Nantucket 350
Written By Sharon Lorenzo
Photography by Terry Pommett
The island’s founding families mark 350 years since their ancestors arrived on Nantucket. After seven years of discussion, negotiation and compromise, the Town of Nantucket agreed two years ago to clear a wide access path to the ancient burial ground where approximately 238 of the island’s earliest settlers of European descent were laid to rest.
This promontory overlooking Maxcy’s Pond was the location of the island’s earliest church, which was moved and reconstructed as the vestry of the Congregational Church on Centre Street. Seismic radiography will be used in the near future to locate the exact perimeter of this building so that today’s island visitors and descendants can sense first-hand the spiritual center of those first settlers on Nantucket who braved an Atlantic crossing, cold winters and accommodations to the Wampanoags.
A stone tablet erected in 1881 on the site honors the ten men who formed part of the group of the early proprietors. Local historian Dr. Frances Karttunen noted that Maxcy’s Pond was probably an alternate spelling for Macy’s Pond, a fitting tribute to a dynasty represented today in our retail business economy with Macy’s stores. She further observed that the wives of these men were also sturdy souls, who gave birth and raised 80 children, some of whom were eventually laid to rest in this sacred spot. Karttunen and many other Nantucketers hope that eventually a second stone will be dedicated in this spot to the women and children of those worthy sires.
This summer’s celebration and rededication of the site marked the semi-septicentennial, or 350th anniversary, of the founding of what was the island’s original Sherburne settlement in 1659. Reverend Edward B. Anderson blessed the location during a short service accompanied by 17th century music played on a viola da gamba by Mollie Glazer, director of Nantucket School of Music. A walking tour of the area, now cleared for fishing by the Nantucket Anglers Club, was attended by many family members of the Macy clan, who had gathered for a weekend to honor their forefather Thomas Macy. Since Nantucket Historical Association is charged as the intellectual custodian of this historic site, Mark Avery as the NHA’s Manager of Historic Properties chose the 1841 John Greenleaf Whittier poem “The Exiles” to capture the essence of the celebration:
God bless the sea-beat island and grant
forevermore, that charity and freedom dwell
as now upon her shore.
Macy descendants Miles Carlisle and Rachel Freeman, who still occupy their family’s early homes on Main Street, joined the ceremony of rededication. Carlisle inherited and today graciously guards the remaining artifacts of the whaling legacy of his forefather Henry Coffin, who was the son of wealthy whale-oil merchant Zenas Coffin and who built the brick house on Main Street in 1834.
Carlisle is a distant cousin of Freeman who today resides nearby on Main Street with her husband and children, in the home built in 1838 by Joseph Starbuck for his son Matthew. The aforementioned Henry Coffin had married Levi Starbuck’s daughter Eliza Starbuck in 1833, thus connecting the two families.
Freeman inherited her home from her great grandmother Pauline Mackay Johnson, who lived in the house until her death in 1958. Freeman said she feels it would be fitting to mark the founders burial place with a memorial to the wives of the first proprietors since many of the homes have passed to the women in the family who, like her, have preserved them. Carlisle noted that it was customary in the 19th century for family businesses to be passed to the sons and the real estate to the daughters. In fact, Eliza Coffin was the sole owner of Carlisle’s property at the time of her death in 1935.
The secrets and remnants of old Sherburne live on today in the hearts and minds of many Nantucket residents who are descendants of the original settlers. The original Sherburne settlement was relocated to the current town center in about 1717 as repetitive storms silted in the opening of Capaum Pond and made navigation from this smaller, quiet harbor too difficult.
Nantucket historian Clay Lancaster and others have located numerous dwellings that were disassembled and rebuilt from their original sites. One of those belonged to the Charles Kilvert family on Main Street. Lancaster located the exact former perimeter of the Main Street house on the hillside overlooking Capaum Pond. Lily Kilvert, Charles’ daughter, recalled that when they would have a plumbing repair at their Main Street house they often found seaweed and Quaker toys behind wooden siding in the front parlor.
Historians disagree whether Nantucket’s native Indian sachems such as Nickanoose or Wanackmamack fully understood they were giving away permanent title when their Nantucket lands were conveyed to the English newcomers in the 17th century.Whatever the case, the Indians and early settlers on Nantucket learned from each other while exchanging goods and services for the mutual benefit of all, creating a truly multicultural community. This cooperative symbiosis was rare in America’s history when foreign cultures integrated into the New World. Perhaps that sense of a shared legacy and love for the uniqueness of the Nantucket experience united islanders then and now in a devotion to the preservation of community and heritage on this faraway island.
