Editing Nantucket (section)

==History==
{{For timeline}}
[[File:Clinton Folgers "Horsemobile".jpg|thumb|250px|Clinton Folger, [[mail carrier]] for Nantucket, towed his car to the state highway for driving to [[Siasconset, Massachusetts|Siasconset]], in observance of an early 20th-century ban on automobiles on town roads.]]
[[File:hsl-Nantucket01-horses and people in street-closeup.jpg|thumb|right|250px|1870s street scene on Nantucket]]

===Etymology===
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.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1 = Laverte
 | first1 = Suzanne
 | last2 = Orr
 | first2 = Tamra
 | title = Massachusetts
 | publisher = Marshall Cavendish
 | year = 2009
 | location = Tarrytown, New York
 | page = 38
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=R5rA_Z7cnXAC&q=Natockete+Nantucket&pg=PA12
 | isbn = 978-0-7614-3005-6 }}
</ref> 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".<ref name=":1" /> Wampanoag is an [[Eastern Algonquian languages|Eastern Algonquian language]] of southern New England.<ref>Huden, John C. (1962). ''Indian Place Names of New England''. New York: Museum of the American Indian. Cited in: Bright, William (2004). ''Native American Place Names in the United States''. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 312</ref> The [[Nehantucket]] (known to Europeans as the Niantic) were an Algonquin-speaking people of the area.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xpx6WoPz7xIC&q=nehantucket&pg=PA31|title=The Indian Tribes of North America|first=John Reed|last=Swanton|date=August 25, 2018|publisher=Genealogical Publishing Com|isbn=9780806317304|via=Google Books}}</ref>

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.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last = Morris
 | first = Paul C.
 | title = Maritime Nantucket: A Pictorial History of the 'Little Grey Lady of the Sea'
 | publisher = Lower Cape Publishers
 | date = July 1, 1996
| page = 272}}
</ref><ref>
{{cite journal| title = 60,000 Summer visitors replace whalers on salty Martha's Vineyard & Nantucket
 | journal = Life Magazine
 | pages = 34–39
 | date = August 9, 1937
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=oUUEAAAAMBAJ&q=Nantucket+grey+lady&pg=PA38
 | access-date = April 8, 2013}}
</ref>

===European colonization===
The earliest European 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 [[Ferdinando Gorges|Sir Ferdinando Gorges]] and the [[William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling|Earl of Stirling]]. Mayhew led several families to settle the region, establishing several treaties with the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|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 Americans in the United States|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|Dukes County]], [[Province of New York|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.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last = Philbrick
 | first =  Nathaniel
 | title = Abram's Eyes: The Native American Legacy of Nantucket Island
 | publisher = Mill Hill Press
 | year = 1998
 | location = Nantucket
 | page = 308
 | isbn = 9780963891082}}
</ref>

===Nantucket settlers===

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 (settler)|Tristram Coffin]], "for the sum of thirty pounds (equal to £{{Inflation|UK|30|1659|fmt=c}} today) also two beaver hats, one for myself, and one for my wife".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Worth|first1=Henry|title=Nantucket Lands and Landowners|date=1901|publisher=Nantucket Historical Association|pages=53–82|edition=Volume 2, Issue 1}}</ref>

The nine original purchasers were Tristram Coffin, Peter Coffin, [[Thomas Macy]], [[Christopher Hussey (died 1686)|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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://nha.org/research/nantucket-history/history-topics/who-were-the-proprietors/|title=Who were the Proprietors?|work=Nantucket Historical Association|access-date=December 9, 2023}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Anderson|first1=Florence|title=A Grandfather for Benjamin Franklin: The True Story of a Nantucket Pioneer and His Mates|date=1940|publisher=Meador|page=183}}</ref> Seamen and tradesmen who settled in Nantucket included Richard Gardner (arrived 1667) and Capt. John Gardner (arrived 1672), sons of [[Thomas Gardner (planter)|Thomas Gardner]].<ref>Gardner, Frank A MD (1907). ''Thomas Gardner Planter and Some of his Descendants''. Salem, MA: Essex Institute. (via [https://books.google.com/books?id=k6hLAAAAMAAJ&dq=thomas+gardner+planter&pg=PA1 Google Books])</ref> 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.<ref name="philbrick2001">{{Cite book|last=Philbrick|first=Nathaniel|title=[[In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex]]|publisher=Penguin|year=2001|isbn=978-1-101-22157-0|location=New York, NY|author-link=Nathaniel Philbrick}}</ref>

[[File:The town of Sherburne in the island of Nantucket (NYPL b12610613-422499).jpg|thumb|300px|right|The town on Nantucket Island, when it was still called Sherburne, in 1775]]

Before 1795, the town on the island was called Sherburne.<ref name="Sherburne">{{cite book|last1=Brookes M.D.|first1=Richard|title=A General Gazetteer ... Illustrated with maps ... The fifteenth edition, with considerable additions and improvements|date=1819|publisher=J.Bumpus|location=London|page=471|edition=15|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=neBhAAAAcAAJ&q=sherburne+massachusets&pg=PR3|access-date=September 20, 2017}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|title=Discover Nantucket|url=http://www.discovernantucket.com/history.php|website=discovernantucket.com|publisher=The Inquirer and Mirror|access-date=September 20, 2017}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gardner|first=Will|title=The Coffin Saga|publisher=Whaling Museum Publications|year=1949|isbn=|location=Nantucket Island, Massachusetts|pages=}}</ref>

===The Wampanoags===
When the English settlers arrived on Nantucket in 1659, the island was populated by Wampanoag [[Native Americans in the United States|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 [[sachem]]s.<ref name=Other>{{cite book|first=Frances Ruley|last=Karttunen|title=The Other Islanders: People who pulled Nantucket's oars|date=2005 |publisher=Spinner Publications, Inc|location=New Bedford, Massachusetts|isbn=0932027938}}</ref>{{rp|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 [[Pound sterling|pounds sterling]], equal to £{{Inflation|UK|66|1659|fmt=c}} today).{{r|Other|p=26-7}}  In 1750 the deeds were upheld by a judge from the [[Massachusetts General Court|General Court of Massachusetts]] in spite of petitions from the Wampanoags claiming that the sachems had not had the authority to sell the land.{{r|Other|p=52}}  The Wampanoags converted to Christianity and took up trades that were useful to the settlers, becoming, for example, carpenters and weavers.{{r|Other|p=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.{{r|Other|p=44-6}} By the 18th century, a system of [[Debt bondage|debt servitude]] was set in place which provided the English settlers with steady access to a pool of Wampanoag labor.<ref>Nathaniel Philbrick, ''In the Heart of the Sea: The Incredible True Story that Inspired Moby-Dick,'' [[HarperCollins|William Collins]] 2000 p.5.</ref>

During the century that followed the arrival of the English 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.{{r|Other|p=45-6,54}} In 1763 the Wampanoag community was struck down by an epidemic of unknown origin, which killed 222 of them while leaving the English community unaffected. Some of the survivors left Nantucket and some married into the small African community on the island.{{r|Other|p=52-4}} Two children, Abram Quary and [[Dorcas Honorable|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.{{r|Other|p=56}}

In 2021, the ''Nantucket Annual Town Meeting'' voted to replace the [[Columbus Day]] holiday with [[Indigenous Peoples' Day (United States)|Indigenous People's Day]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nantucket-ma.gov/2308/Nantucket-Celebrates-Indigenous-Peoples-|title=Nantucket celebrates Indigenous People's Day|publisher=Town & County of Nantucket|access-date=September 5, 2023}}</ref>

===Whaling industry===
{{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.<ref>{{cite book |author= Macy, Obed |title=The History of Nantucket:being a compendious account of the first settlement of the island by the English:together with the rise and progress of the whale fishery, and other historical facts relative to said island and its inhabitants:in two parts |year=1835 |publisher= Hilliard, Gray & Co. |location= Boston |isbn=1-4374-0223-2 }}</ref> 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 the United States|west coast]] of [[North America]] in modern times with protection from whaling.<ref>{{cite journal |last= Van Deinse |first= A. B. |year= 1937 |title=Recent and older finds of the gray whale in the Atlantic |journal= Temminckia |volume= 2 |pages=161–188 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last= Dudley |first= P |year= 1725 |title=An essay upon the natural history of whales |journal= Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London |volume=33 |pages=256–259 |doi=10.1098/rstl.1724.0053|s2cid= 186208376 }}</ref>

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 English Nantucketers—a typical boat's crew had five Wampanoag oarsmen and a single white Nantucketer 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."<ref name="philbrick2001"/>

Nantucket's dependence on trade with Britain, derived from its whaling and supporting industries, [[Nantucket during the American Revolutionary War era|influenced its leading citizens]] to remain neutral during the [[American Revolutionary War]], favoring neither the British nor the Patriots.<ref>
{{Citation
 | last = Hinchman
 | first = Lydia S.
 | title = William Rotch and the Neutrality of Nantucket during the Revolutionary War
 | journal = Bulletin of Friends' Historical Society of Philadelphia
 | volume = 1
 | issue = 2
 | pages = 49–55
 | date = February 1907 | doi = 10.1353/qkh.1907.a399227
 | s2cid = 160684041
 }}</ref>

[[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 [[Captain Ahab|Ahab]] and [[List of Moby-Dick characters#Mates|Starbuck]] are both from Nantucket. The tragedy that inspired Melville to write ''Moby-Dick'' was the final voyage of the Nantucket whaler ''[[Essex (whaleship)|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 {{convert|40|acres|0|abbr=off}}.<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Kelley | first1 = Shawnie | title = It Happened on Cape Cod | publisher = Globe Pequot | year = 2006 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=EuSeEVcASI4C | access-date = November 22, 2011 | isbn = 978-0-7627-3824-3}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q8JvDwAAQBAJ&q=Decline+of+Nantucket+whaling&pg=PA110|title=Inventing New England|last=Brown|first=Donna|date=November 17, 1997|publisher=Smithsonian Institution|isbn=9781560987994|pages=110|language=en}}</ref> 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 States of America|Confederate]] [[commerce raiders]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yBK_6isJSDEC&q=Confederate+destruction+of+Nantucket+whaling+vessels&pg=PA175|title=Global Coastal Change|last=Valiela|first=Ivan|date=March 12, 2009|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=9781444309034|language=en|page = 175}}</ref>

===Later history===
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]].{{citation needed|date=September 2024}}

Nantucket and towns on Martha's Vineyard contemplated seceding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which they considered at various [[town meeting]]s 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]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Massachusetts isles Wave Secession Flag |first=John |last=Kifner |date=April 6, 1977 |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/06/archives/massachusetts-isles-wave-secession-flag.html |access-date=August 22, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |date=April 18, 1977 |title=People, Apr. 18, 1977 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,914917-2,00.html |magazine=Time |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101208151115/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,914917-2,00.html |access-date=October 28, 2020|url-status=dead |archive-date=December 8, 2010 }}</ref>