Bill
Higginbotham: The Other Islanders fills in great gaps in history
never covered when I was going to school. And the chapter on my mother, Florence
Higginbotham, brought back a lot of memories for me. I wish I had had this
history to read when I was growing up in Nantucket.
Angeleen
Campra: Frances Karttunen has taken on the task of expanding Nantucket
history, an endeavor which puts all who love Nantucket in her debt. The Other
Islanders shines a light on important aspects of Nantucket history that have
long been ignored or forgotten, and in doing this, presents a richer and more
complex view of both the past and the present.
Carl Cruz, New Bedford
Whaling Museum: I wanted to thank you personally for all the outstanding
work you do to make sure people of color are not forgotten. Congratulations for
the masterful job on this book. Finally, there is a voice for the voiceless.
Thanks for telling these untold stories.
Adele Ames: It has to be
a great satisfaction to you to see the interest in the book. It shows, as we
believed, that there are many who want to know about this side of Nantucket and
your thorough exploration is satisfying that interest. May it
continue.
Olga Hansen: I have your book and am enjoying it so
much! I can see where you spent hours and hours on research and on interviewing
everyone. It was worth it! I forgot to tell you about the way the fishing boats
saved out a lot of fish for the families and friends on Nantucket. They would
put the fish in heavy wire baskets on the deck of the boat for anyone to take.
It was a common practice for the boats to do that. No one went hungry if they
liked fish! My father would fillet the fish for some of the people, especially
the ladies.
Ethel Larsen Hamilton: I have just finished for the
second time your wonderful book, The Other Islanders. It is a book that
will go down the years with the early history of Nantucket and its people. I
particularly enjoyed Sconset and the people I knew in my childhood.
Robert F. Mooney, author of Nantucket Only Yesterday and
More Tales of Nantucket: You have done a great book, not only for the
ethnic people involved but for the future history of Nantucket. This will become
a valuable source book for future writers about the island. There is more to
history than archives and artifacts. The people count, and they did not all go
whaling.
Beverly Morgan-Welch, executive director of the Museum of
Afro-American History: Congratulations and our profound thanks for your
extraordinary research that pays noble tribute to our
foreparents.
Francis W. Pease, author of My Nantucket
Boyhood: I am devouring every word of your book. It is the best and most
comprehensive history of Nantucket I have ever seen, bar
none!
Elizabeth Oldham, editor: As I began copyediting The
Other Islanders, I immediately realized it was a work of prodigious
scholarship. The author is a bear for accuracy. She’s indefatigable. Anywhere
she had to go—including off-island—she went, making contact with every element
she was writing about. Just for the Nantucket Historical Association to have it
on-line is an asset. It sets an example for what our resources are. The NHA has
a unique collection, and Fran just plumbed it to its depth. It’s a first and
important piece of work.
Donna Lamb: Thank you so much for
providing my daughter a copy of The Other Islanders. What a generous gift
for all our children. Ray Senecal is my daughter's great uncle. Joe Senecal and
Mike Lamb were her great grandfather and grandfather, so this book is
particularly special to her.
Helen Seager: This is a wonderful new Nantucket book. It is
meticulously researched and tells the stories of people who did the work that
made the island great: Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, free Blacks, Cape
Verdeans, South Sea islanders, from the Far East, Canada, Ireland, Finland. Fran
Karttunen has done a remarkable job of first documenting, then telling peoples'
stories, and her index is masterful. The book was published by Spinner
Publications of New Bedford. It is beautifully and sensitively designed and
illustrated; Spinner's designers are the best. I wish every community in the
nation could have a book like this!
Ben Simons, Nantucket Historical
Association: What a pleasure it is to read through The Other Islanders! I think it is a great service to
the island’s history, written with such a positive, sober spirit! I also wanted
to pass along praise for your book that I received by chance recently. Jennifer
Bunting, publisher at Tilbury House press in Maine, and her husband Bill
Bunting, author of books on Maine maritime history, just got a copy of the book,
and were extremely impressed, and wanted to say how important they thought it
was. I believe they are involved in a project to shed light on Maine’s “other
islanders” or “other citizens.”
Lamont Thomas,
biographer of Paul Cuffe: An
impressive job of integrating mainland, maritime, "coof," island, Native,
religious, British, African ... culture! For the first time, the mish-mash makes
sense to me. It's as though you had lived through it all in a former life.
Thanks for your astonishing work.
Marilou
Kratzenstein: Let me tell you that I bought a copy of The Other
Islanders and am very impressed with it. We need more of this type of social
history, a recounting of the lives of people who otherwise have been overlooked.
I love the way it's laid out and the use of sepia, pale green and other "faded"
colors. The very look of the book conjures up the era of the people it
represents. You get the sensation of examining a historical document.
Vladimir Strelnitski, director of the Maria Mitchell
Observatory: Here is a unique history of Nantucket’s people, intermingling
scrupulously researched scientific information with gripping historical
stories.…Reflected in the small mirror of Nantucket is the uneasy progress of
inter-ethnic relations, from blatant xenophobia to tolerance to mutual respect,
as shared in touching stories of helping. This is the progress that is making
America an unprecedented melting pot of human cultures.
Denise Patmon,
University of Massachusetts, Boston: Beginning with the Wampanoag, The
Other Islanders provides stories from the diverse groups of people who have
set foot on Nantucket shores. The experience of folks from different ethnic
groups is told through stories making these everyday people no longer faceless
and recognizing their significance to the island, bringing to life former and
present-day domestics, bakers, gardeners, and the like.
Nathaniel Philbrick,
author of In the Heart of the Sea: Nantucket is known for its Quaker
whalemen of old and its billionaires of today, but as The Other Islanders
eloquently demonstrates, the real story lies elsewhere. ŃH
