February 28, 2024
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry continues her series about the founders of Nantucket, Massachusetts, and their descendants, focusing on Charlotte Coffin Gardner and the journal she wrote describing the three-year sea voyage she made from Nantucket to Seattle and back again from 1852-1855. Melissa is a genealogist who has a blog, AnceStory Archives, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
Today I continue with my series on the scions of the founders of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
This photograph shows the parlor room in the George Coffin House, 33 Main Street, Nantucket, where generations of the Coffin-Gardner family lived. The red arrow to the right of the fireplace points to the sewing cabinet from the ship Sara Parker sitting on top of a table (see description below). This photo is from a page in the Gertrude A. Pratt scrapbook.
One of the many scrapbooks preserved at the Nantucket Historical Association is in the Gertrude A. Pratt collection.
A page in Pratt’s scrapbook contains a photo of her friend Grace Brown Gardner (1888-1973), historian and teacher, and the daughter of Arthur Hinton Gardner and Mary Macy Brown.
In this photo, Grace is sitting in a chair in the parlor of the George Coffin House shown above, holding the logbook of her grandfather Captain William Bunker Gardner (1811-1856), a Nantucket whaler and shipmaster whose portrait hangs above her. William is the son of Samuel Gardner and Elizabeth Morin.
Grace never married and had no heirs, but she left behind a goldmine of relics, including her grandfather’s letters and logbook, as well as a journal authored by her grandmother Charlotte Coffin Gardner (1820-1882), wife of Captain William Bunker Gardner.
Charlotte is the daughter of George Coffin and Sarah “Sally” Calder.
Charlotte wrote her journal while traveling with her seven-year-old son George Henry Gardner on the Sarah Parker, a ship commanded by her husband Captain William Bunker Gardner.
The Sarah Parker made a voyage in 1852 from Nantucket to San Francisco and Washington state. The journal covers the years 1852-1855.
The journal was first introduced to the public in 1938 by Washington historian Mrs. Lloyd O. Graves, who received a typed transcription from Grace Brown Gardner.
Here is a newspaper clipping mentioning Charlotte’s journal being read before the Seattle Chapter of the Daughters of the Pioneers of Washington.
This article reports:
Mrs. Gardner, who kept the journal, visited in the homes of many of the grandparents of the Daughters of Pioneers. Very few diaries were kept by women in those days according to Mrs. Graves, who considers it one of the most valuable assets to Northwest historical archives.
These Washington pioneers were among the passengers of the schooner Exact, commanded by Captain Isaiah Folger of Nantucket, who also appears in Charlotte’s journal.
Many old New England names who were on the West Coast visited Charlotte and her family on the ship, bridging the two worlds.
In 1953 Grace Brown Gardner gifted the typed copy transcript of her grandmother’s journal to Mrs. Lloyd Graves, who later donated it to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.
The Seattle Daily Times featured a full spread entitled: “A Women’s View of Pioneer Days on Pacific Coast,” citing Charlotte’s journal along with her photograph.
Here are portions of this article from Charlotte’s journal.
The entry for April 4, 1853, records this:
“Arr’d [arrived] at New York (Alki Point) [Seattle] this morning at 8 o’clock. Mr. [Charles Carroll] Terry, a man for whom we brought goods, has been on board. He keeps [a] store and with a company gets out cargoes for ships. Many Indians are on deck. George is delighted to see and hear them talk.
“April 5th. A beautiful day. My clothes are drying. Yesterday a brig came in and anchored near us. The captain, two passengers, Mr. Terry and Mr. [John Nathan] Low, spent the evening with us. About a dozen men live here and one family, Mr. Low, [his] wife [Lydia Colburn Low], and four children.
“7th. Early yesterday morning George Henry and myself went ashore. G. enjoyed himself well, racing about over the prairie, under the trees, and down on the shore with Alonzo and John [Jr.] Low [the Low boys].
“I walked a great distance with the two little [Low] girls, Mary and Minerva. I picked several wild flowers and saw some Indian graves not far from shore, some with a board fence around them with their basket and tin plate or cup laid upon the grave or hung over it.”
In 2021 I published a story on families who settled Alki Point: Mayflower Descendants: Who’s Who, Part V. Many of these families appear in Charlotte’s journal. Below is a photo of some of these Seattle pioneers at the dedication of the Alki Point Monument.
The Seattle Daily Times article also features an image of a sewing cabinet in the form of a Chinese pagoda, made by the seamen aboard the Sara Parker and presented to Charlotte.
More to come…
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Note on the header image: flag of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Credit: NuclearVacuum; Wikimedia Commons.
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