50 Feet in the Air
To Kezia Coffin, the Declaration was “horrible”
In January 1775, Kezia Coffin turned sixteen years old, and she began keeping a diary. She recorded the comings and goings of people to her home of Nantucket, a tiny island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The whalers, traders, travelers, and locals whose movements are documented in Coffin’s diary brought news to Nantucket. On April 21, 1775, for example, a man arrived with the “shocking” report of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The next week, a couple arrived from Lynn, Massachusetts, and confirmed that the Boston Neck, the small stretch of land connecting the city to the mainland, was completely closed. People evacuating Boston came to Nantucket, too, including the poet Phillis Wheatley, in the company of her former enslaver’s son and his family.
Detail of Nantucket Island from The Atlantic Neptune, 1780, Library of Congress
Most of the actual pages of Kezia Coffin’s diary no longer survive, but a transcript in the collections of the Nantucket Historical Association shows that it was a rich resource of everyday life on the island. It was also a place for Coffin to document her perspective on the Revolutionary War. She descended from some of the first settlers of the island, and she was a member of Nantucket’s Quaker community. The language that Coffin used to describe the events happening around her shows her loyalty to the British and her frustration with revolutionary leaders. In May 1775, a ship with “100 Provincial soldiers” landed in Nantucket in search of provisions, and Coffin wrote, “God save George the King.” The next day, she described the soldiers as “rebel Low lived fellows.” In the coming months, Coffin described the Sons of Liberty as the “sons of Balaell,” or the devil. “O! how I abhor & detest such creatures,” she wrote. Coffin was frustrated by men who “pretend they are fighting for” liberty, “yet don’t allow others liberty to think as they please unless they think just as they do.”
The following summer, when Coffin was seventeen years old, the Continental Congress declared independence. A man named Sturgis Gorham brought a copy of the Declaration to Nantucket on July 17. To Kezia Coffin, the Declaration was “horrible.” She wished that the Continental Congress “and all their well wishers had been strung 50 feet in the air before they had been suffered so far as to bring about their wicked & ruinous plans.” Coffin believed that the delegates only declared independence “to aggrandize themselves,” writing, “they care not for their bleeding country.” She ended her commentary: “the Lord reward them according to their words.” For Coffin, the Declaration was a traitorous document, and independence was a “wicked & ruinous” proposition.
A few months later, Kezia Coffin engaged in her own rebellion—though she may not have seen it that way. Beginning in July 1775, Coffin frequently mentioned Phineas Fanning in her diary. In January 1777, two women from the Quaker meeting came to advise Coffin “not to be courted by a Presbyterian,” namely Fanning. They also advised her “not to dress so fashionable.” Coffin wrote that “some of their advice was good,” but still “quite needless at this time.” Nevertheless, three months later, she and Fanning announced their plans to marry. The Quaker meeting disowned Coffin for marrying outside of her community.
Kezia and Phineas Fanning made their home on Nantucket as the Revolutionary War waged on. In April 1783, news of peace reached the island. As Coffin wrote: “America allowed to be Independent & everything that the Rebels can wish allowed them.” Clearly, she was still disappointed in the decision to separate from Great Britain. But Kezia Coffin Fanning’s story is a reminder of something often overlooked in histories of the war: many people who disagreed with independence continued to live their lives in the United States. She also continued to keep her diary, and in 1820, she was buried on the island.
Grave Marker for Kezia Fanning, Prospect Hill Cemetery, Find A Grave
Like Kezia Coffin Fanning’s diaries, the copy of the Declaration of Independence that was brought to Nantucket in July 1776 does not survive. But her account of receiving the news does, and it shows that, despire the isolation of living on an island, this diarist had a clear understanding of the political developments happening on the mainland.
