I first published this story the summer leading up to our wedding in 2017 and I figured nearly 9 years later (!) we were due for a refresh!
Today’s post is a long one, but one that holds a special place in my heart! In the summer of 2017, I asked my mom to help write about our family’s history on Nantucket just before Will and I were married there that September. Of course Nantucket is a popular vacation destination, but to me it will always be the place that connects me and my siblings to our parents, our grandparents, and their parents and grandparents dating back to the 1880s.
It’s the place I first visited the summer before I was even born, the place I learned to swim with all my siblings and cousins, the place where I’ve ordered the same ice cream flavor the past 36 years and counting. It’s where my parents were married and where I grew up knowing I’d want to be married too, the place we scattered my grandfather’s ashes and celebrated my Grandy’s life, the place that Will and I said “I do,” and where this past September three of our four sons walked down the aisle in my brother and his wife’s wedding as well (2017 me definitely couldn’t have imagined that part!).
Nantucket is a place that’s never easy to get to but always worth the trip, with rich history and incredible natural beauty. In 2017, I asked my mom and her mom Grandy to help tell the story of our family and our favorite place. I’m so happy we were able to record these stories before Grandy passed away in 2022 and hope perhaps some of her stories will interest some of you as well!
Walking into ‘Sconset Chapel in 1994
And walking out, September 2017!
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Our family’s love affair with Nantucket started well over a hundred years ago.
Dr. Charles Oliver, my great-great-grandfather, was an eye surgeon at Philadelphia Wills Eye Hospital. It was 1887 and he had just completed a fairly new procedure called cataract surgery. In those days, patients recuperated for days in the hospital with sandbags positioned on either side of the head to ensure immobility. (Today this same surgery takes no more than 30 minutes and you can be out the door 15 minutes later!)
Dr. Oliver’s patient informed him that he couldn’t afford to pay him for the surgery, but that in exchange for his new eyesight, he would give him two plots of land on the North Bluff of an island off the coast of Massachusetts.
My great aunt, Katharine Stanley-Brown Abbott, wrote that Charles Oliver visited Nantucket for the first time in 1887. To get there, he took the train from Philadelphia to New York, sailed on an overnight steamer up Long Island Sound, arriving in Fall River the following morning. From there, he took two more trains to reach New Bedford, traveling via the paddle wheel steamer Nantucket to reach the faraway isle. (Our sons ages 6, 5, 3, and 1 complain about the 4 hour drive and 2 hour, 15 minute slow ferry from Connecticut — imagine an almost two-day trip!)
After seeing his land in Siasconset, Dr. Oliver asked his driver for the name of the best builder on the island and was told George Gibbs. For $1,200, Gibbs would build our family’s first summer house (1889-1979) called Sunnycliffe on the North Bluff, halfway between Sankaty Light and the village of ‘Sconset. This would be his wedding present to his then fiancée, Mary Henry (can you imagine?!).
Sunnycliffe as seen from the ‘Sconset Bluff Walk, one of my favorite ways to spend a summer afternoon.
Charles and Mary arrived at their new “cottage” in June 1889 with their two month old son, Norris. The house was much bigger than the Olivers had imagined: three stories, six bedrooms, several balconies and porches that overlooked the Atlantic. The interior was pine tongue and groove with no visible nails anywhere. Three fireplaces warmed the home along with with a coal stove in the kitchen. Gibbs claimed that the $1,200 allowed him to build the house like the ships he was accustomed to building — and to completely furnish it with beautiful rugs, painted wooden furniture, and elaborate wicker pieces. “On the floors there were hooked rugs. Thin, ruffled curtains fluttered at the windows, light enough to let in sunshine without spoiling the view. An atmosphere of summer pervaded the house. Mr. Gibbs had thought of everything,” my great-aunt wrote.
With the industrial surge of the 1870s, people wanted to escape the heat, filth, and disease pervasive in American cities. The Olivers were no exception: from June until August each year, they would entertain a constant stream of guests at their home on Nantucket. In 1895, Mary acquired a guest book and encouraged all visitors to enter a line or two reflecting on their stay. Segments of songs, stanzas of poetry, and original prose fill the early pages. Full page watercolors and caricatures emerged during the twentieth century. The guests’ comments share the feeling that “‘Sconset and Sunnycliffe offered a special, elusive ambience that would remain in their minds and hearts forever,” wrote my great-aunt Katharine. When my grandparents sadly sold Sunnycliffe in 1979, there were several volumes of the guest book, featuring hundreds if not thousands of entries. My parents have preserved this tradition with their own guest book that sits on the entry table of their home. We have a long way to go to get to thousands of entries, but we did just need to order a second volume!
Mary and Charles Oliver had two children, Norris and Katharine. Katharine was my grandfather’s mother, a musician and an author. My mom recounts nights spent around the Steinway grand piano during her childhood summers on Nantucket, with her grandmother playing showtunes and all the adults drinking and singing. The piano was in a beautiful paneled room that was intended as the formal dining room, but Katharine preferred the room for a different type of entertaining. As a teenager, her son Edward Stanley-Brown (my grandfather and my mom’s dad), built a bar for this room. He and a friend, Bob Benchley, painted the facade of the bar during a three-day Nor’easter with different images of drinking terms: dead stiff, hollow leg, and under the weather to name a few. The bar was left in the house when my grandparents sold it, but was acquired by the Benchley family when one of the new owners of Sunnycliffe was going to renovate. The bar hadn’t been seen by my mom, her siblings, or their mom (my Grandy) for over thirty-seven years, but leave it to Grandy to make a few calls and have it displayed as a very fun focal point at our welcome party the night before our wedding!
My grandfather Edward (whom we called Grandpeter for reasons unclear to this day) was a pediatric surgeon at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City. He spent every summer of his life on the island except for the year he served in the Korean War. He worked all year to be able to savor the 30 days of rest he got on Nantucket every August. He was an avid reader, fisherman, and chef. One of his greatest joys was to wake early and visit Bartlett’s Farm and Glidden’s fish market to see what had been harvested or caught that day. Grandy, my mom, and her siblings would often return from a day at the beach or the tennis court to elaborate dinners prepared by Grandpeter in the kitchen at Sunnycliffe.
Grandy with all her grandchildren on ‘Sconset Beach in 1998.
My mom has spent time on the island every summer of her life as well. As she and her siblings grew up, they worked several jobs on the island over the years. Both my mom and Aunt Jill worked at Moby Dick, a series of small cottages and a restaurant on the southeastern shore of the island in ‘Sconset. That business was sold in the 1980s and was renamed the Summer House, where Will and I had our wedding reception nearly 9 years ago!
Arriving to our wedding reception at the Summer House in 2017!
My cousin Emily stuffing rocks in my diaper at Windmoor, circa 1991.
My grandparents bought their own house, Windmoor, in Tom Nevers in 1980. Grandy started going to the island with her husband in 1952 and spent the summer and early fall there each year through the age of 94. She was a very active needlepointer and part of the original group of women who started a project to replace the old brown vinyl kneelers at the ‘Sconset Chapel with beautifully needlepointed kneelers designed by one of Nantucket’s most cherished artists, Erica Wilson. It was a project that was slated to take five years, but Grandy and her friends had all 200 kneelers completed in less than two! The beautiful kneelers are still there today and feature Nantucket birds, fish, flowers, and historical buildings and are truly the crown jewel of this quaint chapel. Will and I knelt on two of these needlepoint kneelers during our wedding ceremony. My mom and dad were also married at the ‘Sconset Chapel almost 31 years ago to the day. (I’m told their knees got stuck on the old vinyl kneelers, however.)
Will’s parents hosted our rehearsal dinner at the Chanticleer, where my parents had theirs as well. My dad’s parents, Liz and Ted Horan, had their own memories at the Chanticleer, which was once a series of cottages and a restaurant where they’d spent their honeymoon in the 1950s!
The night of our rehearsal dinner at the Chanticleer
My sister, brothers, and I were also fortunate to spend our summers on Nantucket, initially at Grandy’s home with our cousins, then in a series of vacation rentals as everyone’s families grew, and then my parents purchased their own home on the island 22 years ago. My parents hosted the welcome party the night before our wedding in their backyard with a food truck from Millie’s, where my siblings and cousins spent their college summers working (unsurprisingly I always worked retail jobs in town and spent all my earnings on clothes!).
I remember bringing Will to my parents’ house about six months after we started dating and praying he would grow to love Nantucket as much as I do. I think it’s been 13 summers since that first trip and I’d say mission accomplished! 🙂
It’s since become the place Will and I took our engagement pictures, had our rehearsal dinner / welcome party / wedding ceremony and reception, and spend as many weeks as we can each summer with family, friends, and our own little crew — Teddy born in 2019, Peter in 2021, Tucker in 2022, and Rory in 2025! It is the joy of my life to get to share this special place with each of them and hope it comes to mean as much to them as it does to me. ❤️
P.S. I’ve compiled all our family favorite spots in my Nantucket guide and will be sharing bits and pieces of our summer adventures over on Instagram if you’d like to follow along. Happy summer, everyone!