Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford
(1829-1921)

Universalist minister, author, and women's rights activist, Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford was one of Nantucket's best-known women during her lifetime, gaining national recognition for her pastoral, political, and literary achievements. Born in 1829 to George W. Coffin and his first wife, Phebe Ann Barnard, Phebe Ann Coffin was left motherless less than a month later. Her father, a mariner, married his second wife, Emeline Barnard, six months later, and over the next two decades their family increased with seven more children. The often-repeated statement that Phebe Ann Coffin was born in 'Sconset was refuted in print by Phebe, in her book Heart of Siasconset, in which she makes it clear that she was born in town.

A precocious child, Phebe was fond of memorizing and reciting poetry when barely more than a toddler; and stories are told of her childhood orations from the top of Brant Point Lighthouse. She studied at island schools, both private and public, and taught school in 'Sconset when she was sixteen. At the age of twenty she married Joseph Hanaford, a homeopathic physician and teacher who was for a time principal of the North Grammar School in town, before the couple moved off the island. Phebe, who came from a long line of Quakers, turned to Universalism in the 1860s, and in 1865, when she was thirty-six and her two children were teenagers, Phebe preached her first sermon - in 'Sconset, probably at the schoolhouse. Ordained in 1868, Phebe's ministry took her first to Waltham, Massachusetts; then New Haven, Connecticut; and later Jersey City, but her heart was in 'Sconset, and she returned to visit her parents as often as she could.

Phebe wrote more than a dozen books, including the true story, Captive Boy of Tierra del Fuego which recounts the 1854 shipwreck of the Manchester, and the survival of Thomas E. Coffin—one of her 'Sconset students—and his ordeal among the "savages" who lived at the tip of South America. Her lighter tale, Heart of Siasconset, published in 1890, recounts the summer visit of sisters Jean and Helen, and their friend N. M. (native member; Phebe herself).The trio stays at "Coffyn Cottage" with Phebe's elderly parents, and through the description of their activities Phebe presents an homage to her second home, including a chapter on the dedication of the Siasconset Union Chapel in 1883, and a copy of the address she delivered on that occasion.

Phebe Hanaford
P453

Read "A Paper Trail: Piecing Together the Life of Phebe Hanaford" by Lisa M. Tetrault, from the Historic Nantucket

A digital exhibition by the Nantucket Historical Association