HISTORICAL SKETCHES. 169 



reported their comfortable situation. During that 

 year some eight or ten families removed from Salis- 

 bury to the island, and from that time the number of 

 civilized inhabitants continued to increase." (Macy 

 Genealogy, page 23.) 



Although it has been customary to speak of Thomas 

 Macy as the first settler, the fact must not be lost 

 sight of that Edward Starbuck, James Coffin, and 

 Isaac Coleman came to the island in the same boat 

 with Macy, and remained the whole of the winter 

 (1659-60). 



Notwithstanding the fact that Macy and his com- 

 panions were the first to take up a residence here, 

 Tristram Coffyn was one of the earliest to agitate the 

 question of purchasing the island from Thomas May- 

 hew. This must have been previous to 1659. 



According to Mr. Allen Coffin's book, " The Coffin 

 Family," Coffyn certainly visited the island with others, 

 months before Thomas Macy and companions landed. 

 He says : — 



" Early in 1659, according to Benjamin Franklin 

 Folger, the most reliable genealogist of Nantucket, 

 Tristram Coffyn proceeded upon a voyage of inquiry 

 and observation, first to Martha's Vineyard, where he 

 took Peter Folger — the grandfather of Dr. Benjamin 

 Franklin — as an interpreter of the Indian language, 

 and thence to Nantucket, his object being to ascertain 



when he first came here ; was an active, enterprising man, fear- 

 less of danger ; was at one time a magistrate. He lived west- 

 ward, and died June 12, 1690, aged eighty-six years. — Old 

 Records, 



