Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602-1890

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  The letter from Prince appears in Henry J. Cadbury’s “Nantucket and Its Quakers in 1722,” HN (1946). Where not otherwise stated, all references to White’s correspondence, sermons, and memorandum books come from NHA Collection 129—almost all of which appears in HN (1898) entitled “Timothy White Papers, 1725–1755,” ed. Myron Samuel Dudley—and NHA Collection 299 (“White Family Papers,” from Dover, New Hampshire). It is from this last collection, relatively little of which has previously appeared in print, that most of my quotations come.

  White was one in a long line of distinguished Nantucket schoolteachers. In 1716, Eleazer Folger became the town’s first official schoolteacher but seems to have quit after a year due to a lack of interest (in Starbuck). According to Obed Macy’s “Anecdotes,” another early teacher was a shadowy figure by the name of Collings who kept a school on Pleasant Street in a “very old shattered building with diamond cut glass windows.” Although a man of “ability and good learning,” he left the island suddenly, handing over the school to Benjamin Coffin. It was later rumored he was a pirate who had come to Nantucket to avoid arrest. Another schoolmaster by the name of “little Draper” kept school in a meeting house that stood not far from Maxcey’s Pond. According to Macy, it was the “first building that was burnt down on Nantucket that I ever heard of.” White’s letter to Colman is cited by Byers. The letter from Governor Belcher appears in HN (1900).

  In his “Anecdotes,” Macy describes the corrosive effects of drink on the Indians: “When they were furnished with strong drink, they would leave town at night and proceed towards their home until the effect of the poison would cause them to drop by the way, exposed to the inclemency of the weather. It often happened in these cases that they were found dead, and not much care was taken to carry them to any particular burying ground but were interred where they were found, which sometimes happened several days afterwards.” Macy in his “Anecdotes” describes “the principal or last [Indian] meeting house” as situated within “a short distance” of the Indians’ final burying ground in Miacomet, and claims that it “was standing until about the year 1782.” This structure was built in or before 1732 when Judge Benjamin Lynde recorded that “Mr. White preached very well at the new built Meeting House” (cited in Chase’s “First Congregational Church”).

  Byers refers to the Indian churches as “a buffer” and also cites the Indian petitions (which are reprinted in Starbuck). While Byers and Vickers paint a picture of Indian exploitation on Nantucket, Little is quick to point out that island Indians enjoyed a level of participation in the English whaling economy that was without precedent in New England. Her analysis of eighteenth-century account books causes her to dispute claims that most Indian whalers on Nantucket were indebted servants, while she reminds us that the lay system enabled an Indian to make more than a decent wage in the whale fishery. In “Along-Shore Whaling” she states, “English-Indian relations [on Nantucket], while certainly not perfect, have to be considered among the best in America.” Unfortunately, however, even though Indian-English relations on Nantucket were about as good as it got, it was still essentially a slave-master relationship. Even Nathaniel Starbuck, Jr., son of the “Great Woman,” would will several of his Indians, as well as his “Indian debts,” to his heirs (in Starbuck).

  The references to Abraham Monkey and Cromwell Coffin appear in Book 1 of the Nantucket Court Records. The Indian petition quoted here is dated July 14, 1747, and appears in Starbuck. The reference to the potential Indian uprising is in Macy’s History; the Boston News-Letter report is cited in Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery. Eliza Mitchell recorded in a notebook of reminiscences in 1894 (NHA Collection 23) another account of the Indian uprising. As an eight-year-old girl, Mitchell heard the tale from a woman “between eighty and ninety years of age,” whose account was later confirmed by the famed Siasconset genealogist and historian Benjamin Franklin Folger (see Chapter 12). According to Mitchell, after learning of the Indians’ plot, the English families “gathered their little ones close around them, club’d together,” while the men set out “through fog and darkness” only to find “not the least indication of any disturbance.” It turned out that the informer had come up with the story of the plot just to get some rum from the English. When the Indians were told of the “culprit’s” tale, they demanded that he be punished at the whipping post that then existed near where the Civil War monument now stands on Main Street. According to Mitchell, this was the last Indian whipping to be performed on Nantucket. Although the fears of a rebellion were apparently groundless, the behavior of the English clearly indicates that they were well aware (and leery) of Indian discontent.

  Macy speaks of the English and Indians having the equivalent of a final legal showdown concerning the Indians’ claims that their lands had been taken through nefarious means. According to Macy, the decision was in favor of the English, with the Indians resigning themselves to their situation from that point forward. Although Macy dates this turning point as 1753, Starbuck claims that it was actually in 1758, five years before the plague.

  That White had a lot to learn about the coasting trade is suggested by a letter from one of the leading merchants of the day, Joseph Rotch, who complains about White’s instructions concerning a shipment from Philadelphia: “As for sending orders for such things it is not the way amongst merchants. When I sent Capt. Chase last year I never had any agreement with any man but sent him to John Misslen and desired him to load his bark. . . . Thou must trust to me and my friend to fill the vessel up.”

  Macy’s History contains an account of the Indian sickness, as does Eliza Mitchell’s notebook of reminiscences, which focuses on the role played by Zaccheus Macy, who attended the sick on a daily basis. According to Mitchell, he provided them with broth while keeping “the Indians to the leeward of himself” so as to avoid infection. If Timothy White failed to be the Peter Folger of his day, the title probably should go to Zaccheus Macy, who according to Mitchell “was the only person of that time who understood the Indian dialect. He could converse freely with them [and] consequently could influence them in many ways for their good.” Perhaps more important, Z. Macy (unlike White) had the financial means to devote extensive time and energies to the Indians. According to Mitchell, “He was considered wealthy in his time because it took so few thousand dollars in his day, as compared with this, to make the fortunate quite independent.” Macy’s altruism did not stop with the Indians; he also became known as the primary bonesetter on the island, performing his services free of charge.

  11. Peleg Folger, the Poet Whaleman

  Peleg Folger’s original log is at the NA. On the inside cover is written, “The property of Sam’l Swain, Nantucket”; beneath that: “To F. C. Sanford, 1885.” An incomplete nineteenth-century transcription of Peleg Folger’s log is at the NHA, Log #318.

  William Root Bliss was the first to quote generously from Folger’s log in Quaint Nantucket. Edouard Stackpole relies almost exclusively on Folger’s journal for information concerning eighteenth-century whaling in The Sea-Hunters. In And the Whale is Ours: Creative Writing of American Whalemen (Boston, 1979), Pamela Miller provides a sampling and literary analysis of nineteenth-century logs, but, to my mind at least, Peleg Folger’s eighteenth-century log beats them all hollow.

  The specifications of a typical whaling sloop come from The Sea-Hunters and Douglass C. Fonda, Jr.’s monograph, Eighteenth Century Nantucket Whaling (Nantucket, 1969), a distillation of information gleaned from logs and journals in possession of the NA and NHA. The rig of a typical whaling sloop included a gaff-rigged mainsail (which when reefed was referred to as a “balanced mainsail”), a squaresail set on a short topmast above the main, a trysail just forward of the mast, and a jib set on a bowsprit.

  According to tradition, Nantucketers sometimes used the taste of the sea bottom to help them determine their location. An old Nantucket anecdote describes a trick played on a captain when the crew substituted the contents of a flowe
rpot for the soundings he had been using to plot their course through a thick fog. After tasting the soil, the Captain shouted, “Nantucket’s sunk and here we are right over Old Marm Hackett’s garden!” Two versions of this anecdote are cited in William F. Macy’s The Nantucket Scrap Basket; a third is entitled “A Cruise Along Shore in the Seventeenth Century” and contained in Sailor’s Magazine (November, 1848) and reprinted in Roger Duncan and John Ware’s A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast (New York, 1983). There is also a Down East “Bert and I” version of this tale.

  That sociability was expected among whalemen is indicated by this entry in Folger’s log: “In the morning we spied a sail and drew up with him but the clown would not speak with us, steering off about SE.” When Folger refers to whalers from “Cushnet,” he is talking about the Acushnet River on which the whaling village of Bedford (eventually New Bedford) would soon be founded by the Nantucketer Joseph Rotch.

  Peleg’s “bogtrotters” were not the only ones who did not appreciate the dead whales left by the Nantucketers. By 1765, the governor of Newfoundland had issued an order that required whalemen to “carry the useless parts of such whales as they may catch to at least three leagues from shore . . .”; also of interest is this directive: “In all dealings with the Indians, to treat them with the greatest civility: observing not to impose on their ignorance, or to take advantage of their necessities. You are also on no account to serve them with spirituous liquors”; from Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery.

  For an account of the racial make-up of colonial whaling crews, as well as how the technological advances of whaling reduced the whalemen’s quality of life, see Vickers’s “Maritime Labor in Colonial Massachusetts.” The text of the 1758 exemption for Nantucket Quaker whalemen (in Starbuck) reads in part: “Inasmuch as the inhabitants of Nantucket most of whom are Quakers are by law exempted from impresses for military service. And their livelihood entirely depends on the whale fishery—Advised that his Excellency gives permission for all whaling vessels belonging to said island to pursue their voyages, taking only the inhabitants of said Island and said vessels. . . .” Even if the Quaker whalemen did not fight against the French, they were inevitably caught up in the conflict. According to Starbuck, six Nantucket vessels were lost at sea in 1755–6, while another six were captured and burned by the French.

  From Folger’s log: “In Straits St. Davis are several things remarkable: 1. A right whale is a very large fish (for the most part) they are somewhat hollowing on their backs, being all slick and smooth and having no hump at all as other whales. Their bone (of which is made stays and hooped petticoats) is grown in their mouth, the under end or butt growing in the gum of the upper jaw. Their tongue is monstrous large and will commonly make a tun of oil. Their bone is from 3 to 12 feet long according to the bigness of the whale and is all the teeth they have. They have two spoutholes and make a forked spout whereby they are distinguished from other whales at a distance. Blubber, lean, and fluke of a young right whale is good food. 2. A spermaceti is a large whale. They will make from 10 to 100 barrels of oil. They have no bone in their head and their brains is all oil. They have a hump on the after part of their back: one spouthole. Their under jaw is full of hard ivory teeth and tongue very small. 3. A humpback hath a hump differing from a spermaceti—that being hooking and this straight. They have bone like a right whale only tis short and good only to make buttons.”

  When the Greyhound spoke with a Dutch ship, they discovered a unique passenger: “They had an Indian and his canoe on board and intended to carry him to Holland and bring him back next year.” Obed Macy in his History has this to say about the difference between the whale fishery and the “cold-blooded butchery” of war: “For deeds of true valor, done without brutal excitement, but in the honest and lawful pursuit of the means of livelihood, we may safely point to the life of a whaleman, and dare the whole world to produce a parallel.”

  Macy quotes from Folger’s poem “Dominum Collaudamus [Let Us Praise the Lord]” while providing a brief description of his character: “His general deportment was serious and contemplative. It was rare that he indulged in levity, but he was free and sociable in conversation on useful subjects, whether moral or religious.” Macy also describes the circumstances of Folger’s death: “For several days previous to his departure, he appeared to have a satisfactory presentiment of his approaching end, and that the sting of death was entirely removed. He had much to say by way of advice to his friends and neighbors, who visited him in his last moments.”

  The poem about “Uncle Pillick” is in Macy’s Scrap Basket. Folger’s workbook (kept from 1758 to 1762) as well as the log-like group of stitched-together papers that comprise his later journal are in NHA Collection 88, Box 23, Book 57, and Collection 118, Folder 37.

  The quote from Emerson concerning Nantucket captains comes from his Journals. Any discussion of eighteenth-century whaling on Nantucket would not be complete without the inclusion of “The Whale-List” by Thomas Worth (cited in Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery):Out of Nantucket there’s Whalemen seventy-five,

  But two poor Worths among them doth survive:

  There is two Ramsdills & there’s Woodburys two,

  Two Ways there is, chuse which one pleaseth you,

  Folgers thirteen, & Barnards there are four

  Bunkers there is three & Jenkinses no more,

  Gardners there is seven, Husseys there are two

  Pinkhams there is five and a poor Delano,

  Myricks there is three & Collins there are six,

  Swains there are four and one blue gally Fitch.

  One Chadwick, Coggshall, Coleman there’s but one,

  Brown, Baxter, two & Paddacks there is three,

  Wyer, Stanton, Starbuck, Moorse is four you see,

  But if for a Voyage I was to choose a Stanton,

  I would leave Sammy out & choose Ben Stratton.

  And not forget that Bocott is alive,

  And that long-crotch makes up the seventy-five.

  This is answering to the list, you see,

  Made up in seventeen hundred & sixty-three.

  12. Kezia Coffin’s Revolutionary Rise and Fall

  Crèvecoeur’s references to “Aunt Kesiah” appear in the last of his five letters about Nantucket, a letter that contains several references to events that occurred after the outbreak of the Revolution. For a discussion of the time-frame contained within the Letters, see my “The Nantucket Sequence in Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer,” New England Quarterly (September, 1991). Miriam Coffin, or The Whale-Fishermen: A Tale was published anonymously in 1834. See Lisa Norling’s “ ‘How Fraught with Sorrow and Heartpangs’: Mariners’ Wives and the Ideology of Domesticity in New England, 1790–1880,” New England Quarterly (September, 1992), for a brief comparison of Crèvecoeur’s and Hart’s portrayals of Kezia Coffin. Mrs. Starbuck’s reference to having torn down Kezia’s country house in Quaise appears in “Personal Reminiscences of Mrs. Eliza W. Mitchell,” dated November 27, 1894, NHA Collection 252.

  The tradition concerning Kezia’s conduct during a town meeting is recounted by George Worth in the Worth Family Papers, NHA Collection 129, Book 9. For more information about Kezia’s sister Judith, see Norling’s “Judith Macy and her Daybook; or, Crèvecoeur and the Wives of Sherborn,” HN (Winter, 1993). Franklin’s letter to Kezia appeared in NI (January 26, 1824). The reference to her in-town mansion is from George Worth; Hart also goes into a fair amount of detail about the house in Miriam Coffin. In a September 2, 1918, letter to Alexander Starbuck, Henry Worth (NHA Collection 144, Folder 18) recorded all references in Quaker records to Kezia and John Coffin; one entry reads: “Kezia Coffin disowned for keeping a spinet in her house and permitting her daughter to play thereon.”

  At some point Kezia Coffin Fanning’s diaries were tragically lost; what remains are the fairly detailed notes and transcriptions made by family members in NHA Collection 2. Kezia Fanning’s di
ary has several references to the spinet and the Quaker disciplinary committee.

  The March, 1773, reference to Phineas Fanning is in the first volume of the Nantucket Court Record Book. Traditions concerning Phineas Fanning’s arrival on the island are contained in “Nantucket Surnames,” The Gleaner, New Bedford, 1847 (NHA Collection 43, Folder 4), as well as Miriam Coffin, in which Fanning appears as the lawyer Grimshaw. Just as Nantucketers had a natural aversion to hireling priests, they did not seem to have much use for lawyers, a tradition that may have dated back to the days when old Stephen Hussey sued the town selectmen. Even with Kezia as a client, Fanning appears to have had plenty of time on his hands, and he soon became one of the island ’s leading duck hunters and fishermen. In her journal, Kezia Fanning regularly recorded the day’s kill; a typical entry: “P.F. shoots geese, teal, coot, duck, bluebill, redhead, broadbill.” Crèvecoeur explicitly states that there was so little legal business on the island that if it were not for the fact that Fanning had married the wealthiest heiress on the island, he would have been a very poor man. Unfortunately for the Fannings, Crèvecoeur’s words would prove prophetic, with Fanning serving at least one sentence in debtor’s prison (see Chapter 14).

  As to be expected, loyal Nantucketers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have tended to deny vehemently Crèvecoeur’s claim concerning opium use, even though they have been perfectly willing to accept his many other, less controversial observations concerning the islanders’ habits, the geography of the island, and the details of the whale fishery—all of which have withstood (to an amazing degree) the test of time. In a personal communication to the author (May, 1991), Everett and Katherine Emerson, who are at work on a definitive edition of Crèvecoeur’s Letters, claim that they have uncovered historical evidence concerning opium use in the eighteenth century that convinces them that Crèvecoeur’s observations are correct.