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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Vol 50, no. 1 (Winter 2001), p. 14-18
Helping Hands
by Kate Stout
HARDSHIP. IT IS A WORD AS WELL AS A condition that, until recent times, was prevalent on this remote island. Hard winters, lean times, war, all served to exacerbate the everyday difficulties of depending on time, tide, and fair winds to ferry in supplies — as well as opportunity — and ferry out the men who would travel worlds away for their livelihoods. Islanders had, and continue to have, great personal reserves against the physical hardships of life on a remote island. As Maria Mitchell observed in January 1857, during the third bad winter in a row. "We hear of no suffering in town for fuel or provisions. I think we could stand a three month siege without much inconvenience as far as the physicals are concerned."
Reserves against isolation and the consequences of poverty were something else again. Mitchell observes in her journal of the period that the island was "now sixteen daily papers behind the rest of the world." The severe storm had forced the closing of what social activity there was —"The Coffin School has been suspended ... and the Unitarian Church has had but one service." Drifting snow even made sledding difficult. "We know we cannot 'get out'," Mitchell writes, "any more than Sterne's starlings, and we know that 'tis best not to fret."
That stalwart position, however, was not shared by all, not for wont of wishing to make the best of a bad and tedious situation, but for wont of material as well as inner resources.
That same entry, on January 23, when the wind was howling and the "mercury [fell to] 20 below zero," Mitchell also wrote: "There are some families who are a good deal in suffering, for whom the Howard Society is on the look-out."
The Ladies Howard Society, as it was formally known, was a group of women on the "look-out" for indigent women and children of the island. Named for an eighteenth-century philanthropist, the Howard Society was officially incorporated in 1836, and was neither the first nor the last in a series of lifelines to the island's less fortunate souls.
In fact, the Howard Society really sprang out of Revolutionary War Nantucket. Mrs. Harriet Peirce, in her "A Brief History" of the group, wrote that "a few young ladies . . . [devised] a plan by which the poor people of the town could have the benefit of some education for their children." She goes on: "This was around 1814, in the midst of the war with England.... It was a period of great suffering: the bare necessaries of life were all that many families could secure. ..." The group opened a school and quickly noted that "some [of the children] were quite destitute of comfortable clothing. ..." The women then became something of a sewing circle, collecting material and making clothes for those in need. Because of this, they came to be known by 1817 as the Fragment Society. They continued their free school until public schooling came to the island in 1829, but the sewing continued unabated. Then, in December 1836, the Fragment Society merged with "the Benevolent and Charitable Societies to carry on the work of caring for the Island's poor," forming the Ladies Howard Society. The Howard Society wasn't incorporated until 1856.
Even so, it served the island for some seventy years, providing clothing and shoes and even, in 1872, mounting a campaign to provide "a home for destitute old ladies," laying the philosophical and social groundwork for such eventualities as Landmark House and Our Island Home. Indeed, in the 1919 NHA Proceedings, the Howard Society was remembered as a "large and important charitable society" whose members had "walked in our midst on their errands of mercy."
Indeed, the instinct to do "good works" on Nantucket has had a consistent and generous presence on Nantucket throughout its history. The fruit of those instincts has been numerous charitable associations aimed at relieving the suffering of the have-nots by the haves. Just as the ladies of the Howard Society worked side by side to bring some measure of education and relief to the island's poor, so did the Children's Aid Society, the Helping Hand Society, the Union Benevolent Society, the Relief Association, the Free Masons, and the International Order of Odd Fellows work to bring relief to the needy of many descriptions. And that is just to name a few of those that predate the twentieth century.
Little is known about some the societies. The Helping Hand Society, for instance, was active in the 1880s, and made its business assisting "many feeble persons and worthy poor," as the author of a notice of its annual meeting wrote for the Inquirer and Mirror in 1887. Another, the Union Benevolent Society, also active in the 1880s, aimed its charitable activity at "indigent and orphaned children," according to a write-up of its 1885 annual meeting. The Union Benevolent Society collected and dispensed almost new secondhand clothing to needy children. It is relevant to note that both of these little-known groups were active in a period of economic somnolence on Nantucket — at exactly the point in time when the island had endured about a quarter of a century of decline.
Another much more documented and longer-lived group, the Relief Association got under way during this period too. Incorporated in 1874, the organization began as most of the women's relief efforts did—in somebody's parlor, where a small group of concerned citizens met to discuss and "do something about" a problem they had identified as worthy. In this case, as Marie M. Coffin, then Relief Association secretary, writes in a 1970 history of the group, "Eight Nantucket ladies met at the home of Mrs. David N. Edwards for the purpose of adopting some plan for helping indigent, aged people ... [to make] their declining years more comfortable."
Although the Relief Association had dues, as most of the early charitable associations did, they raised money in time-tested ways—"by means of entertainments, . . . parties, musicals . . ." and the like. The Relief Association, from its earliest years, was relatively prosperous, showing $5,000 in the bank by 1880. In turn, they dispensed monthly allowances, sometimes $2, "which," Mrs. Coffin writes, "was considered good in those days." Still, the Relief Association was not impervious to the economic stasis of the early decades of the twentieth century and might not have survived had it not had its own "angel." Gulielma (Elma) Folger, who served as president of the Relief Association from 1912 to!930, infused the organization with cash on a kind of "as needed" basis. Genuine relief from financial worries did not truly abate, though, until the 1960s. Given a "block of stores on Federal Street," the association sold two properties in 1961 and the remainder in 1969, solidifying its future. By 1970, it boasted $200,000 in available funds, and broadened its charitable efforts as a direct result. The interest was "used to help those at present on our monthly list, together with special gifts when needed and for Christmas gifts to about 16 people," Mrs. Coffin noted. Proudly unaffiliated—the Relief Association, Mrs. Coffin wrote, was "entirely sectarian"—it continued its good works until 1980.
Unlike the Relief Association, the Children's Aid Society was spawned in the vestry of the Baptist Church — good Christian women endeavoring to address and redress a societal woe, in this case the island's youth. In its constitution, the society proposed to "provide a Home for destitute girls, where they may be supported, watched over and so trained, that they may prepare themselves in a useful and respectable manner. ..." Such an institution was established and it quickly became residence to "six children; two about 13 years old, and four a few years younger," according to a report in the Inquirer and Mirror. Organized in 1867 for the "protection, training and support of such girls as may be found needing this aid," these children attended public school and "Sabbath School." They were also taught the basic tools for such a "respectable" life — how to sew and keep house.
The Children's Aid Society eventually included boys. By 1924, the group was itself struggling to survive. In the minutes for that year, it was noted that the "conditions under which the Society labored during the past few years remained the same." In fact, they could only afford to look after a single child, a boy named Leonard Gould, who had been under their wing for at least a couple of years at that point. "... that seems to be all the responsibility the Society feels authorized to undertake, owing to the lack of funds necessary to attempt other work." Nevertheless, the society managed to hang on until 1948 when it voted to ask the Union Benevolent Society to accept its funds and carry on its work.
Often, though, the good works of such groups took on a meddlesome and morally superior tone. The Children's Aid Society, for instance, got on its moral high horse in 1892 when, in an Inquirer and Minor article, it announced a campaign against the "painful increase in profanity and impure language" it believed was all too common among Nantucket's youths. And the 1901 inception of the Boys' Improvement and Industry Association speaks for itself. This was a short-lived attempt to improve the "morals, manners and habits" of the island's young men — a kind of presumptuousness that was destined to fail. Still, those good ladies thought that by providing diversions in the form of training in manual arts, some entertainment, and a place to gather, they might forestall the inherent wickedness of idle boys. No more permanent than their scrap-paper minutes heralded, the effort to make good men of dissolute boys lasted only seven years—and yet it identified a chronic problem in island life. Indeed, the Boys' Improvement and Industry Association might well be thought of as the forerunner of the Boys and Girls Club and the Teen Center in today's Nan tucket.
Although all of these organizations were the work, primarily, of women, it was fraternal organizations that allowed men to exercise the spirit of giving within the community. Free Masons, the International Order of Odd Fellows, and, the youngster among them, Rotary Club International (the Nantucket chapter was instituted in 1950), all are benevolent societies that put community service among their top priorities. Often maligned, and so dismissed, as "secret societies," they are among the most enduring of any of the island's organized efforts at benevolence. What "secrets" they have are internal, the stuff of initiation, modes of recognition, advancement and ceremonies — much as one might find in a college fraternity or sorority — not of secret doings. Indeed, the constitution and rules of all these fraternal organizations are available to the public.
The Masons held their first Nantucket meeting in 1771. They were mostly mariners, "and none blessed with a fortune." The charter for the local group, known then as now as Union Lodge, was granted by the Grand Lodge in Boston at a meeting convened at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern on April 16, 1771. Some of the original Nantucket Masons began as Masons in England or in other U.S. cities, a prerequisite for a lodge being a certain number of Masons of a certain rank. The Masons experienced the vicissitudes of any group enduring the ups and downs of a given community. The first Masonic funeral on-island was that of Jethro Coffin's grandson, also called Jethro, who died five days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. They endured an "anti-Mason" period that shrank lodge memberships across the nation: in four years, from 1832 to 1835, only three men applied for membership to the Union Lodge; and then came the Great Fire. And yet, in over two hundred years — making them the oldest continuously operating organization, charitable or otherwise, on Nantucket — the Masons have been remarkably fixed. They acquired their first permanent home on Main Street behind the Pacific Bank building in 1802 and their current home (the lodge occupies the second floor) at the corner of Union and Main Streets in 1890.
Although Free Masonry is not a religious organization, membership is open only to men who believe in a "Supreme Being." Its traditional roots and moral imperative go back to the Old Testament and the building of the Temple of Jerusalem. Each member must subscribe to the organization's three main principles: brotherhood, relief, and truth. "Relief" is synonymous with alleviating suffering, not just among themselves but among the community at large. Traditionally, Masons aim their efforts at the care of orphans, the sick and the elderly, first among their own and then in the community.
Hamstrung in recent years by cosdy and necessary renovations to their Main Street building, local charitable initiatives have been limited. They are known, however, for their cache of medical equipment, mainly hospital beds and wheelchairs, which are made available to those in need. They also designate $4,000-$5,000 annually to a Relief Fund, which is earmarked for local "people who are hard up," says current treasurer Paul Bennett. Most Masonic giving, however, is dispensed at the state and national level (to the tune of more than $1 million per day).
Like the Masons, the Odd Fellows hailed first from England where, in the late 1700s, a group met with the express purpose of extending a helping hand to needy members of the community at large. This was considered odd behavior at the time (charity began — and ended — at home) and so the men were dubbed Odd Fellows. By 1845, when the local chapter of Odd Fellows was established on Nantucket, charitable deeds were not only common, they were a way of life. At that time, the Odd Fellows, like the Masons, were a natural complement to the benevolent work orchestrated by the women of the Children's Aid, Howard, and other charitable societies of the day.
Today, the Odd Fellows continue that largesse, giving away $12,000 in scholarships annually, assisting individual families in need, lending a hand at community events, and working the hospital health fair every year.
The women's arm of the Odd Fellows (there is a women's arm of the Free Masons, too, the Order of the Eastern Star, but its Nantucket chapter was disbanded several years ago) is called the Rebeccas, or as it was spelled in its earlier years, Rebekahs. A small but lively revival of this group was instituted in 1999, and it is charged with the same community-service goals as its male counterpart.
The upstart among the island's fraternal organizations is Rotary Club International, which celebrated its fiftieth year in 2000. By Nantucket standards, Rotary is still new, and yet is, locally, by far the most community conscious. Unlike the Masons and the Odd Fellows, Rotary membership is based on active participation in the life of the island's business community, rather than brotherhood per se. Whereas the Masons and the Odd Fellows put the welfare and well-being of their brothers first, Rotary makes the community its number one priority. As one Rotarian put it, "Our function is to raise money and pump that money right back into the community where it appears to be most needed." Current treasurer Flint Ranney says that Rotary has dispensed "anywhere between $16,000 and $35,000 a year" over the last four years to numerous local organizations. In 2000 alone, they gave out $16,000 in scholarships to graduating Nantucket High School seniors. Rotary also runs a fuel-assistance program. The electric company and Harbor Fuel alert them when someone is having difficulty paying a bill. Rotary never knows who the recipient is — that remains strictly confidential — but Rotary funnels cash to the utilities that is in turn applied to the outstanding accounts of needy islanders. While they do participate in the international efforts of their organization—the fight against polio, to name one—the Rotarian motto is "service above self," and that service begins at home on Nantucket.
From a timeline point of view, then, organized benevolence has spanned more than two hundred years on this little elbow of sand. Since the first settlers came ashore, looked around and saw all too clearly how alone they were on this island thirty miles at sea, and how much they would have to depend on each other to survive, helping hands have always been at the ready. The hardship of isolation necessarily gave birth to a continuum of selfless giving that was inspired not by self-glorification but by the clear recognition that there but for the grace of God go I.
Although it was intended only to describe the work of the Relief Association, what Marie Coffin wrote, describing that group's "policy," resonates as a kind of moral constitution for the island throughout its history. That policy, she wrote, "has always been to do good quietly, never telling who was being helped. A cheery call from our Treasurer, who puts into their hands a sum of money which we know can and will be used for their comfort, is a spiritual as well as financial help, for it means that someone cares."
Kate Stout is the editor and publisher of the Nantucket Map and Legend and a frequent contributor to Historic Nantucket.
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