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This article first appeared in the Spring 2001 issue of Historic Nantucket.
“The very heart of this
institution”: The NHA Research Library
By Aimee E. Newell
At the 1932 annual meeting of the Nantucket Historical
Association, secretary Catherine
Eger’s report boasted, “We believe we
now have one of the best whaling libraries in the
world, if not the best. . . .” Despite the
hardships of the Great Depression, the NHA
celebrated its recent acquisition of the Hadwen
and Barney Candle Factory, which had
been converted into its Whaling Museum and filled
with the artifact and library
collections of Edward F. Sanderson. This gift was
just one example of the centrality that
the NHA’s library has held throughout the organization’s
existence. From its beginning
in 1894, the NHA charged itself with “collecting
and preserving” not only artifacts and
structures, but “such materials, books, papers
and matters of interest as may tend to
illustrate and perpetuate the history. . . of the
island.”
The
strength of the NHA’s collection lies in its
connections — between manuscripts and
artifacts, photographs and buildings, between the
material items and the people who use
them. The history of the NHA’s library cannot
be separated from the history of the
organization as a whole; the development of an intertwined
bibliographic and decorative arts
collection was a priority from the beginning. The
strengths of today’s NHA Research
Library are all evident from the records of the
past: collecting oral history; serving the
public by answering inquiries; providing personal
connection through genealogy;
representing what has gone before in the photographic
collection; and publishing
selections from the NHA’s holdings to encourage
residents and scholars to learn more
about the island and its fascinating history. Those
activities prompted curator Susan E.
Brock to remark in 1900, “our library . . .
is rapidly growing to be the most important and
satisfactory portion of our work,” achieving
an early tradition of excellence and quality
that is still evident today.
As
the NHA established itself in the community throughout
the waning years of the
nineteenth century, donations began to pour in,
and manuscripts were always mentioned
in the NHA Proceedings on an equal par with artifacts.
The Reverend Myron S. Dudley,
acting president, explained the value of the NHA’s
library collection in 1899: “Of
unquestioned value in the collection of a historical
society are the manuscript documents
belonging to the time and territory which the society
properly represents. This is the
material, for the greater part, that once lost or
destroyed, can never be
replaced, for it is not in duplicate.”
In
June 1894, the NHA purchased the Friends Meeting
House on Fair Street and set up its
first headquarters. The first annual meeting in
1895 included readings from 1815 and
1824 documents in the fledgling organization’s
collection. Founding secretary Mary
Eliza Starbuck presented a passionate plea for the
preservation of Nantucket’s material
history:
It
is most desirable to secure all possible material
relating to old Nantucket, and members
are earnestly requested not only to give donations
of money, but to make an active search
for all sorts of relics, particularly manuscripts,
before it is too late and these valuable
mementoes are carried away from the island as trophies,
or by progressive housewives
“cast as rubbish to the void. . . .” Let
us collect and preserve what we may of the first
essentials.
Curator
Brock and the other NHA founders had a clear vision
of their collecting policy,
stating in 1896 that they were interested in items
“concerning everything that was ever
known to happen or exist on the island.” And,
in 1900, “Our ambition has long been to
possess a complete collection of everything which
has ever been printed in Nantucket,
about Nantucket, or written by a Nantucket person
. . . we may perhaps be pardoned for
boasting of . . . the finest collection of Nantucket
printed matter in existence.” Brock’s
appreciation for history is evident in her annual
reports to the membership. Her writing
also indicates a thoughtful curator whose ideas
were often ahead of their time. In 1899
she wrote, “In our anxiety to procure relics
of the past, we do not forget that the present is
bye and bye to become quite as interesting to future
generations, and as we go along, we
are carefully preserving such mementos of contemporaneous
history as come to us.”
One hundred years later the NHA is still interested
in the present, as much as the past,
and has made several pleas for contemporary material
over the past year.
The
NHA was so successful with its collecting that space
quickly became a problem as
the Friends Meeting House was crammed with the association’s
burgeoning collection.
Just four years into the NHA’s existence, in
1898, the need for a new, fireproof building
to house the collection was acknowledged at the
NHA annual meeting. In 1904 the NHA
achieved financial security and broke ground for
its “fire-proof building” on Fair Street.
A fitting celebration of the NHA’s tenth anniversary,
the new building represented the
importance that the NHA placed on preservation and
accessibility. President Alexander
Starbuck described the new building at the annual
meeting, “I use the term ‘securely
kept’ instead of ‘stored’ as it signifies
to my mind a come-at-able repository always
accessible instead of a vault formally opened only
on special occasions and carefully
guarded from the eyes of the profane.”
News
of the “finest collection of Nantucket printed
matter in existence,” held by the
NHA, traveled fast. Annual reports by the secretary
and curator refer to numerous
requests for historical information, a service still
offered by NHA library staff, who
answered over 500 phone, mail, and e-mail requests
in 2000. While present-day requests
come in from all over the globe, in 1897 a letter
from Alaska was an exciting occurrence,
worthy of mention at the annual meeting. By 1901,
the NHA secretary remarked, “We
are receiving very frequently many valuable letters
from sources which show us to be
getting a name for ourselves.” And by 1911,
the inquiries were so numerous that the
curator decided to charge a small fee for answers.
In
1906, curator Susan E. Brock celebrated her twelfth
year in that position with a title
change, becoming the NHA’s curator and librarian.
Her subsequent reports draw
attention to the developing library’s strengths:
oral history and genealogical resources. In
1911, a “great increase in interest” in
genealogy was sparked by the acquisition of the
William C. Folger notes (manuscript collection 118),
a carefully handwritten record of
island births, marriages, and deaths, which was
one of the sources used to compile the
five-volume set of Vital Records of Nantucket, Massachusetts,
to the year 1850,
published by the New England Historic Genealogical
Society.
Throughout
the early years, NHA officers called for oral history
in the form of island
stories and slang terms, reminding the membership
not only of their importance for future
historians, but also lamenting how these bits of
Nantucket culture were slipping away.
Curator Brock called for these fleeting stories
in 1904: “[W]e ought to make a collection
of historical items written and furnished by any
or all of our members who may know
little incidents, handed down from generation to
generation but never printed or
preserved in any durable form.” Meanwhile,
President Starbuck’s 1906 report called for
collecting photographs, noting their importance
for future island historians and residents,
“Who can forecast the events of the coming
50 years, or put an estimate on the value the
pictures of today may have then?”
Space
limitations continued to plague the NHA. In 1913,
just eight years after the Fair
Street Museum was built, curator Susan Brock once
again reported to the NHA
membership: “Our collection is now so crowded
in some departments that it is impossible
to display many articles of interest. This is especially
the case with the library. . . .” This
crowding was alleviated with the purchase of the
Whaling Museum in 1930, which had
its own library space. The NHA staff wasted no time.
As President William F. Macy
reported at the 1930 annual meeting, “The removal
of the whaling material from the
Historical Rooms . . . relieved the congestion there
and enabled the Curator to rearrange
the collections so that everything showed to better
advantage.”
The
Whaling Museum Library was expanded in 1942, under
the direction of NHA
councilor Dr. William E. Gardner, who created an
NHA Archives in the Whaling
Museum loft. Inspired by a visit to the archives
at the British Museum, Gardner asked,
“Why not begin here the assembling of special
collections which could be carefully
studied and arranged and, from time to time, especially
advertised and exhibited.” Under
his watchful eye, “truck-loads of books, papers,
pictures and other items” were brought to
the Whaling Museum, relieving the overcrowded state
of the Fair Street Museum and the
Friends Meeting House. As the NHA continued to grow,
the Whaling Museum attracted
great attention and interest among visitors and
scholars alike. This interest resulted in
donations of books, manuscripts, and artifacts to
the collection over the years, including
many significant gifts of logbooks, letters, business
papers, books, and maps, as well as
the collection of the present-day Reading Room namesake,
Edouard A. Stackpole, whose
voluminous accumulation of papers, manuscripts,
and books came to the NHA after his
death in 1993.
In
fact, it was Stackpole who began the long process
of bringing the NHA Research
Library under one roof upon completion of the construction
of the Peter Foulger Museum
in the early 1970s. As he explained in 1970, “The
Foulger Museum . . . for the first time
[provides] adequate facilities for the manuscript
and rare book collections and for the
research center that has never before been available.”
In
1991, the NHA library was renamed “The Edouard
A. Stackpole Research Center” and
its location on the second floor of the Peter Foulger
Museum was enlarged, providing
extra room to accommodate researchers and housing
the manuscript collections and NHA
Archives in one environmentally controlled room.
But by the late 1990s, the NHA’s
collection of more than 4,800 books, 400 linear
feet of manuscript material, and 45,000
images once again were constrained in a space too
small for expansion and in what were
considered substandard environmental conditions.
The
rededication of the NHA Research Library this spring
[April of 2001] marks not only
the 107th anniversary of the founding of the NHA,
but continues the tradition of
excellence in caring for the “remnants”
of island history, that was espoused by the
NHA’s founders.
Aimee E. Newell is the NHA’s former curator of collections.
© Nantucket Historical Association. All rights reserved.
Sidebar:
Edouard A. Stackpole Collection
For more than fifty years, Edouard A. Stackpole
(1903–1993) was a central
figure in the Nantucket Historical Association.
President of the association, author,
researcher, and historian, Edouard performed an
invaluable service for all Nantucketers
by collecting, preserving, and documenting the island’s
past. In addition to the historical
materials Edouard gave to the NHA during his lifetime,
his complete collection of books,
manuscripts, maps, photographs, notes, and correspondence
was bequeathed to the
research library upon his death. It is an impressive
body of materials pertaining to the
island’s history and maritime history in general.
Edouard
began his collecting activities as early as the
1930s, gathering materials that
reflected his particular interest in the China trade,
the Arctic and Antarctic, the Pacific
islands, sealing and whaling, and Nantucket Island.
Edouard’s son Renny recounts how
his father would organize newsclippings and notes
on a variety of subjects into
commonplace books. Edouard accumulated many Nantucket-related
items by advertising
in local papers for logbooks and documents, which
were purchased and added to his
personal collection. These items can be studied
in the Nantucket Historical Association
Research Library at 7 Fair Street. The new library’s
reading room has been named for
Edouard A. Stackpole, to honor his many contributions
to the association and to
scholarship in Nantucket and maritime history.
Henry
C. Coke Melville Collection
Henry C. Coke clearly had a deep interest in, and
admiration for, the writings of Herman
Melville. His collection, comprising seventy-four
volumes, includes first editions of
many of Melville’s works, later reprints, and
published criticism by Melville scholars.
Following Henry C. Coke’s death, the collection
was donated to the NHA by his widow
in 1984. Highlights of the Henry C. Coke Melville
Collection include the 1851 London
and New York first editions of the The Whale (or
Moby-Dick); first editions of Omoo: A
Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, and Typee:
A Peep at Polynesian Life; and
later, limited editions of Moby-Dick that include
illustrations by Rockwell Kent, Mead
Schaeffer, and Barry Moser. This impressive collection
of books, many of which are in
their original bindings, was catalogued in 2000
and is available to researchers for study.
In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the publication
of Moby-Dick, this spring
[April 2001] and summer the library will display
in its new Whitney Gallery an
exhibition showcasing various editions of Moby-Dick.
Many of the books on display will
be from the Coke Collection.
