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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Vol. 44, no. 2 (Summer 1994), p. 4

Nantucket Historical Association Centennial Logo

When did history begin? The classic response is that history began with the invention of writing. That is a thoughtful answer, but one that does not take into account the fact that written language is but one system of symbols that people have used to record the course of human events.

The NHA's logo — an arrow, a harpoon, and two beaver hats — communicates meaningfully without using any letters.

The arrow refers to an age when hunting was basic to the communal economy. This age lasted for tens of thousands of years. It lasted on Nantucket until 1641. Until that year, the people of Nantucket lived in a time before books and maps.

Of all animals, the largest and most difficult to pursue is "the leviathan that lives in the deep." The zenith of all those centuries of developing hunting skills was reached by Nantucket whalemen in the nineteenth century. The exploration and charting of the watery world was a byproduct of the global hunt for their prey by those valiant seamen. The harpoon is the unique symbol of that period of history.

But what of the two beaver hats?

In 1659 a group of Englishmen paid Thomas Mayhew of Martha's Vineyard thirty pounds sterling and two beaver hats, "one for myself and one for my wife." In return the group became, in the eyes of English law, the "original" proprietors of Nantucket Island.

Mayhew's reasons for asking for two beaver hats as part of the price for the island are not hard to guess. Fashion. Conspicuous consumption. Domestic tranquility. They add a human touch to this first recorded island real estate transaction. Beaver hats, worn by both men and women, were much in vogue in seventeenth-century England, and they were very expensive. They have additional symbolic relevance. European interests pushed outward into two continents to supply a lucrative market in beaver hats: westward into North America and eastward into Siberia. Although no more the cause of the exploration and settlement of those frontiers than the whale was of the world's oceans, the beaver came to represent the expansion of civilization spurred by a global economy.

The beaver and the whale. One by land. The other by sea.

The thirty "coins" surrounding the other objects allude to the thirty pounds sterling that made up the balance of the purchase price paid to Thomas Mayhew.

Itself a lesson in history, our logo is a fitting symbol of the Nantucket Historical Association's mission. When Nantucket artist Daniel Thaxton was asked to create a special design for our centennial, he stated that the traditional logo was interesting and appropriate, too good to alter. Using it as the basis for the design, Thaxton added the commemorative text that is incorporated into the NHA centennial logo as it appears today.