Young Helen Marshall (1851–1939) joined her family aboard the 1856–61 voyage of the whaling bark Aurora. Helen’s father, Joseph Marshall of Nantucket, commanded the Aurora, and she and her mother, Malvina, were making the voyage with him.
Helen was born on the island of Faial in the Azores, near the beginning of her father’s previous command. She spent eight of her first nine-and-a-half years aboard whalers with her parents. Returning to Nantucket in 1861, she continued her education on island and at Vassar College.
She made the Grand Tour of Europe in 1876–77 with her friend Ann (Mitchell) Macy, a sister of astronomer Maria Mitchell. Upon her return, Helen taught at Nantucket High School and later at the Norwich Free Academy in Connecticut. She maintained a cottage at ’Sconset in her retirement.
