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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Professionally, Macy was not only a carpenter but also a general contractor, and his grandson describes his method of doing business:His practice was to bargain, to build a house, and finish it in every part, and find the materials. The boards and bricks he bought. The stones he collected on the common land, if they were rocks he would split them. The lime he made by burning shells. The timber he cut here on island. The latter part of his building, when timber was not so easily procured of the right dimensions, he went off-island and felled the trees and hewed the timber to the proper dimensions. The principal part of the frames were of large oak timber, some of which may be seen at the present day. The iron work, the nails excepted, he generally wrought with his own hands. Thus being prepared, he built the house mostly himself.

  If this is to be trusted, it seems that some large oak trees still existed on Nantucket well into the first half of the eighteenth century. By this time, the type of dwelling house had evolved from the very simple and symmetrical “English” style (with only two rooms on either floor) to the lean-to, with rooms added in the back first floor as the roof extended into a long “catslide” in the rear. Initially it was common practice to orient these houses to the south, with the long catslide offering protection against the cold northerly winds of winter. This rather humble and asymmetrical form, which evokes the look of someone hunched against the weather, appealed to the austere sensibilities of the Quakers. Long after the lean-to had gone out of fashion on the mainland, Nantucketers clung tenaciously to the style. As late as the 1790s, Richard Macy’s nephew, yet another Richard Macy, refused to enter his son Job’s new home because it had two stories in the front and rear and no catslide. Such symmetry was viewed as an affront to the lopsided tradition fostered by carpenters such as the first Richard Macy, as well as Elihu Coleman, whose lean-to home (built in 1722) still exists on what is now an impassable section of Hawthorne Lane to the south of Madaket Road.

  The year after Coleman built his home in the “old” section of town, Macy built what would become the most important structure (from a developmental point of view) on Nantucket in the eighteenth century. In 1723 he began construction of Straight Wharf, so called because it extended “straight” out into the harbor from Main Street. Pegging together huge logs that were then weighted down with rocks and sunk deep into the mud, Macy piled layer upon layer of logs and rocks until this sandwiched structure was well above the waterline. He then drove piles around its edges, topped it off with a layer of sand, and Straight Wharf was completed.

  Six years before Macy built his wharf, the town had already begun to reorient itself to the newer, larger harbor, with the Fishlot Division of 1717—a distribution of land that may have been spurred by the filling in of Cappamet Harbor. The Fishlots extended the length of modern-day Fair Street, which acted as an access road to lots on either side. During the same year that Straight Wharf was built, another division of much smaller lots known as the Warehouse lots was made in the vicinity of the wharf.

  The town was now positioned to enter into a whole new level of commercial activity as Macy’s wharf became the place where not only whaling vessels off-loaded their oil but also trading vessels—from “apple merchants” to “wood coasters”—sold their wares. For the first time, Nantucket had what could be properly termed a waterfront, and with it came the necessity of policing what inevitably became the more lawless side of town. The same year the wharf was built the town established a “constable’s watch in the night season, for suppressing disorders” caused by “Indians, Negroes, and other suspected persons,” and “if they shall be found upon the wharf and about town after nine of the clock at night, they shall be taken up and carried before a Justice.”

  But if Richard Macy’s wharf quickly became a focal point of vice, the evil reputation was not enough to prevent the wholesale movement of the town in its direction. Since wood was such a valuable commodity on the island, all the original homes in “old” Sherburne (approximately fifty in number) were either moved in their entirety or cannibalized for their lumber and reconstituted as part of the new town, leaving Elihu Coleman, who had once lived on the eastern edge of town, far to the west of new downtown Nantucket. This giant shellgame was going on throughout the island. To the east, fishing villages in Sesachacha and Peedee would gradually and irresistibly lose most of their houses to Siasconset as it proved the better place for codfishing toward the end of the century.

  Meanwhile back at Wesco, all this movement meant that it was an excellent time to be a carpenter. Besides building houses, Richard Macy also had the income he derived from his wharf, of which he would maintain a substantial interest for the rest of his life. But his innovative building did not stop here. As it became more and more obvious that there were not the waterways required to power a sufficient number of grist and fulling mills and that the one thing there was not a shortage of on Nantucket was wind (statistically, it is one of the windiest places on the East Coast), Macy recognized that what the island needed was a windmill. Unfortunately, he had never even seen one. Given the complexity of the undertaking and his lack of experience with the technology, Richard was on the verge of sending for a millwright when he had an extraordinary experience. According to his grandson, “His mind became so absorbed in the subject that he dreamed how to construct the building in every part. He placed confidence in the dream and conducted the workmen accordingly. It proved a good strong mill.”

  Part Hercules, part intuitive genius, Macy remained “a hard laboring man from his youth to old age.” As his daybook shows, besides houses, wharves, and windmills, he made calashes, coffins, chests, and oaken bedsteads that he banged together with a sledge. He also built whaleboats, an art that he would pass on to his eldest son Zaccheus. Just how closely the Macy family stuck together (Richard and his first wife Deborah had twelve children, seven of whom lived to maturity) is suggested by a court case involving Zaccheus and an Indian by the name of Panjame. According to Zaccheus’s testimony, he had lost a saw his father had given him in 1731 when he was only eighteen years old; now, nine years later, he had discovered that Panjame was in possession of the saw, which had “RM” marked on it, and accused the Indian of stealing it. Zaccheus’s father Richard appeared in court and “made the same attestation,” as did Jabez Bunker, who claimed to have seen the saw “at Panjame’s house.” Although Panjame denied the accusation, he was found guilty, and, as was typical for the time, was sentenced to pay triple damages and court costs.

  Throughout his long life, Richard Macy dealt regularly with the Indians much in the same way that Mary and Nathaniel Starbuck did, but on a smaller scale. With cash difficult to come by not only on Nantucket but throughout colonial America, what has become known as “bookkeeping barter” was the rule. English and Indians alike kept account books in which they recorded their dealings with various individuals. Although Nantucket Court records are filled with cases involving debt disputes among the English and Indians, Richard Macy appears to have taken matters into his own hands when he ran into trouble collecting what was owed to him. Certainly, his impressive physical presence must have facilitated credit negotiations. In 1717 he recorded in his daybook two nearly identical “agreements” between himself and the Indian “young Ephram,” one of which reads: “Ephram having taken money 40 shillings he doth engage to bring the money in two months or to bind his 2 young sons for fishing upon whaleboat till they are of the ages of 21 years. . . .” A tentative circular scratch is recorded as Ephram’s “mark,” while Ruth Pease signed on as a witness. Whether or not Ephram was ultimately forced to sell his “2 young sons” into bondage, four years later in 1721 Macy was still extending credit to “Ephram Indian,” as well as selling him a hat for 18 shillings, all of which Ephram paid off in full through mowing hay, tending corn, and paying Macy over a pound in cash.

  Macy’s daybook is not all about debits and credits. On page twenty-three, the Quaker carpenter recorded the following homily under the title “Certain good”:A good man wa
lks in straight

  parths and is not easily led

  aside into crucked parths

  that leads to theare

  destruction but ceaps his

  mind stidfast apon the Lord.

  And yet this little passage may have had to do with credit after all. Perhaps Richard read this passage to those who owed him money so as to remind them of the unpleasant consequences of following “crucked parths.”

  With interests in Straight Wharf and a mill, not to mention whaling, farming, and sheep-raising, as well as his carpentry business, Richard Macy was positioned to take advantage of Nantucket’s economic growth in the years preceding the Revolution. Throughout this period, he and his brothers and sisters would remain very close, never straying from the tight circle of old Nantucket families that had come to their aid soon after John Macy’s death. This meant that the Macys’ growing influence and wealth remained concentrated within a small group of kin. In the words of Lydia Hinchman, “The Macy family was a close corporation for many years. Up to 1800 very few surnames appear [in the marriage records], excepting such as may be classed among orthodox Nantucket names.” Hinchman’s use of the word “orthodox” is appropriate, for it was within the adopted family of the Friends Meeting that the Macys put together the pieces of a family unit that had been so cruelly disbanded by the death of father John Macy in 1691.

  Richard was a member of the Society of Friends, but his sense of the Inner Light sometimes led him in unusual directions. When his wife Deborah died, Macy—at the age of eighty—decided to marry a woman by the name of Alice Paddock and went to his son Caleb’s house to inform him of his decision. When Caleb objected to the plan on account of his father’s old age, Richard told his son that he misunderstood the reason for his visit. He had not come for advice or support, he had come simply to tell him that he was going to marry Alice Paddock. Perhaps contributing to Caleb’s objections was the fact that Richard had signed a prenuptial agreement with his new fiancée in which he guaranteed her 13 pounds, 6 shillings, and 8 pence “annually upon his decease.”

  Three years later at the age of eighty-three, he apparently made some remarks that his fellow Friends viewed as inappropriate. As was required by the Discipline, he made a public and formal apology, which read: “Through inadvertency and old age at our last monthly meeting, I spoke to recommend that which was contrary to the good order of Friends which hast since been a grief to my mind as well as brought a burthen to my honest Friends on that account, for which I am sorry and desire Friends to pass it by.”

  Then, two years later in 1774, Richard and his wife became very ill, requiring that they move in with Macy’s daughter Judith and her husband Jonathan Bunker. For twenty weeks, both of them were so sick that they required around-the-clock attention. This prompted Richard to enter into an agreement with his son-in-law in which he acknowledged that “through weakness of body and infirmity of old age” he was “now incapable of managing my estate.” Except for his “little new dwelling house and half share of old wharf which I reserve the income thereof to myself,” he handed over the management of and income derived from his now considerable estate to Jonathan Bunker, under the provision that he agree to take care of Richard and his wife.

  Although Macy was no longer the strong, quick-witted man of action he had once been, he was still an inspiration to not only the young Obed, who seems to have been a rapt listener to many of his grandfather’s stories, but also another grandchild, Elihu Bunker, who wrote to him in the final year of Richard’s life. Elihu, the father of two children and living in New York, had recently lost his wife and wrote: “I . . . should be glad at all times to hear that you was [sic] so far favored as your great age and infirm year can afford, but you have lived to see that no age is exempted from that stroke of Death which is great and awful.”

  At the age of ninety years and twenty-two days, Richard Macy, once known as the “strongest man in the county,” died, according to Obed, “in peace with all mankind and in full belief of the Christian religion as professed by the Society of which he was a member.” The youngest son of a father he had scarcely known, he left a lasting impression not only on his island community but also on the memories of his grandchildren.

  CHAPTER 10

  Of God, Indians, and Getting By: The Hireling, Timothy White

  DESPITE ITS QUAKER reputation, Nantucket was not, religiously speaking, a one-horse town in the eighteenth century. About fifteen years after the Friends built their meeting house, the Congregationalists built their own place of worship on a slight rise of ground just to the north of No-Bottom Pond. However, just because they had a meeting house did not mean they were about to pay for a minister.

  Traditions died hard on old Nantucket, particularly if they had to do with religion and money. Nantucket’s Congregationalists were not alone in their determination to avoid the temptations of a “hireling priest.” In 1720 the Boston divine Samuel Danforth mentioned the southeastern communities of “Freetown, Tiverton, Dartmouth and Nantucket” as “frontiers, bordering upon or near to the place where Satan hath his throne,” that were in desperate need of the civilizing influence of a Harvard-educated minister. Two years later, the Boston Congregationalists put their money where their rhetoric was and sent one Nathan Prince to the island. He would last only a year. In a letter to his brother, Prince describes what he is up against. Although Congregationalists outnumber most of the nonconformist sects on the island (including Baptists and Philadelphians), they are still running a very distant second to the Quakers: ’Tis strange how they have increased. Twenty years ago there was scarce one and now there are several hundreds, all proceeded from a woman (one Starbuck) turning Quaker; who being a person of note for wisdom in this place became a preacher and soon converted so many as that they formed themselves into a society and built a meeting house and became the prevailing profession of the island.

  Five years after her death, the island was still possessed by the charismatic ghost of Mary Starbuck.

  Enter a twenty-five-year-old minister by the name of Timothy White.

  In the beginning, this Harvard graduate from Haverhill (deep in the heart of the Merrimack Valley) seems to have been blissfully oblivious to the extent of the challenges he had assumed. For one thing, he had some money in his pocket, provided to him by the Congregationalists in Boston. For another, he was in love.

  In a letter to his sister Abigail, written during his first year on Nantucket in 1725, he explains that he has been “stiffly engaged in courting,” and as a consequence has been “very forgetful of those lesser things,” such as writing letters. This is no solemn and bloodless Puritan but a young man who seems to relish the rumors concerning his romantic attachments: “Whether the reason is, because my company is so very delightsome & charming, or what it is, I can’t tell, but it has been my portion to be honor’d with such suspicions wherever I have yet lived for any time. But if this be not true, I could wish it were, for I am no enemy to proceedings of this nature.”

  Three years later he would marry the seventeen-year-old Susanna Gardner; two years later they were building a house on land given to them by Susanna’s father at the corner of North Liberty and Cliff Road. Behind them was a swamp that abutted the Jethro Coffin House where Timothy and Susanna kept a garden. By that point they had already lost two children in infancy; in 1731 they would finally have a daughter, Susanna, and then, two years later, a son, Timothy. The Whites would ultimately have a total of thirteen children, of whom only six would survive to maturity.

  Even though White had married into one of the more influential Congregational families on the island, it soon became clear that his connections were to no avail when it came to securing a fixed position in the community. Whereas Starbucks and Macys occupied the positions of power among the Quakers, Coffins, Gardners, and Bunkers were the island’s most prominent Congregationalists. Over the years White would add close to 200 members to the church and seems to have been a popular minister. Even so,
the congregation remained steadfast in its refusal to provide White with a steady income.

  In order to support himself and his growing family, White, as so many people have done on this island, was forced to do a little bit of everything. In 1728 he began to preach to the Indians on a monthly basis, his efforts financed, once again, by off-island religious authorities. For the next thirteen years he preached to gatherings of between twelve and eighty Indians at meeting houses in Miacomet, Siasconset, Squam, and Okorwaw, carrying with him a small three-and-a-half by six-inch notebook in which are scribbled the notes to hundreds of sermons.

  He seems to have been a forceful preacher, who was not afraid to speak his mind. In one existing sermon, he scolds his listeners for their behavior during a recent “disturbance”:Is it agreeable to the good government of the family for either the heads or members of it to be from home (especially at the tavern) till eleven or twelve o’clock at night, or one or two in the morning? Is it not offensive to disturb people in their houses in the evening by needless noises, and in the proper hours for rest, beating the drum or firing guns? And how can that be justified which obliges the careful owner to watch till after midnight to prevent his house or substance being destroyed by fire?

  Although this sermon (on a separate sheet of paper) is not dated, making it impossible to determine when as well as where it was delivered, the text suggests that the Congregationalists may have been a little less sedate than their Quaker counterparts.