The Growth of a Fishing Village: Early History to 1820

The prehistory of Siasconset, when the Indians of the island were the sole human inhabitants, offers scant record of settlement at Siasconset, the Algonquian word meaning "the place of great bones." The area was under the control of Wanackmamack, Wampanoag sachem of the southeastern sector of the island; his people would certainly have combed the beaches for drift whales and other gifts from the sea, but Siasconset had little further appeal in those days.

Architectural historian Henry Chandlee Forman states that fishing and whaling stations at Siasconset and Sesachacha "seem to have commenced their careers as English fishing stages independent of Indian settlement," assigning a date of circa 1676 to the whaling station at Siasconset Bank; the Sesachacha, or Quidnet, station was the largest whaling station on the Atlantic shore, a hamlet of thirty fishing huts at that time.

The great bones that pinpointed 'Sconset's location were whale bones; the early whale station at the center of the fledgling village consisted of a few small houses on either side of a lookout platform. Although the island's other whaling stations became obsolete, the 'Sconset site survived as the primary fishing spot, the "stew-pond" of the island. The old whaling-lookout platform was used decades later for other purposes—to discern ships on the horizon, to spot schools offish, or to observe the seemingly infinite ocean.

J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur wrote a description of Siasconset in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782). He found a fishing shack occupied by a family with numerous children—the only residence with inhabitants. The family lived by fishing alone. Their house "had been built on the ruins of one of the ancient huts erected by the first settlers for observing the appearance of the whales." Other visitors over the next two decades describe much the same thing: a small cluster of fishing shacks with seasonal occupants and very little else.

Joseph Sansom presents a similar description of a slightly larger village in 1811, which consisted of "forty houses, or rather huts, of one story, standing apart, in four rows, leaving three broad lanes between them, which are covered with a fine sward of grass, the place being only resorted to spring and fall; when the bank is crowded with women and children, and 20 or 30 boats are sometimes seen offshore at a time, catching cod.... Now two or three widowed families make a living by entertaining strangers, and if they want fish they pay for it."

The War of 1812 brought extreme hardship and deprivation to Nantucket—all maritime commerce, including whaling, came to a standstill as British cruisers and privateers patrolled the surrounding waters. The limited agriculture of the island could not provide sustenance for a population that had grown to nearly 7,000 inhabitants, and supplies could not be procured from the mainland. Fishing became a necessity, and the village of 'Sconset expanded to accommodate the demand. According to Edward F. Underhill — who interviewed the oldest residents of 'Sconset in the 1880s and published several historical accounts of the village — new fishing houses were built in 1814 and houses were moved from Quidnet to Siasconset, increasing the size of the enclave to around fifty houses.

A digital exhibition by the Nantucket Historical Association