Mary Coffin Starbuck (February 20, 1645 – late 1717) was a Quaker leader from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She and her husband, Nathaniel Starbuck, were the first English couple to marry on Nantucket and were parents to the first white child born on the island. She supported her husband's efforts to run a trading post, which grew into a large mercantile business with the advent of the whaling trade. Unusual for the time, she was a prominent leader in civic and religious matters. She had ten children and her family members were leaders in the Quaker meeting.
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Early life
Born on February 20, 1645, in Haverhill, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mary Coffin was the youngest daughter of Tristram Coffin (1605–1681) and Dionis Stevens (died after 1682). Her parents and her five older siblings emigrated from Brixton, England in 1642 to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her father's two unmarried sisters and widowed mother came with them.
She moved with her family to Nantucket when she was about 15 years of age. Her father, called the "patriarch of Nantucket", was one of the original English proprietors of the settlement, and he was the island's first chief magistrate. With his sons, Tristram owned all of Tuckernuck Island and one quarter of Nantucket. Over the course of his life, he gave land to his children, including Mary and her husband after their marriage. She inherited her business and civil prowess from her father. She was baptized at Waiputequat or Waqutaquaib Pond by Peter Folger and had "radical religious leanings". Folger, a Baptist, was the maternal grandfather of Benjamin Franklin.