The History of Nantucket; Being a Compendious Account of the First Settlement of the Island by the English, Together with the Rise and Progress of the Whale Fishery; and Other Historical Facts Relative to Said Island and its Inhabitants.

A descendent of Thomas Macy's fifth generation, American Quaker Obed Macy is best known for his 1835 History of Nantucket, the first standard history of the subject. Obed's ancestor, Thomas Macy, was among the first group of European settlers to establish his family on the island of Nantucket which he and other settlers secured in 1641 with the signing of several treaties with the native Wampanoags. In his 1835 history, Obed wrote that in the early pre-1672 colony, a whale of the kind called "scragg" entered the harbor and was pursued and killed by the settlers. This event started the Nantucket whaling industry which largely depended on the Wampanoag manpower, sourced from a system of debt servitude established by English Nantucketers. By 1850, whaling was in decline, as Nantucket's whaling industry had been surpassed by that of New Bedford. The American Civil War dealt the death blow to the island's whaling industry, as virtually all of the remaining whaling vessels were destroyed by Confederate commerce raiders.