Nantucket History & People

Nantucket History & People

Surfside’s Ocean View

• by Frances Ruley Karttunen • Surfside is a product of Nantucket’s search for a new way to make money in the latter half of the 1800s. After the Great Fire of 1846, Nantucket experienced a swift decline from its former prosperity.  Whales were growing ever scarcer and voyages to […]

Nantucket Indians
Nantucket History & People

Nantucket’s Last Indian?

• by Frances Ruley Karttunen • Entering or leaving the Nantucket Atheneum, visitors come face-to-face with the portrait of an aging man sitting barefoot at a table in his modest house, surrounded by baskets and his household goods. His back is to a window through which there is a view […]

Nantucket Town Crier
Nantucket History & People

Nantucket Criers

• by Frances Ruley Karttunen – author of Nantucket Places and People series • For three decades Town Crier Curtis Barnes walked up Main Street ringing in Daffodil Weekend, the Fourth of July, the lighting of Christmas trees on Main Street, and Christmas Stroll.  His English Air Raid Patrol hand […]

Foggy Facts and Fiction on Nantucket
Nantucket History & People

Nantucket Legends: Foggy Facts and Fictions

The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) is pleased to present Nantucket Legends: Foggy Facts and Fictions, the major 2013 exhibition examining some of the most curious stories of Nantucket’s past. Legends such as the first Nantucket Tea Party, R. H. Macy’s red star tattoo, Tony Sarg’s sea serpent hoax, the origin […]

Nantucket History & People

Newtown Cemetery

by Frances Karttunen Newtown Cemetery, also known as the Old South Cemetery, faces Sparks Avenue and is bounded on the west and south by school property. When it was designated as a burial ground in the 1700s, however, it was on the extreme south edge of town, surrounded by empty […]