Because the village of ’Sconset (Siasconset) underwent so few changes during the 19th century, or indeed during the century before, it is not possible to date the drawing made by Alexander Seaverns with any exactness. Seaverns, who was known locally during the second half of the 19th century as a wood engraver and an artist, came to Nantucket to teach in the school and remained.

’Sconset, located some seven and a half miles from the town of Nantucket was a 17th-century settlement. Its houses, all small in scale, have been given the name “whale houses.” Many of the surviving houses have been individually studied and described in Henry Chandlee Forman, Early Nantucket and its Whale Houses, New York, 1966.

The ’Sconset scene which presented itself to Charles Francis Adams on his visit to the island with his father and party in 1835 seems not materially different from Seaverns’ depiction of it some years later. Adams’ description, showing more precision and eye for detail than he ordinarily manifested in the Diary, gives emphasis to those qualities which are evident in the drawing as well: “Siasconset is the Nahant of this Community. Originally a fishing settlement, the huts were gradually deserted by their original tenants and taken by the comfortable citizens for the purpose of affording clear air and change of scene for the two summer months. They are all of a similar construction, of one story and protected from the external air by shingles over boards. They are rarely painted and probably cost five or six hundred dollars to build. The houses are placed within a very few feet of each other and the people when there make a sort of general society. There is a primitive simplicity about this whole thing which I have met with nowhere else” (p. 220, below).