Quaker Revivals as an Organizing Process In Nantucket, Massachusetts 1698-1708

Quaker Revivals as an Organizing Process In Nantucket, Massachusetts 1698-1708 Alison M. Gavin* This small Island lies about 20 Leagues from the main Land of NewEngland , inhabited by a mixed People of various Notions, and some among them called Christian Indians, but no settled Teachers of any kind: And as poor Hirelings search all Corners for settled Maintenance, several such, from time to time, had made their Attempts upon this People on that Account, but were disappointed.' Many itinerant Friends found the ground prepared for them in colonial America, despite the 17th century laws restricting Quakers. This was true in Nantucket, where "[t]he combination of diversity, radical spiritism, anticlericalism, and tolerance helped precipitate the 'convincement' of . . . islanders."2 Evangelical ministry in Nantucket was remarkable for the impact it had not only on a few inhabitants , but on the entire population. Quaker revivals served as an organizing process that unified a spiritually seeking, politically shaky, economically challenged community. Nantucket is a small island 80 miles southeast of Boston, originally inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Indians. In 1641, the island was deeded to Thomas Mayhew, merchant and Indian missionary, by the agent of William, Earl of Sterling. Mayhew purchased the Indian rights to the island in 1659 and sold it the following year to an association of nine proprietors from the Merrimac Valley. The conditions of the sale agreed upon were "Thirty pounds of currant pay" and "two bever hats one for my self and one for my wife."3 Nantucket fell under the Province of New York in 1664, and in 1692 *Alison M. Gavin is a graduate of Indiana University. Her work in progress is a novel based on the life of Mary Starbuck. 1.Thomas Story, A Journal of the Life of Thomas Story (Newcastle upon Tyne, Eng.: Isaac Thompson and Co., 1747) 350. 2.Edward Byers, The Nation ofNantucket. Society and Politics in an Early American Commercial Center, 1660-1820 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987) 105. Byers's work is the most thorough recent history of the island. 3.Obed Macy, The History ofNantucket, 2nd ed. (Mansfield, MA: Macy and Pratt, 1880. Reprint 1972) 20: Alexander Starbuck, The History ofNantucket , County, Island, and Town (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co. Reprint, 1969) 18. Both of these works are classics. Starbuck's includes correspondence , legal documents, and genealogies. 58Quaker History Parliament transferred control of the island to the Province of Massachusetts. Evidence shows that several of the original proprietors were sympathetic to the cause of religious dissenters, if not dissenters themselves. This would explain why they chose to purchase land in an area beyond the jurisdiction of the General Court of Massachusetts Bay. Harsh laws restricting Quakers, enacted by the Court in 1656 in an attempt to prevent conversions,4 punished sympathizers as well as Quaker visitors and residents. Thomas Macy, the first proprietor to settle with his family on the island in 1658, is considered a sympathizer. Macy, a member of a separatist faction in Salisbury, was fined 13 shillings by the Court in 1658 for permitting Salem Quaker Edward Wharton to stay in his barn during a rainstorm.5 Edward Starbuck, another proprietor, was charged with the "great misdemeanor" of the profession of Anabaptism at Dover in 1648;6 he fled to Nova Scotia before settling in Nantucket in 1660. At least two of the newcomers as well had histories of dissent in Massachusetts Bay. Peter Folger, contracted in 1666 to serve the town as a miller, was a Baptist who left the intolerable conditions of the Bay Colony for Rhode Island in the 1650's. Folger's friend John Gardner counted five Quakers among his immediate family; he paid the court fine when his stepbrother Samuel Shattuck was accused of reviling the Salem magistrates in 1659. Clearly, then, the early settlers of Nantucket included sympathizers , religious dissenters, and non-conformist colonists of Massachusetts Bay. In their fledgling settlement, geographically and politically removed from the General Court, the original proprietors had the opportunity to create a new society. The means through which this society would develop was the religious revival. A revival, in the words of Perry Miller, "jerked men away from . . . preoccupation with what had...