Shadows of History UNDER THE EAVES
BY MARLI GUZZETTA
With paper cutouts dangling from wires and illuminated by projectors, Christie Cure’s home at 8 Orange St. looked like a shaken snow globe filled with historical Nantucket images three weeks ago, when artist Marguerite White’s “Pelagic Magic” installation stalked the walls with shadowy historical palimpsests, focusing on nautical imagery. Overhead in the foyer, cutouts of seabirds shared the air with cutouts of ships out of commission and those still afloat. In the front receiving room, a whole theater of shadows included an image of a carved ivory flower boat — a souvenir often brought back from China to Nantucket during the whaling years.

It was the first winter show of the informal arts salon Cure has developed in the 15 years she’s leased out the bottom floor of the home, which is owned by Virginia Andrews. Cure calls her informal salon “The Orange Street Project” — an off-season meeting place for the readings of short works, prose and poetry, for Cure’s ”Bedroom Theatre,” parlor shows, and the “Artists Without Galleries” series. It’s also a home base for Cure’s production company — Red Wolf Blue/Lola M. — which she runs with her New York-based partner Christina Voros. (The two created a short film on island last winter.)

Artist Marguerite White used paper-cut-outs and projectors to fill the walls of 8 Orange with shadowy images of Nantucket’s nautical past.

“Pelagic Magic” was particularly resonant, given that 8 Orange was built by mariner Captain Benjamin Coggeshall in 1836. He purchased the land at 8 Orange from his brother Peleg for $600. Peleg retained the lot next door at 10 Orange, and the brothers built homes side-by-side.

According to the 1970 report Historic American Buildings Survey on the home, Peleg worked as a cooper. A whaleshipman, Benjamin made at least five trips out of Nantucket between 1832 and 1851, as the Captain of the ships Peruvian, Walter Scott, Monticello and Alabama.

Benjamin and his wife, nee Eunice Gardner, had a 7-year-old daughter, Sarah, and a 2-year-old son, Benjamin, when they moved into the home at 8 Orange. In 1836, Eunice gave birth to their third child, Martha. The family lived at 8 Orange until selling the residence to Nathaniel Sprague in 1841. (According to HABS, both brothers sold their Orange Street homes at the same time “for some unknown reason.”)

Sprague only owned the home for a single day before selling it to well-todo Daniel Jones. Daniel and his wife, born Elisa Arthur, had three grown children — Daniel Jr., Lydia and Henry — when they purchased the home.

Daniel and Elisa had been living across the street at 5 Orange before purchasing the Coggeshall house. “Daniel Jones was called a silversmith in deeds, although there is no record of his work in lists of silversmiths who worked on Nantucket,” according to the HABS report for 8 Orange. “He was known, however, as a man of substance and some standing in Nantucket, and although Mrs. Jones is believed to have been a Quakeress, their home contained many costly items of furnishings, brought in from the Orient.”

Documentation made by the NHA in subsequent years, however, sheds some light on the sources of Daniel’s wealth. On an 1826 stockholder’s certificate from Manufacturers and Merchants Bank, Daniel is listed as the bank’s president. In 1838, Nantucketer Jane Russell mentioned in a letter to her brother that Daniel was one of the men who lost candlehouses to a fire. And in the 1843-47 logs for the ship Mary, Daniel is credited as the “Owner- Agent” for the vessel, which sailed often to the South Pacific. As such, it makes sense why the home would have expensive Oriental furnishings.

Three years after Daniel and Elisa moved into the home, their eldest son, Daniel Jr., died single at age 30. The couple remained in the home until 1848, until Daniel Sr. died on Feb. 9 at age 69. The deed to the home went to the couple’s remaining son, Henry, owner of Henry Jones & Co., a company that sold lumber.

It’s uncertain whether Henry was yet married to his wife, Sarah H. Folger, when he sold the home in 1852 to blacksmith Elisha(i) Parker for $850. At the time, Elisha and his wife, Elizabeth, had a 9-year-old daughter, Rachel. Two years later, they gave birth to a son, Clinton.

When Elisha died at age 65 in 1884, Elizabeth inherited the home, which passed to Clinton upon her death in 1894.

Clinton and his first wife, Ida Abby Hardy, whom he married in 1876, had four daughters: Clara, Elizabeth, Ida and Barbara. Ida died in 1897, four years after the birth of her youngest daughter. Two years later, Clinton married a second time to Harriet E. Andrews.

After Clinton’s death in 1933, the home went to Harriett and “her three [step] daughters,” according to the HABS. The three daughters listed were Clara, Elizabeth and Ida. (The youngest of the four, Barbara, seems to have died beforehand.)

Clara and Ida never married. Elizabeth, coincidentally, married into her stepmother’s family, to fisherman David P. Andrews. She gave birth to three children: Barbara (probably named after Elizabeth’s deceased sister), George Easton and James Clinton.

As adults, none of the three sisters actually lived in 8 Orange. Just around the corner, Clara and Ida lived together at 1 Stone Alley, while Elizabeth and David raised their three children at 3 Stone Alley.

James Clinton, better known as “Clint,” became a marine archaeologist who wrote thoroughly about the life in Nantucket’s waters. He had one child, a daughter named Virginia, whom he and his wife, Edith, raised at 3 Stone Alley. Virginia (better known on island as “Ginger”) was born at Cottage Hospital “when it was literally a cottage on West Chester Street,” she said.

Ginger now owns the home at 8 Orange St. and the home at 3 Stone Alley jointly with the trusts of her Aunt Barbara and Uncle George.

Because Ginger lived so close to her grandmother, her great-aunts and her aunt and uncle, she is able to remember them all quite well. Her Grandma Elizabeth (better known as “Bessie”) was a woman “with a good sense of humor,” she said. “She knitted a lot and was very

involved in the Ladies Union Circle,” Ginger added. “And she liked flowers. She always had pretty things in the house.”

Ginger has fond memories of her aunts Clara and Ida. “They practically raised me,” she said.

“Clara was the librarian at the Atheneum, and Ida was the manager of Coffin’s Dry Goods Store and later a docent at the Oldest House. I used to go up there and help her dust and put fresh water in the flowers,” she remembered. “They were just great people. Ida liked to go for walks. She taught me about wildflowers. And they always went for Sunday drives. They were pretty much always interested in everything — especially Nantucket. What the birds were doing. What the fisherman were catching. Clara, she had bright red hair and played the piano. And the two of them were kind of fond of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.”

Ginger’s great-aunt Clara outlived her sisters and even a new paint job on the house at 8 Orange. She also replaced the north side clapboards. She was succeeded at the Atheneum by her niece — Ginger’s aunt, Barbara Andrews, who worked at the Library of Congress before returning to Nantucket and the Atheneum.

The last family heir left on island, Ginger began looking after the home’s maintenance sometime in the 1980s.

“It’s an endless source of distraction and worry,” she said. “You want to maintain the historic integrity of the house, but everything is expensive, and you can only do a certain amount by yourself when you’re one person. A lot of decisions come up that need to be made, and it’s not always easy to find the right people to do the work that needs to be done, for what your goals are.” The most significant thing Ginger has done since becoming the house’s steward is replace the roof.

While Ginger has leased out the top half of the house as a separate apartment to vacationers and retirees, filmmaker, playwright, actor and Mitchell’s Book Corner staffer Christie Cure has been renting the lower portion of the house for the last 15 years, regularly converting her home into an arts and performance space.

Some of Cure’s favorite events have included “Pelagic Magic” and also “Artists without Galleries” — a parlor show first held eight years ago in the winter for artists without galleries as incentive to finish projects and as an aid to help them find a gallery for a showcase in the spring. Four years ago, Cure produced “The Grass is Greener,” three short plays written by Anne Meara. She also hosted “American Tropical” as a Bedroom Theatre production in 2001. Written by Richard Ford, the short play took place in the parlor of Cure’s home, with pocket doors opening up to Cure’s bedroom, which she converted into audience seating. The last night’s performance was standing-room-only, at 40 people.

For her next Orange Street Project event, Cure plans on hosting a visual arts show, currently entitled “Geography of the Mind,” at the end of the winter. Cure may also have a reading for a play she plans to finish soon entitled “Lola M.”

“Even though the house is a different sort of space for an art exhibit or production, there’s something about the history of the house, and the spirit of the house, that make things that could have been disastrous go well,” said Cure, who has used just about everything in her home as a set or a prop for a show. “Everything is sort of a moveable feast,” she said.

In historic documents, the house at 8 Orange is still referred to as the “Coggeshall House” — not a bad namesake, seeing as Coggeshall was something of a maritime hero in his day. On a voyage with Captain Calvin B. Worth (of the ship United States) in 1849, Coggeshall assisted the rescue of the New Bedford-based crew of the Triton, which had been attacked near “Sydenhan’s Island” by natives who killed five crewmembers and wounded seven others. Coggeshall literally sailed until he died. In 1854, he fell into a “convulsive fits” shortly after returning home from his last voyage with the Alabama to Hawaii.

Marguerite White’s recent maritime themed show dedicated to the island could have just as well been a show about the house itself. All of the families who have owned the home, including the Andrews family, have been dusted with fishermen, sailors or people who’ve made some income from the sea. Even Ginger, who is currently on the town’s preservation committee, includes in her work history on the island a few stints at opening scallops.

“I was taking about 300 years of actions and incidents in a harbor and I just shook it all up and dumped a couple of memories out, a couple of scenes, to make something like a dream sequence on the wall,” said White, who tailored the installation specifically for Cure’s house. “I wondered, ‘What comes into a harbor, what goes out? And this house: Who’s come in and out of that parlor?’”

It’s rewarding to think that White’s “Pelagic Magic” may have reached back and touched the home’s actual past. It’s possible, for example, that Daniel Jones, whose boat went out to the South Pacific, had in his home one of the carved ivory boats whose shadow decked the wall during White’s show. It’s either an amazing coincidence, or not a coincidence at all. With a home as old as 8 Orange, history seems to be written on the walls in a language that can be read even when all of the lights are off.

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