Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry continues her series about the founders of Nantucket, Massachusetts, and their descendants, focusing on the Cartwright family line. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
The Gertrude A. Pratt Scrapbook contains two photos of the Cartwright family of Nantucket, Massachusetts. I did some research and found more photographs and relics housed at the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) as well as in private collections.
The Cartwright ancestral line has a Mayflower passenger, Degory Priest, and many Nantucket settlers.
Unfortunately, the two Cartwright family photos from the scrapbook are not sharp. In the first photograph, showing the family standing in front of the house, one of the women on the stairs is not identified – but the rest are labeled. Bejamin Cartwright is in the dark suit. To his right on the stairs are his daughters Edith, Emma Lucretia, and Jean Campbell. To his left are his grandchildren Lemuel, Edith, and Virginia, all born to Emma Lucretia and her husband Dr. Lemuel Cornick Shepherd.
The second photo is titled “All aboard for Sconset!” The label lists Benjamin C. Cartwright with his daughters, Agnes (Nye) Betteridge, Edith, Virginia, and Lemuel Shepherd, and Getrude (Porter) Pratt (white dress).
Whaling Captain Benjamin C. Cartwright (1831-1920) married Agnes Campbell Hamilton (1839-1916), daughter of John and Agnes (Dunn) Hamilton.
Captain Benjamin and Agnes’s son Archibald “Archie” Cartwright (1883–1962) was the last Nantucket man to go whaling. Below is a photo of Archie when he was a young boy.
It was natural to Archie, being the son and nephew of whalers, to take to the sea. He shipped out of New Bedford on the bark Sunbeam in 1906, at age 23, for a two-year voyage to the Pacific. He married Austie Avilda Dunham (1884-1918) and left descendants.
Archie also worked as a carpenter and a crewman aboard the fishing boat Petrel. Additionally, he was chief of the Nantucket fire department. In retirement he became the second custodian of the Nantucket Whaling Museum.
Archie was among the subjects interviewed by Henry Carlisle Coffin. Click here to listen to Archie’s oral history interview: CT-28B Oral History.
Here is a photo of Archie with members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows of Nantucket, who also descend from the island’s first settlers.
Many of Captain Benjamin’s ancestors are listed on the monuments erected for the Nantucket founders. Below is an image of the monument erected in 2009 to honor the wives of the men founders, whose power and influence was just as instrumental as their male counterparts.
Benjamin C. Cartwright’s lineage:
- Captain Benjamin C. Cartwright
- Alexander and Phebe (Joy) Cartwright, daughter of William and Jedidah (Meader) Joy
- Benjamin and Abigail (Paddock) Cartwright, daughter of Jonathan and Kezia (Gardner) Paddock
- Hezediah and Abigail (Brown) Cartwright, daughter of Dr. Joseph and Abigail (Trott) Brown
- Sampson and Bethia (Pratt) Cartwright
- Joseph and Dorcas (Folger) Pratt, daughter of Peter and Mary (Morrill) Folger
- Phineas and Mary (Priest) Pratt
- Degory and Sarah (Allerton) (Vincent) Priest (Sarah was the widow of John Vincent; she and Degory married in 1611 and had two daughters, Mary and Sarah, but Degory came over on the Mayflower alone, intending to bring his family later; Sarah’s brother Isaac Allerton did come over on the Mayflower with Degory; after Degory died during the colony’s first harsh winter, Sarah then married Godbert Godbertson, had a son Samuel with him, and the entire family came to Plymouth on the Anne in 1623)
I found a newsclip revealing the Cartwright family’s ancestor ties to Dr. Franklin’s maternal line.
This article reports:
We have had placed in our hands several familiar letters and memoranda written by some of the ancestors (on the mother’s side) of Dr. Benjamin Franklin; and among them one from Franklin himself… It is already known that the Doctor’s mother was a native of Nantucket – and among those papers we find the following memorandum relating to her family: “Peter Folger (the father) married Mary Morrill; by whom he had 1. Johanna married to John Coleman; 2. Bethia, to John Barnard; 3. Dorcas, to Joseph Pratt; 4. Bathsheba to [Joseph] Pope; 5. Patience, to Ebenezer Harker; 6. Experience, to John Swain; 7. Abiah, to Josiah Franklin; and two sons, John [married Mary Barnard] and Eleazer [married Sarah Gardner]. There is also a long letter from Peter Folger to his son-in-law, Joseph Pratt, dated Nantucket 1677-8. This letter is full of moral instruction, and concludes with this sentence: “Do not lay these lines where you may never see them more; for you may have occasion to look on them when I may be far enough from you.”
To be continued…
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Note on the header image: flag of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Credit: NuclearVacuum; Wikimedia Commons.
Related Articles:
- Read more on Mayflower gossip: The Mayflower Passengers’ Dark Side: Scandal in Plymouth Colony, Part I and Part 2.