The first place we ran past was the oldest house on the Island – built in 1686 as a wedding present for Jethro Coffin and Mary Gardner – the house is known as Jethro Coffin House. Very large fireplace in the living area allowed for the family to cook their meals.
The next place that we ran past was the Quaker Meeting house. The meeting house was actually built in 1838 but the meetings of the Quakers began in 1701. The funny thing with the Quakers of Nantucket was the fact that when they first started out, the idea was to be able to “pray to god” without the need of the organized/costly/all encompassing religion. So, they would just meet once a month to give each other support. Well, over the years the Quaker’s split into three (3) different organizations because the leaders were not happy that the members did not show up to meeting enough, that the members did not donate enough, and on and on…back to the same problems they had with organized religion.
In between these places we ran past some of the 800 homes listed as National Historic Landmarks – great places.
One issue we had with the island homes compared to other towns that we have visited such as Annapolis, MD – Charleston, SC – is that the island of Nantucket requires that all the homes be painted one of 12 colors only. This sounds good, but it takes the character out of the old homes.
One nice part was the fact that the town does not allow for the “tearing down” of old homes and then building new homes in their place. Instead what you see around town is contractors lifting homes off of the old foundations, digging out the dirt, putting in a new foundation, and then putting the house back down on the new foundation. Now that is refreshing to see compared to the tear-em down and build up a new house.
At a clothing shop we saw a shirt that said “Turn Left at the GREY house with the WHITE trim…” – sufficed to say, that was just about every house.
Nice 4 mile run…
1 comment:
Very cool. Good history lesson.
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