People & Our Past
Discover an island steeped in history and home to a host of fascinating people from all walks of life.
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Nature’s Nobleman
As the years turned his famous rescue into a story, a memory, Walter Chase took a room in a house owned by Mary Nye at 14 Hussey St. Chase’s grandfather was Owen Chase of the ill-fated whaleship Essex....
read moreWalking on History
It was a sunny Thursday morning when Mary Bergman walked on the uneven sidewalk along upper Main Street toward the Civil War monument. As the surface changed from brick to slate to brick again, she pointed...
read moreStraight Wharf’s Tim Farley
Tim Farley has been behind the bar at Straight Wharf Restaurant for 13 seasons. What started as a summer job turned into a career, and for Farley it’s much more than just making drinks. It’s about...
read moreInside the Collection
When you walk through the Nantucket Whaling Museum past stoic portraits of whaling captains, harpoons, the skeleton of the sperm whale that hangs above Gosnell Hall, up the steps across from the clock’s...
read moreTake Me Out to the Ball Game
The game was introduced in the 1840s and 1850s, those years before the Civil War. But the seeds of baseball were planted during that war, blossoming when soldiers on both sides returned to their small...
read moreThe Questions: Sam Slosek
The 23 acres of farmland off Polpis Road have been in Sam Slosek’s family since 1954, when his grandfather, Stan Slosek, bought the property and started a dairy operation called Moors End farm. By the time...
read more“A Thousand Leagues of Blue”
The captain is drunk. His mistress is on the ship. He is ferrying passengers from island to island in the South Pacific, not paying any attention to the whales he’s sailed thousands of miles to hunt.
...read moreThe Battle for the Bluff
The 30-year battle with erosion on the Sconset Bluff has become more than about finding a workable and acceptable engineering solution to save the houses along Baxter Road from falling into the sea, as...
read moreThe Pandemic of 1918
The epidemic hit the island like a thundering wave. Everybody knew what was happening on the mainland. The now-iconic photos were simply the news of the day then: New York City cops wearing surgical masks,...
read moreThe Skipper Restaurant
“I remember the huge winch that was at the bow, and the graceful curve of her deck and bulwarks. Even at a young age I could appreciate the magnifi- cent view across the Easy Street Basin, and of course no...
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