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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Vol 49, no. 4 (Fall 2000), p. 11-14
"A genuine relic of old Nantucket":
Eliza Ann McCleave's Museum
by
Aimee E. Newell
A MEMOIR BY FELLOW NANTUCKETER Deborah Coffin (Hussey) Adams (1848-1936) remembers Mrs. Eliza Ann McCleave (1811-95) as a "stout handsome woman" who "gathered together . . . the curios brought by [her husband] from foreign lands and charged a small admission for exhibiting them. To hear her explain them and the way in which they were collected was a treat not to be missed." Although Eliza Ann McCleave's life did not overlap significandy with the Nantucket Historical Association, the success of her museum must have inspired many of the association's founders.
Eliza Ann Chase was born on July 12, 1811, along with her twin sister, Phebe Ann (1811-80), to Job and Ruth (Macy) Chase. Eliza Ann and Phebe Ann were the youngest in a family of six daughters, so Eliza Ann was introduced to Nantucket's tradition of female independence at an early age. The business opportunities afforded Nantucket women due to the dominance of the island's whaling industry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, compared to their mainland counterparts, are well documented. As early as 1780, one Nantucket visitor remarked on the unusual status of island women, "As the sea excursions are often very long, [the whalemen's] wives in their absence are necessarily obliged to transact business, to settle accounts, and in short, to rule and provide for their families. These circumstances being often repeated, give women the abilities as well as a taste for that kind of superin-tendency, to which, by their prudence and good management, they seem to be in general very equal."
By the mid-nineteenth century so many Centre Street shops were owned and run by Nantucket women that one section of the street was called "Petticoat Row." Other women worked as school-teachers to support themselves and their families while husbands and fathers went whaling. In keeping with island tradition, Eliza Ann McCleave found a unique way to earn some extra money: she converted a room of her home at 109 Main Street into a museum, complete with benches and a daily "lecture," during which she described many of the artifacts in her collection, often in verse.
Unfortunately, litde documentation exists to assert when McCleave first opened her museum, or why she decided to take on such a public role. What is known is that her collection of artifacts, many brought home from the islands of the South Pacific by her husband, and supplemented with natural specimens and Nantucket knick-knacks given to her by friends and visitors, began to grow during the 1840s.
Eliza Ann married Robert McCleave (1809-78), the son of Joseph and SalJy (Chase) McCleave, in 1829. Robert was the fourth of eight siblings, with two sisters and five brothers, several of whom also pursued whaling careers. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, Robert sailed on his first whaling voyage, aboard the ship Loper under the command of Captain Obed Starbuck, to the Pacific Ocean. After a subsequent voyage on board the same ship from 1827 to 1829, McCleave made his first step up the ladder of the whaling hierarchy.
In 1829, after marrying Eliza Ann, Robert signed onto the ship Rambler as third mate. Over the next eighteen years he would serve on five voyages of this ship, eventually rising through the ranks to become captain of the vessel in 1835. Not surprisingly, these dates coincide with the beginning of Eliza Ann's collecting activities. The earliest date in Eliza Ann's handwritten 1869 inventory of her collection reads, "A nest of Baskets of five, in one, made from the Straw which grew at St. Catharin's S.M. and were made by the Inmates of the Nunnery at that place in 1838. Capt. Robert McCleave Donor." Captain McCleave had returned home in 1838 at the conclusion of his first voyage in command of the ship Rambler.
After two more voyages as captain of the Rambler, McCleave signed off from that ship in 1847 and returned to whaling as captain of the ship Richard Mttchell in 1848. McCleave's log for that voyage is now in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association and tracks a difficult but successful trip to the Azores, New Zealand, Rarotonga, and Hawaii. Although McCleave returned to port with over 1,700 barrels of sperm oil, he lost six men and his dog Rover along the way, as well as weathering an attempted desertion by part of the crew.
In addition to chronicling the hardships of life at sea, McCleave's log indicates the happiness of his marriage and how the strength of his feelings for his wife helped keep him going. McCleave wrote some poetry in the back of his log, and one poem, tided "Lone on the Waters," describes these feelings:
Tis lone on the waters when ever mournful bell
Tend forth to the sunset a note of farewell
When home with the shadow and winds as they sweep
There comes a fond memory of home; o'er the deep
When the wings of the sea bird is turned to her nest
And the heart of the sailor; to her he loves best,
Tis lone in the waters that hour hath a spell,
To bring back sweet voices and sounds of farewell.
The final voyage of McCleave's career was aboard the New Bedford ship Oliver Crocker, as captain, from 1854 to 1858. One set of souvenirs from this voyage is visible in the only known photograph of Mrs. McCleave's museum: several carved-ivory napkin rings, which are on a table in the center of the photograph. Although many of the delicate natural-history specimens exhibited in the McCleave Museum disintegrated, the NHA was fortunate in 1956 to be given these napkin rings by a McCleave descendant. Carved from whale ivory, the napkin rings show lovely motifs, including flowers, a house, and a whaling scene. The history behind the napkin rings appears in Mrs. McCleave's 1869 inventory and illustrates her flair for telling a good story:
This carving was done by a youth of 18 years of age that went on the whaling voyage with my Husband in 1854 On Board Ship Oliver Cracker of N Bedford. He was a remarkable youth a natural carver, ingenious every way, and highly educated. He did this carving at intervals, when it was his watch below had to use such tools as he could get and what my Husband had with him, he was uncommon smart, my Husband was fond of him. He did not follow the Seas after this one voyage. He was in youth, the reason he took a fancy to go a whaling voyage, only one failing in habits some intemperate when in Port, a perfect little Gentleman on board of the ship. No doubt he is all right now he belonged to one of the first of families near Boston, Mass. My Husband took a fancy to him he was so smart in every way. He shipped under a fictitious name. I think he has been at my Museum ... I think he likes to keep his history in youth a secret. I don't tell his name he went by on board ship ...
Robert McCleave achieved financial success as a whaler, as his obituary explained, "He was in affluent circumstances all his life, leaving intact a comfortable fortune to his widow and only son." Records from McCleave's many voyages attest to his success, with over 5,000 barrels of sperm oil unloaded upon the return of the ships he captained. Given this success, it seems likely that Eliza Ann McCleave first started her museum as a leisure pursuit. However, with her husband away for years at a time, paid only upon his return to port, the proceeds from the museum would have been helpful, supplementing the family's income while Robert was halfway around the world hunting whales.
The couple's one surviving child, Henry P. McCleave, was born in 1829, and eventually settled in California, having sailed there on the Henry Astor during the height of the gold rush in 1849, when financial opportunities on Nantucket were bleak.
Exactly when Eliza Ann first opened the doors of her home to the public is unclear. She compiled "A Catalogue of the articles in my Museum" in 1869 and several items are documented as gifts from her husband upon his return from whaling voyages in the 1830s and 1840s. The couple's home at 109 Main Street provided a convenient destination for the summer visitors that began to vacation on Nantucket's shores during the 1860s and 1870s.
McCleave's 1869 inventory, in the collection of the NHA's Research Library, suggests an arrangement similar to many early American museums, a classic "cabinet of curiosity," where unrelated objects were collected and arranged for their oddity or interest. Although Nantucket often seems isolated today, for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the island was the sophisticated center of the American whaling industry. Nantucket whalemen traveled the world returning home with stories of alien cultures and souvenirs, many of which made their way into Mrs. McCleave's museum.
Visiting this museum was a way for curious islanders to learn more about where their family and friends went when they left Nantucket's shores. The 1869 inventory shows that Eliza Ann collected a wide array of natural specimens and artifacts reflecting many world cultures as well as commemorating the island's history. Entries in her list are diverse, ranging from "Straw cord . . . made by one of the Natives of the Feege [Fiji] Islands" to "A Silk pincushion made from the Silk which was manufactured from the silk worm itself while [the Nantucket] Silk works were in operation."
While Mrs. McCleave's museum may have been an island novelty, it was not the only way to experience natural curiosities and local history on Nantucket. Island newspapers contain many notices and advertisements about traveling exhibitions, circuses, and lecturers that visited Nantucket throughout the nineteenth century. Certainly, Charles Willson Peak's museum of natural history in Philadelphia would have been known on the island. With the nation's centennial approaching, an interest in American history, local genealogy, and natural history were popular topics for study and discussion.
Against this backdrop of national trends, it is not surprising that Eliza Ann McCleave became a local legend, of sorts. Several island guidebooks from the late nineteenth century highlight the McCleave museum, which was deemed "worthy of a visit for the curiosities it contains, but more especially for their graphic description by the proprietress."
One Nantucket guide, published in 1916, several years after Eliza Ann McCleave's death, described Mrs. McCleave as "one of the most interesting characters of the last generation." While these accounts suggest the popularity of Mrs. McCleave's Museum with off-island visitors, one author noted the excitement of a visit for local islanders as well:
Lizy Ann knew every Nantucketer, of course, and when one of them accompanied her off-island visitors, her personal observations were apt to be amusing and sometimes rather embarrassing. On one occasion a fair daughter of the island brought a young man from Boston. In the midst of the lecture, Lizy Ann suddenly inquired: "Is this young fellow a beau of yours, Caroline?" "Oh, no, no;" replied the lady. "Is he going to be?" was the next question.
Both published and unpublished reminiscences of Eliza Ann McCleave cherish her theatrical poetic lectures, as she described her collection of curiosities. An 1871 letter written by Georgianna Hayward to her father confirms the pleasure that a visit to the museum provided:
We went to see Mrs. McCleave's Museum. You ought to have gone there, when you were here, + never set foot on the island again without going there. She shows her curiosities + then when she gets half way, she recites some poetry that she made up when she was sweeping + they are very funny.. .1 forgot to say that I think Mrs. McCleave pretty cool. She said right out to mother, "How nice + clean your teeth are, for your own teeth. It is so seldom you see people with their own teeth nowadays."
One of the most popular items in the museum was a shell comb owned by Eliza Ann's twin sister Phebe Ann. A verse about die comb, which is attributed to Mrs. McCleave in several guidebooks describing her museum, reads, "This old shell comb, though not as old as Noah, / Yet, when fifteen, my sister Phebe wore; / She worked very hard to gratify her passion, / And when the cost was earned, 'twas out of fashion." McCleave's 1869 inventory confirms the anecdote told in this verse, and offers a moral to the story:
We are Twin Sisters and our Mother gave us four Dollars each to buy a Shell Comb as such were in fashion in those days; [Phebe Ann] not satisfied with her lot wanted a larger one, and accordingly she had one made in Boston . . . she never enjoyed the comb but I did mine and used it up and am enjoying hers also; It shews us it is best to be satisfied with our lot...
Obviously a forthright, if somewhat intimidating, guide, Eliza Ann McCleave was also known for her soft heart. As her obituary described, "Mrs. McCleave was a woman of sterling qualities — one of those people whose left hand never knows what the right hand doeth, and her benevolence has been widespread in substantial form in this community, and her loss will be widely felt." After her death in 1895, Mrs. McCleave's collection was auctioned off in August 1896. A handbill (in the NHA's Research Library collection) advertising the auction expresses the interest that many Nantucketers had in Mrs. McCleave and her collection, "This is without a doubt the opportunity of a lifetime to obtain a genuine relic of old Nantucket from a Museum that is known the world over."
The recently formed Nantucket Historical Association was able to purchase a few items at the auction such as silk and cocoons from Florence, Massachusetts, a piece of redwood from California, and a list of Methodist preachers stationed at Nantucket from 1799 to 1886. Also, Eliza Ann's son, Henry P. McCleave, was a generous contributor of artifacts to the association's collection, giving many additional items from the museum and the family's collection including five embroidered infants' caps made by Eliza Ann McCleave and portraits of his father, Robert McCleave; his uncles, Captain Paul Chase and Captain Henry Paddack; and his aunt, Mrs. Paul Chase (Mary Chase). As the NHA's curator, Susan E. Brock, wrote in her 1903 report to the membership, "It has been well said that a historical society should be something more than a 'strongbox' to hold collections. It must be a living institution. ..." Eliza Ann McCleave understood this well.
Aimee E. Newell was formerly the curator of collections at the Nantucket Historical Association and a frequent contributor to Historic Nantucket. Her article,"That pride in our Island's history": The Nantucket Historical Association, appeared in the Winter 2000 issue.
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