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

by Nathaniel Philbrick

But even preaching before the English and the Indians was not enough for White to make ends meet. So he established a school. In his memorandum book he kept a strict account of not only attendance but payment by his pupils’ parents. The tuition was in the neighborhood of ten shillings per quarter, and it was not unusual for him to have as many as thirty-four pupils, mostly Coffins, Gardners, Bunkers, Chases, Brocks, Chadwicks, and an occasional Folger. More often than not he was paid in hay, wool, wheat, wood, molasses, cheese, and tallow instead of money.

  Although now burdened with more than his share of the cares of this world, White, who carried a monogrammed ivoryheaded cane, does not seem to have entirely lost his sense of fun and good humor. Among his papers are several fragments of doggerel verse describing the challenges of being a schoolmaster:Scholars being come each from his home, we set all things in order.

  One takes his book with scowling look, to writing goes another.

  To warm the rooms run Nat or Tom and fetch a coal of fire.

  Some take the wood such as is good. Put that stick here, this there.

  Come hither, Jo, your mouth clap to and make the fire blaze.

  At which the boys without much noise, with smiling faces gaze.

  Come, Ben, and read your letters, heed and keep your line with care.

  A school so green I’ve never seen, I solemnly declare.

  With money tight, the students provided their own books:Bibles for spellers, testaments as well as psalters and primers, too,

  Spelling books some, old psalm books one, Pilgrim’s Progress also,

  Tattered and torn letters, old and worn, but few without his mark;

  From where they’re bro’t puzzles my tho’t, unless from Noah’s Ark.

  Soon the strain of being not only a minister to the English and Indians but also a schoolmaster began to catch up with Timothy White. Although the Nantucketers’ refusal to support him financially seems to have been a matter of principle, it was difficult for White not to take it personally. In a letter written in 1731 to Benjamin Colman in Boston he expresses his “great discouragement” and complains of “a numerous company of heretics who are continually plotting against, and will spare no pains to overthrow, the truth.” Colman in turn spoke to the governor of Massachusetts, Jonathan Belcher, who on October 3, 1732, took the extraordinary step of writing directly to George Bunker, a leading member of the Nantucket congregation. The letter provides a fascinating portrait of Timothy White and his dilemma: I understand he has been now about seven years in Nantucket and preached (twice every Lord’s Day) to a congregation of between 200 and 300 souls, among which you are one of the principal, and I find his chief support hitherto has been from private funds, arising out of collections and subscriptions in and about this town [Boston], . . . and although there are about 60 men that attend on his preaching, yet he has been obliged to support himself for more than two years past wholly by his school; and the funds from which he formerly received considerable being now exhausted, he is at present under great discouragement, not seeing how he shall subsist himself and family, but thinks he must be obliged to come away. Upon the representation of these things I sent for him and told him he must by no means think of leaving you. He bears an extraordinary character among the ministers here for a gentleman of good learning and religion, and of great modesty and humility. I, therefore, think that the whole Island, and particularly those that attend him at public worship, have a great blessing in him, and I hope you will think so, and show him your respect and affection by being willing to make him able to live and to do his work among you. . . . Pray, consider seriously of all I have said, and how easy and light a thing it is to maintain a Gospel minister if it pleases God to incline your hearts.

  But the hearts of the Nantucket Congregationalists were not so inclined. For many islanders, the Congregational “Establishment” emanating from Boston represented everything their forefathers had come to Nantucket to escape. Even if their personal religious beliefs were essentially Congregational, they were not about to knuckle under to an off-island authority—particularly if they were going to have to pay for the privilege. But there was another factor in the way of establishing a Congregational ministry on Nantucket, and it had to do with the Indians.

  Congregationalism was not only the Boston way, it was also the Indian way on Nantucket, and English Nantucketers were in no hurry to emulate this “heathen” mode of worship, which predated their own appearance on the island. By the 1730s, the Indians’ situation on the island had degenerated dramatically. The population had plummeted from 1,500 in 1675 to less than half that number as disease and alcoholism took their toll, a process that many of the English helped to accelerate. Obed Macy describes the vicious circle in which so many island Indians found themselves: “Some of the English were so wicked as to . . . trade with them for their baskets, fish, corn, and vegetables and pay them in spirituous liquors and frequently get them in debt and cause them to go a whaling to pay their ‘masters’ as they called them. This kept them in a low degraded state.”

  For the Indians, the last bastion of their cultural identity was the meeting house. These primarily Congregational assemblies provided what one historian has called “a buffer” against the cumulative effects of disease, alcoholism, and debt servitude and were vital to the Indians’ survival as a viable community. English Nantucketers, who had never operated under the watchful eye of a hireling minister, had little sympathy for the Indians’ century-old tradition of Congregational worship. For the English, making money was the true religion, and all other spiritual and cultural needs (especially those of the Indians) took a very distant backseat. Just how destructive the Nantucket whale fishery and its system of debt servitude were to the Indian community is made plain in petition after petition sent to the Massachusetts General Court throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. According to the Indians’ own testimony, when out at sea they are forced to spend “the Sabbath day rowing after whales or killing whales all day long . . . and when we are on land then we have no time to go to the meeting and then we are called to go away again to sea whaling.” The Indian boys who have been brought up by their English masters “take no notice of the Sabbath day”; instead of going to the meeting house, they “go away to see their friends.” With their traditional ways being irrevocably eroded by the whaling interests of the English, the Indians ask how they can be expected to continue on “when our masters lead us to darkness and not in light?” It would prove to be a rhetorical question.

  As Obed Macy so insightfully observed, “all the Indians lacked was encouragement and proper management.” And to a certain extent, Timothy White, who was being paid by the off-island spiritual leaders to inspect the Indians’ religious meetings and schools, attempted to provide this “proper management.” He made conscientious efforts to insure that the four Indian ministers received their duly allotted stipends from Boston. In one letter he expresses genuine concern about the effects of recent cutbacks on the Indian schools: “I am under great discouragements about the Indian schools, and I find the Indians themselves under the like—for as the books fail, so the schools (at best) are so unsteady that they complain of their children’s loafing in the vacant times what they gain when at school.”

  But if White clearly cared about the island’s native people, his ties to the English community meant that he would never become an outspoken advocate of the Indian cause. To illustrate the impossible tightrope act White was forced to perform in his dual role as minister to both the English and Indians, let us look to the example of Cromwell Coffin. White’s memorandum book records the baptisms of several of Coffin’s children; he was apparently an upstanding member of the church and community. The Nantucket Court Records are also filled with Cromwell Coffin’s name, but in these instances it is in connection with an Indian by the name of Abraham Monkey. In October of 1731 Monkey was convicted of stealing “leather and some tools” from Thomas Clark and “two shirts and a pair of stockings” from Wil
liam Smith. Unable to pay triple damages and court costs (while also suffering a whipping of “15 stripes”), Monkey was sentenced to serve on a whaler until he had paid off the debt. Then in February of the following year, he once again ran into trouble for stealing “a great coat, a gun lock, some shot, and a shirt” from Tabor Morton. It was then that Cromwell Coffin entered his life, offering to pay “for him and let him at liberty” if Monkey agreed to add three years to his debt servitude on Nantucket whalers. In October, Coffin and Monkey were back in court:Abraham Monkey being brought into court by his master Cromwell Coffin and it appearing to this court that his master hath paid for him twenty pounds for sundry thefts committed by the said Abraham, it is therefore ordered by the court that the said Abraham shall serve the said Cromwell Coffin or his assigns three years and six months after his former time is expired.

  Suffice it to say that the future of Cromwell Coffin’s investment was assured.

  If Timothy White was to attend to the spiritual needs of the island’s Indians (without losing all hope of English financial support), he would have to do it in such a way that did not alienate the likes of Cromwell Coffin, whose business interests were so intimately involved in Indian debt servitude. This meant that while White might give the Indians (in Macy’s words) “encouragement,” he was not about to question what constituted their “proper management” by the English. As a consequence, he never seems to have rocked the boat when it came to Native American–English relations on Nantucket, and at least some of the Indians’ own religious leaders were less than pleased with him. In 1733, five years after he had begun preaching to the Indians, White was issued a certificate from Boston addressed “to the ministers of the several Indian Congregations of the island of Nantucket,” reminding them that the Commissioners had appointed “Rev. Mr. Timothy White to preach lectures to you, to oversee, counsel & advise you from time to time as occasion shall require, and to inspect the schools and churches and to catechize the children & such as are proper for it, & you & all concerned are to pay a proper regard to him accordingly.”

  Rather than become a whistle-blower, White chose to become a player in the Nantucket economy, using his knowledge of the Native American community to help English “masters” get the most out of their Indians. In 1747, Bellamy Bosworth of Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard, wrote to White, requesting him to settle his account with a Nantucket shipowner concerning his “two Indians’ voyages” and then added, “I also desire you to write to me what you think to do with my Indians: and when you want them I hope you will send orders for them, or order who you please to come for them. I can fit them out in part, the rest you must supply them with.” If White was sympathetic to the Native Americans’ plight, it did not keep him from making a much needed dollar in the business of Indian debt servitude.

  During White’s tenure on the island, the Indians’ frustrations apparently reached the breaking point. The whale fishery was not the only threat to their way of life. They were also running out of land. Numerous complaints were filed with the General Court describing how the English had obtained land deeds from Indians who did not have the proper authority. The English also abused their grazing rights on what little land the Indians still possessed, making it difficult for them to grow their crops. Unable to get any satisfaction from the court system, the Indians may have hatched a plan to retake the island by force. In the Boston News-Letter of October 5, 1738, is a report that an Indian friendly to the English had disclosed a plot to attack the English settlement. According to Obed Macy:Intimation was . . . given to the whites, that the Indians had entered into a conspiracy to rise upon them, on a certain night, and to massacre men, women, and children. At the appointed time, agreeably with the information, the high sheriff, with fifty well armed men, issued out of the town to reconnoiter the settlements of the natives, and ascertain whether they were making any hostile movements. They found all quiet; it was harvest time, and the Indians were merrily husking their corn.

  The Boston News-Letter report makes it clear that the fears of the English remained high, however, especially since their whalers contained such a large percentage of Indian crew members. Timothy White was certainly no Peter Folger, ready to leap into the fray when Indian-English relations reached a flash point. As much a part of the problem as he was a potential solution to it, White could do little more than watch the sad and slow decline of a people whose spiritual life had become a casualty of the English community’s remorseless pursuit of worldly success.

  As the years dragged on and his family increased—while funds from Boston and his Nantucket congregation, if anything, decreased—White inevitably looked to other sources of income. The whale fishery was not, by any means, the only way people made money on Nantucket. By this time, the island had become the focal point of a vast “coasting trade” along the eastern seaboard, while also establishing a direct and profitable link with London. Crèvecoeur described the extent of the island’s commercial ties in the 1770s:[T]hey are well acquainted with the cheapest method of procuring lumber from Kennebec River, Penobscot, etc.; pitch and tar from North Carolina; flour and biscuit from Philadelphia; beef and pork from Connecticut. They know how to exchange their cod-fish and West Indian produce for those articles which they are continually either bringing to their island or sending off to other places where they are wanted.

  White started out slowly, initially acting as an agent for goods provided by family and friends in Haverhill. In 1733 he received five barrels of cider from a Mr. Brown, which after selling to a Gardner and three Coffins, gave him “neat proceeds” of close to five pounds, with which he purchased wool and fish that he then shipped back to Brown. He also sold books, such as almanacs and bibles, to the parents of his pupils. Then, in 1745, he made the plunge, purchasing an eighth interest in the “good sloop Susanna [also the name of his wife], burthen about fifty-six tons, now out on a whaling voyage.” In a letter written during the following year, he describes the vessel as “an excellent seaboat . . . but dull upon a wind,” while outlining plans to outfit her for the London trade.

  As White’s mercantile interests expanded, he became increasingly disaffected with his ministerial efforts on Nantucket. By 1749, he seems to have determined that he must soon leave. The powersthat-be back in Boston did their best to convince him to carry on:We are sensible, indeed, your services among them have been attended with many peculiar difficulties; and that you have been but poorly requited by man for your laborious endeavors to serve the Kingdom and interest of our Lord Jesus Christ in the place where you are. But remember, Dear Brother, we serve a good Master, who will one day richly reward the little he enables us to do in his service.

  And as you have been long acquainted with that people, and, we hope, have a great interest in the affections of many of them, we can’t but fear your leaving them in their present state will greatly disserve the cause of Christ in his holy religion, which we trust are exceeding dear to you.

  The following year, Timothy White left Nantucket. After serving a brief stint in Narragansett, where once again he failed to secure an established ministry, he was back in his hometown of Haverhill. He still owned part of the Susanna but complained that “being about 150 miles from Nantucket I can but seldom get any intelligence from thence of the managements of my partners.” Increasingly he looked to exploit the benefits of living on the Merrimack River, “where we abound with the best of Plank & Ship timber” as well as staves, clapboards, and shingles that he might trade in London for woolens, linens, gloves, soft pewter, nails, cutlery, and other items.

  On September 13, 1755, he wrote the letter with which he broke his final tie with the ungrateful congregation back on Nantucket. Writing to the commissioners in Boston, he recounts how in 1732 Reverend Colman sent him a set of “Baxter’s Works” for both himself and the trustees of his congregation. Now that he has left the island, and there being “neither minister nor trustee” on Nantucket, he wants to know if he is justified in keeping the books, exp
laining: “Inasmuch as I supplied that pulpit for more than eighteen years after they were put in my hands, & during this term of years lived chiefly upon my own means, I am justified in accounting them my own.” Certainly, the Boston Congregationalists would have found it difficult to disagree.

  In 1763, thirteen years after White’s departure from Nantucket, a “yellow fever” killed 222 out of 358 island Indians, thus reducing at a stroke the vitality of the strongest rival of Nantucket’s white Congregational community. Four years later, in 1767 (two years after the death of Timothy White in Haverhill), the Nantucketers at last decided to foot the bill for an established minister. With the Indians wiped out (and with them, their churches), English Congregationalists were finally willing to put their own religious house in order.

  CHAPTER 11

  Peleg Folger, the Poet Whaleman

  IN MOBY-DICK Ishmael claims that “a whaleship was my Yale College and my Harvard.” Nantucket’s real-life counterpart to Ishmael was Peleg (pronounced “PILL-ick ”) Folger who, after growing up as a farmer on Nantucket, went to sea at seventeen. It was then, in the year 1751, that the primarily self-taught Peleg began keeping a log. On the very first page of his journal it becomes obvious that this is an exceptional document from an exceptional individual:Many people who keep journals at sea, fill them up with some trifles or others; for my part, I propose in the following sheets, not to keep an over strict history of every trifling occurrence that happened; only now and then of some particular affair; and to fill up the rest with subjects wither mathematical, theological, historical, philosophical, or poetical, or anything else that best suits mine inclinations. . . .