Global events once again conspired to effect change on Nantucket. With the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the resulting war with Britain in 1793, many of the diaspora Nantucketers returned to their island home, wealthy beyond the dreams of those who had remained behind. They brought back with them a pro-French attitude and revolutionary zeal, at just the moment in time when battle lines were forming throughout the newly christened United States of America over exactly what form the new nation would take. Those battle lines would reach right into the shattered heart of Nantucket, running along the fault lines within that lay hidden all this time, bursting asunder its treasured harmony and dividing neighbors and friends alike. It was to be a time of great acrimony and bitterness, of wild accusations, slander and double-dealing. There's even an astrologer involved.

Quakerism, which had begun the eighteenth century poised to become one of the major faiths of the New World, ended it almost as an irrelevancy. As Quakerism became more and more respectable (in the 1600's being a Quaker could have gotten you whipped, branded or worse), and as members of the Meeting gained worldly wealth and political power (especially in Pennsylvania and Nantucket) many Quakers began to worry that their faith was losing its rigor. Consequently a tightening of discipline occurred, resulting in the "reading out" or expulsion, of many Quakers from their local meetings, for such infractions as wearing fancy clothing or dancing. These expulsions, combined with a voluntary loss of members and a lack of converts (no surprise there), resulted in a smaller, more inward-looking movement that failed to thrive.

The American Revolution accelerated this trend; many Quakers who joined the rebels were expelled, and the general perception persisted that Quakers were more than merely pacifists -- that they were in fact closet Tories, with Nantucket leading the way. Naturally after the war this proved less than popular, and Quakerism declined further, eventually falling into schism in the early nineteenth century about the influence of other Protestant denominations on their beliefs.

Nantucket was not immune to these external forces, and if anything they were accentuated by the loss of so many Quaker whaling captains and owners to new home ports overseas. During this time the Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists and Episcopalians made great headway on the island, especially the first two groups who followed an evangelical faith that provided a vibrant alternative to the staid, dour Quakers. There was also a great degree of overlap in membership between these growing denominations and Freemasonry, which was firmly planted on Nantucket in 1771 and remains active to this day. These group provided an alternative social and political power structure for non-Quakers who were alienated from the power base of the Quaker meeting.

As the power of the Quaker meeting began its inexorable slide on Nantucket, events were transpiring on the mainland that would only increase the widening divide between Friends and families on the island. The nation as a whole was riven, for the first time, by party politics: a struggle between the Federalists, the party of Washington and Adams, who favored a strong central government and national bank, and the Democratic-Republicans, led by Jefferson, who opposed the bank and any centralization of governmental powers. The Federalist camp tended to be dominated by wealthy merchants, and was concentrated in the Northeast. They were generally pro-British, as much of their trade was with the former mother country. The Democratic-Republicans were typically southern, agrarian and admired the French Revolution, at least until the Reign of Terror.

Nantucket's still-dominant Quaker majority, many of whom were newly returned from France, were typically ardent Democratic-Republicans (presumably in part due to an aversion to off-island influence over local matters). The problem was, however, that Nantucket was but a tiny speck of Democratic-Republicanism in a sea of Federalism, at a time when the Federalist Adams was in the White House. At the time the spoils system dictated that governmental appointments went to the party faithful, and Nantucket was no exception; as a result, state and federal jobs, such as Postmaster, went to local Federalists on Nantucket. In the case of Postmaster, the appointment was given to one William Coffin II.

William Coffin II was a fascinating, irascible old coot. His house still stands at 29 Union Street; I gaze out of my bedroom window onto it each morning. Federalist, Freemason, Congregationalist (and later Unitarian), Coffin was a man who lived on an island where the majority prided themselves on circumspection and couldn't seem to keep his mouth shut. Throughout his entire long life Coffin repeatedly found himself in the middle of controversy, sometimes on the side of the angels but often to his own detriment. His outspokenness made him many enemies, as we shall see.

While there were underlying faults that ran through the entire community, faults than would soon rupture and not be healed for decades, William Coffin II seems to have been the focus of much discontent. Given his tendency for forthrightness (to put it mildly), as a Federalist in Democratic-Republican Nantucket Coffin exacerbated an already antagonistic situation; the return of the whalers from abroad added further tinder to pyre. All that was required was the spark to ignite it -- a spark that would take the form of the Great Nantucket Bank Robbery of 1795.

The bare facts of the matter are briefly stated: on the very foggy night of June 20, 1795 three men, using keys fashioned from pewter spoons, broke into the newly-chartered Nantucket Bank, located where the Sports Locker is now. The bank had only been in business for approximately two weeks but had a substantial (for the time) amount of hard cash on hand, to the tune of $20,000 in various denominations of coins (when the robbery was first discovered the bank directors kept a lid on things until the 26th, when a general alarm was raised, in order to allow for a transfer of additional capital so that the bank would not fold if there were a run on its holdings).

Business in Nantucket came to a standstill as people milled about in the street for days; wild conspiracies theories abounded, but curiously many locals refused to consider the possibility that the robbery had been committed by strangers. Most people felt that they had a pretty good idea who had done the deed: suspicion immediately fell upon one Randall Rice, a native Rhode Islander who had married a local girl, operated a slaughterhouse, and, most damning of all in the eyes of island Quaker's, did some legal work on the side. One wonders also if Rice's combination of ruthless business and legal tactics used to acquire his property (located at the base of Old North Wharf) at the expense of his impoverished neighbors, not to mention being a Federalist, did not add to his patina of guilt.

Apparently Rice was initially fingered by one Walter Folger, Sr. (whose son was a bank director), an avowed Democrat, amateur phrenologist (they claimed that the shape of a mans head and the bumps on it could be used as a kind of lumpy psych test) and repeated targets of Rice's lawsuits. On June 22nd, Folger averred, he had been walking from his house to the wharves along Liberty Street and had passed Rice in front of Uriah Swain's house (another bank director, who owned 5 Liberty Street -- the present home of Catherine Flanagan Stover, our Town Clerk); Rice, unsurprisingly, crossed the street to avoid him. Folger claimed that Rice "looked guilty of something", which was apparently all his son and the other bank directors required as proof . On June 26th, the day news of the robbery became public, warrants were sworn out for Randall Rice and two other men named Nichols, who were family friends of Rice. The prisoners were incarcerated in a local store and were guarded, curiously enough, by the bank directors themselves. After a hearing before Josiah Coffin, Esq., Justice of the Peace, the men were released; Rice soon after filed a lawsuit against Folger for slandering him.

In the absence of actual evidence, rumors abounded and grew wilder with each passing day. Libbeus Coffin described by those who knew him as an illiterate laborer of vile temper and questionable competency, claimed that he had seen several men, including Randall Rice and William Coffin II, entering the bank that foggy June night and removing something that appeared to be quite heavy. Over the course of repeated re-tellings the story morphed into a dream that Libbeus had in which he saw the sacks of money in Randall Rice's house. A nephew of the bank president related that he had overheard Rice planning the robbery with his co-conspirators. One woman of questionable repute named Rachel Gardner, who claimed to have been in a barn with a man (a euphemism if ever I've heard one) the night before the robbery, also claims to have overheard some plotting.

And the beat went on. With each new "witness" others came forth, swearing that they had seen or heard this or that, generally basing their stories on the previous testimonies of their neighbors. The accusers, all bank directors, mostly Quakers and Democratic-Republicans, won over a large segment of the population to their side based on little more than gossip and innuendo. Before the affair was over their methods would include bribery and perjury, but before events reached this crescendo the rising tide of hysteria overwhelmed one of the few non-Quaker bank directors: an outspoken Federalist and Freemason called William Coffin II, who soon found himself in the middle of the firestorm, much to his chagrin.

On July 9th Coffin met the bank president, Joseph Chase, in the lower square in front of the Pacific Club; as they rambled in the direction of Rice's slaughterhouse at the foot of Old North Wharf Chase turned on Coffin and accused him of complicity in the robbery. Coffin, caught off-guard, stammered out a denial, but it was obvious that the die was cast: as far as Chase was concerned, Coffin was guilty. Apparently Chase decided that he needed more proof than the dubious claims of a prostitute and a village idiot before he took legal action; accordingly, he traveled to Providence, RI to consult an astrologer (as one does in such situations). Not surprisingly, the astrologer provided descriptions that matched those of the men already under suspicion.

As July progressed insults were hurled from one side to the other. On August 22nd a U.S. marshal came to Nantucket and, along with several bank directors, searched the suspects' homes and business, with no results. Nevertheless, Rice and his fellow "conspirators", minus William Coffin II (who was merely "strongly suspected") were brought before a Court of Inquiry held by a lawyer from the Attorney General's office. Testimony was taken from the various alleged witnesses but when the most credible, William Worth, admitted that he had lied previously many of the others' stories, based in part on his testimony, collapsed like a house of whale blubber. Sylvanus Macy, another board director and apparently a central figure in the rumormongering against William Coffin II, even offered one witness $3000 if he would just stick to his story. Amazingly, the presiding attorney found sufficient credibility in the remaining witnesses to hold the men over for trial; however, William Worth, Libbeus Coffin and Rachel Gardner were also charged with perjury (tellingly, their bail was posted by Uriah Swain, Walter Folger, Sr., and others in the accusers' camp).

In September Sylvanus Macy renewed his attacks against William Coffin II, but refused to press them in public. Coffin's attempts to bring him to account before a meeting of the bank's principal stockholders, but Macy demurred. Coffin even went to the extraordinary length of appealing to the Quaker Meeting for relief from the depredations of the Quaker Macy, but his pleas fell on deaf ears; perhaps he was receiving his comeuppance from his years of obdurate contrariness.

Finally, in December, 1795, Coffin had had enough; he financed his own "fact-finding" mission to New York in search of the perpetrators. Apparently he met with almost instant success -- by the end of the month Coffin was writing his wife and claiming that one of the perpetrators had been caught in Philadelphia. Two months later Coffin was back on Nantucket, followed soon after by Joseph Chase, who brought a man named Weatherly with him in chains. In April of 1796 Chase and Uriah Swain returned to New York and detained one John Clark, Jr., who confessed his role and named his accomplices, none of whom were from Nantucket. This should have cleared Coffin, Rice and the others but incredibly, this evidence was never presented in court; so eager were Macy, Swain, Chase and the other accusers to ruin their rivals that they suppressed the exculpatory evidence.

As recounted by Clark, on June 17th, three days before the robbery, the sloop Delphin arrived from New York in Nantucket Harbor; on board were three men: John Clark, Jr., James Weatherly and Seth Johnson. The vessel left port before daybreak on the 21st, the day after the robbery. News of the crime had spread rapidly to mainland towns and cities, and in early July Johnson and Weatherley had actually been found in possession of a large quantity of gold coins and were arrest for the bank robbery, but as no one from Nantucket bothered to follow up on this they were eventually released.

Weatherley and Clark, who apparently couldn't keep their mouths shut, confessed again to their guard at the Nantucket Gaol (who was fired for reporting the confessions) and later to their cellmate Phineas Fanning, recently incarcerated for alleged indebtedness but actually locked up for siding with Coffin and the others. Fanning, Randall Rice's attorney, was the husband of Kezia Coffin Fanning, the diarist, who was the daughter of Kezia Coffin, the infamous profiteer from the days of the Revolution. Kezia, recently released from debtors' prison in Nova Scotia, was living with her daughter and son-in-law in rather impoverished circumstances. Phineas and Kezia were divided over the guilt of their fellow Nantucketers and once again Sylvanus Macy intervened, securing a new home for the Coffin-Fannings on Main Street and, it was hoped, Kezia's support. He also visited Phineas in prison and promised his release if Fanning would testify that Rice had confessed to him that he had robbed the bank. To his credit Fanning declined, and Kezia came to be convinced of the innocence of her fellow Nantucketers, eventually testifying to the underhanded tactics employed by Macy and the other accusers.

When he was finally released Fanning slipped away to an isolated stretch of the Long Island coast, presumably after the money that he was told was buried there, but returned empty-handed. In the meantime, Weatherley and Clark "escaped" from the Gaol, allegedly with the assistance of some of the bank directors, and hid in ropewalks and swamps before eventually finding passage off of Nantucket. In spite of the exonerating confessions Rice and the others accused in the robbery were tried in July of 1796, fully a year after the event occurred -- only Rice was found guilty, and he was imprisoned in Boston. He eventually was pardoned and released, but by then his business affairs were in ruins and he was jailed in Nantucket for his debts. Although he was eventually released and resumed some legal work he never achieved the heights of success that he had known previously.

The other defendants, exonerated, were spoiling for revenge, and sued Walter Folger, Uriah Swain and others for slander. And so it went. Five years later William Coffin II was defamed in the State Legislature by his own Representative when Coffin came to provide testimony; naturally he sued for slander. The island remained bitterly divided for decades, and only after all of the participants were dead were the wounds fully healed. There were a number of other controversies on Nantucket involving William Coffin, and the old divisions that underlay the animosities kindled by the Great Bank Robbery, but they must wait for another time. While they each concern a distinct event they are united by their common origins in the bitter feud that rent Nantucket in two, a feud whose roots lay deep beneath the cracked and shifting foundations of this house divided.