Oldham, Mary Elizabeth

Mary Elizabeth “Libby” Oldham was born March 8, 1927, in Port Chester, New York, and grew up in neighboring Rye, New York. She began visiting Nantucket in 1951, and by the early 1970s, both her mother, Amélie Oldham, and her oldest sister, Faith Oldham, were living year-round on the island. Libby worked for the better part of her early adult life in Manhattan, most notably for the Bollingen Foundation, a publisher of scholarly works in the humanities. In 1979, she took what she thought would be a brief hiatus from her New York life to await the birth of her grandson on Nantucket.

She served as executive director of the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce from 1982-1992. She was a stalwart of the Unitarian Church, served as its treasurer, and was a jubilant member of the church choir. She sang in the community chorus and she was a frequent featured performer on the stage of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. She also participated in the successful campaign to restore the African Meeting House. In 1982, Libby was instrumental in establishing the South Church Preservation Fund, the nonprofit entity charged with the structural stewardship of Nantucket’s 1809 golden-domed church building that houses the Town Clock. She worked as copyeditor for Nantucket Magazine until 2005, and worked for the Nantucket Hostorical Association from 1996 to 2018. Libby passed away in Nantucket on 20 June 2018.