The site of the island’s first organized town, Sherborne, is here on Nantucket’s north shore. What remains of the original harbor is now Capaum Pond, a brackish pond surrounded by private land. on three sides and Nantucket Sound to the North.
Founded in 1659 by the first English settlers, they named their new home after the town they were from in England. The buildings and homes of Sherborne were perched around the tiny harbor for over thirty years. After decades of shifting shoals slowly clogging the harbor entrance, a violent storm around 1712 pushed tons of sand into the channel and sealed Sherburne Habor for good. So the people adapted and moved their homes around today’s harbor. You can see one of these houses, originally owned by the Starbuck family, at the corner of Gardner and Main streets, opposite the Civil War Monument.
After you find the cache and are done seeing the monuments, the bird eye views of Macy Pond, Washing Pond, and Capaum Pond, head over to and down Washing Pond Road to see what remains of Shurburne. The dirt road becomes a sand trail and leads to the beach where families in the know spend their summers splashing about, but be sure not to miss the walking by Capaum pond. Take time to imagine what it must have been like for those settlers there to decide to pick up and move their community after spending so many years getting there and finally building building their town there. The decision to pick up and move houses from one part of the island to another is practice most people in this country never see, but folks on Nantucket see dozens of houses driven down streets and moved around each Fall. Islanders know that when they see a bunch of mailboxes' posts pulled out of the ground and laying by the side of the road, they should hurry along before the road is blocked by the chunk of house just minutes away!
To learn more about Nantucket’s beginnings and this area visit:
http://minerdescent.com/2012/02/08/nantucket-founders/
and
http://www.nha.org/library/cemeteries/infofounders.htm
This image is that of the original Gardner grave marker. It's carved decor is stunning! It has a skull at the top with wings and goggly shapes and swirls all around. It also has other names crudely etched in it - other dead people buried here or the marks of early hoodlums? Who knows!?!
* For those of you who log your benchmarks, don't forget to photograph the monument, it is bench mark: LW4213