• 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 […]
Tag: Nantucket History
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 […]
Gray Seal Population: Plague or Pleasure?
• by Sarah Teach • For many Americans, seals are little more than a childhood memory of a visit to the zoo. But for residents of Nantucket Island, the blubbery marine mammals are quickly becoming a topic of discussion saved only for trusted company. At the core of a growing […]
Art & History Meet
On Friday, May 24, from 5 to 7 pm, the Artists Association of Nantucket and the Nantucket Historical Association will celebrate the opening of John Austin: One Artist’s Nantucket. This collaborative exhibition will be held in the Whitney Gallery at the NHA Research Library, 7 Fair Street, and features works […]
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 […]
Water, Water Everywhere
Wannacomet Water Company by Sarah Teach Wherever you are on Nantucket, you know you can quickly reach water. And that’s one reason we all love Nantucket. We swim in it; we sail through it; we breathe in its salty scent, thick with the promise of life. But we cannot drink […]
Gimme Shelter – Asylum on Nantucket
by Frances Karttunen On the left side of Orange Street as one proceeds outbound toward the edge of town stands the Landmark House. Now housing an assisted living community, it was previously Our Island Home. Before the prominent old building was Our Island Home, it had been Nantucket’s Town and […]