Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 40

Near one of the princ.i.p.al wharves is the Custom-house. It is situated at the bottom of the square already referred to, of which the Pacific Bank, established in 1805, occupies the upper end, the sides being bordered by shops. The first-floor of the Custom-house is used by a club of retired ship-masters, in which they meet to recount the perils and recall the spoils of whaling battles.

We are told by Macy, the historian of the island, that "the inhabitants live together like one great family. They not only know their nearest neighbors, but each one knows the rest. If you wish to see any man, you need but ask the first inhabitant you meet, and he will be able to conduct you to his residence, to tell you what occupation he is of, etc., etc." If one house entertained a stranger, the neighbors would send in whatever luxuries they might have. After a lapse of nearly forty years, I found Macy's account still true. All questionings were answered with civility and directness, and, as if that were not enough, persons volunteered to go out of their way to conduct me. In a whaling port there is no cod-fish aristocracy. Thackeray could not have found materials for his "Book of Sn.o.bs" in Nantucket, though, if rumor may be believed, a few of the genus are dropping in from the main-land.

I observed nothing peculiar about the princ.i.p.al centre of trade, except the manner of selling meat, vegetables, etc. When the butchers acc.u.mulate an overstock of any article they dispose of it by auction, the town-crier being dispatched to summon the inhabitants, greeting.

This functionary I met, swelling with importance, but a trifle blown from the frequent sounding of his clarion, to wit, a j.a.panned fish-horn.

Met him, did I say? I beg the indulgence of the reader. Wherever I wandered in my rambles, he was sure to turn the corner just ahead of me, or to spring from the covert of some blind alley. He was one of those who, Macy says, knew all the other inhabitants of the island; me he knew for a stranger. He stopped short. First he wound a terrific blast of his horn. Toot, toot, toot, it echoed down the street, like the discordant braying of a donkey. This he followed with l.u.s.ty ringing of a large dinner-bell, peal on peal, until I was ready to exclaim with the Moor,

"Silence that dreadful bell! it frights the isle From her propriety."

Then, placing the fish-horn under his arm, and taking the bell by the tongue, he delivered himself of his formula. I am not likely to forget it: "Two boats a day! Burgess's meat auction this evening! Corned beef!

Boston Theatre, positively last night this evening!"

He was gone, and I heard bell and horn in the next street. He was the life of Nantucket while I was there; the only inhabitant I saw moving faster than a moderate walk. They said he had been a soldier, discharged, by his own account, for being "_non compos_," or something of the sort. I doubt there is any thing the matter with his lungs, or that his wits are, "like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;"

yet of his fish-horn I would say,

"O would I might turn poet for an houre, To satirize with a vindictive powere Against the _blower_!"

The history of Nantucket is not involved in obscurity, though Dr.

Morse, in his _Gazetteer_, printed in 1793, says no mention is made of the discovery and settlement of the island, under its present name, by any of our historians. Its settlement by English goes no further back than 1659, when Thomas Macy[242] removed from Salisbury, in Ma.s.sachusetts, to the west end of the island, called by the Indians Maddequet, a name still retained by the harbor and fishing hamlet there.

Edward Starbuck, James Coffin, and another of the name of Daget, or Daggett, came over from Martha's Vineyard, it is said, for the sake of the gunning, and lived with Macy. At that time there were nearly three thousand Indians on the island.

Nantucket annals show what kind of sailors may be made of Quakers. The ill.u.s.tration is not unique. In the same year that Macy came to the island a ship wholly manned by them went from Newfoundland to Lisbon with fish. Some of them much affronted the Portuguese whom they met in the streets by not taking off their hats to salute them. If the gravity of the matter had not been the subject of a state paper I should not have known it.[243]

Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were not included in either of the four New England governments. All the islands between Cape Cod and Hudson River were claimed by the Earl of Sterling. In 1641 a deed was pa.s.sed to Thomas Mayhew, of Martha's Vineyard, by James Forett, agent of the earl, and Richard Vines, the steward of Sir F. Gorges. The island, until the accession of William and Mary, was considered within the jurisdiction of New York, though we find the deed to Mayhew reciting that the government to be there established by him and his a.s.sociates should be such as was then existing in Ma.s.sachusetts, with the same privileges granted by the patent of that colony. In 1659 Mayhew conveyed to the a.s.sociates mentioned in his deed, nine in number, equal portions of his grant, after reserving to himself Masquetuck Neck, or Quaise.[244] The consideration was thirty pounds of lawful money and two beaver hats, one for himself, and one for his wife. The first meeting of the proprietors was held at Salisbury, Ma.s.sachusetts, in September of the same year (1659), at which time ten other persons were admitted partners,[245]

enlarging the whole number of proprietors to nineteen. After the removal to the island, the number was further increased to twenty-seven by the admission of Richard and Joseph Gardiner, Joseph Coleman, William Worth, Peter and Eleazer Folger, Samuel Stretor, and Nathaniel Wier.

The English settlers in 1660 obtained a confirmation of their t.i.tle from the sachems Wanackmamack and Nickanoose, with certain reservations to the Indian inhabitants, driving, as usual, a hard, ungenerous bargain, as the Indians learned when too late. In 1700 their grievances were communicated by the Earl of Bellomont, then governor, to the crown.

Their greatest complaint was, that the English had by calculation stripped them of the means of keeping cattle or live stock of any kind, even on their reserved lands, by means of concessions they did not comprehend. At that time the Indians had been decimated, numbering fewer than four hundred, while the whites had increased to eight hundred souls. The mortality of 1763 wasted the few remaining Indians to a handful.[246] In 1791 there were but four males and sixteen females.

Abraham Quady, the last survivor, died within a few years.

The choice of the island by Macy is accounted for by the foregoing facts, doubtless within his knowledge, as many of the original proprietors were his townsmen.

Thomas Mayhew ought to be considered one of the fathers of English settlement in New England. He was of Watertown, in Ma.s.sachusetts, and I presume the same person mentioned by Drake, in his "Founders," as desirous of pa.s.sing, in 1637, into "fforaigne partes." He is styled Mr.

Thomas Mayhew, Gent., a t.i.tle raising him above the rank of tradesmen, artificers, and the like, who were not then considered gentlemen; nor is this distinction much weakened at the present day in England. Mayhew received his grant of Nantucket and two small islands adjoining in October, 1641, and on the 23d of the same month, of Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. The younger Mayhew, who, Mather says, settled at the Vineyard in 1642, seems to have devoted himself to the conversion of the Indians with the zeal of a missionary.[247] In 1657 he was drowned at sea, the ship in which he had sailed for England never having been heard from. He was taking with him one of the Vineyard Indians, with the hope of awakening an interest in their progress toward Christianity. Jonathan Mayhew, the celebrated divine, was of this stock.

The first settlement at Maddequet Harbor was abandoned after a more thorough knowledge of the island and the accession of white inhabitants.

The south side of the present harbor was first selected; but its inconvenience being soon felt, the town was located where it now is. By instruction of Governor Francis Lovelace it received, in 1673, the name of Sherburne, changed in 1795 to the more familiar one of Nantucket.

The town stands near the centre of the island, the place having formerly been known by the Indian name of "Wesko," signifying White Stone. This stone, which lay, like the rock of the Pilgrims, on the harbor sh.o.r.e, was in time covered by a wharf. The bluff at the west of the town still retains the name of Sherburne. I found the oldest houses at the extremities of the town.

[Ill.u.s.tration: E. JOHNSON'S STUDIO, NANTUCKET.]

Another of the original proprietors is remembered with honor by the islanders. Peter Folger was looked up to as a superior sort of man. He was so well versed in the Indian tongue that his name is often found on the deeds from the natives. The mother of Benjamin Franklin was the daughter of Folger. They do not forget it. The name of Peter Folger is still continued, and family relics of interest are preserved by the descendants of the first Peter.

Any account of Nantucket must be incomplete that omits mention of Sir Isaac Coffin. Sir Isaac was a Bostonian. His family were out-and-out Tories in the Revolution, with more talent than in general falls to the share of one household. He was descended from an ancient family in the northern part of Devonshire, England. In 1773 Isaac Coffin was taken to sea by Lieutenant Hunter, of the _Gaspee_, at the recommendation of Admiral John Montague. His commanding officer said he never knew any young man acquire so much nautical knowledge in so short a time. After reaching the grade of post-captain, Coffin, for a breach of the regulations of the service, was deprived of his vessel, and Earl Howe struck his name from the list of post-captains. This act being illegal, he was reinstated in 1790. In 1804 he was made a baronet, and in 1814 became a full admiral in the British navy. One of his brothers was a British general.

On a visit to the United States, in 1826, Sir Isaac came to Nantucket.

Finding that many of the inhabitants claimed descent from his own genealogical tree, he authorized the purchase of a building, and endowed it with a fund of twenty-five hundred pounds sterling, for the establishment of a school to which all descendants of Tristram Coffin, one of the first settlers, should be admitted. On one of his voyages to America the admiral suffered shipwreck.

During the war of 1812, it is related that the admiral made a visit to Dartmoor prison, for the purpose of releasing any American prisoners of his family name. Among others who presented themselves was a negro.

"Ah," said the admiral, "you a Coffin too?" "Yes, ma.s.sa." "How old are you?" "Me thirty years, ma.s.sa." "Well, then, you are not one of the Coffins, for they never turn black until forty."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[229] Purchas, iv.; reprinted in "Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Collections,"

iii., viii. I can not give s.p.a.ce to those points that confirm my view, but they make a strong presumptive case. It has been alleged that De Poutrincourt landed here after his conflict with the Indians of Cape Cod. So far from landing on the island they saw, Champlain says they named it "_La Soupconneuse_," from the doubts they had of it. Lescarbot adds that "they saw an island, six or seven leagues in length, which they were not able to reach, and so called '_Ile Douteuse_.'" The land, it is probable, was the Vineyard.

[230] By Sir F. Gorges.

[231] Nantasket, Namasket, Naushon, Sawtuckett, are Indian.

[232] In 1602 by the colony of Bartholomew Gosnold, already so often mentioned in these pages.

[233] Better known as Holmes's Hole.

[234] On the raising of the ice-blockade of the past winter seventeen mails were due, the greatest number since 1857, when twenty-five regular and two semi-monthly mails were landed at Quidnet.

[235] In 1837 its population was 9048; it is now a little more than 4000.

[236] The Dutch also whaled with long ropes, as is now our method.

[237] Weymouth also describes the Indian manner of taking whales: "One especial thing is their manner of killing the whale, which they call powdawe; and will describe his form; how he bloweth up the water; and that he is twelve fathoms long; and that they go in company of their King, with a mult.i.tude of their boats, and strike him with a bone made in the fashion of a harping-iron, fastened to a rope, which they make great and strong of the bark of trees, which they veer out after him; that all their boats come about him, and as he riseth above water, with their arrows they shoot him to death. When they have killed him and dragged him to sh.o.r.e, they call all their chief lords together, and sing a song of joy; and these chief lords, whom they call sagamores, divide the spoil, and give to every man a share, which pieces so distributed they hang up about their houses for provision; and when they boil them, they blow off the fat, and put to their pease, maize, and other pulse which they eat."--"Weymouth's Voyage."

[238] Nantucket in 1744 had forty sloops and schooners in the whale-fishery. The catch was seven thousand to ten thousand barrels of oil per annum. There were nine hundred Indians on the island of great use in the fishery.--Dougla.s.s, vol. i., p. 405.

[239] State papers.

[240] Gordon, vol. i., p. 463.

[241] Records of Congress.

[242] Of Macy it is known that he fled from the rigorous persecution of the Quakers by the government of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. The penalties were ordinarily cropping the ears, branding with an iron, scourging, the pillory, or banishment. These cruelties, barbarous as they were, were merely borrowed from the England of that day, where the sect, saving capital punishment, was persecuted with as great rigor as it ever was in the colonies. The death-penalty inflicted in the Bay Colony brought the affairs of the Friends to the notice of the reigning king. Thereafter they were tolerated; but as persecution ceased the sect dwindled away, and in New England it is not numerous. The Friends' poet sings of Macy, the outcast:

"Far round the bleak and stormy Cape The vent'rous Macy pa.s.sed, And on Nantucket's naked isle Drew up his boat at last."

[243] Thurloe, vol. v., p. 422.

[244] The nine were Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleaf, John Swain, and William Pile, who afterward sold his tenth to Richard Swain.

[245] John Smith, Nathaniel Starbuck, Edward Starbuck, Thomas Look, Robert Barnard, James Coffin, Robert Pike, Tristram Coffin, Jun., Thomas Coleman, and John Bishop.

[246] Of three hundred and fifty-eight Indians alive in 1763, two hundred and twenty-two died by the distemper.

[247] Hutchinson.