The Eleven Families of Nantucket
1659 — The Island Purchase
In 1659, Tristram Coffin led nine purchasers to Nantucket Island. Within a generation, eleven families would form the core of the island’s community — interconnected by marriage, bound by the sea, and documented in Eliza Starbuck Barney’s genealogical record of 40,000 islanders.
The Purchase
On July 2, 1659, Tristram Coffin and eight other men purchased Nantucket Island from Thomas Mayhew for thirty pounds and two beaver hats. Mayhew held the patent from the Earl of Sterling; the Wampanoag sachems who had lived on the island for thousands of years were not party to the transaction. The nine original purchasers — Coffin, Thomas Macy, Edward Starbuck, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleaf, John Swain, Tristram Coffin Jr., and Robert Barnard — were soon joined by others, and by the end of the decade, eleven families formed the core of the English settlement.
The Eleven Founding Families
MACY
Thomas Macy
First European resident of Nantucket.
SWAIN
Richard Swain
Original purchaser. Intermarried with every founding line.
GARDNER
Richard Gardner
The half-share men. The Coffin–Gardner feud split the island.
COLEMAN
John Coleman
Original proprietor. Coleman descendants across the island.
FOSTER
Ebenezer Foster
Recruited tradesman. Foster descendants in the Perry line.
STARBUCK
Edward Starbuck
Proprietor. His son married Tristram’s daughter Mary.
BARNARD
Nathaniel Barnard
Among the nine original purchasers.
PIKE
Robert Pike
Original purchaser. Salisbury, Massachusetts origins.
GREENLEAF
Tristram Greenleaf
Co-purchaser and early settler of the island.
The Coffin–Gardner Feud
The power struggle between Tristram Coffin’s faction — English settlers holding full shares, oriented toward land and political control — and the half-share men led by John Gardner — tradesmen who demanded equal voice in island governance — split Nantucket for a generation. Peter Folger, the schoolmaster, sided with the tradesmen and was jailed for it. The feud was resolved only by marriage: Jethro Coffin wed Mary Gardner in 1686, and their wedding gift — a house at 16 Sunset Hill Lane — still stands as the Oldest House on Nantucket. This archive documents descendants of both sides.
The Whaling Era
By the early 1700s, Nantucket had become the whaling capital of the world. The founding families — Coffin, Starbuck, Macy, Folger, Gardner — captained the ships, processed the oil, and built the economy. At its peak, Nantucket whalers ranged from the Arctic to the Pacific, and whale oil lit the lamps of colonial America. The sinking of the Essex in 1820 and the Great Fire of 1846 marked the beginning of the end. Families scattered to the mainland — to New Bedford, Fall River, and Cape Cod — where the Winter-Swift family would later settle.
Research Resources
Barney Genealogical Database
40,000+ Nantucket genealogical records, free access. genealogy.nha.org
NHA Research Library
Nantucket Historical Association research services. Contact: library@nha.org
New Bedford Whaling Museum
Maritime archives, whaling records, and ship logs from the era when Nantucket families relocated to the mainland.
Connections to the Archive
The Nantucket founding families connect to nearly every other line in this archive. The Gardners and Fosters appear in the Cincinnati research. The Coffins trace back to medieval Devon through the Portledge centuries. The Swains and Macys intermarried with every founding line on the island. And from Nantucket, the families spread to the mainland — to the Cape Cod towns and New Bedford harbors where the Swift and Winter families built their lives.