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Arrival & Workways
Nantucket whaleships on outward bound voyages stopped at the Cape Verdean islands of Brava and Fogo to recruit men to their crews. Some of these crewmen came all the way back to Nantucket, settled on-island, and found wives in Nantucket’s African American community. Cape Verdean Michael Douglass, married whaling captain Absalom Boston’s sister Mary in 1811. After 1850 Cape Verdean men continued to go whaling on New Bedford ships, but for nearly fifty years few came to Nantucket. Cape Verdean presence on Nantucket resumed in 1906 when the Burgess Cranberry Company turned Gibbs Swamp on the north side of the Milestone Road into the largest commercial bog in the world. By 1910 over a hundred Cape Verdean men, women, and children were planting and harvesting cranberries there. Cranberry cultivation on Nantucket did not meet expectations, and the number of Cape Verdean workers declined, augmented for a few weeks each autumn by berry pickers who came from the mainland. In the meantime, some Cape Verdean families on Nantucket had found other employment as shellfishermen, gardeners, carpenters, caretakers, cooks, and domestics. |
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