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
...more
