Maria had completed her advanced school-

visiting lecturers who encouraged the exchange of ideas. Being the child of

ing with Cyrus Peirce (later the head of the first teacher-training college in

an exceptional and indulgent schoolteacher had its advantages: Maria and

the United States), but she continued to pursue scientific and philosophical

her siblings were well educated, girls and boys alike, in the Quaker tradition.

studies in the manner of a true autodidact, and she taught younger students

The youngest Mitchell daughter, Phebe Mitchell Kendall, wrote in her biog-

as Peirce’s assistant. Her real opportunity for advanced education came from

raphy of Maria that “there was everything in the home which could amuse

her appointment as first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, in 1836.

and instruct children.” They studied their lessons together in the evenings,

Incorporated in 1834, the Atheneum was an outgrowth of earlier library

and their father, a respected amateur astronomer, enlisted their aid during

societies that merged and expanded to create a new institution that featured

observations of the sky; they all learned to use sextants, chronometers, and

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books and artifacts that she exam-

accompanied Miss Swift to England, but the young girl was called home

ined and cataloged one by one, and

when her father suffered financial losses, and Maria was left alone. With

she no doubt read voraciously. Her

letters of introduction to many scientists across Europe, she sought out

brother Henry later wrote: “The

astronomer after astronomer, and her fame preceded her. She visited nu-

library was open to the public only

merous observatories in England, spending a few days at the home of Sir

a few hours of each day, so that she

John Herschel, whose numerous children, exhibiting a lively interaction with

had great opportunity for reading

their kind parents, must have reminded her of her own indulgent upbringing.

and study, with the best authorities

From England Maria ventured to Edinburgh, then to Paris where she met

in literature and science within

up with Nathaniel Hawthorne and family, and accompanied them to Rome.

reach. . . .”

Hawthorne wrote that “she seems to be a simple, strong, healthy humored

Maria continued astronomical

woman, who will not fling herself as a burden on our shoulders; and my only

studies that she had begun with her

wonder is that a person evidently so able to take care of herself, should come

father when a child, and each night

about having an escort.” Maria became particularly close to the Hawthorne

she went to the roof of the Pacific

children; Julian Hawthorne later wrote, “There was a charming quaintness

Bank, where her family had lived on

William Mitchell, 1860s

the upper floor since his appointment as

P21775

cashier in 1836, to peer through her telescope and scan the bowl of the sky.

From that post at the top of Main Street she spotted a telescopic comet in

and innocence about her and immense healthy curiosity about this new old world and its contents. She had a great flow of native, spontaneous humor, and could say nothing that was not juicy and poignant.”

During her visit to Rome, Maria’s request for admission to the Vatican

1847, winning a gold medal from the King of Denmark and becoming the first

Observatory was met with shock, since no woman had ever set foot there,

woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1848, when

not even Caroline Herschel, famous sister of Sir William Herschel, John’s

she was thirty years old. Despite her growing fame in the international scien-

father, or Mary Somerville, the best-known female scientist of the Victorian

tific community, Maria continued her day job at the Atheneum, and she took

era, who was living in Florence at the time. Perhaps they never thought to

a second job in 1849 as a “computer” for the American Nautical Almanac; the

ask, but Maria did, and was admitted. That honor was followed by a trip to

tables for the planet Venus were her responsibility, an assignment she kept

Florence to visit Mary Somerville, greatly admired by Maria as the person

for nineteen years.

who translated the algebra of LaPlace’s Mécanique Céleste into the common

Maria was ready for a change in her routine by 1856, when she left the Atheneum. She had saved some money and was eager to see more of the

language—in other words, into words—demonstrating her complete understanding of the text. Maria wrote about her in her journal:

world. In 1857 she set off on a stagecoach journey to Chicago to collect the young daughter of wealthy banker General H. K. Swift, Miss Prudence Swift,

I could but admire Mrs. Somerville as a woman. The ascent of

with whom she would tour the South as chaperone. They proceeded to St.

the steep and rugged path of science had not unfitted her for the

Louis where they boarded a steamer for a cruise to New Orleans, traveling

drawing-room circle; the hours of devotion to close study have not

from there to Charleston, Augusta, and Nashville, where she and Miss Swift

been incompatible with the duties of wife and mother; the mind

hired a guide and explored Mammoth Cave.

that has turned to rigid demonstration has not thereby lost its faith

After her trip through portions of the southern United States, Maria

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in those truths which figures will not prove.

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Maria Mitchell (1818–89) COLLECTION OF MARIE AND JOHN SUSSEK

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Pacific Bank, 1870s, Alanson Barney, stereograph P14277

Maria was stating her belief that women of science need not be considered aberrations, or monsters of their sex: they could lead normal lives, converse in society, have families, and retain their faith in God. All they needed were equal education and opportunity.

Maria had long cared for her ailing mother, and continued to do so when she returned from Europe. In 1861, Lydia Coleman Mitchell died, and Maria and her father moved to Lynn, Masschusetts, where her sister Kate Mitchell Dame lived. She continued to do her work for the Nautical Almanac for several years, but the transforming change in her life came when she was appointed professor of astronomy at Vassar in 1865. She now had to teach the subject she had immersed herself in for years, and was no longer able to continue her own detailed scientific observations. Teaching became a passion, however, and the advancement of women in science a goal. She wrote Professor Maria Mitchell in the Vassar College observatory, circa 1885

in her diary in 1868: “Resolved, in case of my outliving father and being in

P618A

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regard to salary. . . .” Her father, to whom she had been devoted her entire life, died in April 1869.

Maria taught at Vassar for almost twenty more years. During that time she traveled with students to Iowa in 1869 to observe the total eclipse of the sun, and to Denver in 1878 for the same phenomenon, and in the summer of 1873 she visited Russia. According to her biographer sister, Maria boasted that she had earned a salary for fifty years straight, and up until 1883, when she sprained an ankle, she had spent time outdoors every single day. If the weather did not permit astronomical observations, she walked. Ill health forced Maria to resign her position at Vassar in 1888, and she returned to Lynn, where she died on June 28, 1889.

A genuine celebrity in her day, Maria never enjoyed the limelight. She was devoted to her family, her scientific pursuits, and her students, and she lived a simple, purposeful life. She was honored in her hometown when the Maria Mitchell Association was created in 1902 to preserve Maria’s rich legacy in science and education.

A woman of great scientific accomplishment, Maria had a philosophical and poetical side as well, and was humbled by the vast expanse of the sky that she so carefully observed. Susan Boardman has created several embroidered narratives featuring quotes from Mitchell that reveal the sensitivity of the astronomer: “I saw the stars in the evening and met them like old friends from whom I had been long parted.”

In the piece reproduced here, Boardman displays a silver sliver of a moon and a sky full of stars illuminating a school of fish slipping through the ocean, where seaweed waves its fingers amid scallops and starfish. Two

Sketch for Maria Mitchell (1818–89)

carved-ivory fish complete the nighttime scene. In another Maria Mitchell piece are the sites of Maria’s Nantucket activities: her childhood home on Vestal Street; the Atheneum, where she was librarian for twenty years; and the Pacific Bank, where her family lived for a number of years while her father was cashier.

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Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937) “ One of Nantucket’s primary memory-keepers” SUSAN EMMA BROCK WAS BORN at one of the major turning points in Nan-

a pretty clear picture of

tucket’s history—the tail end of the local whaling industry’s boom years—to

the relationship between

George H. Brock, a whaling captain, and Charlotte A. Coleman. Susan’s father

twenty-five-year-old

made the necessary leap from whaling to merchant service when Susan was

Susie and her younger

six years old, and took his wife and child on a working voyage from Bos-

friend. They were devoted

ton to San Francisco in the new clipper ship Midnight, an adventure Susan

to one another, passion-

later recounted in Doubling Cape Horn, published first in 1926. She had fond

ate about the music they

memories of the months at sea: her father took her out on the ship’s bow-

played—she on piano, or-

sprit to watch the figurehead dive into the waves; he climbed with her up

gan, and a Cremona vio-

the mizzenmast; and he bundled her up and brought her on deck during a

lin; and he on piano—and

snowstorm so she could glimpse Cape Horn, a sight she remembered all her

concerts they were able to

life. All of these shipboard excursions terrified her mother, but Susan felt

attend. He sent her sheet

safe in her father’s arms and relished the experience. Their ship sprang a leak

music, and she described

on the return voyage, and rather than retiring to a port for repairs, Captain

for him her occasional

Brock sailed on, keeping the pumps going day and night and creating a bang-

public performances on

ing soundtrack to the long voyage home. On her first night in her Nantucket

Nantucket.

bed, Susan awoke to peace and quiet and screamed: “Oh papa, wake up—the pumps have stopped!”

That trip was Susan’s first and last journey outside the narrow confines of

Equally fascinated by the sciences, particularly botany, Susie was one of

life on Nantucket, except for occasional sedate sojourns in Brooklyn, Boston,

the founding members

and Philadelphia. She lived with her parents on Fair Street, just north of St.

of the Nantucket Botan-

Paul’s Episcopal Church (the house has been removed) and attended Nan-

ical Society, which met at the Main

tucket public schools until she graduated from high school; there her formal

Street home of Mrs. Starbuck, who

education ended, but she was one of Nantucket’s many accomplished female

“(of course) was elected president”

autodidacts, continuing to educate herself in science, music, art, German,

[Catherine Starbuck owned the Middle Brick.] Benjamin sent copies of his

and other subjects through study clubs created for that purpose.

college lectures on the subject to Susie, and she diligently read them and

The Nantucket Historical Association preserves a lively one-sided cor-

Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937) as a girl, 1850s, E. T. Kelley, carte de visite

CDV1018

attempted to share them with the members of the botanical society, who

respondence between “Susie” and her friend Benjamin Sharp (1858–1915),

sometimes were not as enthusiastic as she wished. He suggested she read the

when he was in medical school in Philadelphia from 1877 to 1879. Although

works of philosopher John Locke, and although at first she labored with the

his letters to her have not been found, her references to his remarks provide

material, she gained an appreciation after months of study, and found the

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author “more entertaining every day.” They discussed microscopes, and Benjamin sent her slides to view with the microscope purchased by the Nantucket society.

The nature of the relationship between Benjamin and Susie was alluded to a number of times. When her family planned to spend several weeks around Christmastime in Brooklyn in 1877, she wrote to Benjamin: “I am quite sure that if you spent the Holidays in Brooklyn you would be much benefited thereby.” He was not able to do so, but he in turn invited Susie to Philadelphia, and although she was twenty-five years old, she was totally dependent on her parents for permission and funds for such a trip: Mother has promised to let me go for a few days—with lots of ifs in the way; if I am well, if the weather is good, and if this, that, and the other—still it is considerable for her to say so much—and I really think that she will finally give her consent. [December 14, 1877]

Left: Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937), 1870s CDV1019

Susie did get her way eventually, and made the trip to Benjamin’s home that year and again the next.

Above: Dr. Benjamin Sharp (1858–1915), 1890s P15550

In March of 1878, Susie signed her letter to Benjamin “your friend and affectionate sister”—the latter term one that obviously irritated him so much that she felt the need to explain her choice of words and placate him in a letter written in early May: I am very sorry that I have so many times used a term so very distasteful to you. You must blame the poverty of our language. We

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are so in the habit here of using the word friend when speaking of a mere acquaintance that, as soon as a person becomes more to us than the latter, we need a more expressive term than the former. Since my own brother died, I have never liked to call myself anyone’s sister—and it requires something of an effort every time I do so—but it seemed to me to express our relationship better than anything else. I think I know a reason for what you term a mere whim and I wonder that it did not occur to me before. [May 7, 1878] How did Susie feel about Benjamin? We’ll never know for certain. In 1881, he married Virginia Mae Guild, a young artist he met on Nantucket where she summered with her mother and sister. When Susie learned of the couple’s engagement in 1880, she wrote to Benjamin: I hope it need not make any difference in our friendship —I do not see why it should. Surely Miss G. will not grudge one little corner of your heart to such an old friend as I am—and you promised once that you would not let me be crowded out, do you remember?

[July 22, 1880]

Fishing Lady of Boston Common, Susan Colesworthy (1752–1811),

The correspondence between Susie and Benjamin continued, but some

1765, silk yarns with tent stitch

of her sparkle diminished. She related that the Botanical Society had wilted,

on canvas

she was no longer studying German so intensively, and, in 1881, a perplexing

GIFT OF SUSAN E. BROCK, 1937.33.1

injury to her right wrist caused her so much pain she was unable to play the piano for months; in other words, all those things she enjoyed doing with

China Vase, circa 1860–70, porcelain,

Benjamin were no longer so enjoyable. As he pursued his scientific studies

brought to Nantucket by Captain

in Leipzig with his lovely new wife at his side, Susie began to feel the limita-

George H. Brock of the clipper

tions of her situation. In a letter written in 1882, she lamented:

ship Midnight GIFT OF SUSAN E. BROCK, 1937.33.2

There is nothing whatever for me to tell you about us here in Nantucket. We do the same things, and see the same people day after day and year after year and I suppose we shall until we die or blow away or something. [December 3, 1882]

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Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937) COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

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The last letter from Susan E. Brock that Benjamin Sharp saved is dated 1884; she congratulated him on the birth of his second child, a son.

Susan and her unmarried compatriots on Nantucket were in limbo. They did not attend college, and if they chose not to marry, they were dependents and caretakers of their parents. In Susan’s circle they were all financially comfortable, and they entertained themselves with cultural activities and social engagements. Although Nantucket women were known as clever entrepreneurs when their maritime husbands were at sea, the era of maritime husbands had ended by the late 1870s, when Susan and her female friends were in their twenties. Except for teaching, meaningful employment was not available during the decades-long period of population decline, and there were fewer local students to educate. The population of Nantucket was almost 9,000 when Susan was born in 1852, but by 1875 it had fallen to 3,201, and by 1900 was less than 3,000.

Susan eventually found an outlet for her talents and energy in two

places: the Unitarian church, where she was organist for many years, and the Nantucket Historical Association, where she became the first curator, when the collections were housed in the Quaker Meeting House. Her world became even smaller—both the Unitarian and Quaker meeting houses, where she spent more and more of her time, were a stone’s throw from her home on Fair Street. Although the physical dimensions of her existence might seem circumscribed, her intellectual talents were challenged and inspired by the work of organizing and cataloging the books, papers, and artifacts of the rapidly growing historical association, and she returned wholeheartedly to music when she finally regained the use of her wrist in the summer of 1882.

The Nantucket Historical Association was founded in 1894; Susan was a member of the first governing council and chair of the loan committee. In

Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937), 1915 P9308

1897, her longtime friend Dr. Benjamin Sharp, an ardent supporter of the NHA, and of Susan, proposed that her appointed position as librarian and cabinet-keeper be changed to a salaried position renamed curator, with an annual remuneration of $25.00. The same amount was paid to the secretary of the association, Susan’s friend Mary Eliza Starbuck. Both women advocated for a fireproof building to house the valuable collections of the rapidly

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growing association, and their wishes became a reality when the new concrete storage and exhibition space, appended to the Quaker Meeting House, opened in 1904.

Brock was curator of the NHA until 1928, when she became curator emerita. In an obituary notice included in the minutes of the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting, she was lauded for her years of dedication to the organization; the Inquirer and Mirror likewise applauded her professional achievement: “Much of the success which followed the organization of the society in 1894, and the accumulation of such a rare collection as it now possesses, was due to her interest and untiring efforts.”

Boardman’s embroidered narrative displays the things that Brock loved most—the Quaker Meeting House and Fair Street Museum, the Unitarian Meeting House and its famous Goodrich organ, and Brock’s Cremona violin. The clipper ship Midnight, which transported young Susie Brock on the adventure of a lifetime, is shown surrounded by playful sperm whales, illustrating a passage in her tale of that voyage that quotes an old whaleman aboard as saying, “The huge creatures must have had an uncanny sense of the harmless character of our ship, for they were never known to venture so near and fearlessly around a whaleship.” Whaling was a thing of the past, but collecting the materials and artifacts of that era was a job well suited for one of Nantucket’s primary memory keepers.

Sketch for Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937)

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Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938), 1879

Title page to My House and I (1929)

GPN 4416

Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938)

8 Pleasant Street, 1950s P2451

“ The few of us not called to the profession of matrimony or any more clearly defined profession” LIKE HER FRIEND SUSAN EMMA BROCK, Mary Eliza Starbuck was the only

She knew how to combine fierce pride with nostalgia, and was aware of just

daughter of a Nantucket whaling captain who was struggling to keep working

the sort of Nantucket-laced tale and poem that would appeal to the senti-

during the last years of the industry. She grew up during the period when the

ments of the time. Articles written by her appeared in St. Nicholas and New

population of Nantucket was in steep decline and circumstances were strait-

England Magazine in the late 1890s, and in 1929 she wrote a lengthy memoir,

ened for many families who had depended on the success of the whale fish-

My House and I, published by Houghton Mifflin. The narrative floats around

ery for their livelihoods. The stories told by the old salts of the glory days of

through time and topics: memorable shipwrecks, harbor freeze-ups, the

the whaling era were still fresh, as were the treasures that had been brought

Guinea neighborhood, the Civil War, and remembered slights and embarrass-

to the island. Mary Eliza wrote that “it is shawls and china and lacquer ware,

ments from childhood. Her home at 8 Pleasant Street—the same house where

rather than oil casks, that are suggested by the term ‘whaling’ to us who were

Phebe Folger Coleman visited her brother, Walter, and painted the town red

born in the last years of that industry.”

from a second-floor window—shares the spotlight; Mary’s tale is interwoven

Mary Eliza’s knowledge of Nantucket’s history, combined with her ob-

with the story of her beloved home.

servations of the increasing summer crowds who came to the island for the

The first five years of her life were spent in Edgartown on Martha’s

pleasures of the seashore, influenced her prose and poetry about the island.

Vineyard, where her mother’s family lived, and where the young Mrs. Lois

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Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938) NANCY AND AL FORSTER

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Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938) COLLECTION OF BARBARA AND PHILIP CARUSO

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Pease Starbuck took six-month-old Mary Eliza and five-year-old Henry when her husband, George, sailed away on the Islander, on a whaling voyage that lasted five years. Upon news of his imminent return in 1861, the family sailed back to Nantucket, and Mary Eliza awaited the arrival of a father she did not remember in the slightest. Nor did she know him for long—he died two years later. According to her reminiscences, Mary Eliza was indulged by her parents and older brother; dressed in lovingly described frocks, her hair curled and coifed, she was the darling of the family and could do no wrong. In 1866, her mother married Captain James Wyer, a widower with no children, and Mary Eliza tells of riding on the back of a Galapagos turtle, kept at his house on Orange Street, where there was also a pet monkey. With no step-siblings accompanying her new father, Mary Eliza remained the center of her small universe, which became more comfortable with the infusion of Mr. Wyer’s

Mary E. Starbuck, ca. 1890,

ample means. He was persuaded to move to the Pleasant Street house after

Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin

the nuptials, and to rent his own property to tenants.

(1856–1930), oil on canvas

Mary Eliza’s patchwork island education began at age five at a Cent School

GIFT OF MRS. MARIA H. WILSON

(where pupils paid a penny a day) on the corner of Pine and School Streets.

1969.15.1

From there she went to what she calls an Intermediate School, then the West Grammar School. A teacher at the latter institution shook her for a minor offense during her first week there and she refused to return, so her mother enrolled her in the Coffin School. After the Coffin School she attended high school, in a building that preceded the one now on Academy Hill, but left when her older friend (and future sister-in-law) Charlotte “Sharlie” Baxter, author of “The Legend of Wauwinet,” graduated. Sharlie had the good fortune to study at Vassar for a year, while Mary Eliza attended Hepsibeth Hussey’s Fair Street Academy during the last year that Hussey taught there, 1870.

When still a teenager, Mary Eliza began her teaching career, but found working with younger children extremely taxing; in her first twelve weeks as a teacher she lost twelve pounds. [Her older brother, Henry, a graduate of Exeter, was teaching at Phillips Academy at the same time, and would study law at Harvard.] Mary Eliza was more successful, and happier, teaching older students at the Coffin School, where she was employed from 1888 to 1889.

In her memoir she remarks that Nantucket’s chief industry, after whaling was over, was the raising of schoolteachers, most of whom left the island in search of employment.

Mary Eliza Starbuck dedication in copy of My House and I, 1930

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When Mary began writing poetry is not known, but she was a poetic spirit from a young age, full of passion for her native environs. Although she studied piano for a time with her friend Susie Brock, music was not her great talent. With her fellow autodidacts she explored a variety of subjects at study clubs, remarking that “the clubs, intellectual and otherwise and suited to all tastes, became almost innumerable.” Like her friend Susie Brock, however, she pondered her limited circumstances: By the time the Spanish Civil War came on I had arrived at the age spoken of as “no longer young.” That meant that my contemporaries were married or pursuing some other career. The few of us who had not felt called to the profession of matrimony or any more clearly defined profession, were regarded as out of the running. The why was guessed at, wondered at, fictionized, but our Mary Eliza Starbuck in the garden at 8 Pleasant Street with lilac bush, circa 1910.

futures were no longer of vital interest to anybody.

P9128

Although Mary Eliza may have felt somewhat invisible in society as an unmarried woman, she also recognized the Nantucket tradition of independent women pursuing their own interests: “Women did what they saw fit to do, and whatever it was, it was accepted without comment.”

One of the prime movers of the newly established Nantucket Historical Association, Mary Eliza served as the first secretary, from 1894 to 1900, working closely with her friend and fellow autodidact Susan Brock. The reports of the two women were published in the annual Proceedings of the NHA, and reveal their devotion to the cause of preserving the island’s past. Mary beseeched those gathered at the first annual meeting: To secure all possible material relating to old Nantucket, and . . . to make an active search for all sorts of relics, particularly manuscripts, before it is too late and those valuable mementos Sketch for Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938)

are carried away from the island as trophies, or by progressive housewives “cast as rubbish to the void.”

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In 1924, Mary Eliza Starbuck established herself as the poetic voice of

“Just a sandy wind-swept island!”

Nantucket when she published a slim volume of poetry called Nantucket

What more would you have it be,

and Other Verses. Most of the poems included in the book were previously

With a turquoise sky above it,

published in the period 1916 to 1918, in Life, the New York Evening Post, The

Around it a sapphire sea?

Farmer’s Wife, and other periodicals. Her earliest published poem appears to be “The Purple Island,” which appeared in New England Magazine in 1906:

The embroidered view on page 106 is from Folger’s Marsh, one of Mary Eliza’s favorite spots, looking across the Great Harbor to Great Point light-

Purple Island! Purple Island!

house, with the sapphire sea and turquoise sky of summer evoking the clarity

There are mystic moments when

of the day. Scudding clouds and the full sails on three of Nantucket’s tra-

All the voices of the springtime

ditional catboats are in the background of the marsh scene, where an egret

Call us o’er and o’er again

gulps down a quick meal from a passing school of fish; a pair of ducks floats and dives; and a scallop, a crab, an eel, and a pair of starfish nestle among

Back to thee, far purple island Where the slow tides rise and fall,

the reeds.

Mary Eliza returned to the NHA in 1922, resuming her role as secretary,

And the spirit slips its moorings

and working alongside her friend Brock until they retired in the same year.

When in spring the voices call.

Appreciations for their long-term contributions to the NHA were published side by side in the 1938 Proceedings.

All the weary ache of longing Born of absence fades away.

We can see the white sails winging Homeward at the close of day, And beyond, the silver harbor And the gray roofs of the town; And the tender purple shadows Of the night come drifting down.

Much of Mary Eliza’s poetry is nostalgic, some of the poems are religious in nature, some speak of lost love, and many are reveries on the beauty of the island. Her best-known poem, reprinted on cardstock in a variety of illustrated versions and sold in local bookshops and souvenir stores, is titled simply

From Nantucket and Other Verses,

“Nantucket.” The first verse was chosen by Boardman as the theme for her

1911

embroidery about Mary E. Starbuck:

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CHAPTER 7

Twentieth Century IN 1900, NANTUCKET WAS HOME to a mere three thousand or so year-

turned an eighteenth-century barn into a unique studio home while mys-

round residents and a seasonal destination for those who were fortunate

tifying their neighbors with their exotic architectural experiment.

enough to own a summer home on the island. Before automobiles and

Most of the women in this chapter discovered Nantucket in the last

airplanes, most people who came to Nantucket for the summer came to

half of the twentieth century, and are still making their mark here in a

stay for more than a week or two; it was just too long a journey to justi-

variety of ways, many of them throwing their energy into guiding non-

fy a quick trip, which was an impossibility. Florence Lang, an artist and

profit organizations that serve the island. Others include businesswomen,

property owner in the early decades of the century, was instrumental in

a scrimshaw artist, and a renowned ornithologist. All of these women are

creating an art colony on the island that flourished from 1920 to 1945,

multifaceted, independent, industrious—and interesting, good company

bringing in a new summer crowd. Some of those artists eventually bought

for their historic Nantucket sisters.

their own homes here, among them Gertrude and Hanna Monaghan, who

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Gertrude Monaghan (1887–1962) and Hanna Monaghan (1889–1972) A “ virus struck under the pseudonym of ART.” GERTRUDE AND HANNA MONAGHAN, natives of Philadelphia, came to Nan-

tucket in the summers to immerse themselves in art beginning in 1923, when they rented a small cottage-studio from Florence Lang, who was the doyenne of Nantucket’s thriving art colony in the 1920s and ’30s. Many of the paintings from the group of artists who worked on the island in that period are

Gertrude Monaghan (1887–1962), 1930s.

Hanna Monaghan (1889–1972), 1930s.

recognized and valued by collectors today; the Nantucket Historical Associ-

P16956

PH37-70

ation paid homage to the local art colony in a major exhibition in 2007. Although few of the Monaghan sisters’ small pieces of art survive, they created a major work of design and decoration that is a monument to the era: the house known as Greater Light.

Gertrude was the more accomplished artist of the two sisters. She had studied in Philadelphia and abroad, and was an established muralist in her hometown. Hanna,two years younger, was an amateur actress, a writer, and, from all indications, the more flamboyant of the pair, the mover and shaker whose enthusiasm and energy were the driving force behind the creation of Greater Light. They were from a well-educated, well-to-do Quaker family but could not have been more different from the Quakers who dominated Nantucket society in the eighteenth century, imposing their aesthetic of simplicity that shunned color, ornamentation, music, and dancing. As Quakers, Gertrude and Hanna adhered to the principal of “inner light,” following the divinely inspired creativity that for them meant a life devoted to art, and they reveled in beauty wherever they found it. They were indulged and supported by their parents, James and Anna, who helped them purchase an eighteenth-century barn on Howard Street in 1929. The sisters had a vision of turning that barn into a thing of beauty and inspiration, a place where they could live to create and display art.

Greater Light, 1930s

P20096

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Greater Light COLLECTION OF BARBARA AND EDMUND HAJIM

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ancient livestock barn and pigsty into a home, it aroused the curiosity of the townspeople, who found them “peculiar.” Public opinion mattered little to the sisters at the time, although later in life Hanna wrote a memoir, Greater Light on Nantucket, that is a defense of their transformation of the barn.

The suspicious and ungenerous attitude of so many of her neighbors had affected her deeply, and she wanted

Great Hall of Greater Light, 1930s

P20099

to make it perfectly clear that what she and Gertrude accomplished was for the sake of art, and was ultimately an expression of their faith in their inner light.

The sisters spent the winter of 1929 in Philadelphia designing their Nantucket dream house, creating a cardboard model that Hanna put in a hatbox and transported to the island, where she met with builder Magloire “Mack” Paradis.

After examining her whimsical model, he suggested that instead of proceeding with their plan, they tear the place down and start over. But the Greater Light Sketch

sisters persevered, and guided the creation of the great hall on the first floor, with its conical, stuccoed fireplace, the mantel supported by gold pillars

Nantucket in the 1920s was a town in decline. The thriving tourist in-

found in an antiques store, and the north wall composed of nine church

dustry that had emerged in the late nineteenth century with a promise of

windows. Open to the rafters, the room features an interior balcony near the

new prosperity had been temporarily quashed by World War I and the Great

old hayloft door on the west side of the house. The balcony railing came from

Depression that soon followed. The year-round population of the island was

a salvage yard, as did other elements in the redesigned space, including the

under three thousand in 1920, a low point that rivaled mid-eighteenth-cen-

twelve-foot-high wrought-iron gates that frame the patio. The sisters paint-

tury numbers. Many houses stood empty and neglected, and the year-round

ed floor tiles and rafters, applied gold leaf to walls, and designed a brick patio

residents who remained on island were generally old-fashioned and conser-

under the overhanging roof on the east side that served as an outdoor room

vative. When Gertrude and Hanna, in their chauffeur-driven car, accompa-

and led to a garden-level dining room and kitchen. A dumbwaiter ran from

nied by their white greyhound named Angel Gabriel, began to remodel an

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women when they were working at their easels, or were otherwise involved in a project or performance.

When the house was completed, they furnished it with an eclectic mix of decorative items, appraising each piece of furniture, or wall hanging, or rug for its craftsmanship and beauty, and commingling antique Italian carved chairs with American patchwork quilts, an appliquéd harem curtain, a Chinese porcelain punch bowl, and a seventeenth-century camphorwood chest. The garden space was approached with the same enthusiasm and eye for design, and they had the help of someone Hanna refers to as the “garden old lady” who lived on Main Street, and endured the suspicious stares of her neighbors as she scurried over to Greater Light with baskets of bulbs—and much-needed advice. The resulting garden is one of the island’s little pockets of verdant surprise, with a tiny pool and fountain and a single alabaster

Bookplate by

column as focal points among the flowers and shrubberies, shaded by two

Gertrude Monaghan

now-enormous sycamores.

Greater Light’s garden extends to the smaller cottage known as Lesser Light, another remodeling project that the sisters undertook with the same creativity and enthusiasm. It, too, features a high-ceilinged studio room,

pleted in 2011, and the house and gardens are now open for tours, programs,

with a fireplace at one end and a raised platform at the other that leads to

and private events. Greater Light, the pièce de resistance of the Monaghans,

a second level where a kitchen, dining room, and bedroom are situated. A

is a monument to Nantucket’s Art Colony, and to the era between the two

spectacular carved door and staircase to upper-floor bedrooms is the most

world wars, when artists flocked to the island for summers of intense work

original feature of the house, which became the summer residence of Anna

and instruction. Gertrude and Hanna were fortunate to have their own piece

and James Monaghan. The names of the cottages in the Monaghan com-

of Nantucket, and they continued to summer at Greater Light for the rest of

pound come from the book of Genesis: “And God made two great lights: the

their lives. It represented their vision of art embodied, and was a collage of

greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night; he made

all manner of beautiful things.

the stars also.” In keeping with that theme, the third cottage belonging to

In Boardman’s embroidered narrative, Greater Light is depicted on a sum-

the sisters on Howard Street was named North Star, and was another old

mer day with white roses climbing the south wall and two sister gulls flying

barn that they transformed into a charming living space.

above the rooftop. The column and arch border was inspired by the two intri-

Lesser Light and North Star are private residences, but Hanna Monaghan

cately carved columns, featuring whimsical birds and a grapevine, that frame

bequeathed Greater Light and its furnishings to the Nantucket Historical As-

the doorway leading from the Monaghans’ patio to their ground-level dining

sociation in 1972. Not a typical and easily explained “historical” property, the

room. Boardman has taken those elements and draped them over the arch

deaccessioning of Greater Light was considered more than once in the past

that crowns the piece, and in the pediment has included the sisters’ beloved

three decades. Thankfully, the restoration of the Monaghan home was com-

white greyhound, Angel Gabriel.

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Greater Light post restoration, by Jeff Allen, 2011

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Edith Folger Andrews (1915–2015) ALTHOUGH RELATED TO THE original Folgers who settled on Nantucket in the

seventeenth century, Edith was not born on the island. A native of New Jersey, she first came to Nantucket in 1938, after graduating from Pennsylvania State University. While she pursued an advanced degree and began teaching, Edith returned to Nantucket each summer and worked for the Maria Mitchell Association. She completed a Master of Science in Ornithology at Cornell University in 1946, and taught at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, from 1946 to 1953. She married Nantucket native Clint Andrews in 1953, and the couple settled on Nantucket, where their daughter, Ginger, was born in 1954.

Nantucket’s preeminent ornithologist, Edith was a keen observer of birds for most of her life, and most of those birds have been Nantucket natives or migratory travelers, representatives of the 350 species that have been seen on the island. The Andrews family was in residence at the University of Massachusetts Field Station in Quaise from 1963 to 1984, while Clint was

Edith Folger Andrews, by Beverly Hall

the director of that facility, and there Edith began netting and banding birds as part of her ongoing research. She also prepared bird skins from birds she found dead or dying, creating an impressive research collection that is now

Boardman’s narrative includes statements Edith has made about the ex-

housed in the Maria Mitchell Association’s natural science department, and

citement of birding, and the importance of careful observation. Some of her

known as the Edith Andrews Ornithological Collection. In 2005, she was

favorite birds—northern shrike, cardinal, and American goldfinch—fly across

elected an Honorary Member of Harvard’s Nuttall Ornithological Club, an

the sky, while others—red crossbill, indigo bunting, black-capped chickadee,

award that places her in the company of some of history’s birding giants.

rose-breasted grosbeak, pine siskin, and Blackburnian warbler—perch on the

She was the author of several books, including Birds of Nantucket and Birding

limbs of an accommodating tree and bushes. Wood ducks swim on a small

Nantucket, and for many years contributed a weekly column on birds to the

blue pond, and on the ground nearby are a yellow rail, a bobolink, and a

Inquirer and Mirror.

common redpoll.

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Edith Folger Andrews (1915–2015) COLLECTION OF EDITH ANDREWS

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Jane Stroup (1920–2011) and Joan Manley

(b.1933)

NOT SO LONG AGO, there was a compound on Candlehouse Lane that featured

a greenhouse, studio, dwelling, cottage, and a nursery growing herbs, heather, day lilies, and ornamental grasses; it was called Garden of the Sea. Joan Manley, formerly head gardener for Walter Beinecke Jr.’s Sherburne Associates, bought the idyllic property in 1980 and started her business, while her partner, Jane Stroup, retired science librarian for the Maria Mitchell Association, was able to devote time to crafting sculptures in stone and wood in the little studio. Everything about Garden of the Sea was small in scale, well tended, simple, and beautiful, reflecting the aesthetic sensibilities and diligent work of the two women.

Joan was the first of the pair to discover Nantucket, coming to the island as a youngster to visit her uncle, Joseph A. Manley, who lived on Union Street. She moved to the island in 1962 to help her friends the Tuteins run the Woodbox Inn in the wintertime, and in 1965 began her work with Sher-

Garden of the Sea, circa 2000

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burne Associates. Jane moved to the island in 1969, after visiting a number of times with her twin brother, Jon, who had settled here after a career as a magazine editor in New York. Jane felt lucky to find employment as a librarian at the Maria Mitchell Association Science Library, even though she had a Ph.D. in the social sciences and had worked at The New Yorker magazine and for the Society of Applied Anthropology—not the usual prerequisites for her new position. Her wide range of talents included sometimes writing her annual library reports in iambic pentameter.

When Jane’s health began to fail, Joan sold the property and the women left their charming haven, which has since been greatly altered. Boardman’s embroidered depiction of Garden of the Sea preserves for posterity an image of the buildings and grounds, surrounded by a simple split-rail fence, full of

Joan Manley by Jon Stroup (1917−2006),

trees and nursery plants, with the women working among the thriving flora

Jane Stroup, 1950s

oil on canvas, 1978

on a summer day.

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GIFT OF REGGIE LEVINE, 1988.0121.001

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Garden of the Sea COLLECTION OF JOAN MANLEY AND JANE STROUP

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Grace Grossman (1924–2004) “Bayberry Farm” COLLECTION OF BETSY DE LEIRIS

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Grace Swig Grossman (1924–2004) GRACE GROSSMAN, ONE OF NANTUCKET’S most revered twentieth-century women, was a

true champion of the island. Working closely with her husband, Bernard (Bernie), she began a career of service to the island when the couple retired here in 1965 from Newton, Massachusetts. Grace knew Nantucket from her childhood, however, when her family vacationed at the White Elephant, and she introduced her husband to the island after their marriage in 1943. She and Bernie built a house on Polpis Harbor, Bayberry Farm, where they lived yearround, and they kept an office in the heart of town.

Grace and Bernie devoted time and energy to projects supporting Cape Cod Community College; the student union on campus is named for the Grossmans in honor of their dedication to the success of that institution. Grace had a talent for raising money for nonprofits through merchandising, working in that capacity for Old Sturbridge Village and establishing a museum shop at the Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. Those talents found fruition on Nantucket also, when she organized and established the museum shop for the Nantucket Historical Association. She and Bernie were instrumental in projects for local senior citizens—the conversion of Our Island Home and the old Academy Hill School into apartments for that segment of the population—and they helped found Small Friends on Nantucket, a day-care facility, and were important supporters of the renovation and expansion of the Nantucket Atheneum. There seems to be no worthy cause that did not attract their interest, and after Bernie died in 1996 Grace continued to do the good work they both loved, including taking his place as stalwart representative on the board of the Steamship Authority.

Dubbed “Amazing Grace” by many of her admirers, she had a ladylike elegance and a kind and generous spirit; she seemed to know everyone in town, and made many quiet gifts of benevolence that are not recorded in the public record, but remembered with fondness.

Boardman’s narrative embroidery features the Grossmans’ home on the harbor, with

Grace Grossman (1924–2004) by Beverly Hall, 1991 PH9-2-22

children frolicking in the apple orchard. The view from their house was a constant reminder of the importance of the steamship as a lifeline to the mainland; Boardman has included in her piece both the steamship and the terminal building on Steamship Wharf, icons for Grace’s years of advocacy. The little Museum Shop of the NHA, located adjacent to the Whaling Museum, completes the homage to Grace Grossman.

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Edith Scott Lynch Bouriez (b. 1926) IN 1952, EDITH LYNCH and her husband, Hamp-

ton, first visited Nantucket and immediately fell in love with the beauty and simplicity of the island and its old world charm. On an outing to Eel Point, Edith had an epiphany: she had to give this experience to her children, two young boys who would soon be joined by a sister. The family rented houses on the island for a few summers and then decided to buy their own summer home, 9 Milk Street, in 1960. Built in the late eighteenth century, the

Edith Bouriez

house is an authentic piece of Nantucket history, little changed on the exterior; and on the interior, which features a huge kitchen fireplace (now in the dining room), wide floorboards and other early

1800 House Sampler by Edith Bouriez

details tell, better than any book, of a different era on the island. The origin of her house and the stories of the families who lived in it intrigued Edith, and she wrote a history of 9 Milk Street in 2003, augmenting the story told in

Susan came to Nantucket to study with Erica Wilson in 1974, met Edith at

bricks, mortar, and wood.

the time, and she too fell in love with the island.

Edith is a master needlewoman, an expert in crewel, quilting, appliqué,

A love of teaching embroidery led Edith to volunteer at the Nantucket His-

trapunto, and other methods of needle art. An early member of the board

torical Association’s 1800 House, which is the association’s site for early Amer-

of the Embroiderers Guild of America, she judged and gave workshops and

ican arts and crafts classes. There she has taught crewel point, black work, gold

seminars, and is an EGA certified teacher in crewel. She met Erica Wilson,

work, and sampler stitching. Her hands seldom idle, Edith also knittted beautiful

a graduate of the Royal School of Needlework in London, in the 1950s, and

scarves sold at Nantucket Looms to benefit the 1800 House.

when Erica set up shop in New York, Edith was manager, taught all classes,

Boardman’s narrative embroidery features Edith’s historic house on Milk

and trained teachers. Erica Wilson’s Nantucket Needlework Seminar was

Street (now owned by her son), with her carriage house (an eighteenth-century

Edith’s idea, and it was at one of those summer needle-fests that she met

pony stable) in the rear, both covered in climbing pink roses. Her granddaugh-

Susan Boardman, then teaching at Simmons College in a graduate program.

ters are shown playing croquet on the lawn, while their dog frolics nearby.

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Edith Bouriez (b. 1926) COLLECTION OF HELEN AND HAMPTON LYNCH

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Elizabeth “Libby” Oldham (b. 1927) FOR MANY YEARS the Research Associate at

the Nantucket Historical Association Research Library, Libby Oldham was the go-to person for questions about Nantucket history, fielding inquiries that ranged from the general “Where can I read about the history of whaling?” to the much more specific: “I’m looking

Libby Oldham by Beverly Hall, ca. 1985

Libby Oldham and John Knox-Johnston in

for the house where my great-great-grand-

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Charley’s Aunt by Jack Weinhold, 1990

mother lived,” and everything in between.

Accuracy should be her middle name; she is a In her bailiwick, 2001

stickler for well-documented facts about the

a position she held for ten years. Her expert copy-editing skills were em-

history of the island that has been her year-

ployed not only for chamber publications, but soon for Nantucket Magazine,

round home for nearly forty years. Libby first

Historic Nantucket, and scores of books about Nantucket—no written work

visited Nantucket in 1951, when she spent a summer here with her former

about the island is complete until it has been “libbied,” a process that not

husband, working at the Sidewalk Café on South Beach Street. At the end of

only adds and subtracts commas, but ferrets out even the minutest mistakes

the season they decided to ride their bicycles part of the way home, begin-

in historical fact. She received a lifetime achievement award from the Egan

ning in Rye, New York, her hometown, and pedaling their three-speeds more

Maritime Institute in 2009 for her editing work with Mill Hill Press.

than 250 miles to Washington, D.C. That sort of free-spirited adventuring led

From managing the fund-raising campaign for the Unitarian Meeting

to a life in Greenwich Village beginning in 1953. Libby worked in publishing,

House in 1982 to working on the steering committee of the African Meeting

principally with the Bollingen Foundation, publisher of scholarly works in

House, Libby shared her talents not only to help preserve important histori-

the humanities.

cal icons of Nantucket, but also to entertain, through singing in the Unitari-

Libby’s mother and her sister, Faith, bought a house on Martins Lane in 1957, making Nantucket the central gathering place of the family, and drawing Libby and her daughter, Maia, back to the island frequently. When Libby’s

an Church Choir and the Community Music Center Chorus and performing in local theater productions.

Boardman’s embroidered narrative features the Unitarian Meeting House,

grandchild was due to appear on island in 1979, she made the decision to

African Meeting House, Quaker Meeting House and NHA Research Library,

move here permanently.

and the Pacific Club (former home of the Chamber of Commerce) over a

Immediately involving herself in the community, Libby was hired by the

background of book titles, with one of Libby’s favorite quotes “They say life’s

Chamber of Commerce to oversee the publication of its annual visitors guide

the thing, but I prefer reading.” One could easily argue that her life proves

to the island, and in 1982 was tapped to be the chamber’s executive director,

otherwise.

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Elizabeth “Libby” Oldham (b. 1927) COLLECTION OF ELIZABETH OLDHAM

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Nancy Chase (1931–2016) THE ONLY NANTUCKET NATIVE among the

Creek in Madaket is depicted, with Nancy’s boat, and whales and a whirligig

twentieth-century women featured in

represent her carved figures. Completing the embroidered piece is a whim-

Susan Boardman’s needle art, Nancy Chase

sical image of Nancy in snorkel gear and a red bathing suit, swimming with

is descended from the English settlers who

a whale in Hawaii—a memorable event. Bordering the images are adjectives

ventured to the island in the seventeenth

her friends use to describe her: prankster, authentic Nantucketer, generous,

century. She attended Nantucket public

renowned ivory carver, perfectionist, caring, tinkerer, strong-minded.

schools, graduating with the class of 1949.

Nancy began whittling and carving when she was a young girl, creating her first pieces of scrimshaw from part of a whale jawbone given to her by her grandfather, Warren Benson Chase, a carpenter. In 1952, she carved an

Nancy Chase

ivory silhouette of Nantucket Island for the

SC802

lid of her mother’s José Reyes lightship basket, and, unwittingly, stumbled upon her avocation. Reyes liked her work so much he commissioned her to carve one hundred three-inch sperm whales for his basket tops, paying her $7 per whale, which encouraged her to retire from Nantucket Bank, where she was employed for ten years, and to devote all of her time to carving ivory. She was, without a doubt, the master scrimshander on island. Her workshop on Cobble Court was a jumble of works in progress, featuring shelves lined with intricate ivory carvings, from miniature animals to complex, detailed still-life depictions of whaling, and even a tiny lightship basket woven from razor-thin pieces of ivory. Nancy was quick to say that she has never made a traditional lightship basket; her sister, Susan Ottison, is the master of that craft.

Boardman’s embroidered narrative is as playful as Nancy was, featuring the scrimshander at work and on her tractor, tending the beautiful lawn around her home and workshop on Cobble Court, where she painstaking-

Nancy Chase by Beverly Hall, 1990s

ly laid the cobbles by hand. A cottage she owned for many years on Hither

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Nancy Chase (1931–2016) COLLECTION OF NANCY CHASE

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Esta-Lee Stone (b. 1938) ESTA- LEE VISITED NANTUCKET for many summers when she was a young

girl, vacationing with a favorite aunt at the Holiday Inn, dining at the North Shore Restaurant, and swimming at Jetties Beach. Later, she and her husband, Harris, made Nantucket a summer vacation destination, bringing their children Jordan and Hannah, and staying at various island hostelries: the Moby Dick Inn, the Stone Barn Inn, and the Harbor House. Love of the island led them to purchase their first Nantucket house at 66 Orange Street in 1982, and their daughter was married in the backyard there. When grandchildren began to come along, the Stones started the search for a house in a quieter neighborhood, and in 2000 took on the challenge of restoring 9 New Mill Street, a historic house built in 1809. An appreciation of the architectural details of the interi-

Esta-Lee and Harris Stone (middle) on safari

or—wainscoting, fireplaces, staircases, mantels, and trim—sparked their interest in learning more about preservation techniques particular to their own project, and, consequently, to become advocates for historic preservation on Nantucket.

After she retired from a demanding career in the field of occupational therapy, Esta-Lee was able to focus more on becoming a member of the island community. She has served on the board of the local synagogue, she and Harris have volunteered their time at the Maria Mitchell Association as members of the work group planning the development of the Vestal Street campus, and both of them have served on the board of the Nantucket Preservation Trust. Although they are not on Nantucket year-round, they are, in Esta-Lee’s words, “madly in love with the island.”

In one of her more playful embroideries, Susan Boardman has placed the Stone’s house at 9 New Mill Street above a scene of Esta-Lee and family frolicking at the beach. Esta-Lee’s love of cooking and her professional life are represented in the upper right and left corners of the border by a food processor and a bowl of fruit, and a depiction of the human brain. The remainder of the border is filled with icons of the Stone’s many trips to Southeast Asia, while the Hebrew inscription at the top of the piece translates as,“Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one.”

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Esta-Lee Stone (b. 1938) COLLECTION OF ESTA-LEE AND HARRIS STONE

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Isabel Carter Stewart (b. 1939) AS YOU DRIVE DOWN PROSPECT STREET from the Old Mill toward the hospital, per-

haps you’ve noticed the house called Windsor Cottage, set back from the road behind a picket fence. Little changed since it was built in 1926, the house has a unique history proudly preserved by five generations of remarkable women. Isabel Carter Stewart recalls that her grandparents, John Carter and Mabel Pugh, originally from Windsor,

Isabella Carter Stewart

North Carolina, built the cottage in 1926 on land they purchased at the outer edges of the New Guinea neighborhood. As far as can be determined, they were the first African-American family to build a summer home on Nantucket. Mabel’s sketch of the cottage design in white ink on black photo paper has been preserved by the family, along with photographs, furnishings, and mementos collected over the years.

John and Mabel came to the island every summer, and the modest cottage became a social gathering place for others in the African-American community of the 1930s and ‘40s, and when the occasional “colored” visitor to the island needed lodging, the Carters made a room available. Their daughters, schoolteachers Isabel and Florence Carter, were second-generation owners of the cottage and for a few seasons ran a business there called Florabel Carter’s Box Lunches, catering to the summer people who waited in the front yard for their orders of sandwiches, coleslaw, and brownies.

Boardman’s embroidered narrative features the era of Florabel’s, the two sisters standing at the fence by the hand-painted business sign, the cottage behind them. Names of the Windsor Cottage females frame the image: Mabel; her daughters Florence and Isabel; and Florence’s daughter Isabel Carter Stewart, former director of the Chicago Foundation for Women and Girls, Inc. and a past trustee of the Nantucket Historical Association. The fourth generation of women to enjoy summers at the cottage are Carter Stewart’s wife, Michelle Alexander, who finds the family getaway peaceful and restorative, a respite from her busy life as a writer, professor, and mother of two daughters, Nicole and Corinne, the fifth generation of women who will carry the family tradition into another century; and Jay Stewart’s partner, attorney Yasmin Marie Torres, who hopes that the vision and genersosity of spirit of John Carter will carry on in their sons, Ulyses and Aeneas.

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Windsor Cottage Women COLLECTION OF ISABEL CARTER STEWART

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Caroline Ellis (b. 1942) CAROLINE ELLIS IS A QUIET LEADER in Nantucket’s preservation community.

Long a summer resident of ’Sconset, she and her husband, Douglass, first came to the village when they were in college and Douglass worked at the ’Sconset Casino. Later they bought a tiny house in Codfish Park, then moved up the hill to Bluff Cottage on Front Street, where they enjoyed village life in the summer with their daughter, Sarah. Caroline served on the board of the ’Sconset Trust and was later executive director of that organization. Her knowledge and experience with preservation issues led her to become a founder of the Nantucket Preservation Trust in 1997, an organization she served as a longstanding board member, and for whom she is now a director emerita.

Another passion of Caroline’s is gardening. When she and her husband built a house in Quaise in 1994, Caroline carefully considered her new environs and worked with landscape designer Lucinda Young to preserve and protect the natuCaroline Ellis (b. 1942) and Otis

ral habitat while creating a charming outdoor room and kitchen garden adjacent to the house. She also enlisted the aid of photographer Cheryl Comeau Beaton in

documenting the amazing diversity of wildflowers (more than a hundred different species) that grow on her property. A member of the Nantucket Garden Club, Caroline also supports the Garden Conservancy, which featured her outdoor spaces in their 2003 Open House days on the island. An appreciation of Caroline’s interest in preserving historic landscapes led to the Nantucket Preservation Trust’s Caroline Ellis Landscape Award, whose first recipient was, most fittingly, the ’Sconset Trust, in recognition of its work relocating Sankaty Head Lighthouse in 2009.

The narrative embroidery of Blueberry Hill, the Ellis’s property in Quaise, features their beloved red oak and tupelo trees, Rhode Island Red chickens, vegetable garden, daughter Sarah reading in a hammock, pet cats, roses, poison ivy, goldfinches and whip-poor-wills.

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Caroline Ellis (b. 1942) “Blueberry Hill” COLLECTION OF CAROLINE AND DOUGLASS ELLIS

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Susan Rootberg Shapiro (b. 1942) SUSAN SHAPIRO HAS BEEN A FORCE of nature all her life. She skipped a grade

in school, graduated from college in three years, and was one of twenty-three women among five hundred graduates of Harvard Law School in 1965, when she was twenty-three years old. Her romantic life moved at a similar pace—she met her husband, Dennis, in January of 1965, they were engaged in June, and married in August. Besides practicing law for forty-two years, she raised three children, learned to fly a plane, and became an avid sailor, golfer, and ice and ballroom dancer. She has embraced and excelled at a variety of sports and

Susan Rootberg Shapiro

other hobbies—including needlepoint, silver-smithing, and orchid culture— and served on the boards of the Linda Loring Foundation, the Nantucket Land Council, and the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, as well as those of the LA Opera and Boston Lyric Opera.

Boardman’s narrative embroidery pays tribute to Susan’s dance through the delights of life with a quote from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, spoken by Florizel to his love Perdita: “When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do nothing but that.” The focus, competitive spirit, and enjoyment of the challenge at hand have propelled Susan forward. Central to her commemorative piece are the catboat she and Dennis sail, the IOD (International One Design) yacht she helped crew for a number of years, and the sails of Nantucket’s annual race week, an event she has co-chaired. She is portrayed golfing, dancing with her husband indoors and on the ice, and relaxing on the beach. Her grandchildren Sasha and Benjamin swing and play in the sand. Completing the embroidery are icons of the challenges and pleasures of her life: an airplane, a silver cup, scales representing justice, the secret garden at her home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and the condo in Los Angeles where she and Dennis spend five months a year.

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Susan Rootberg Shapiro (b. 1942) COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND DENNIS SHAPIRO

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Patricia Egan Butler (b. 1944) COLLECTION OF PATRICIA BUTLER

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Patricia “Pat” Egan Butler (b. 1944) PAT BUTLER HAS BEEN A STRONG VOICE for historic preservation on the is-

land since 1986, when she arrived to take the position of Historic Districts Commission administrator. With a graduate degree in historic preservation, and an undergraduate degree in art history, Pat accepted her mission as protector of the island’s historic architecture with professional tools and an eye for beauty and harmony, both of which are articulated in her writing about the island’s built heritage. She was instrumental in the 1994 revision of the HDC’s bible, Building with Nantucket in Mind, and in 2003 she coauthored Sea-Captains ’ Houses and Rose-Covered Cottages: The Architectural Heritage of Nantucket Island, a New York Times Book of the Year.

She is the author of Behold: The Siasconset Union Chapel, the History of the

Pat Butler, circa 2000

Chapel and Its Needlework, published in 2008, and was a contributor to the

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Nantucket Historical Association’s ’Sconset, a History, also in 2008. One of her signature observations is included in the border of the embroidered narrative that Susan Boardman created to honor her: “Nantucket architecture tells us many stories about history, geography, technology, economy, religion, aesthetics, love, and family.”

After eleven years with the Nantucket HDC, Pat resigned, but her commitment to the cause led to her appointment as the first director of the Nantucket Preservation Trust, founded in 1997. With an emphasis on preservation advocacy and education, and a desire for dialog with all agencies and organizations supporting historic preservation on the island, the NPT was the perfect platform for Pat’s experience and talents. Now retired, she devotes her time to research, teaching, and to her grandchildren, who are depicted in the embroidered narrative walking through the garden of the Richard Gardner III house at 34 West Chester Street, where Pat once lived in an adjoining cottage.

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Molly Anderson (b. 1947) THE NEWEST ARRIVAL on the island among the twentieth-century women featured in

Boardman’s work, Molly Anderson moved to Nantucket in 2005 to serve as director of the Nantucket Atheneum, a position first held by Maria Mitchell in 1836. She was not new to the island, however, having visited here for fifteen years before her move, and she and Susan Boardman, longtime friends from their days in Washington, D. C., are “chosen sisters.”

Molly’s goal at the Atheneum is to provide programs and services to the entire community. The changing demographics of the island have been embraced through literacy programs, islandwide reading programs, and stimulating speakers who fill the roster of the summer lecture series. Molly is a quiet, behind-the-scenes powerhouse, with a profound respect for the importance of public libraries, especially during times of national economic recession.

Now a year-round resident and owner of a small historic house built in 1835 by a twenty-year-old house carpenter, Molly delights in the walk to town each day to her post at the Atheneum. Boardman’s embroidered narrative depicts both the Atheneum and the house on New Street, with Molly walking one of her West Highland Terriers,

Molly Anderson (b. 1947)

Phebe, while her other dog, Emma, demands attention from son Christian, lounging in a hammock in the back garden, while son Andrew is seen in a rowing shell on the harbor.

Favorite flowers—lavender, lily of the valley, phlox, morning glories, sweet peas, and campanula—bedeck the garden and are scattered across the landscape.

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Molly Anderson (b. 1947) COLLECTION OF MOLLY ANDERSON

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Mimi Havemeyer Beman (1948–2010) COLLECTION OF DWIGHT BEMAN

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Mary “Mimi” Havemeyer Beman (1948–2010) MIMI BEMAN WAS THE WELL- KNOWN PROPRIETOR of Mitchell’s Book Corner from 1978 to 2004. Located

on the southeast corner of Orange and Main Streets, Mitchell’s was founded by Mimi’s parents, Mitchell and Mary Havemeyer, in 1968. The 1847 building was restored by ReMain Nantucket in 2009, and continues to house Mitchell’s Book Corner.

A summer visitor to Nantucket when a child—her mother’s mother owned 28 Orange Street—Mimi’s roots on the island go back to the time of its settlement by English colonists in the mid-seventeenth century. Her most famous ancestral relation is Maria Mitchell, and although Maria never married, her younger brother Henry did, three times in fact, and had one daughter, Mary Hayward Mitchell, Mimi’s grandmother. Henry Mitchell, Mimi’s great-grandfather, was the leading hydrographer in the country in the late nineteenth century, focusing on tides and seas while his famous sister observed the stars.

Although she had planned a career in academia, focusing on Italian language and literature, Mimi found herself the owner of the bookstore when her mother died in 1978, just three years after the death of her father. Living in New York at the time with her husband, Dwight Beman, and their brand new daughter, Mimi had not planned to take over the business so soon, but she was up to the challenge, having helped her parents plan and run the business since its inception. For years Mimi and Dwight

Mimi Beman (1948–2010), 2003

divided their time between New York in the winter and Nantucket in the summer, where the bookstore

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became the family’s livelihood and Mimi’s passion. The Beman family relocated as year-round residents and Dwight became the househusband (the family expanded with the birth of two more daughters) and a master genealogist while Mimi lived and breathed books. A voracious reader of a broad range of genres and subjects, Mimi knew her readers’ tastes, and could always recommend the perfect title.

The embroidered narrative shows the position of the stars on the night Maria Mitchell discovered her comet (October 1, 1847); a selection of Mimi’s favorite books; a map of Nantucket (referring to a collection of island maps inherited from the Mitchell side of the family); and a quotation from Dante’s Paradiso, Canto 33, v. 145: “Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

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Elizabeth “Liz” Wade Winship (b. 1951) and Deborah “Debbie” Pixley Fraker (b. 1954) LIZ WINSHIP AND DEBBIE FRAKER are two of Nantucket’s longtime business-

Liz Winship and Debbie Pixley Fraker, 2010

women, perpetuating the island tradition of women shopkeepers who populated “Petticoat Row” in the nineteenth century. Both women worked summers on Nantucket during their college years, and met on the island in 1978, soon becoming close friends. Both moved to the island year-round in the seventies, and married and raised families here.

Liz worked for Nantucket Looms for eighteen years before buying the business in 1993 from Andy Oates and Bill Euler, who had started it in 1968. Debbie devoted twenty-seven years to The Lion’s Paw before buying the business from Dan and Nancy Bills in 2007. She has now moved her store from the corner of Main and Washington Streets farther up the hill to the corner of Main and Union Streets, on the other side of the street from her friend Liz. The businesses complement each other: Nantucket Looms produces fine handwoven articles, and also represents local artisans, mingling artisan pieces with an eclectic array of antiques and home accents; Debbie’s store specializes in home furnishings from tabletop to bed linens and furniture.

Boardman’s embroidered narrative dedicated to Liz and Debbie features the two friends at Debbie’s historic home, Windy Hill, located near the island’s eighteenth-century windmill, shown in the background. The two front rooms of the 1839 house were where people once dropped off their corn and wheat for milling and picked up sacks of cornmeal and flour. Liz and Debbie are depicted in the backyard, where sheets flap on the clothesline while Debbie’s Jack Russell terriers cavort around them, and clouds with human faces blow breezes on the scene.

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Windy Hill COLLECTION OF DEBORAH PIXLEY FRAKER

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Janet Leef Sherlund (b. 1954) JANET LEEF GREW UP IN MOUNTAIN LAKES, New Jersey. She met her future hus-

band, Rick Sherlund, when both were attending Cornell University. Living for a time on the West Coast, they were not aware of the charms of Nantucket until 2000, when, after spending too many summers in hot climes, they decided to see if what they had heard about the island was true—that it benefitted from cool breezes and was full of roses. They landed in ’Sconset, and found both claims valid. The Sherlunds immediately bought a fixer-upper on Ocean Avenue and set about creating a flower-filled family compound overlooking the ocean.

Janet became involved in the Nantucket Historical Association right away, contributing to the renovation of the Whaling Museum, serving on the Antiques

Janet Leef Sherlund

Show committee for several years and chairing it in 2005, and joining the Board of Trustees in 2006. Her enthusiasm for the organization and commitment to fund-raising around the country served her well as president of the board from 2009 to 2016. Janet loves the idea of living with history and learning about the people who lived on the island in earlier centuries. One of her sons became a maritime-history buff after spending time at the Whaling Museum, and that spurred her into collecting scrimshaw, lightship baskets, and other maritime artifacts.

Luminous evenings with the moon hanging over the breakers at ’Sconset are what give Janet peace. In her contemplative moments she writes (and her words form the narrative base of Boardman’s embroidery): “The light, the sky, and the sea at ’Sconset free my soul like nothing else can. ’Sconset allows me to exhale, to breathe slow and deep, and to let my heart sing.” The whimsical details of the stitched scene include a mermaid swimming in the ocean with all manner of sea life, and a whale spout appears on the horizon under a full moon in a star-studded sky.

The scene is framed with a variety of flowers found in the Sherlund’s ’Sconset garden.

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Janet Leef Sherlund (b. 1954) COLLECTION OF JANET AND RICK SHERLUND

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THE ARTIST

Susan Ruckstuhl Boardman (b. 1946) SUSAN RUCKSTUHL PICKED UP A NEEDLE when she was only five years old, and, with a little help from

her mother, stitched her first piece of embroidery. Hundreds of Nantucket girls did the same thing in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, learning simple stitches as first steps in a life with the needle that led to samplers, hand-stitched clothing, and decorative pieces for those who were adept, and, for the less talented, the domestic essentials of carefully mended shirts and sheets and

Susan Boardman by Jack Weinhold, 2018

tightly sewn buttons.

Acuity with the needle was a necessity for these girls, whereas for Susan it was an outlet for artistic expression. She became serious about needlework after graduating from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1968. With her husband, Bill Boardman, in law school, Susan worked to support the couple during the day, and at night, while he was studying, she occupied herself with Mary Ann Beinecke’s Nantucket School of Needlery Extension Course Home Study, a curriculum offered by the only licensed needlework school in the country at the time. After beginning a graduate program in education at Simmons College in Boston in 1970, Susan did not have time to finish the needlery course, but she had been captivated by the study of the early history of the craft and the development of styles throughout the centuries; it awakened her own interest in design and technique.

Susan’s career in education began with teaching home economics classes at Winchester, Massachusetts, public schools while she was attending Simmons College classes in the evenings. After graduating from Simmons, she taught courses in the college’s education department, her favorite being a class she designed for teaching the history and execution of textile craft. During this time she learned about CHAPTER 8 | THE ARTIST

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Sketch for Charlotte Coffin Wyer (1824–1905)

Sukey, the artist’s muse

the American Institute of Textile Arts, an adjunct of Pine Manor College, in

the next fifteen years. In 1989, they purchased the historic Benjamin Barney

Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, from Priscilla Gray, the mother of one of her

Jr. house at 8 Ash Street, and spent two years carefully restoring it, so when

students at Winchester Junior High, and both women took classes there from

their youngest son began his college career in 1994, Susan was able to follow

1976 to 1978. Susan earned an Advanced Professional Study Certificate from

her muse to the island and settle here year-round. The Boardmans have since

the institute, and served on the faculty. In the meantime, her sons, Michael

restored a house on Upper Main Street where they now reside.

and Stephen, were born in 1974 and 1976, and in 1978 Bill’s career as an

The history, architecture, and natural beauty of the island have been in-

attorney took them to Washington, D. C., severing for a time Susan’s connec-

spirational for Susan’s art, which was by no means dormant during her years

tions to the New England textile arts and education community. She devoted

in Washington. She took two years off from her teaching career to be at home

her considerable energies to raising a family and teaching, first at the Lab

with her boys, and during that time began making appliquéd and patchwork

School of Washington, and later at the National Child Research Center.

quilts that displayed her prowess with a needle while telling stories: two of

Susan first visited Nantucket in the summer of 1974, to participate in a

the quilts are about historical women. The first was inspired by reading ex-

“Nantucket Needlework Seminar” offered by Erica Wilson, an expert En-

tensively about Queen Elizabeth I, and the second pays homage to First Lady

glish embroiderer, who was a graduate of the Royal School of Needlework

Abigail Adams. A third quilt, commemorating the Boardmans’ twenty-fifth

and owner of a needlework shop on Madison Avenue in New York; Wilson’s

wedding anniversary in 1993, was one of the winners of a 1995 competition

Nantucket classes were organized and co-taught by Edith Bouriez, an accom-

that featured modern art quilts with architectural themes, sponsored by the

plished needlewoman who, like Wilson, had a summer home on the island.

Decatur House Museum in Washington, D.C. The Benjamin Barney Jr. house

Bill accompanied Susan to Nantucket, and he and other husbands of students

is represented in one of the squares of the quilt, along with some favorite

were entertained by Wilson’s husband, the furniture designer Vladimir Kagan.

items, including sailboats, Brant Point Light, and other island icons. In these

The Boardmans fell in love with the island that summer and began making

quilts, elements of Susan’s future work can be seen—from an interest in

short vacation excursions to the island with their boys over the course of

telling women’s stories visually through textile art, to a love of Nantucket’s

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historic houses and landscapes. Her Nantucket quilt toured the United States and France with the traveling exhibition.

Settling into her island home year-round and immersing herself in the community, Susan began volunteer work at the Nantucket Historical Association and served on the board of the newly organized Nantucket Preservation Trust, and on the Nantucket Atheneum’s board. While taking an art class at the Massachusetts College of Art, she contemplated other needle-art projects, all the while continuing an engrossing volunteer project at the NHA, reading and indexing the whaling journal kept by Susan Veeder, who accompanied her husband, Captain Charles Veeder, on a voyage in the Nauticon from 1848 to 1853. The journal’s charming, intricate watercolor scenes of ports and islands visited during her years at sea were the inspiration for Susan’s first embroidered narrative, “As Seen from Ship Nauticon,” completed in 1998.

Artist-made thread purl, needlelace, hand-dyed, hand-cut leaves

In some ways resembling a small and intricate quilt, the piece features three scenes from Veeder’s journal—islands in the Paumoto Group; Cocos

early morning meditative walk of three or four miles, when she threads

Island, and the harbor at Otahiti [Tahiti]—with journal entries written above

her way through the streets of town, envisioning her pieces or unraveling

and below each scene and around the border that frames the journal’s

technical knots in a complicated design. By her own admission compulsively

illustrations. While the harbor scenes are tranquil, Boardman’s border is

industrious, she works forty to fifty hours a week in her home studio, where

dynamic, filled with whales and whaleboats full of men enacting the chase,

she sometimes has more than one piece in progress.

capture, and drama of the hunt, all executed in embroidery and appliqué on

Recognition of her artistry was immediate, thanks especially to the

hand-dyed fabric in the muted colors of the original journal, and featuring

efforts of Liz Winship, proprietor of Nantucket Looms, where Susan is still

carved ivory fish and star-shaped beads. It is a work of such force that it

represented. Jack Weinhold has photographed Susan’s embroidered nar-

draws the viewer in to examine each remarkable element, from the frothy

ratives from the beginning, and has provided critical support and encour-

French-knotted sea to flags on the masts of the whaleships and the carefully

agement to the artist. Soon she began to acquire commissions, to show her

stitched fronds of palm trees.

work, and to be “collected.” Her success is accompanied by generosity; she

Susan’s subsequent embroidered narratives have been scaled down in

often donates a needle-art piece to one of her favorite island nonprofits,

size, but are no less intricate and impressive; each one takes between two

where it is auctioned at a summer fund-raiser. Her embroidered narratives

hundred and four hundred hours to complete, in a process described in the

have been featured in various Nantucket magazine and newspaper articles,

following pages. She continues to be inspired by the journals and letters of

as well as national publications Piecework (July/August 2004) and Fiber Arts

Nantucket women; by the historic architecture of the island and its natural

Design Book Seven (Spring 2004), and in the British magazine Embroidery

bounty, palette, and light; and by the brilliant imagry of Moby-Dick. Her de-

(March/April 2014). Her work has been exhibited at the NHA’s Whitney Gal-

signs reflect her fascination with medieval illuminated manuscripts, seven-

lery, the South Wharf Gallery on Nantucket, the Cahoon Museum of Art in

teenth-century English stumpwork, and the bird’s eye views of late-seven-

Cotuit, Massachusetts, and the New Britain Museum of American Art in New

teenth-century Dutch engraver Johannes Kip. Essential to Susan is a daily,

Britain, Connecticut.

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Materials and Techiques of the Art Clockwise from lower left: needlelace house parts (left) and individual roof shingles (right); drawing of design inspired by photographs; needlelace of house parts in progress (Oldest House); dye painting samples; artist’s DMC floss palette

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK WEINHOLD

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Clockwise from left: leather ship hull being appliquĂŠd to embroidered ship; artist-made ivory buttons; color-mixed DMC floss; individual embroidered flags for appliquĂŠ; embroidery frame; needle roof shingles in progress

CHAPTER 8 | THE ARTIST

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Clockwise from lower left: needlelace house parts and mica windows; thread purl; obsidian star beads; glass beads; hand-dyed, hand-cut leaves 152

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Elements of Construction

Page 26 Susan Austin Veeder (1816–97), 1998 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads, leather, obsidian, micro pigment ink, ivory COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

Cover and Title Page, 2010 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads, gold leaf,

Page 33 Susan Austin Veeder (1816–97), 2004

leather, acrylic pigment, obsidian, ivory

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, gold leaf,

COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

leather, acrylic pigment, ivory COLLECTION OF CHERYL AND JOSEPH ROMANO

Page vi Eliza Spencer Brock (1810–99), 2002 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads, leather,

Page 38 Elizabeth “Betsey” Morse Morey (1810−93), 2007

acrylic pigment, copper wire

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, cotton organdy,

COLLECTION OF NANCY AND DOUGLAS ABBEY

glass beads, gold leaf, leather, acrylic pigment, obsidian, ivory COLLECTION OF ELLEN AND DAVID ROSS

Page x Wonoma (fl. mid-1600s), 2008 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Page 42 Elizabeth “Betsey” Morse Morey (1810−93), 2006

gold leaf, aluminum leaf, ivory

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, cotton organdy,

COLLECTION OF CHRISTINE AND HENRY HARDING

glass beads, gold leaf, leather, acrylic pigment, obsidian, ivory COLLECTION OF CHERYL AND JOSEPH ROMANO

Page 7 The Oldest House 1686, 2009 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, cotton organdy,

Page 45 Eliza Spenser Brock (1810–99), 2004

glass beads, gold leaf, aluminum leaf, mica

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, cotton organdy,

COLLECTION OF SUSAN ZISES GREEN

glass beads, gold leaf, aluminum leaf, leather, acrylic pigment, mica COLLECTION OF HONEY KURTZ

Page 10 Kezia Folger Coffin (1723–98) and her daughter, Kezia Coffin Fanning (1759–1820), 2009

Page 51 Eliza Spenser Brock (1810–99), 2005

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads, gold

gold leaf, obsidian, antler

leaf, obsidian, mica, leather, acrylic pigment, ivory

COLLECTION OF CAROLINE AND DOUGLASS ELLIS

COLLECTION OF SUSAN ZISES GREEN

Page 23 Phebe Folger Coleman (1771–1857), 2010

Page 54 Charlotte Coffin Wyer (1824–1905), 2009

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

gold leaf, photographic reproduction, ivory

leather, acrylic pigment

COLLECTION OF BETSY TYLER

COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

ELEMENTS OF CONSTRUCTION

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Page 62 Mary Ann Morrow Winslow (1820–1900)

Page 95 Maria Mitchell (1818–89), 2005

and Susan Sprague Winslow (1827–68), 2009

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTION (PRIVATE COLLECTION)

gold leaf, aluminum leaf, ivory COLLECTION OF MARIE AND JOHN SUSSEK

Page 65 Azubah Cash(1820–94), 2017 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and hand-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Page 101 Susan Emma Brock (1852–1937), 2006

gold leaf, leather, obsidian

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

gold leaf, mica, leather, obsidian COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

Page 70 Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814–1904), 2005 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Page 105 Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938), 2004

gold leaf, obsidian, mica, ivory

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads, gold leaf

COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

COLLECTION OF NANCY AND AL FORSTER

Page 74 Eunice Ross (1824–95), 2002

Page 106 Mary Eliza Starbuck (1856–1938), 2002

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

mica, obsidian, micro pigment ink, acrylic pigment, ivory

acrylic pigment, leather

COLLECTION OF MICHAEL BOARDMAN

COLLECTION OF BARBARA AND PHILIP CARUSO

Page 78 Eunice Starbuck Hadwen (1799–1864), 2009

Page 112 Gertrude Monaghan (1887–1962) and

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Hanna Monaghan (1889–1972), 2007

gold leaf, mica, leather, metal sequins, acrylic pigment

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

THE ARTIST DONATED THIS NARRATIVE TO SUPPORT THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

gold leaf, aluminum leaf, mica, obsidian COLLECTION OF BARBARA AND EDMUND HAJIM

Page 86 Martha Burgess Fish (1844–1916), 2010 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Page 117 Edith Folger Andrews (1915–2015), 2002

leather, mica, anther

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND WILLIAM BOARDMAN

gold leaf, obsidian COLLECTION OF EDITH ANDREWS

Page 90 Maria Mitchell (1818–89), 2000 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Page 119 Jane Stroup (1920–2011) and Joan Manley (b.1933), 2006

gold leaf, mica, leather, obsidian

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

COLLECTION OF CLARISSA AND BILL PORTER

obsidian, mica COLLECTION OF JANE STROUP AND JOAN MANLEY

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Page 120 Grace Swig Grossman (1924–2004), 2002

Page 135 Susan Rootberg Shapiro (b. 1942), 2011

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads, mica,

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and hand-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

leather, acrylic pigment, ivory

obsidian, leather, aluminum leaf

COLLECTION OF BETSY DE LEIRIS

COLLECTION OF SUSAN AND DENNIS SHAPIRO

Page 123 Edith Scott Lynch Bouriez (b. 1926), 2007

Page 136 Patricia “Pat” Egan Butler (b. 1944), 2006

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, cotton organdy,

gold leaf, aluminum leaf, mica, obsidian

glass beads, gold leaf, mica

COLLECTION OF HELEN AND HAMPTON LYNCH

COLLECTION OF PATRICIA BUTLER

Page 125 Elizabeth “Libby” Oldham (b. 1927), 2002

Page 139 Molly Anderson (b. 1947), 2008

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

gold leaf, obsidian, mica, leather, micro pigment ink

gold leaf, gold thread, leather, mica, obsidian

COLLECTION OF ELIZABETH OLDHAM

COLLECTION OF MOLLY ANDERSON

Page 127 Nancy Chase ( 1931–2016), 2001

Page 140 Mary “Mimi” Havemeyer Beman (1948–2010), 2005

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

leather, mica, obsidian, copper wire

gold leaf, leather, acrylic pigment, gold thread

COLLECTION OF NANCY CHASE

COLLECTION OF DWIGHT BEMAN

Page 129 Esta-Lee Stone (b. 1938), 2008

Page 143 Elizabeth “Liz” Wade Winship (b. 1951) and

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Deborah “Debbie” Pixley Fraker (b.1954), 2004

gold leaf, obsidian, mica

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

COLLECTION OF ESTA-LEE AND HARRIS STONE

gold leaf, mica COLLECTION OF DEBORAH FRAKER

Page 131 Windsor Cottage Women, 2018 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and hand-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

Page 145 Janet Leef Sherlund, (b. 1954), 2014

gold leaf, mica, obsidian, ivory

Cotton thread, hand-dyed and hand-painted cotton fabric, glass beads,

COLLECTION OF ISABEL CARTER STEWART

gold leaf COLLECTION OF JANET AND RICK SHERLUND

Page 133 Caroline Ellis (b. 1942), 2003 Cotton thread, hand-dyed and dye-painted cotton fabric, cotton organdy, glass beads, metal bead, mica COLLECTION OF CAROLINE AND DOUGLASS ELLIS

ELEMENTS OF CONSTRUCTION

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End Notes

Wonoma For an in-depth discussion of the Indians who lived on Nantucket, see Nathaniel Philbrick’s Abram’s Eyes: The Native American Legacy of Nantucket Island (Nantucket: Mill Hill Press, 1998); he examines the tale of Wonoma on pp. 101–06.

The Legend of Wauwinet, by Charlotte P. Baxter, was published as a pamphlet

HN

Historic Nantucket

in 1888; copies are in the NHARL collection. A description of her wedding to

I&M

Inquirer and Mirror

Henry P. Starbuck is in the I&M February 3, 1883. Starbucks All, 1635–1985:

NHA

Nantucket Historical Association

A Biographical-Genealogical Dictionary (Roswell and Decatur, Georgia: W.

NHARL

Nantucket Historical Association Research Library

H. Wolfe Associates, 1984),by James Carlton Starbuck, lists some details of

NP

Nantucket Probate

Henry Starbuck’s education, sons born to the couple, and their deaths in

NRD

Nantucket Registry of Deeds

Santa Barbara, California, in 1918 (Henry) and 1927 (Charlotte).

Genealogies

Mary Gardner Coffin Nathaniel Philbrick discusses the Half-Share Revolt in his chapter “Gardner

Genealogical data for all of the women in this book have been gleaned

Versus Coffin: The Revolt” in Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People,

from the Eliza Starbuck Barney Genealogical Record, in a computer database

1602–1890 (Nantucket: Mill Hill Press, 1994). See Henry Barnard Worth,

available at the NHARL and on its Web site, www.nha.org; Vital Records

Nantucket Lands and Land Owners (Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books Inc.,

of Nantucket, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850 (Boston: NEHGS, 1925); and

1992: facsimile reprint, previously published: NHA Bulletin, vol. 2, nos. 1–7,

Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841–1910, from Original Records held by

1901–13) for information about early land grants and house-lot locations.

the Massachusetts Archives. Online database: NewEnglandAncestors.org,

For details about the Gardner family, see Thomas Gardner, Planter (Cape

New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004; and U. S. Federal Census

Ann, 1623–1626; Salem, 1626–1674) and Some of His Descendants, giving

Records available through ancestry.com.

Essex County, Massachusetts, and Northern New England Lines to the Eighth

Whaling Statistics

Generation and Nantucket Lines Through the Fourth Generation, compiled and arranged by Frank A. Gardner (Salem, Massachusetts: Essex Institute, 1907).

Records of whaling voyages are in Judith Navas Lund et al., American Offshore

For Coffin family information, see The Coffin Family Genealogy, by Louis

Whaling Voyages 1667–1927 (New Bedford: Old Dartmouth Historical Society,

Coffin (NHA, 1972) and “Jethro Coffin in Mendon, Massachusetts, 1708–26,”

2010), and Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery

by Elizabeth A. Little and Margaret Morrison, HN, vol. 34, no.2, October

(Secaucus, New Jersey: Castle Books, 1989; originally published 1878).

1986, pp. 20–26.

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Helen Winslow Chase’s Jethro Coffin House Chronology, 1686–1986 (NHA:

Phebe Folger Coleman

1986) presents documented facts about the Oldest House and its inhabitants,

The deed for the Colemans’ house on Milk Street is in NRD Book 16, p.511;

and includes versions of the “Indian Closet Legend.”

for land in Miacomet, NRD Book 18, p. 259; and for Middle Wharf, NRD Book

See also “An Old Bridal Present,” by Winifred Snodgrass in The Oldest House

19, p. 216.

on Nantucket Island, edited by Tristram Coffin (Poughkeepsie, New York: A. V.

Maria Mitchell lauds Phebe in “Committee on Science Report,” 13th Annual

Haight Co., 1911).

Report of the Association for the Advancement of Women, Women’s Congress,

Mary Gardner Coffin’s portrait was the subject of investigation by Margaret

Des Moines, Iowa, October 1885 (Buffalo, 1886), p. 25.

Greene in “Who Painted the Portrait of Mary Gardner Coffin?” HN, vol. 20,

Phebe’s letters to Samuel are in NHARL MS 107/folder 17. Her “Lines for a

no. 4, April 1973, pp. 7–12.

Young Lady’s Sampler” are in NHARL MS 282/folder 5. Her farewell poem

Kezia Folger Coffin and Kezia Coffin Fanning

was written in 1809 (see NHARL MS 43/folder 2) and published in the Cleveland Daily Advertiser April 7, 1837. The sale of the Coleman House

The following sources portray Kezia in fact and fiction: J. Hector St. Jean de

on Milk Street and the New Dollar Lane house to Gilbert Coffin in 1809 is

Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer Describing Certain Provincial

recorded in NRD Book 21, p. 56; the sale of wharf property to Alexander Ray

Situations, Manners and Customs Not Generally Known, and Conveying Some

2nd in 1818 is in NRD Book 25, p. 36.

Idea of the . . . Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies in North America

Phebe’s letter to her parents in 1810 is in NHARL MS 188/folder 49; her

. . . (London: Thomas Davies, 1782); Joseph C. Hart’s Miriam Coffin, or the

letters to Walter Jr. in 1820 and 1829 are in NHARL MS 107/folder 17.

Whale Fishermen: A Tale (New York: G. and C. H. Carvill, 1834); and Diana

In “The Ghent Manufactories, Ghent, Columbia County, New York,” Capt.

Gaines’s Nantucket Woman (New York: Dutton, 1976). Quoted passages from

Franklin Ellis states that “The present Garner grist-mills, near the village

Crèvecoeur are from an edition published by Penguin Books in 1981, and

of Ghent, occupy the site of saw and grist-mills erected soon after the

found on pp. 157, 159, and 160. Thomas Fanning Wood describes the diaries

settlement of the town, by Samuel Coleman.” See Ellis’s General History of

in his possession to historian Alexander Starbuck in a letter dated April

Columbia County, New York (Philadelphia: Everts and Ensign, 1878).

7, 1877, in NHARL MS 2/folder 5. Wood’s handwritten extracts from the

Phebe’s Power of Attorney to her brother, Gideon, is in NRD Book 29, p. 282.

diaries and his niece’s typescript copies are in NHARL MS 2/folders 2–4.

William C. Folger’s letter to his uncle, 1836, is in NHARL MS 335/folder 298;

The extracts were published by the NHA in HN from 1953 to 1959. For a

his autograph book is in NHARL MS 282/folder 9.

record of Kezia’s transgressions, see Women’s Monthly Meeting 9th mo 18th

Phebe’s letters written 1850–57 are in NHARL MS 107/folder 17.

day 1773, in NHARL MS 52/Book 10. Jane Mecom’s letter to her brother, Benjamin Franklin, August 29, 1789, can be read in its entirety at www.

Susan Austin Veeder

franklinpapers. org.

Susan’s journal of the voyage of the Nauticon September 24, 1848, to March

Eliza Mitchell’s reminiscence about the Quaise tunnel is in NHARL MS 23.

24, 1853, is in NHARL MS 220/Log 347. Mary Hayden Russell’s letters are in

Kezia Folger Coffin’s probate inventory is in NP Book 4, p. 242. Phineas

NHARL MS 83/folder 1.

Fanning died before Kezia’s estate was settled, and Kezia Fanning was

See Edouard Stackpole’s “Nantucket and Pitcairn Islands” in HN, vol. 28, no.

appointed administrator, NP Book 4, p. 250. Kezia Fanning’s will is in NP

4, April 1981, pp. 9–20.

Book 6, p. 252; her probate inventory is on pp. 283–84.

The deed for the Orange Street house is in NRD Book 37, p. 168.

Edward J. Kirwin’s log of the William Gifford is in the collection of the New NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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Records of the dispatches of the American Consulate in Tahiti are in the

Mary Morrow Winslow and Susan Sprague Winslow

National Archives.

Thomas Morrow purchased 47 Centre Street from Edwin Barnard on January

Bedford Whaling Museum, KW452.

Elizabeth (Betsey) Morse Morey

24, 1848; see NRD Book 47, pp. 383–84.

Letters from Susan Sprague Winslow are in NHARL MS 160/folder 11.

For deeds to Squam farm and adjacent land, see NRD Book 34, p. 309; Book

Joseph C. Winslow’s letter to Charles and Henry Coffin, September 8, 1862, is

37, pp. 351–52; Book 40, pp. 15, 175, 176. The deed to the house at One

in NHARL MS 15/folder 43.

Somerset Road is in NRD Book 48, p. 552.

I&M May 4, 1889, reprints Capt. Oppisso’s letter dated September 10, 1862.

Betsey’s journal of her voyage in the Phoenix is in NHARL MS 220/Log 207.

The deed for the sale of 19 India to Joseph Winslow in 1894 is in NRD Book

Israel Morey bought a second farm in Squam in 1851; see NRD Book 49, p. 97.

58, pp. 23–24.

The account of Israel’s death is in the Weekly Mirror, November 3, 1860.

Perry Winslow’s letters to Mary are in NHARL MS 166/folder 14.

Eliza Spencer Brock Eliza’s journal of the voyage in the Lexington is in NHARL MS 220/Log 136.

The 1851 deed to the house on Step Lane is in NRD Book 49. Pp. 140–43.

Clara Winslow’s letter to her cousin is in NHARL MS 160/folder 6.

An obituary notice for Perry Winslow is in the I&M October 25, 1890; Mary Morrow Winslow’s is in the I&M January 13, 1892.

For more information on Eliza Brock, see Sherri Federbush’s “The Journal of

Azubah Cash

Eliza Brock: At Sea on the Lexington,” HN, vol. 30, no. 1, July 1982.

For newspaper references to Azubah and William Cash, see the keyword-

An obituary notice for Peter C. Brock is in the I&M, July 13, 1878; of Eliza

searchable Historic Digital Newspaper Archive created and hosted by the

Brock, February 4, 1899; of Joseph C. Brock, September 12, 1925.

Nantucket Atheneum, at www.nantucketatheneum.org, a research tool

Charlotte Coffin Wyer

unavailable in 2010, when the first edition of this book was published.

Azubah’s agricultural-fair prizes are noted in the I&M of October 10, 1887,

Charlotte’s journal of her voyages in the Harriett Irving and the Young Hero is

and October 14, 1894. An article about the reception held for William Murray

in NHARL MS 220/Log 268.

Cash is in the I&M on March 13, 1875.

Alexander Russell, owner of 23 Pearl, mortgaged his house to Alexander D.

See Edward Rowe Snow’s, “Azubah, the Whaler’s Wife” in Women of the Sea

Bunker in 1833 (NRD Book 33, pp. 417–18); Bunker sold that mortgage to

(New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1962), 71–85.

Samuel Wyer 1836 (NRD Book 35, p. 337), who foreclosed on the property in

Azubah’s journal is in NHARL MS220, Log 213. Her “baby book” is in MS 228,

1840 (NRD Book 40, p. 422).

folder 1.

Samuel Wyer is described in James I. Wyer Jr.’s The Nantucket Wyers (Albany,

See “Azubah Cash’s Whaling Days” by Amy Jenness, HN, Fall 2004, for more

New York, 1911), p. 17, and his ownership of the Sea Ranger is mentioned.

excerpts from Azubah’s journal.

See I&M September 15, 1904, for an obituary notice for Lieut. John Morissey,

The deed from Mary Barnard to William Cash for 48 Orange Street is in

husband of Charlotte Elizabeth Wyer.

NRD Book 55, page 92; from Robert B. Coffin to William Cash for land and a dwelling in ’Sconset is in NRD Book 59, page 29. The Power of Attorney from William Cash to Azubah Cash is in NRD Book 57, page 102. Cash’s purchase

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of a cottage in Oak Bluffs is mentioned in the I&M of July 15, 1876.

file, for details of Dorcas Hadwen Lee’s family.

Notice of the purchase of the bark Islander is in the I&M of July 13, 1861; the

An obituary notice for William Hadwen is in the I&M, March 26, 1962;

arrival of the Islander “with the jawbone of a ninety barrel sperm whale” is in

obituary notice for Eunice Hadwen is in the I&M, January 6, 1864.

the I&M of July 22, 1865.

Obituary notices for William Cash are in the Nantucket Journal of February

Martha Burgess Fish

9, 1882, and the I&M of February 11, 1882. An obituary notice from the

Martha Fish’s diaries are in NHARL MS 380. Her will, dated February 2, 1916,

Barnstable Patriot for Alexander G. Cash is reprinted in the I&M of March 18,

is in NP 1406.

1922, and one from the Hyannis Patriot for Miss Mary H. Cash is reprinted in

In 1894, Roland B. Hussey purchased the “Cherry Grove Lots” from Elliot

the I&M of November 21, 1931.

Cathcart: see NRD Book 78, pp. 304–05; he sold the property to Mattie Fish

Azubah Cash’s probate inventory is in Nantucket Probate 627.

in 1897: see NRD Book 80, pp. 335.

Mary Ellen Pleasant

Abner Fish purchased the “George Myrick Farm” from Elisha and Elizabeth Parker in 1879. In the deed, NRD Book 65, p. 295, the location is described

See Lynn Hudson’s comprehensive biography, The Making of Mammy

as “in the South Pasture” bordered by Lover’s Lane and the South ’Sconset

Pleasant: A Black Entrepreneur in San Francisco (Urbana: University of Illinois

Road. According to William E. Gardner’s map, “Nantucket Farms , Showing

Press, 2003) for details of the life of Mary Ellen Pleasant. See also Susheel

the Location and Ownership as of the Year 1850,” Proceedings of the NHA,

Bibbs, “Mary Ellen Pleasant, Mother of Civil Rights in California,” HN, vol. 44,

1947, p. 43, Charles Burgess’s farm was in Shawkemo, near William B.

no. 1, Spring 1995.

Starbuck’s Quaise Farm.

Eunice Ross For more information on the Guinea neighborhood and the Ross family, see

In 1891, Martha Fish bought the “homestead of the late Owen Manter,” on Orange Street, from Mary A. DeWolf : see NRD Book 75, p. 38.

Frances Ruley Karttunen’s The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s

Maria Mitchell

Oars (New Bedford: Spinner Publications, 2005), and for an in-depth study

Phebe Mitchell Kendall’s Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals (Boston:

of the integration of the Nantucket schools, see Barbara White’s A Line in

Lee & Shepard, 1886) is the primary source for this brief discussion of Maria.

the Sand: The Battle to Integrate Nantucket Public Schools, 1825–1847. (New

Margaret Moore Booker’s Among the Stars: The Life of Maria Mitchell—

Bedford: Spinner Publications, 2009).

Astronomer, Educator, Women’s Rights Activist (Nantucket: Mill Hill Press, 2007),

Eunice Starbuck Hadwen

a comprehensive and well-documented biography, was also consulted. See also Henry Mitchell’s “Biographical Notice of Maria Mitchell,” from the Proceedings of

For details about the Main Street houses built for William Hadwen and

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. xxv, 1890.

Joseph Starbuck, see author’s A Walk Down Main Street: The Houses and Their

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s comment about Maria is in Helen Wright’s Sweeper in the

Histories (Nantucket Preservation Trust, 2006).

Sky: The Life of Maria Mitchell, First Woman Astronomer in America (New York:

NHARL MS 421, letter from Susan Gardner to William C. Gardner, December

Macmillan, 1949), p. 115; Julian Hawthorne’s comment is in Booker, pp. 203–04.

23, 1847, describes the party at the Hadwens’ new home.

Maria’s comments about Mary Somerville are in Kendall, p. 121.

Eunice Hadwen’s letters are in NHARL MS 227/folder 1.

See James Hadwen, His Ancestors and Descendants [1906] in NHARL Hadwen NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

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Susan Emma Brock Brock’s memoir, Doubling Cape Horn, was published by the I&M in 1926, and reprinted by the Nantucket Historical Association in 1941.

Her letters to Benjamin Sharp are in NHARL MS 270/folder 4.5.

Brock’s annual Curator’s Reports are in the Proceedings of the Nantucket Historical Association, beginning in 1895, with her report as Chairman of the Loan Committee, and continuing through 1927.

An obituary for Brock appears in the I&M, August 14, 1937, and in the report of the 44th Annual Meeting of the NHA, July 27, 1938.

Mary Eliza Starbuck See Mary Eliza Starbuck’s My House and I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929) for all quotations.

Gertrude and Hanna Monaghan

About the Author

See Hanna Monaghan’s Greater Light on Nantucket (Philadelphia: Hill

Betsy Tyler

House, 1973) and the author’s Greater Light: A House History of Gertrude

Former Obed Macy Research Chair of the NHA and editor of Historic

and Hanna Monaghan’s Summer Home on Nantucket (NHA, 2007) for a more

Nantucket, Betsy Tyler is an NHA Research Fellow and author of the

comprehensive discussion of the Monaghan sisters and the creation of

following NHA publications: Greater Light, A House History;

Greater Light.

’Sconset: A History (with other contributors); The ’Sconset Actors Colony: Broadway Offshore, 1895–1925; and Nantucket Historical Association Properties Guide. She has written more than three dozen histories of houses and public buildings for the Nantucket Preservation Trust, as well as the neighborhood guides A Walk Down Main Street; Off Centre: The Wesco Acre Lots; and Main Street, ’Sconset (with Michael May).

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