John Pinckney Nelson

John “Jack” Pinckney Nelson, 78, of Little Compton, died on December 1st , 2024, following a long struggle with Lewy Body Dementia.

Jack was born in Concord, NH on October 2, 1946 to John Guy Nelson and Jean Pinckney Nelson. He lived in Bedford, NH as a child, where his love for history, wildlife, farming, art, music, being outdoors, and working with his hands began. Jack also spent some of his boyhood developing deep roots on his family’s farm in Little Compton, which would be his home for the majority of his life.

Never one to fit into a prescribed mold, Jack’s turbulent schooling included stints at the Cardigan Mountain School, Woodstock Country School, and Northfield Mount Hermon. Jack struggled to find his place at each, and ultimately defied traditional expectations by embarking upon his own path to fulfillment and creative expression.

Jack eventually settled in Boston, where he began an apprenticeship under William Post Ross, an accomplished woodworker and harpsichord maker. He also met and married his first wife, Donna Nutter Nelson, who became mother to his three children. In 1969, Jack and his young family moved to the farm in Little Compton, thereby becoming the ninth successive generation of the Wilbour family to call it home. He set up shop as a furniture and cabinet maker, specializing in making exquisitely crafted custom furniture with a preference for working with native species of wood. In 1977, he undertook the development of a process for using cow bone as a replacement for ivory on musical instruments. From his first experiments with cooking bones on his beloved 1930s Glenwood kitchen range, he built his “bone business” into an international success, selling his highly sought-after product to instrument makers all around the world. Jack had many additional pursuits over the years, being at times a farmer, building contractor, keyboard restorer, antiques dealer, artist, musician, poet, surrogate grandfather and always an inveterate collector.

Jack was predeceased by his ex-wife, Sarah Wheeler Harkness, who he met in the early 1980s. For 25 years, they made a home for themselves on the farm and in the local community. Jack pursued higher education beginning in the late 1990s, eventually graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2002 from UMASS Dartmouth as a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in English Literature. Jack had great contemporaneous enthusiasm for singing, writing, painting, printmaking, woodworking, making sculpture, reading, farming, raising animals, stamp collecting, selling eggs from his hens, hosting friends and summer tenants at the family farm, and visiting his many friends and acquaintances both locally and abroad. He preferred to live a nineteenth-century lifestyle, surrounding himself with artifacts of the agricultural and industrial ages and embracing techniques long abandoned by others. He preferred rail travel to flying, winding back roads to highways, cotton, wool and leather to synthetics, and cast iron, steel and wood to plastic. He loved to eat and was infamous around local buffet tables for having a very healthy appetite. He was a long-time participant in the Westport Art Group’s figure drawing group, the Little Compton Congregational Church choir, the USDA Soil Conservation Service, and the American Institute of Organbuilders. He was that guy at financial town meetings that wanted to go over the upcoming year’s budget line by line, and also that guy standing at the post office licking large numbers of stamps so he could post packages of cow bone around the world. He

was, in short, one of Little Compton’s true eccentrics and an indelible shade of the local color.

Jack kept working until he couldn’t, and suffered greatly from the diminishment his dementia caused. He was deeply passionate in the pursuit of his many endeavors, and thus was often a polarizing figure, one who provoked strong feelings, positive or not, in the people he met and interacted with. He touched a great many peoples’ lives during his own, was a teacher to many.

He brought a tremendous amount of beauty into the world through his various avocations. He was, in the recent words of a dear friend, “truly, unapologetically himself – for better or worse”.

Jack is survived by his sister, Judith Minzel, of Port Townsend, WA; his daughters, Ann “Cricket” Nelson of Breaux Bridge, LA, and Rebeccah Nelson of Trinidad, CA; his son and daughter-in-law Michael Nelson and Jennifer Booth of Little Compton; and his grandson, Kagan Marks-Nelson of Trinidad, CA. He is also survived by his dear friend and companion of fifty years, Margaret Merrill of Dayton, ME. Gifts in honor of Jack may be made by consciously giving your support to a caregiver, to the dementia research or support organization of your choice, or to Hope Health of Providence, RI.