Susan
Emma Brock (1852-1937)
Susan Emma Brock traveled as a child aboard the clipper Midnight,
her father, Captain George H. Brock, master, around the Horn to San
Francisco. According to her journal, the captain took his daughter
on deck in a driving snow squall and pointed out to a reach of land
covered with ice: "Now look hard and try to remember what you
see, for there are not many little girls who ever see Cape Horn."
Susan served as the NHA's first curator, from 1894 to 1928, and donated
many valuable artifacts that had been acquired during her father's
extensive travels. She was a multitalented autodidact, active in numerous
island organizations, including the Unitarian Sewing Society, the
Mozart Club (she played a Cremona violin), the Botany Society, and
serving as organist at the Unitarian Church. Susan Brock lived at
14 Fair Street, across the street from the Quaker Meeting House and
Fair Street Museum, where she worked as curator.
The
embroidered narrative shows the Quaker Meeting House and Fair Street
Museum; the Unitarian Church, the church's Goodrich organ, and Brock's
Cremona violin. The image of the clipper ship Midnight surrounded
by playful sperm whales derives from a passage in her journal that
quotes the old whalemen aboard as saying, "The huge creatures
must have had an uncanny sense of the harmless character of our ship,
for they were never known to venture so near and fearlessly around
a whaleship."
