African Meeting House, Nantucket
The exterior of the African Meeting House
on Nantucket, recently restored.
Photo: Claudia Kronenberg
On Nantucket Island -- where there are more than 800 structures that
predate the Civil War -- a ramshackle little building stood on a corner
plot at Five Corners in the area once known as New Guinea.
It is the only public structure remaining on the island that is
identifiably central to the history of the African community of the 18th
and 19th centuries.
The small post-and-beam building dates from about 1827, when it was a
church, a school for African children, and a meeting house.
This segregated community, south of Nantucket Town, touched the lives of
escaped slaves, Native Americans, Cape Verdeans, Quakers, educators, and
Although Nantucket public schools were racially integrated in 1846, the
meeting house continued to be used well into the 20th century as a social
A succession of events — the discovery of petroleum, the California Gold
Rush, and especially the demise of the whaling industry in the 1850s
turned Nantucket into an economic disaster area.
In 1911, a young African America woman of 15 came to Nantucket to work for
one of those families returning every summer with her employer. In 1920,
this young woman, now Mrs. Florence Higginbotham, bought her own
Nantucket home at 27 York Street where she lived for the rest of her
life. In 1933, Mrs. Higginbotham acquired the adjoining property with
the meeting house and two outbuildings.
The meeting house continued to be used as a social center,
but after World War II it was rented out as a garage, and then a storage
shed and repair shop for bicycles.
Mrs. Higginbotham died in 1972, leaving as her sole heir
her son, Wilhelm, who honored her request to retain the meeting house
property, underscoring what she recognized as its historic significance.
She was not alone in that recognition, for the businessman
who had stored his bicycles there began research that led to its
inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places and to the
restoration effort now being pursued.
It was under his aegis that negotiations began between the
owner and influential members of the African American community in
Boston, resulting in its acquisition in 1989 by the Museum of Afro
American History on Beacon Hill.
The Museum's success in restoring Boston's 1806 African
Meeting House on Smith Court was certainly a determining factor in Mr.
Higginbotham's decision to relinquish the property on Nantucket: he knew
it would be in good hands. In 1992, the Friends of the African Meeting
House on Nantucket joined with officials and distinguished guests from
Boston and Nantucket to rededicate the site as a centerpiece of
Nantucket's history, and to honor the memory of Florence Higginbotham.
The restoration of the Meeting House was completed in 1999
and the opened to the public on a seasonal schedule.
More on the Higginbotham