Lydia Barney's Poem,
"O Spare Us Our Sconset," 1841

Lydia Barney wrote her poem after the gale of October 3,1841, a storm described by historian Alexander Starbuck as "doubtless the severest gale recorded in the history of the island," when several houses on the east side of Front Street fell down the bank and into the sea; the area later known as Codfish Park did not yet exist. Set to the tune of the 1811 air Scotch Bonnie, Barney's poem was undoubtedly a hit time; ninety-two-year-old Mary B. Plaskett recorded the music and lyrics from memory in 1906. Local genealogies list a dozen women named Lydia Barney, but only two are real possibilities for the poet Lydia (1794-1855), daughter of Matthew Barney and Abigail Macy; or Lydia (1818-90), daughter of William Barney and Sarah Joy. The first Lydia—whose father, a poet in his own right, owned Ivy Lodge on Shell Street— never married; the younger Lydia married whaling captain Oliver Spencer in 1851.

A digital exhibition by the Nantucket Historical Association