Coleman, Seth, 1744-1822

Seth Coleman was a Quaker whaler and boat-builder who spent most of his life in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Coleman was born in 1744 to Barnabas Coleman and Rachel Hussey Coleman of Nantucket, where he likely spent his early life. In 1768 he married Deborah Swain, daughter of Reuben and Elizabeth Swain; the couple had 13 children during their marriage of over fifty years.

Coleman and his family eventually emigrated to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, likely as part of a larger migration of Nantucket whalers to the area in 1785. There he served as pound keeper and as clerk of Dartmouth's Quaker meeting. In 1801 he was sent by Lieutenant Governor Wentworth to aid survivors of a shipwreck on Sable Island and investigate the incident. Coleman was involved with a group of Black refugees from the Chesapeake Bay who the British navy brought to Nova Scotia during the War of 1812. When an outbreak of smallbox started to spread among the refugees in late 1814, Coleman alerted authorities to the presence of the disease, and under the instructions of Lieutenant Governor Sherbrook he administered a vaccine or inoculation to several hundred people over the next few months.

In 1821 Coleman returned to Nantucket, and he died early the next year, on March 26, 1822, at age 77.