This lovely figurehead once adorned the three-masted clipper ship Imperial, built in Quincy in 1869.  The shipping records list New York, Liverpool, San Francisco, Antwerp, Shanghai, and Portland among her ports of call before she sailed her last voyage in 1876 due to the introduction of the steam engine.

The Imperial was the last ship in a large fleet owned by Captain J. Henry Sears of Brewster. The figurehead was carved from longleaf pine, by the renowned carver Herbert Gleason from Boston. She was retired to Brewster and mounted on the bluff on Sears Point, overlooking Cape Cod Bay. While her original colors had faded, Sears had her painted white to protect her from the harsh weather.

In 1969, Capt. Sears’s granddaughter, Barbara Hoyt Ecker, gifted the “White Lady,” as she was affectionately known, to the Provincetown Museum. In 2013, the Ecker-Hoyt family had her restored with the intention that she would be on display. She is currently on loan to the Brewster Historical Society, and we are pleased to welcome her home.

Special Note: Captain J. Henry Sears’s Brewster business partner and brother-in-law, Captain Josiah Knowles, built “Nellie’s Dollhouse,” in the Cobb House Museum and can also be viewed on this website..

2023.3 On loan from the Ecker Family