Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

by Samuel Adams Drake

"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 Massachusetts, 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 illustration 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 passed 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 associates should be such as was then existing in Massachusetts, with the same privileges granted by the patent of that colony. In 1659 Mayhew conveyed to the associates 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, Massachusetts, 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 title 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 Massachusetts, and I presume the same person mentioned by Drake, in his "Founders," as desirous of passing, in 1637, into "fforaigne partes." He is styled Mr. Thomas Mayhew, Gent., a title 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.