Who was Tom Nevers? (Nantucket)

[pentadent]

Looking at maps and info on Nantucket, MA, USA, I see several landmarks, etc. named after a Tom Nevers. Yet my google searches don’t come up with any biographical info on who he was. Anyone know?
*I do know that the Houston Astros had a Tom Nevers in the 90’s but the Nantucket Tom Nevers in MA seems to be a historical figure.

Thanks in advance.

[Chez_Guevara]

@pentadent

Yet my google searches don’t come up with any biographical info on who he was.

Neither do mine.

I have failed to unearth a scintilla of detail concerning Mr. Nevers and I’m now just as interested in him as you are.

Hence the bump.

[Fear_Itself]

I located this:

So who was Tom Never, whose name was appropriated for this ill-fated land speculation? The Nantucket Wampanoag Never family—with their surname variously spelled Never, Nevar, and Neaver—is documented through account books, court records, and vital statistics of the town of Nantucket. Jonas Never appears in Mary Starbuck’s account book in the mid 1680s. “Old Never” (his baptismal name may have been Jonathan) is listed as one of the Wampanoag “masters of families” in 1723. Six members of the Never family—two men, two women, and two children—perished in the devastating “Indian Sickness” that struck Nantucket’s Wampanoags in the winter of 1763-64. But Tom Never? No record of him is to be found, unless perhaps he is “Old Tom,” who had an account with Mary Starbuck in 1685.

But the developers didn’t just make up the name in 1916 to lend cachet to their scheme. On Ferdinand C. Ewer’s 1869 map one finds Tom Never’s Head, Tom Never’s Pond, and also Tom Never’s Swamp, all tucked into the elbow of the South East Quarter. Ewer knew his Wampanoag places and place names. If only we could ask him about Tom Never.

According to William Root Bliss, an author of September Days on Nantucket, published in 1902, Tom Never was an Indian whom the English settlers put in charge of a whale look-out station at the southeast corner of the island.

[Polycarp]

He is famous for his distrust of all financial institutions, keeping all his life savings in an old oaken bucket in his bedroom. His daughter, whose name is given as Nan, eloped to Rhode Island.

What?

[Hazle_Weatherfield]

A sign for “Tom Nevers” field is seen in the opening credits of “Wings.”

[Mister_Rik]

I went to high school with a Tom Nevers.

[pentadent]

@Hazle Weatherfield

A sign for “Tom Nevers” field is seen in the opening credits of “Wings.”

Ha, you are right! Research shows that the airport terminal shown in the Wings opening is the actual airport on Nantucket, though the sign and the name are faked. The real name for the Nantucket airport is Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK). Shows that Tom Nevers is a common enough name on the island for the show to pick it up.

Fear Itself - your link helps, thanks. Though it seems to be saying that not even the islanders are really sure who he was.