# Tier 1 — Absalom Boston (1785–1855) and the African Meeting House Captain of the *Industry* (1822, all-Black crew), store and boarding-house keeper in New Guinea, Meeting House trustee, *Liberator* subscriber, litigant for his daughter Phebe Ann. Son of Seneca Boston (formerly enslaved on-island) and Thankful Micah (Wampanoag). Buried in the segregated cemetery. **His own hand is thin.** That is the production fact. This build is retrieval-heavy, place-first, and must not invent an interior monologue Hollywood would like. Treat the **Meeting House** (consecrated 1825; 200th in 2025) as co-lead. Museum of African American History owns it. ## Why Tier 1 anyway - Standing building and Seneca Boston house — among the oldest Black-built / Black-used landmarks in the U.S. - Public record of a life that changed island law (1845 petitions → Mass. equal-education statute → Boston’s suit → 1846–47 integration). - Demand is real and currently underserved by spectacle whaling narratives. - Dual/ensemble with Edward J. Pompey, Eunice Ross (her petition is in her voice), Anna Gardner, Phebe Ann Boston. ## Primary material There is no Kendall volume. Reconstruct from the public record. Cary & Cary (1977) said this out loud: working-class Bostons left no convenient family archive. ### A — closest to own words | Source | Where | Use | |---|---|---| | Crew lists and voyage record, *Industry* 1822; earlier *Lydia*, *Thomas*, *Independence* | NHA ships’ papers; New Bedford / whalinghistory.org | What he did at sea. Voyage was not a financial success; do not puff it. | | 1839 petition, “Absalom Boston and 53 others,” to repeal color distinctions | Mass. Archives; discussed in NHA activism pages | Civic voice, shared. | | Suit on behalf of Phebe Ann Boston after the 1845 law | Town / court record | Father-as-litigant, not a speech. | | Land, probate, store records; selectmen journals | Nantucket town; NHA | Property, inn, store. | | Church trustee role, African Baptist / Meeting House | MAAH; NHA | Institutional, not intimate. | ### B — community voices that must share the room | Source | Why | |---|---| | Petition of **Edward J. Pompey** and 104 others (presented 16 Jan 1845) | Meeting House document. Boston signed. NHA has digitized the 1845 set. | | Petition of **Eunice F. Ross** (presented 26 Feb 1845) | First-person: examined 1840, “amply qualified,” refused “on account of her color.” Honorary diploma 2024. | | White supporting petitions (Joseph Hunt / Thomas Macy; Peter Macy) and remonstrances (Fitzgerald; Harvey Crocker) | The fight was not unanimous. | | Arthur Cooper portrait and story | Neighbor in New Guinea. | | Anna Gardner | Taught at the African School; prepared Ross; resigned in protest. | | *The Liberator* subscription list | Boston among first island subscribers. | | Lorin Lee Cary & Francine C. Cary, “Absalom F. Boston, His Family, and Nantucket’s Black Community,” *Historic Nantucket* (Summer 1977) | Still the starter secondary. | | Barbara White, *A Line in the Sand* (school fight); NHA fellow; 2024 Ross lecture | Living scholar seat. | | Frances Karttunen, *The Other Islanders* | African and Wampanoag context; Thankful Micah line. | | W. Jeffrey Bolster, *Black Jacks* | Labor context. | ### C — cutoff 6 June 1855 - New Guinea geography (York / Pleasant / Five Corners), African School vs. new high school (1838), Mass. 1845 Ch. 214. - He does not discuss the 20th-c. Meeting House rescue by Florence Higginbotham or the 2025 anniversary as lived memory. ### Likeness No reliable portrait of Absalom is standard in the public set (Cooper has a painting, 1825–35). Do not mint a handsome invented captain face and call it him. Options: - Type body + documented clothing + **name the uncertainty** - Object-and-clerk program inside the Meeting House (safer) - Family permission if a likeness tradition exists privately Thankful Micah’s Wampanoag identity makes any family-story generation a tribal consultation issue, not a footnote. ## Partners (non-optional) | Org | Role | |---|---| | **Museum of African American History** (Boston / Nantucket) | Meeting House owner. No install without them. | | **NHA** | Petitions exhibit, research fellows, Whaling Museum adjacency — not a substitute for MAAH. | | **Barbara White / Karttunen / NHA fellows** | Scholar veto. | | **Aquinnah or Mashpee cultural offices** | Thankful Micah line; no invented Wampanoag interior. | | Town Clerk / registry | Land and probate reproductions. | ## Programs 1. **Meeting House object program** (season 3 recommended). Clerk-avatar + Boston as tightly retrieved speaker. Petitions on the table. Ross’s text read in *her* voice, not absorbed into his. 2. **Captain, without puff.** *Industry* 1822 as one chapter, not the whole man. Name the crew. 3. **School fight ensemble.** Boston, Pompey, Ross, Gardner. Dated 1845. The remonstrances stay visible. 4. **Walk:** Seneca house → Meeting House → mill hill burial ground. AR plaques, not a talking ghost at the grave. Refuse: composite “Black Nantucket captain,” Maushop-adjacent origin myth, or making Phebe Ann a ventriloquist dummy. ## Production steps 1. **Partnership before corpus.** MAAH MOU. If they say no to a talking body, ship the clerk + petitions only. 2. **Document-first corpus.** Every generated sentence must point at a record ID. If it cannot, it does not speak. 3. **Question bank that expects “we don’t have his words for that.”** That refusal *is* the ethic. 4. **Likeness decision recorded in the methodology page.** 5. **Small room acoustics.** Meeting House is not a museum theater. Tablet or modest kiosk; no LED blade. 6. **Eval** with MAAH educators, White, and New Guinea descendant communities if identifiable. ## Budget band $80k–$180k for a retrieval-heavy Meeting House install (lower if no hero mesh). $200k+ only if MAAH wants a full body *and* the likeness problem is solved honestly.