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Were There Two Parliament Houses? The Question Is Raised By The Author Of Mary Coffin Starbuck THE FORTHCOMING BOOK, "Mary Coffin Starbuck and the Early History of Nantucket," by Roland L. Warren, is in the hands of the printers, and is due to appear in two or three months. Mr. Warren is the writer of the play about the Oldest House and its early families, which was shown at the celebration activities relating to the Oldest House last summer, and was well received by interested audiences. On this occasion he is writing about the Mary Coffin StarbuckNathaniel Starbuck, Jr. house, known as "Parliament House," on the corner of Pine Street and School Street, in Nantucket. His chapter call ed: "Fact, Fiction and Conjecture," excerpts from which have been used herewith, appears as follows: Fact, Fiction and Conjecture by Roland L. Warren
The confused identification of Mary Coffin Starbuck with her daughter Mary Starbuck has been mentioned in the Introduction. The cir cumstance that one author has the young Mary Starbuck marrying her own father, Nathaniel, might serve as the best illustration of the dif ficulties caused by conflicting accounts. But perhaps the most complex illustration of the jumble of statements based on inadequate data and statements that go contrary to the known facts is the example of Parlia ment House. When was it built? Was there one, or were there two Parlia ment Houses? And, was either one moved into Wesco (the present Nantucket)? In July, 1983, Margaret S. Beale published an article called "The Starbuck Family and the Parliament House" in Historic Nantucket, the of ficial journal of the Nantucket Historical Association. In it, she attemp ted "to determine if a correlation exists between 10 Pine Street and 'Parliament House', a dwelling known as the home of Nathaniel and Mary (Coffin) Starbuck, which was located in the section of Old Sherborn known as Cambridge as early as 1667. According to Nantucket lore, John Folger, a Quaker carpenter, told his grandson, Joseph Austin, that he had incorporated into the house on the corner of Pine and School Streets materials salvaged from 'Parliament House'." Other writers take the "correlation" between the two houses as more than lore. Merle Turner simply reports that "In 1667 Nathaniel and Mary Starbuck had a house, called the Parliament House, on the hill north of Hummock Pond. Around 1820 this was moved to town..." For him, it was not just materials from the original house, but the house itself, apparently intact. Anderson states in a footnote that "The Parliament House still stands, although on a later site, at the corner of Pine and
