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Frequently
Asked Questions:
Can you tell me
a little about the history of Quakers on Nantucket?
The Quaker (Friends) Meeting House on Fair Street was erected circa 1838
by builder James Weeks and originally served as a Friends school for the Wilburite
sect. John Boadle, a Quaker schoolmaster from London, was the teacher, and the
school was called “John Boadle’s School.” In 1864, with the decline
in the number of Friends on Nantucket, the school was converted into a meeting
house and the large South Meeting House next door was sold and removed. The existing
meeting house was purchased from the Friends in 1894 by the Nantucket Historical
Association and served as its first museum.
Quakerism
in America
Quakerism had its roots in England in the 1650s, when George Fox gathered
together a group of “friends” who felt that the spirit of God, or the
“Inner Light,” was within each person and that the worship of God did
not require an intermediary (minister or priest). The Society of Friends, as it
became known, was vehemently persecuted in England and many Friends died in prison.
The first missionaries of the Society of Friends from England arrived in America
in 1656, but only in the colony of Rhode Island were they cordially received.
Quakerism in Massachusetts was a radical departure from mainstream Puritan thought. In addition to their doctrinal differences, the seventeenth-century Friends, unlike the quiet, inward-looking Friends of the eighteenth century, were activists. Refusing to recognize rank, take oaths, or pay any kind of church taxes, they opposed the established church. Massachusetts took the strongest measures to suppress Quakerism, including hanging, and even those who communicated with Quakers were subject to fines. It was not until 1661, when Charles II was restored to the throne and ordered that Quaker trials be transferred to England, that pressure lessened in the Bay Colony. By the 1660s, Quakerism was spreading throughout New England, and Rhode Island elected a member of the society as governor. Even Massachusetts was fairly accepting of the Quakers by the beginning of the eighteenth century.
There does not seem to have been any organized religious group in the Nantucket English community during the seventeenth century. Obed Macy, in his History of Nantucket (1835; reprints 1880 and 1972), remarks that “During the first fifty years after the settlement, the people were mostly Baptists; there were some Presbyterians, a few of the Society of Friends.”
Quakerism
in early Nantucket
The Society of Friends was the first group to formally
organize on the island. This firm commitment was a direct outgrowth of the missionary
visits of Friends from off-island, including Thomas Chalkley, a Quaker missionary-merchant
from Philadelphia, and John Richardson, a well-known English Friend. Between 1704
and 1708, a number of other Friends visited Nantucket from Rhode Island, Long
Island, Philadelphia, and England.
Mary (Coffin) Starbuck (1645–1717) and her husband Nathaniel led the Quaker movement on Nantucket. The Nantucket Meeting was formed in 1708 with Mary serving as an elder and her son Nathaniel Jr. as clerk. The first meetings were held in the Starbuck home, called “Parliament House,” in the original Sherburne settlement at Capaum. [Tradition has it that the house was moved into the Fish Lots at 10 Pine Street, but it is more likely that only materials salvaged from the original house were used.] John Richardson wrote of a meeting at which Mary “Spoke trembling. . . . Then she arose, and I observed that she and as many as could well be seen, were wet with Tears from their Faces to the fore-skirts of their Garments and the floor was as though there was a Shower of Rain upon it.”
In the forty-year period after 1708, the Meeting outgrew a series of meeting houses and expansions. By the late 1750s, the Friends meeting house at the corner of Pleasant and Main Streets served 1,500 persons. In 1762, with the Quaker community having grown to almost 2,400 persons, the much larger Great Meeting House was built at the crossroads of Main Street and Madaket Road.
The Quakers on Nantucket were strong politically and financially; many were involved in the lucrative whaling industry. They were in the majority for most of the eighteenth century, and their devotion to simplicity and strict adherence to traditional ways influenced Nantucket’s architecture, home furnishings, clothing, and social behavior.
Factionalism
in Nantucket Quakerism
The Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were
disastrous for the Society of Friends. Their doctrine of pacifism led them to
read out of meeting dozens who had supported and/or participated in the “American
Cause.” After 1820, Quakerism on Nantucket started to decline rapidly, with
a great decrease in the number of Quakers by the 1840s. Members were read out
of meeting for marrying non-Quakers and for nonattendance. Around 1830, the Hicksite
division had a devastating effect on American Quakerism. The Nantucket Meeting
broke into factions, with older, more orthodox, Quakers unable to accept the changing
times. Three different sects—the Hicksites, the Gurneyites, and the Wilburites—held
separate meetings on the island, thus shattering Quaker unity. By the late 1860s
there were only a few Quakers on the island, and by 1900, it is said, there were
none.
Quakers
Today
Since 1939, members of the Religious Society of Friends have
used the Quaker Meeting House on Fair Street for worship according to the Quaker
manner on Sunday mornings during the summer. Since 2000, a small group has been
meeting there year round. Although under the oversight of the Friends of the New
England Yearly Meeting, the group is without formal organization. Today, the Religious
Society of Friends is one of the recognized Christian denominations with about
120,000 members in the United States and perhaps about 200,000 in all other parts
of the world. Present-day Friends believe that the old Quaker principles and manner
of worship are applicable in modern life.
For further information on current activities of the Nantucket Friends: May to October: 508.257.6101 Off-season: 508.228.1730 Or write to:
Nantucket Friends Meeting
PMB 2
2 Greglen Avenue
Nantucket MA 02554
The Quaker Meeting House has been the property of the Nantucket Historical
Association since 1894.
