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Latin term genius loci—“the spirit of a place.” Although the modern use of the word “genius” has allocated it to the individual, this original use encodes the indelible role of place in personhood. Comets of chance and tides of circumstance sculpt the shorelines of the self to make us who we are—we can no more claim all credit for our achievement than deflect all blame for our impediments, and it is often difficult to separate the elements of life that make for fortune from those that make for misfortune. Were Mitchell’s accidents of birth lucky
Unlike most Nantucket men, who spent the majority of their time on sailing trips, he rarely left his ever-growing family’s side for the remainder of their long and loving marriage, taking on a series of odd jobs—schoolmaster, insurance broker, executor of wills, bank clerk, candlemaker—in order to avoid going to sea. Like Lydia, William had a dual streak of integrity and insurgency. He embraced certain values of the Quaker faith—abolition, education, and equal intellectual opportunities for the sexes. He insisted that his daughters receive the same basic education as his sons, and when one of
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