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2008 A Look Ahead
JANUARY • There were 45 births, 12 marriages and 95 deaths recorded. • A contest for a ton of coal was being held at Coffin's drugstore. • The Nantucket Central Railroad began yearround mail service to 'Sconset. • The Nantucket Union Store advertised King Arthur Flour at $1.05 a bag, butter at 38 cents a pound and eggs for 35 cents a dozen.
• The town wondered if $1,000 was better spent on advertising to attract visitors or by hiring a band to entertain them. • The worst storm in 20 years hit the island on Jan. 24, with wind speeds of 83 miles per hour recorded. Damage was estimated at $5,000. The storm washed out Old North Wharf, damaged bulkheads, tore boats from their moorings and caused major erosion on the eastern shore. FEBRUARY • A man posing as Willard B. Marden of Nantucket was flim-flamming people in upstate New York, saying he had been burned out of his business and was down on his luck. A letter sent to the Postmaster on Nantucket by one from whom he had taken money was answered with the comment that "Mr. W.B. Marden is a young man here in the plumbing business and has not been burned out and has not been out of town this winter." The Feb. 3 edition of the Johnstown Morning Herald noted: "Evidently he claims to have been in the same business as the men he picks out to work upon, for the gentlemen who furnished these facts to The Morning Herald states that when he approached him he claimed he was running the same kind of business he was engaged in, while in Gloversville he posed as a plumber."
• The band vs. advertising question continued, with one islander saying that "Nantucket didn't need to advertise, anyway. During the month of August everywhere is full, and if we had more people here I don't know where we would put them." • A week later, Town meeting voters appropriated the sum of $1,000 "for the employment of a band." MARCH • It was reported that "the monster steamship to be built at Belfast for the White Star line will be 1,000 feet long, 200 feet longer than the Mauretania and her sister ship of the Cunard line."
APRIL • The House committee on roads and bridges submitted a bill to the state legislature that would authorize Nantucket to ban automobiles from June 15 to Sept. 15. • It was debated what effect a new east jetty at Brant Point would have on harbor sands and tides. JUNE • The Maria Mitchell observatory on Vestal Street was completed. • The new motor car of the Nantucket Central Railroad, featuring a 65-horsepower gasoline engine and seating for 30, neared completion at the Mack Brothers factory in Allentown, Pa. Delivery was expected July 1. • Of 13 graduates of Nantucket High School only one, Joseph McCleave Swain, was a male. JULY • The Maria Mitchell observatory was dedicated on July 15. A letter from Alexander Starbuck was read: "My personal and definite recollections of Miss Mitchell run back as nearly as I can determine to about the year 1854. I can recall the little telescope that was located on top of the bank building, then used as now, for a banking house and a dwelling, the latter the home of her father, her mother, her sister and herself. I remember being invited one beautiful moonlight evening to look at the moon through that telescope, and the peculiar sensation it gave me to see that orb apparently so much reduced in size but with a clearly defined rotundity, and resembling to my boyish eyes to so marked a degree a peeled orange." AUGUST • Nantucket's band, the sixth regiment band of Fitchburg, Mass., arrives on Aug. 1. A bandstand is set up at the corner of Main and Federal Streets. • The Nantucket Central Railroad has seven scheduled weekday departures from 'Sconset, beginning at 5:45 a.m. The schedule is cut back to five trips on Sundays. • The New Bedford, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Steamboat Company announces boats leaving New Bedford at 8:10 a.m. and arriving on Nantucket at 12:45 p.m. The 2:10 p.m. boat from New Bedford arrives on Nantucket at 7 p.m. SEPTEMBER • The residents of Tuckernuck, who already claimed a public school, library and telephone connection, sought seasonal postal service. • The Nantucket schools opened on Sept. 14. • William D. Clark, Nantucket's famous town crier, asked to be taken to Our Island Home to relieve his sister and her husband of his care. OCTOBER • Scallopers petition the selectmen to set a limit of six bushels per person per day and to open the season on Nov. 1 rather than Oct. 1. • The new, gasoline-powered railroad car was shipped back to Pennsylvania, "and will be seen here no more." • Nantucket elected Republican candidate William Howard Taft president and James. S. Sherman vice-president to replace outgoing president Theodore Roosevelt. Ellenwood B. Coleman was re-elected state representative. NOVEMBER • The cut at the Haulover, created by an easterly storm in 1896, closed for the first time in 12 years, a detriment to the island's fishing industry because an easy route to the Atlantic was shut off. The channel at the Haulover had reached a width of a quarter of a mile by 1902 and could accommodate boats drawing less than eight feet. DECEMBER • A new 80-foot-high standpipe was built by the Wannacomet Water Company on Cliff Road. It stood 80 feet high and had a capacity of 424,000 gallons. It replaced the old water tank built 30 years before. The tower served the island until it was replaced by the current standpipe in 1996. The present standpipe is 117 feet tall, and holds 2 million gallons. • It was noted that the age limit for teachers in the Boston schools was set at 70. - Compiled by Steve Sheppard Source: Inquirer and Mirror, from the archives of the Nantucket Historical Association. |
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