290 Percy Wells Bidwell 



be found on the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and 

 in a number of coast towns in Plymouth and Bristol Counties.^ 



The township on the island of Nantucket in 1810 was entitled 

 to rank as the fourth in Massachusetts, in wealth and in the number 

 of its inhabitants.^ Here on an area of about 42 square miles there 

 lived 6,800 persons, most of them in a compact village containing 

 some 800 houses.' The chief industry of the place was the whale 

 fishery, which employed a fleet of 120 ships, manned by 1,200 sailors. 

 On the island were 15 or 20 spermaceti works, which refined the oil 

 thus obtained and manufactured large quantities of candles. The 

 former of these products was exported widely to the cities of the 

 United States and to London, Marseilles and the Levant. Owing 

 to the sterility of the soil and to the greater profit to be obtained 

 from whaling, agriculture received scanty attention. More than one- 

 half the area of the island was given over to the pasturage of flocks 

 of sheep, amounting to 7,000 in all, together with cows, oxen and horses 

 in smaller numbers. The land under cultivation amounted to 1,350 

 acres, about one acre to each family on an average, yielding a small 

 amount of maize and a few vegetables. For most of their food supply, 

 consequently, and even for firewood, the people were dependent on 

 the mainland. Flour and Indian com were brought in coasters from 

 New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; provisions for the whaling 

 vessels were obtained in Boston and from the shore towns in Connecti- 

 cut. The only export of an agricultural nature was wool, less than 

 one-half the total product being consumed on the island. The im- 

 portance of the market in Nantucket to the farmers of southern 

 New England seems to have been considerably diminished by the 

 import of grain referred to above.* 



* Bishop, American Manufactures, II. 97. 



2 In population this town was surpassed only by Boston, Salem and New- 

 buryport. 



'The best sources of information on Nantucket at this period are the Topo- 

 graphical Description of Nantucket, by Walter Folger, Jun,, contained in the 

 Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Series I., Vol. 3, pp. 153-155^ 

 and the Notes on Nantucket in the same collections, II. 3 : 18-38. See also Dick- 

 inson, Geographical and Statistical View, p. 32; and Morse, Gazetteer, 1810. 

 St. John de Crevecoeur gives an interesting, but not altogether reliable descrip)- 

 tion of the island and of the manners and customs of its people in his Letters of 

 an American Farmer. London. 1783. pp. 114-212. 



The practice of land tenure in common, which persisted in Nantucket long 

 after it had died out elsewhere in New England, is described by Folger, Op. cit., 

 154. 



* On the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard, in Duke's County, conditions 



