About Nanepashemet

A lot of people ask me about the name of this Blog.  If you were alive and lived in New England at the beginning of the 1600's, just before the start of the Great English Migration, the name would be commonplace to you. 
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Nanepashemet was the sachem of the Naumkeag band of the Massachusetts tribe that ruled the area from the Charles River in Boston to the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth,NH and north as far as the White Mountains.
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He was killed in 1619 by a war party of Tarratines or MicMacs from Maine who were bent on revenge and ravaged the Naumkeags and other coastal Massachusetts bands.  See Remembering the Tarratines and Nanepashemet by John V. Goff.
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There are few European accounts about him, but he was supposed to be a revered leader and warrior.  His name is loosely translated as "New Moon" based upon a propensity to take walks at night, and he was survived by his wife, known only as Squaw Sachem.  She ruled the remnants of his tribe for the next 40 years and was well thought of by the Puritan settlers.  There is a mural depicting her in the Winchester, MA town hall.
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When I decided to start a real estate development firm about five years ago, we were looking for a name, and my son, Ryan, suggested a local Indian name like "Nanepashemet".   So I incorporated as Nanepashemet Project Management, Inc.
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Later, when that company morphed into a wireless telecomumunications contracting company performing site acquisition and equipment installation for wireless carriers, Nanepashemet Project Management, Inc.,  started to be known as NPMI by some of our customers who continually had trouble with the name.
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We also use the name for our Real Estate Brokerage and Renovation offshoot called Nanepashemet Real Estate Services, which specializes in waterfront properties and new land development from Lynn and Swampscott,  north through Marblehead and Salem to Cape Ann and Ipswich.
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There was a victorian hotel on Marblehead Neck known as the Nanepashemet Hotel.  This burned, like most of the hotels of that period.   There continues to be a Boy Scout Council that uses the name and a street in Marblehead is named "Nanepashemet Street", which was close to where we used to live.
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I'll admit that it is a pain to tell people how to pronouce the name, and it is even worse telling them how to spell it, which I frequently have to do because of my email address (jnestor@nanepashemet.com).
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I named this blog after Nanepashemet as well.  Not exactly sure why.