by Pa Rock
Reader
Having breathed my way through seven complete decades on this spinning mud ball we call Earth, I have been fortunate to have visited many places in North America, Europe, and Asia. There are, however, still a couple of destinations remaining on my bucket list, and as the length of my ride on the planet necessarily nears an end, the call to experience those places becomes ever more urgent.
Before my ride is over I would like to trek across the equator and sample life in the Southern Hemisphere. I would like to gaze up in wonder at the Southern Cross from some exotic location in South America, Africa, Australia, or New Zealand - or maybe one grand tour and touch down in all of those places. And, my remaining objective north of the equator is to visit Nantucket.
Nantucket is do-able, perhaps as early as next year, and in preparation for that adventure, I have begun to do what I always do before such jaunts - I start to read about the proposed destination. Being a descendant of several of that small island's "First Purchasers," I had already studied genealogies of the Macy and Coffin families and also read Clarence King's "The Half-Share Man," the story of Peter Folger, Nantucket's first school master and town clerk - and the maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin - as well as another of my direct ancestors. But all of that was fairly ancient history that focused on the island as it was at the time of earliest arrivals of European descent. I wanted to experience the changes that blown across that small sandbar thirty miles off of the New England shore in the intervening centuries,
For that perspective I turned to the inaugural work of famed biographer, Nathaniel Philbrick, and his "Away Off Shore: Nantucket and Its People, 1602-1890."
Nantucket was once a connected part of the continent that became known as North America, but as the oceans began to rise after the receding of the last Ice Age, it was severed from the shore. Some native Americans were on the land as it became an island, and others came and went over the intervening millennia. The first recorded sighting of the small island by a person of European origin was in 1602 when Bartholomew Gosnold and his crew first explored the Cape and surrounding islands.
During the next half-century the European presence began to be felt on Nantucket through the work of missionaries and agreements with the Native Americans to graze sheep on their land. Governor Thomas Mayhew of the Massachusetts Bay Colony purchased a significant portion of the island from its historical occupants, and he, in turn sold most of his Nantucket holdings to a group of other new arrivals to America headed by Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy (Mayhew's cousin), and Edward Starbuck. This collection of "First Purchasers" acquired their portion of Nantucket for thirty pounds and two beaver hats.
The plan had been to move to the island in the spring of 1660, but Thomas Macy, a Baptist, ran afoul of the Puritans when he gave shelter to a group a Quakers during a storm, and felt compelled to leave early for his new home. In the late fall of 1659 the 51-year-old Macy and his wife Sarah (Hopcott) and four children left for Nantucket. Accompanying them were fellow purchaser Edward Starbuck, also in his fifties, James Coffin, a son of a fellow purchaser by the name of Tristram Coffin, and twelve-year-old Isaac Coleman who was possibly an apprentice to Macy - a weaver.
Other purchasers began arriving the following spring bearing surnames that were to remain prominent on the tiny island for centuries: Barnard, Hussey, Swain, Greenleaf, Gardner, and several others. The necessary intermarrying among the first families was so common that soon everyone was more-or-less related to everyone else, and the compilation of complex written genealogies became necessary to keep everyone sorted.
(The founder of Macy's Department Store, Roland Hussey Macy, literally bore the names of two of Nantucket's first European families.)
Philbrick charts his history of Nantucket by anchoring it to several individuals who held great influence on the island during its history, moving the island's story along through time by studying each of these unique characters. The first individual that he focused on, after introducing Thomas Macy and Edward Starbuck as the island's original European settlers, was Tristram Coffin - whom he characterized as a "Country Squire." The elder Mr. Coffin considered himself to be some remnant of British aristocracy, and he proceeded to act accordingly. He controlled (with three sons and a son-in-law) five of the original twenty shares of the island, and much of the early politics on Nantucket were focused either on appeasing or challenging the wishes of the old man.
(As Charlemagne is often sited as the "grandfather" of Europe, Tristram Coffin is literally the forebear of tens of thousands of living Americans, making him a"grandfather" to much of the current United States. Thanks to the knotted nature of Nantucket family relationships, he holds down two spots on my family tree, and I am currently working on another branch that also appears to be headed his way!)
A big part of Philbrick's book is related to the history of Nantucket as a whaling port and the across-the-board economic activity that whaling brought to the once-isolated island community. The island discovered whaling almost by accident, and in the following century it was sending whaling ships and young men literally around the globe. (Perhaps that explains my almost-primal urge to see the Southern Hemisphere!) And as those adventurous and hard-working young men experienced the world on voyages that sometimes lasted years, the women who remained on Nantucket raising the children, keeping house, and operating businesses, became some of beacons of a new age of independence for women. As whaling faded in the late 19th century, Nantucket began shoring-up and formalizing its history and turning toward a future that many recognized would revolve around tourism.
Today Nantucket is still a world unto itself - a world that is part tourist shops, summer rentals, maritime and family history, and a good dose of screaming seagulls and sea breezes. It remains largely on its own - away off shore - and I want to experience it.
Reader
Having breathed my way through seven complete decades on this spinning mud ball we call Earth, I have been fortunate to have visited many places in North America, Europe, and Asia. There are, however, still a couple of destinations remaining on my bucket list, and as the length of my ride on the planet necessarily nears an end, the call to experience those places becomes ever more urgent.
Before my ride is over I would like to trek across the equator and sample life in the Southern Hemisphere. I would like to gaze up in wonder at the Southern Cross from some exotic location in South America, Africa, Australia, or New Zealand - or maybe one grand tour and touch down in all of those places. And, my remaining objective north of the equator is to visit Nantucket.
Nantucket is do-able, perhaps as early as next year, and in preparation for that adventure, I have begun to do what I always do before such jaunts - I start to read about the proposed destination. Being a descendant of several of that small island's "First Purchasers," I had already studied genealogies of the Macy and Coffin families and also read Clarence King's "The Half-Share Man," the story of Peter Folger, Nantucket's first school master and town clerk - and the maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin - as well as another of my direct ancestors. But all of that was fairly ancient history that focused on the island as it was at the time of earliest arrivals of European descent. I wanted to experience the changes that blown across that small sandbar thirty miles off of the New England shore in the intervening centuries,
For that perspective I turned to the inaugural work of famed biographer, Nathaniel Philbrick, and his "Away Off Shore: Nantucket and Its People, 1602-1890."
Nantucket was once a connected part of the continent that became known as North America, but as the oceans began to rise after the receding of the last Ice Age, it was severed from the shore. Some native Americans were on the land as it became an island, and others came and went over the intervening millennia. The first recorded sighting of the small island by a person of European origin was in 1602 when Bartholomew Gosnold and his crew first explored the Cape and surrounding islands.
During the next half-century the European presence began to be felt on Nantucket through the work of missionaries and agreements with the Native Americans to graze sheep on their land. Governor Thomas Mayhew of the Massachusetts Bay Colony purchased a significant portion of the island from its historical occupants, and he, in turn sold most of his Nantucket holdings to a group of other new arrivals to America headed by Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy (Mayhew's cousin), and Edward Starbuck. This collection of "First Purchasers" acquired their portion of Nantucket for thirty pounds and two beaver hats.
The plan had been to move to the island in the spring of 1660, but Thomas Macy, a Baptist, ran afoul of the Puritans when he gave shelter to a group a Quakers during a storm, and felt compelled to leave early for his new home. In the late fall of 1659 the 51-year-old Macy and his wife Sarah (Hopcott) and four children left for Nantucket. Accompanying them were fellow purchaser Edward Starbuck, also in his fifties, James Coffin, a son of a fellow purchaser by the name of Tristram Coffin, and twelve-year-old Isaac Coleman who was possibly an apprentice to Macy - a weaver.
Other purchasers began arriving the following spring bearing surnames that were to remain prominent on the tiny island for centuries: Barnard, Hussey, Swain, Greenleaf, Gardner, and several others. The necessary intermarrying among the first families was so common that soon everyone was more-or-less related to everyone else, and the compilation of complex written genealogies became necessary to keep everyone sorted.
(The founder of Macy's Department Store, Roland Hussey Macy, literally bore the names of two of Nantucket's first European families.)
Philbrick charts his history of Nantucket by anchoring it to several individuals who held great influence on the island during its history, moving the island's story along through time by studying each of these unique characters. The first individual that he focused on, after introducing Thomas Macy and Edward Starbuck as the island's original European settlers, was Tristram Coffin - whom he characterized as a "Country Squire." The elder Mr. Coffin considered himself to be some remnant of British aristocracy, and he proceeded to act accordingly. He controlled (with three sons and a son-in-law) five of the original twenty shares of the island, and much of the early politics on Nantucket were focused either on appeasing or challenging the wishes of the old man.
(As Charlemagne is often sited as the "grandfather" of Europe, Tristram Coffin is literally the forebear of tens of thousands of living Americans, making him a"grandfather" to much of the current United States. Thanks to the knotted nature of Nantucket family relationships, he holds down two spots on my family tree, and I am currently working on another branch that also appears to be headed his way!)
A big part of Philbrick's book is related to the history of Nantucket as a whaling port and the across-the-board economic activity that whaling brought to the once-isolated island community. The island discovered whaling almost by accident, and in the following century it was sending whaling ships and young men literally around the globe. (Perhaps that explains my almost-primal urge to see the Southern Hemisphere!) And as those adventurous and hard-working young men experienced the world on voyages that sometimes lasted years, the women who remained on Nantucket raising the children, keeping house, and operating businesses, became some of beacons of a new age of independence for women. As whaling faded in the late 19th century, Nantucket began shoring-up and formalizing its history and turning toward a future that many recognized would revolve around tourism.
Today Nantucket is still a world unto itself - a world that is part tourist shops, summer rentals, maritime and family history, and a good dose of screaming seagulls and sea breezes. It remains largely on its own - away off shore - and I want to experience it.
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