Pinkham family correspondence (Ms.85.16)

Biographical/Historical note

Elizabeth Pinkham Crosby (b. 1816) and Malvina F. Pinkham Marshall (b. 1820) were the daughters of Capt. Seth Pinkham, a Nantucket whaler, and his wife Mary (Brown) Pinkham. The girls were raised on Nantucket, along with their sisters Harriett (b. 1828), Helen (later the wife of Joseph Belcher of Providence), Mary (b. 1814) and Rebecca (b. 1818) and their brother Seth, who followed their father into the whaling business.

Elizabeth married William H. Crosby in 1834, and Malvina married whaling captain Joseph Marshall (whose second wife she became) in 1846.

The family home on Nantucket, built in 1826 and called the Captain Seth Pinkham House, is now preserved as a historic heritage property. A biographical novel about their father, based on his manuscript logs, journals and correspondence, was published in 1932 under the title Through the Hawse-Hole.