NANTUCKET TREES 9 



The name Grove Lane is probably descriptive of 

 the past; the lane runs today through swampy pasture 

 land. 



Although nearly all the early deeds speak of 

 timber and wood for fuel granted to purchasers of land, 

 a record of 1672 indicates that wood is becoming scarce. 

 "5th 4th mo 1672 James Lopar doth Ingage to carry on a 

 design of whale Catching on the Island of Nantucket. . . 

 and for the Incorragement of the said James Lopar the 

 Town doth grant him Ten Acres of Land in som conv errant 

 place that he may Chuse in, (Wood Land exceped) . . . on con- 

 ditions that he follow the Trade of Whaling on the Is- 

 land two years in all the season thereof..." 



Godfrey writes: "It is probable that the set- 

 tlers were very like their modern prototypes and used 

 wood with an usparing hand; for it seems that but little 

 more than a century from the settlement of the island the 

 inhabitants were obliged to get fuel from Coskata." 16 



Worth, in Nantucket Lands and Landowners, indi- 

 cates how rapidly the settlers used up Nantucket forests 

 and ventures the opinion that there may have been trees 

 large enough to furnish lumber for the first dwellings 

 but that all houses built after 1680 required lumber 

 from the mainland. Worth quotes an order of 1663 that 

 "no man shall cut any timber on Cowatu except for build- 

 ing houses," and again of 1676 that, cutting green trees 

 for post rails or f or . the bark is forbidden. He notes 

 that in 1670 Nathaniel Barnard was importing pine boards 

 from the Merrimac and in 1722 Timothy White was buying 

 wood from Freetown and Rochester. 



The oldest house of today's Nantucket was built 

 in 1686 of wood from Exeter, New Hampshire, where the 

 father of Jethro Coffin owned forest land. 



When Old South Wharf was rebuilt in 1917, pilings 

 of Norway pine were dug up^ 34 Norway Pine has been only 

 occasionally planted on Nantucket. Therefore, this pine 

 for the first South Wharf, built in 1709, must have been 

 imported from the mainland. 



Starbuck records the same decrease in the supply 

 of wood. In the height of the whaling industry, live oak 



