Absalom Boston Memorialized

July 31, 2026

171 years after his death, Absalom Boston is remembered

Written by Brian Bushard

Photography by Charity Grace Mofsen and Courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association

Absalom Boston died on Nantucket in 1855 and was buried at the Historic Coloured Cemetery. But Boston, the captain of Nantucket’s first all-Black whaling crew who was born and raised on the island, never received a headstone. In June, his name—as well as that of his wife Hannah Cook Boston—was memorialized at the Historic Coloured Cemetery as part of Nantucket’s Juneteenth celebration.

“You would go down to the cemetery and look for him, and you see his family but you don’t see him at all,” said Neville Richen, who regularly portrays Absalom Boston in island performances throughout the year. “I thought, isn’t it rather strange that in the Colored Cemetery there wasn’t a memorial. Here is Absalom Boston, a local figure, and the kids don’t really know him.”

Absalom Boston was part of a diverse whaling industry in the early and mid-1800s, when it was not uncommon for crews to include members of the Wampanoag communities around the Cape and islands, as well as Black and Portuguese sailors from Cape Verde and the Azores. Many of the descendants of those whaleships still live in the area. Boston's uncle, Prince Boston, was the first enslaved person on Nantucket to sue for his freedom in 1773, effectively ending slavery on the island.

Boston not only captained an all-Black whaling crew on the whaleship Industry—a six month voyage across the Atlantic—he also became an entrepreneur, shopkeeper and an innkeeper when he returned to the island. He helped create the African Meeting House and was active in Nantucket’s abolitionist movement and ran for public office.

While fully renovated, his house still stands at the corner of Pleasant and York streets, and is now owned by the Museum of African American History. It is called the Seneca Boston - Florence Higginbotham House, taking its name in part from Absalom’s father Seneca.

In 1846, he sued Nantucket’s segregated public school to admit his daughter, Phebe. The case made its way to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Facing mounting pressure, Nantucket desegregated its schools in 1846, and Boston’s daughter was admitted. Hannah Cook Boston, meanwhile, was a pioneer in her own right. Not only did she play a role in school desegregation, but she was the first female steamship stewardess on the S.S. Island Home. “Hannah was a pioneer,” island historian Frances Ruley Karttunen said.

By the time of his death in 1855, the island’s whaling industry had collapsed, and it would have been unlikely that his three surviving children would have been able to afford the cost of a memorial stone, Karttunen wrote in her book, Nantucket Places and People. “We’re aware that a lot of people come to the cemetery looking for something they can’t find,” Karttunen said at the ceremony. “Not only did we want to memorialize these two very important people, but we want to give people who come to the cemetery something to find.”

For years, the only memory of Absalom Boston was a small portrait of him at the Whaling Museum. Boston had a beard and a tuxedo, and on his ears a pair of gold hoops. The omission of Absalom and Hannah Cook Boston’s names from the cemetery was righted this June, 171 years after Absalom’s death. At the Historic Coloured Cemetery, Absalom Boston’s new headstone reads, “Whaling Master. Entrepreneur. Citizen.” Hannah Cook Boston’s epitaph reads: “Wife and Mother. Stewardess on the S.S. Island Home.”

“It was very important, especially for the young people growing up on Nantucket to be more conscious of it,” Richen said. “Not too many people knew about him, and Absalom Boston is now arriving into infamy.” His headstone serves as a fitting tribute to a pioneer who left a mark on Nantucket.

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