Period watercolour of a sperm whale smashing into a whaleboat while the whaleship Essex heels over in heavy seas behind it
A sperm whale attacks a whaleboat — the Essex disaster of 1820, the true story that inspired Moby-Dick. Image via National Geographic's history coverage of the Essex.

A Salt Water Roots investigation · 21 October 2026

The Nickerson–Essex Connection

Robin's Nickerson ancestors helped found Barrington, Nova Scotia, in the 1760s. Two generations of Chatham Nickersons later, a fourteen-year-old cabin boy named Thomas Nickerson survived the sinking of the whaleship Essex — the real ship behind Moby-Dick. Were they family? We traced both lines, link by link. The answer is yes — with one honest gap, and we show you exactly where it is.

The verdict, in three parts

Documented in full

Line A — the Barrington Nickersons

Every generation from the Nova Scotia settlers back to William Nickerson, founder of Chatham, is documented in the published Nickerson genealogy and vital records.

Documented

Line B — Thomas of the Essex

The Nantucket Historical Association and Nathaniel Philbrick document Thomas (1805–1883) as the son of Thomas B. Nickerson "from Cape Cod" and Rebecca (Gibson) Nickerson of Nantucket.

One link not yet closed

The parents of Thomas B. Nickerson

No accessible authoritative source names Thomas Sr.'s own parents. He is expected to be a seventh-generation Chatham Nickerson — but that specific link was not verified, and we won't pretend otherwise.

Two lines, one root — tap any name

Both lines begin at the same man: William¹ Nickerson (1604–1689) of Norwich, England, who emigrated in 1637, married Anne Busby, and founded Chatham, Massachusetts. Below him, the lines part. Tap or click any card to see that person's dates, their place in the chain, and the class of evidence behind the link.

William¹ Nickerson
1604–1689 · Norwich, England → Chatham, Massachusetts

Founder of the line. The Nickerson Family Association estimates that over 95% of North American Nickersons descend from William and Anne — an estimate, not proof for any single line, which is why each line below is traced on its own records.

Line A — to Barrington, Nova Scotia

Chatham, Massachusetts → Shag Harbour & Cape Sable Island, 1760s. Documented end to end.

The other Barrington party — Joshua's first cousins

Joshua didn't come alone. Three children of his first cousin William⁴ Nickerson settled Barrington and Cape Sable Island too:

Line B — to the whaleship Essex

Chatham & Harwich, Massachusetts → Nantucket. Documented firmly at the bottom; the top link is the open question.

Do you hold a piece of this link?

If you have a record — a family Bible entry, a page of a published genealogy, an old letter or deed — that names Thomas B. Nickerson's parents, or any Chatham or Harwich Nickerson of these 1700s–1800s generations, send it in. Every submission is logged into our research database and checked against the published genealogy and the vital records — and if a submission closes this link, this page will be updated to say so.

Send us what you have

Start with Joshua⁵ — the best-documented Barrington progenitor

b. 27 May 1733, Chatham, Mass. · d. 16 April 1821, Barrington, N.S.

Derick's published genealogy gives Joshua's line in one breath — "JOSHUA⁵ NICKERSON (Caleb⁴, William³, William², William¹)" — born at Chatham, married Esther Rider there on 15 December 1754, and recorded as an original Barrington township grantee: "first div., lot No. 23," at Shag Harbour, arriving "in one of the first vessels." The Canadian Register of Historic Places independently confirms him as an original grantee and the township's first Keeper of the Town Grant.

Evidence: Published genealogy (Derick), on Chatham vital records

So how close is the kinship?

If Thomas Sr. sits in generation 7, exactly where the circumstantial evidence points, the relationship works out like this:

Thomas Nickerson of the Essex and Joshua Nickerson of Shag Harbour would be

third cousins, three times removed

…with William¹ Nickerson of Chatham as their most recent common ancestor. The true common ancestor could be closer than William¹ if Thomas Sr.'s branch is identified — it cannot be farther away. This calculation is stated conditionally because the one link it depends on is the unverified one above.

Joshua⁵ — 4 steps below William¹

William¹
→ William²
→ William³
→ Caleb⁴
→ Joshua⁵ of Barrington

Thomas — 7 steps below William¹ (expected)

William¹
→ generations 2–6: branch not yet identified
→ generation 7: Thomas B. Nickerson (presumed)
→ generation 8: Thomas of the Essex

And the independent check: a professional genealogist at American Ancestors (NEHGS) has already traced a Barrington-born Nickerson line all the way back to William¹ using Nova Scotia and Massachusetts vital records plus the published genealogy — finding one Barrington descendant with five separate descents from William¹ through intermarried Nova Scotia families. The Nova Scotia side of this family tree reaching William¹ is not in doubt.

Thomas and the Essex

What the museum record says about the cabin boy himself — Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) sources, with Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea in agreement:

  1. 1805

    Born in Harwich, Massachusetts, son of Thomas B. Nickerson, from Cape Cod, and Rebecca (Gibson) Nickerson of Nantucket. Sources differ on the day: 20 March 1805 in Philbrick-derived accounts; December 1805 in the NHA's own introduction. Both are shown here rather than smoothed over.

  2. 1806

    Brought to Nantucket as an infant. Both parents died before he was two, and he was raised by his grandfather, Captain Robert Gibson.

  3. 1819

    Sails for the Pacific in the whaleship Essex under Captain George Pollard — age fourteen, the youngest of the crew, as cabin boy.

  4. 20 Nov 1820

    A sperm whale sinks the Essex. Nickerson and nineteen other men take to three small open boats.

  5. 1821

    After some three months — 89 days — in the open boats, he and two others in his boat are picked up by the brig Indian.

  6. After

    He stays at sea: boatsteerer on Pollard's next command, the Two Brothers — which also wrecked (the NHA finding aid says 1821; other accounts give 11 February 1823 — flagged, not resolved) — then mate on whaling voyages, master of merchant ships, and finally keeper of a Nantucket rooming house.

  7. 1876

    He writes his own account of the Essex disaster — one of only two first-hand accounts — for the writer Leon Lewis.

  8. 1883–1984

    Thomas dies on Nantucket, 7 February 1883. His account, unpublished in his lifetime, is finally published by the NHA in 1984 as The Loss of the Ship "Essex."

Meanwhile, in Barrington: the Nova Scotia Nickersons' own stories

The connection to the Essex is the headline — but the Barrington Nickersons hardly needed borrowed fame. Documented in heritage and genealogical sources:

Joshua the builder

Joshua⁵ Nickerson was an original Barrington township grantee (first division, lot 23, Shag Harbour) and the township's first Keeper of the Town Grant. An excellent ship carpenter, he framed the Old Meeting House, built the area's first grist mill — and, Derick's genealogy adds, "built the first decked vessel."

He died at Barrington in 1821 and lies in the family graveyard on the property with his wife Esther and sons Levi and Zenas. That same plot later received victims of the steamer Hungarian, washed ashore at Shag Harbour in 1860.

Gilbert and the shipwreck chairs

A later Nickerson of the same Shag Harbour property, Gilbert Nickerson, collected wood from shipwrecks and carved it into "shipwreck chairs," recording each ship's name and history on the back of the chair.

His chairs survive in the Chapel Hill Museum at Shag Harbour and the Archelaus Smith Museum at Centreville — Barrington history you can still sit in the presence of.

The white octagonal Cape Sable lighthouse on a grassy point above a shingle beach and open Atlantic

Cape Sable Island

Where William⁴'s children Elizabeth⁵ and Gideon⁵ settled — the island at Nova Scotia's southwestern tip, in the heart of the waters the Barrington Nickersons fished, sailed, and were wrecked upon.

Cape Sable lighthouse, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Photo via Route 3 B&B.

Elizabeth, first ashore — a story told with a flag on it

Family tradition, retold in Crowell's 1923 history of Barrington, says Elizabeth (Nickerson) Smith travelled to Barrington in 1760 ahead of her husband Archelaus, that the Smiths and Thomas Crowell's family were the first permanent English-speaking settlers, and that she was sheltered by friendly Mi'kmaq — arriving, in Crowell's telling, "in Capt. Eldad Nickerson's vessel" with her four children.

Her parentage and marriage are documented. This migration story is cherished local history, not a contemporaneous record — so it is labelled tradition, exactly as a researcher should.

Read the evidence honestly: conflicts & cautions

A connection is only worth claiming if the weak points are shown alongside the strong ones. These are the ones this research found:

The one missing page

Everything in Line A is proven. Everything in Line B is proven except a single generation — who Thomas B. Nickerson's parents were. The research points to exactly where that answer most likely sits: Part IV of Derick's The Nickerson Family (the Seventh Generation volume, with vital statistics of the eighth), which was not among the texts obtainable online, and the Harwich, Massachusetts vital records. One look at either could turn "expected" into "documented" — and if it does, the cousin count above becomes a fact, not a forecast. That is an open question, stated plainly — not a gap papered over.

Know something we don't? If your family papers, a Bible record, or your own research names Thomas B. Nickerson's parents, send us what you have — every submission is logged into our research database and checked against the published genealogy and the vital records, and this page will be updated if the link closes.

Sources

Every fact on this page traces to one of these. Research gathered 21 October 2026 from web sources; print and paywalled volumes (including Derick Part IV) were not directly consulted.