A Genealogy Vacation or, Nothing Compares To Being There

     I've just returned home from Martha's Vineyard; beaches, sunsets, and best of all, (other than family time), genealogy.  Does it get much better than that?  No. Unless of course one travels to Ireland.

     Ever since I learned that my 4th great-grandfather, Thomas Garner Jr., was born at Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard in 1773, to Thomas Sr. and his wife Ann Williams, I've been curious about how the family arrived on the island and just as importantly, why?  Martha's Vineyard, and the views it offers, are absolutely gorgeous; but why would a person choose to live in such an exposed and sometimes dangerous spot, (particularly during the Revolutionary War), surrounded on all sides by the North Atlantic?  I doubted it was the scenery that drew them.  Not being a native, I was at a loss as to how to  answer these questions but after much online research I had a good idea where to begin looking... the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

     After trudging through town in 80-degree temps the museum, at the top of a large hill, loomed before me.  There is a bus system, but it's still a hike from the stop to the museum.  Once inside though I easily found the research library presided over by a librarian with the delightful name of Bow Van Ripper.  After some discussion and my mention of another Garner close in age to Thomas Sr. who had married Timothy Coffin on Martha's Vineyard, Bow offered an intriguing insight, maybe Thomas was from Nantucket?  He informed me the surnames Garner, Coffin and Williams were old, well known names on that neighboring island.

     This would actually make sense.  Volume three of The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, written by Charles E. Banks and available at Family Search, contains a paragraph about Thomas "Gardner" and his wife Ann Williams.  The author notes they resided on Mill Road in Tisbury but were both strangers to the island with Ann being among the first Williams found in Vineyard records, on the occasion of her marriage to Thomas in 1768.  Looking through the records I could see there weren't many Williams in that place, with none born there until the mid1840's, and those three births were all to the same couple, John and Roxena Williams. 

     The surname Garner has several variations, the most common being Gardner though I also saw it spelled Garnder in Nantucket vital records where there were numerous Gardner's. Those last two spellings were the ones I found in Nantucket records, but from other online sources I could see there were indeed people spelling it "Garner", living on Nantucket in the 18th century; I can only assume they were recorded in vital records under one of the name variants.  Vital records from Martha's Vineyard show the surname was much less common there, there were only two Gardner births, those of Thomas and Elizabeth Gardner, (with Garner in parenthesis), the children of my Thomas and Ann born1773 and1776 respectively.

     One of the online sources that showed Garners on Nantucket is a site picturing the newly restored home Richard Garner Jr., who settled in Salem, built on Nantucket for his son Richard Gardner, a whaling captain who was lost at sea.  A current site including both spellings of the surname! It's conceivable my Thomas Garner was a grandson of the drowned captain or of John Gardner who was a brother of Richard Jr. who also came to Nantucket.

 Built 1722-1724 on Nantucket by Richard Garner, Jr. for his son Richard Gardner 3rd

     Other vital and military records contained many instances where the two names seemed to be used almost interchangeably.  But of course, there were also individuals whose surname actually was Gardner, people not related to me; untangling them would be difficult if not impossible.

     I had hoped to stroll down Mill Road but for several reasons that was not to be.  Firstly, in the year 1892 the town of Tisbury was divided into Tisbury and West Tisbury.  That meant in Thomas' day Tisbury was much larger than now.  There was a Mill Road in West Tisbury, also the area of oldest English settlement, so assuming the road's name hadn't changed in the intervening years, today's West Tisbury is where Thomas actually lived.  The other problem was West Tisbury is largely residential, I didn't spot any tourist buses heading there and it was too far to walk, especially since I wasn't convinced today's Mill Road was the same as Thomas and Ann's Mill Road.  My family had already humored me with a trip to the research library so I contented myself with a glimpse of the West Tisbury area from the ferry.

     Though I didn't learn many new, definite facts about Thomas Garner Sr., I did get to see his island, and the Tisbury librarian telling me my family names were common on Nantucket was major! Who knows how long it would have taken me to figure that out on my own?  Too, I had never considered my family may have included whalers.  Seeing Martha's Vineyard and its sandy soil in person vividly illustrated how difficult farming would have been there and brought home why residents turned to whaling.  By the 1730's however, the whale population around the two islands had been seriously depleted, forcing whalers to search further afield for their prey.  Now voyages could last for years, which might explain the small size of Thomas Jr.'s family.

     Another discovery was the Quaker connection.  One of the reasons the elder Richard Garner left Salem was the persecution of Quakers in that place. Many of his coreligionists did the same, indeed, the birth records of the Garner children were found in Quaker records.  All this gives me several new avenues for research, not to mention a reason to visit Nantucket next year.