The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) is pleased to announce that the 5th Annual NHA History Quiz Bowl will take place on Saturday, March 8, 2014, at 6 P.M. at the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street. This light-hearted competition and community program, now in its fifth year, features teams going head-to-head […]
Nantucket History & People
“One-Third of Our Town Is in Ashes”
Imagine standing on the steps of the Pacific National Bank of Nantucket at the top of Main Street early in the morning on July 14. You look toward the Harbor and see nothing before you but smoking ashes and the brickwork of the Pacific Club Building. To the left, the […]
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 […]
ACK Busters – Island Myths
• by Sarah Teach • One year ago, the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) unleashed the hounds. A team of island historians intent on proving or disproving the island’s collection of myths that have developed over the centuries put their noses to the ground and also into hand-written books older than […]
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 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 […]
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 […]