[edit]
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Nantucket.
Clinton Folger, mail carrier for Nantucket, towed his car to the state highway for driving to Siasconset, in observance of an early 20th-century ban on automobiles on town roads.
1870s street scene on Nantucket
Etymology[edit]
Nantucket probably takes its name from a Wampanoag word, transliterated variously as natocke, nantaticu, nantican, nautica or natockete, which is part of Wampanoag lore about the creation of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The meaning of the term is uncertain, although according to the Encyclopædia Britannica it may have meant "far away island" or "sandy, sterile soil tempting no one". Wampanoag is an Eastern Algonquian language of southern New England. The Nehantucket (known to Europeans as the Niantic) were an Algonquin-speaking people of the area.
Nantucket's nickname, "The Little Grey Lady of the Sea", refers to the island as it appears from the ocean when it is fog-bound.
European colonization[edit]
The earliest European colonial settlement in the region was established on the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard by the English-born merchant Thomas Mayhew. In 1641, Mayhew secured Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the Elizabeth Islands, and other islands in the region as a proprietary colony from Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Earl of Stirling. Mayhew led several families to settle the region, establishing several treaties with the indigenous inhabitants of Nantucket, the Wampanoag people. These treaties helped prevent the region from becoming embroiled in King Philip's War. The growing population of settlers welcomed seasonal groups of other Native American tribes who traveled to the island to fish and later harvest whales that washed up on shore. Nantucket was officially part of Dukes County, New York, until October 17, 1691, when the charter for the newly formed Province of Massachusetts Bay was signed. Following the arrival of the new Royal Governor on May 14, 1692, to effectuate the new government, Nantucket County was partitioned from Dukes County, Massachusetts in 1695.
Nantucket settlers[edit]
European settlement of Nantucket did not begin in earnest until 1659, when Thomas Mayhew sold nine-tenths of his interest to a group of investors, led by Tristram Coffin, "for the sum of thirty pounds (equal to £4,912 today) also two beaver hats, one for myself, and one for my wife".
The nine original purchasers were Tristram Coffin, Peter Coffin, Thomas Macy (an ancestor of William H. Macy), Christopher Hussey, Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Stephen Greenleaf, John Swain and William Pile. Mayhew and the nine purchasers then each took on partners in the venture. These additional shareholders were Tristram Coffin Junior, James Coffin, John Smith, Robert Pike, Thomas Look, Robert Barnard, Edward Starbuck, Thomas Coleman, John Bishop and Thomas Mayhew Junior. These twenty men and their heirs were the Proprietors.
Anxious to add to their number and to induce tradesmen to come to the island, the total number of shares was increased to twenty-seven. The original purchasers needed the assistance of tradesmen who were skilled in the arts of weaving, milling, building and other pursuits and selected men who were given half a share provided that they lived on Nantucket and carried on their trade for at least three years. By 1667, twenty-seven shares had been divided among 31 owners. Seamen and tradesmen who settled in Nantucket included Richard Gardner (arrived 1667) and Capt. John Gardner (arrived 1672), sons of Thomas Gardner. The first settlers focused on farming and raising sheep, but overgrazing and the growing number of farms made these activities untenable, and the islanders soon began turning to the sea for a living.
Sherburne[edit]
The town on Nantucket Island, when it was still called Sherburne, in 1775
Before 1795, the town on the island was called Sherburne. The original settlement was near Capaum Pond. At that time, the pond was a small harbor whose entrance silted up, forcing the settlers to dismantle their houses and move them northeast by two miles to the present location. On June 8, 1795, the bill proposed by Micajah Coffin to change the town's name to the "Town of Nantucket" was endorsed and signed by Governor Samuel Adams to officially change the town name.
New Guinea[edit]
The early settlers brought enslaved African Americans to Nantucket. Although slavery was not abolished on the island until 1773, earlier in the century freed African Americans established a neighbourhood called New Guinea (later Newtown) on the south-west outskirts of the main town, near the windmills on Mill Hill. The community thrived during the 18th and 19th centuries, with shops, churches, a school and a dance hall as well as houses. The building on the corner of York and Pleasant Streets, founded in 1824 as a school, church and meeting-house, was acquired by the Museum of African American History in 1999. During the nineteenth century, Nantucket, which by this time was predominantly Quaker and supported the abolition of slavery, became part of the Underground Railroad, providing sanctuary to African Americans escaping slavery on the mainland. New Guinea was also home to Hawaiian Islanders who worked on the Nantucket whaleships, and to Wampanoags who had married into the African American community.
The Wampanoags[edit]
When English settlers arrived on Nantucket in 1659, the island was populated by Wampanoag Native Americans, one of the Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who had been living there for thousands of years. As many as three thousand people lived on the island in groups governed by sachems.: 17, 21  Within two years of their arrival, the settlers had persuaded two of the sachems, Wanackmamack and Nickanoose, to relinquish their rights to the island in exchange for 66 pounds sterling, equal to £10,805 today).: 26-7  In 1750 the deeds were upheld by a judge from the General Court of Massachusetts in spite of petitions from the Wampanoags claiming that the sachems had not had the authority to sell the land.: 52  The Wampanoags converted to Christianity and took up trades that were useful to the settlers, becoming, for example, carpenters and weavers.: 40  When the whaling industry developed on Nantucket in the 18th century, Wampanoag men went to sea and often made up half or more of the crew of the whaling ships.: 44-6  By the beginning of the 18th century, a system of debt bondage had been implemented to provide local colonists with steady access to a pool of Wampanoag labor.
During the century that followed the arrival of the settlers, the Wampanoag community did not thrive, and by 1763 they numbered only 358 people. Various factors contributed to this decline, including the destruction of the ecosystem that had sustained them, the disadvantages they faced in competing in the developing money economy, losses at sea, and the detrimental effect of rum on their health.: 45-6,54  In 1763 the Wampanoag community was struck down by an epidemic of unknown origin, which killed 222 of them while leaving local colonists unaffected. Some of the survivors left Nantucket and some married into the small African community on the island.: 52-4  Two children, Abram Quary and Dorcas Esop, who were born after the epidemic and lived until 1854 and 1855, have been acknowledged as Nantucket's last Native Americans. Wampanoags from Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod have since then lived on Nantucket.: 56 
In 2021, the Nantucket Annual Town Meeting voted to replace the Columbus Day holiday with Indigenous People's Day.
Whaling industry[edit]
See also: Whaling in the United States
In his 1835 history of Nantucket Island, Obed Macy wrote that in the early pre-1672 colony, a whale of the kind called "scragg" entered the harbor and was pursued and killed by the settlers. This event started the Nantucket whaling industry. A. B. Van Deinse points out that the "scrag whale", described by P. Dudley in 1725 as one of the species hunted by early New England whalers, was almost certainly the gray whale, which has flourished on the west coast of North America in modern times with protection from whaling.
At the beginning of the 18th century, whaling on Nantucket was usually done from small boats launched from the island's shores, which would tow killed whales to be processed on the beach. These boats were only about seven meters long, with mostly Wampanoag manpower, sourced from a system of debt servitude established by local colonists—a typical boat's crew had five Wampanoag oarsmen and a single white man at the steering oar. Author Nathaniel Philbrick notes that "without the native population, which outnumbered the white population well into the 1720s, the island would never have become a successful whaling port."
Nantucket's dependence on trade with Britain, derived from its whaling and supporting industries, influenced its leading citizens to remain neutral during the American Revolutionary War, favoring neither the British nor the Patriots.
Herman Melville commented on Nantucket's whaling dominance in his novel Moby-Dick, Chapter 14: "Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires". The Moby-Dick characters Ahab and Starbuck are both from Nantucket. The tragedy that inspired Melville to write Moby-Dick was the final voyage of the Nantucket whaler Essex.
The island suffered great economic hardships, worsened by the "Great Fire" of July 13, 1846, that, fueled by whale oil and lumber, devastated the main town, burning some 40 acres (16 hectares). The fire left hundreds homeless and poverty-stricken, and many people left the island.
By 1850, whaling was in decline, as Nantucket's whaling industry had been surpassed by that of New Bedford. Another contributor to the decline was the silting up of the harbor, which prevented large whaling ships from entering and leaving the port, unlike New Bedford, which still owned a deep water port. In addition, the development of railroads made mainland whaling ports, such as New Bedford, more attractive because of the ease of transshipment of whale oil onto trains, an advantage unavailable to an island. The onset of the California Gold Rush in 1849 further lured many of Nantucket's workers from whaling, as many islanders abandoned whaling in pursuit of opportunities in the West. The American Civil War dealt the death blow to the island's whaling industry, as virtually all of the remaining whaling vessels were destroyed by Confederate commerce raiders.
Later history[edit]
As a result of this depopulation, the island was left under-developed and isolated until the mid-20th century. Isolation from the mainland kept many of the pre-Civil War buildings intact and, by the 1950s, enterprising developers began buying up large sections of the island and restoring them to create an upmarket destination for wealthy people in the Northeastern United States.
Nantucket and towns on Martha's Vineyard contemplated seceding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which they considered at various town meetings in 1977, unsuccessfully. The votes were sparked by a proposed change to the Massachusetts Constitution that would have reduced the size of the state's House of Representatives from 240 to 160 members and would therefore reduce the islands' representation in the Massachusetts General Court.
