Nantucket, Massachusetts

The Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House celebrates approximately 200 years of Black history on Nantucket Island. Named for the property’s former owners, the historic home along with the neighboring Nantucket African Meeting House mark the location of New Guinea, the island’s earliest free Black community. In 1774, Seneca Boston, a Black weaver, purchased the land where this home sits. Boston bought this property two years after he was manumitted from slavery and resided here with his wife Thankful Micah, a Wampanoag woman, and their six children. The Bostons were part of a large and rather prosperous family, comprised of landowners and mariners. While Seneca’s son, Absalom, gained prominence for serving as captain of a whaling vessel staffed with an all-Black crew, subsequent generations of the Boston family owned and resided at this residence for approximately 126 years and contributed to the growth of the New Guinea community. Following the decline of the island’s whaling industry, an African American woman named Florence Higginbotham purchased this property in 1920 and later the nearby African Meeting House, which led to the preservation of these two landmarks of local Black history. More than 30,000 artifacts were uncovered during the archaeological excavations conducted in 2008 and 2014, which document the lives of these two prominent Black families.

2016 Cultural Resource Management Study No.76: Archaeological Site Examination of the Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House, Nantucket, Massachusetts.