Maria Mitchell’s Attic

I love to walk in the cemetery.  The stones are quite beautiful, as is the landscape.  Is it sad? Yes, but its not creepy or scary.  Many of these people have been forgotten.  Though at the time of their death, their family did not think they would be – nor perhaps did those people before they died.  I find it sad to come across fallen or broken stones, stones that have been overgrown with weeds or a well-intended shrub that has now taken over the space after 100 years or so.  Stones covered so heavily in lichens that you cannot read the name of the person buried there invokes sadness and is worrisome for the damage the lichen can do.  The young children, infants, teenagers, and young adults – that is all the more painful – as they were short-changed on life.  But the old people – those who lived a full and very long life – they got all the time.  And while it’s sad, they are gone, their life was full – no cut off at an early age.

I have written about cemeteries before.  I have noted that I clean stone monuments (gravestones) and run a workshop once a year to teach people how to properly clean stones.  There is a bit of a movement afoot – especially with Instagram and TikTok – where people record themselves cleaning stones and showing people how to do it.  Please be careful – some people are not trained and are doing it the wrong way.  The sound of a metal scraper sets my teeth on edge – that is NOT how you clean historic gravestones – THAT erodes the stone and damages it forever.  So, until you have some in-person training by someone who is qualified, do not do it! 

JNLF

The Mitchell House and the entire MMA is opening for the season on Thursday, June 11, 2026!  Come see what is new, come see things you have missed before, and come meet our new interns who will be with us for the summer!  We are excited to have ALL our doors back open for the summer!

For more information on classes, workshops, walks, children’s classes and camps, and our museum/site schedules, please find out more on our website!

A repost from long ago – because I still like a good chair.

Quite awhile ago, I wrote about some of my collection addictions, including pottery shards, 19th century kitchen mirrors, and of course, enamelware.  Well, here is another one for you.

I love chairs.  Yes, this is another collection addiction of mine.  But not all chairs – chairs from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Typically, I like plain, simple wood chairs with a horizontal piece or two of wood for the back and a plain, thick wood seat.  Simple, not a lot of turns to the wood, and not a lot of decorative features or paint. 

Several years ago, I had a meeting at the home of the leader of a group I was working with.  She owned the Obed Macy house, very much untouched and quite a remarkable house.  Yes, Obed was the Nantucket historian (among other things), as well as the son of island entrepreneur Judith Macy, and the nephew of the island “she-pirate” Kezia Coffin.  We met outside on the side porch which was a late 19th century addition to the house and one that certainly reflected what life was like in the period it was added to the house.  The owner had brought out every chair in her home.  I was on a chair high (not a highchair!) – here I had my choice of nineteenth chairs to sit on. Since I was one of the first to arrive, I took my time picking out which chair I was going to sit   on – I kid you not.  I was like Goldilocks − though I was grown-up enough not to sit on every chair to decided which one I was going to claim for the meeting!  I went on and on and likely on and on about all these lovely chairs to her. 

Unfortunately, the day came several years later when she was faced with having to sell her beloved home to move off-island.  She called me.  She wanted to know if I wanted any of her chairs since she remembered how much I went on and on about them.  It was a mixture of emotion because losing this island resident was a loss for the island and for its history and historic architecture.  I went to her home a few days before she was going to have her sale and helped her move items from the house out onto the lovely 19th century side porch where I first reveled in her chair collection and also out into the large, simple backyard that looked like it too had not been touched since the 19th century.  She told me to take whichever chairs I wanted as she wanted me to have them.  Depressing.  I told her I would not take but that I would buy.  We had a little back and forth but she finally relented.  Then, I had to choose and it was quite agonizing.  Not wanting to be a chair hog, I limited myself.

I now have two matching and two others sitting around my dining room table made from salvaged Nantucket pine floorboards.  We refer to them as “Helen’s chairs” – their previous owner.  She likely found them here on Nantucket; one or more may have even come with the house when she bought it.  We eat every meal sitting in them, spend time with our family in long discussions and laughter sitting in them, and each time I sit, touch, dust, or move them, I think of Helen and the house these chairs once sat in and the conversations and people they must have witnessed over the many years.  A simple wood chair – a witness to history and time.

A repost – with my apologies – from last year.  It started budding the week of April 30 this year.

This is what our landscaper for the MMA calls it.  “The ancient vine.” He tells the people who work for him not to touch the “ancient vine.”  I have probably made him – and all of them – terrified of it.  I am even terrified of it to some degree.

I refer to the grape vine behind the Mitchell House that is supposed to be Peleg Mitchell Junior’s grape vine – Maria Mitchell’s uncle who inhabited the house from about 1836 to his death in 1882.  

It has two trunks but one died several years ago.  Because of that, each year I try to root shoots.  It’s fairly easy to do – when you cut back the vine in late fall/early winter.  I have had success but not success protecting the shoots I baby all winter from bunnies and other critters once I plant them – try as I might.  I started doing this when the one trunk died – I was PANICKED! 

The landscaper stays away because I have told him if anyone is going to accidentally harm or worse yet, kill, this grape vine it would be me so I only have myself to blame.  So each November/December – once ALL the leaves have fallen off – I climb my ladder and quietly, carefully, and fearfully cut back the stems typically to two buds.  I have been somewhat successful in spurring grape production – and these grapes attract some amazing birds in the fall.  It takes me some time – and I pretty much hyperventilate the entire time – and then, I stare at it all winter.  Passing under it multiple times a day to reach my office.  Hoping, and yes, praying, it will come out in the spring.  It’s a late budder so just recently the buds started to show themselves – thank goodness! – and I was rewarded today (May 5, 2025) with this wonderful hot pink color on the edges of the leaves as they are uncurling.

May 6, 1878  Between the clouds, Miss Spalding obtained 7 photographs of Mercury on the Sun.  It is comfort to me to be able to plan and do a new kind of work.  The large telescope worked better than usual, Clark having just been to the Observatory.

Clark, as in Alvan Clark, a man who would become the premier telescope maker in America and who built Maria Mitchell’s 5-inch Alvan Clark refractor that she purchased from him (after working with him to build it per her specifications) with money gifted to her from “The Women of America” led by Elizabeth Peabody.  More than likely, it is this telescope she is referring to as she did use it in the Vassar College Observatory with her students – and it is also taking center stage in photographs, along with her (first her father’s) Dolland telescope.

Maria had decided she would photograph the Sun on every clear day, and this was one of those results.  She would use these images, with her students, to study sun spots and their changes.  With her students, Maria would photograph the transit of Mercury as noted above.  She would also photograph the transit of Venus a few years later with her students.

And with it, some of the heirloom daffodils I purchased for the Mitchell House last fall.  A place was recommended to me by two longtime friends of the MMA and gardeners extraordinaire.  It is called Old House Gardens.  I ordered a small amount as we now have a plethora of voles on Vestal Street – I believe I complained about them here last year.  They won’t eat daffodils so I got a few of “Butter and Eggs” (1777) and “Conspicuus” (1869) as either of these could have appeared in William Mitchell’s gardens.  They were not listed in a letter from John Quincy Adams that I have mentioned before.  But, Adams was not here visiting the Mitchell family when the daffodils would have been in bloom.  The one pictured here is “Butter and Eggs” not completely unfurled.

April 1878. The conference of Woman’s Congress officers met in Washington.  Because we had one member in Washington we were invited to meet in that place.  I went on at a great expense of time, money and strength . . . .

We were in session at least nine hours.  I think that more than half of that was used by Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Sayles.  The only motion which I carried through was to pay the Secretary $200 . . .

In 1878, that was a long train(s) ride to Washington, DC from Poughkeepsie, NY and Vassar College.  If Maria seems perturbed, I am sure she was.  As president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, and thus the Congress, she had to be at the meeting.  But it appears she did not get much say in the nine hour meeting.  This was also a long trip to take when she had another, even longer trip coming up in July of 1878.  In that month, she would travel with students and her sister, Phebe, out west to Colorado to view the eclipse and that train and wagon ride I am sure was weighing on her mind – not just the physical trip but making her way for an important eclipse viewing event.

Well, actually replace the roof!  With funding from the Community Preservation Act and the work of Lydon and Sons, Inc. the Mitchell House is getting a new roof.  The current one had come to the end of its useful life.  A cedar roof can last a long time – longer than asphalt – and is more historically accurate.  The roof we are removing was installed in about 1992 – replacing a roof from the 1930s that was not cedar but a combination of materials that actually yes, did last sixty years.

The unfortunate issue has arisen that the roofwalk (walk) has to be replaced.  This is NOT the original walk – nor that old of a walk.  It’s likely from the 1970s or so and has been cobbled at over time.  It’s not a functioning walk – no one is allowed on it – but the Mitchell House needs it none the less.  Maria Mitchell and her father, William, likely used the walk for astronomical observations – in addition to the yard – but the walk is also protected as part of the preservation easement on the House.  Walks – NOT and NEVER called widow’s walks – were used for preventing and putting out chimney fire and roof fires.  In a place where wood was expensive and had to be brought from “the main” these were purely utilitarian.  What good Quaker (or non-Quaker) would build a platform for his wife to stare out to the harbor to see if her husband was on his way home?

The other issue is that the walk was completely resting on the ridge board – and actually was notched to accept the pitch and tip of the ridge board so they couldn’t work around it.  I suspect this may have been the ways walks were once built – and also a crafty and smart thinking carpenter who came up with the idea.  It makes the walk lower.  But between that issue and the age of the walk and then the blizzard of February 2026 that packed gusts over 83 MPH (that’s Category 1 hurricane winds) the walk gave in.  Balusters had been knocked out and the railings were loose and pulling away from the posts.

So, we will also be working with Barber and Sons to create a new roofwalk – and they agreed to do this for us quickly which is also no small feat given how busy everyone is these days.

So from the bottom of the Mitchell House’s heart (and mine) a big thank you to Chris Lydon and Lydon and Sons and crew, Barber and Sons / Beau and Nate Barber, the Community Preservation Committee, and Nantucket Preservation Trust (our easement holder)!

1882.  Mch.13.3 p.m.  I start for Faculty.  As I sit, I feel as well as I ever did in my life; I go to Faculty and we probably shall elect what we called the “honor” girls.  I dread the struggle that is pretty certain to come . . .The whole system is demoralizing and foolish.  Girls study for “prizes” and not for learning when “honors” are at the end. The unscholarly motive is wearing.  

Maria Mitchell once said, “You cannot mark the human mind because there is no intellectual unit.”  She did not like grades or prizes as you can see by her words above.  I have to agree.  Whether it be in academics or sports or some other activity, you should be rewarded in what you learn and how well you do – not to achieve a prize at the end.  It’s the same idea with giving prizes to everyone so no one feels left out – just don’t do it.  Learn how to lose gracefully.

March is Women’s History Month – though all months should be women’s history month!

Maria Mitchell was one of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Women (AAW), was its president for a term (1875), and founded its Science Committee which she chaired for the remainder of her life.

When the fourth Congress of the AAW met in Philadelphia in October 1876, Julia Ward Howe (also a friend of Maria’s) was serving with Maria on the executive committee.   Maria presented a paper, “The Need for Women in Science.”  In it she stated,

Does anyone suppose that any woman in all the ages has had a fair chance to show what she could do in science? . . .  The laws of nature are not discovered by accidents; theories do not come by chance, even to the greatest minds; they are not born of the hurry and worry of daily toil; they are diligently sought, they are patiently waited for, they are received with cautious reserve, they are accepted with reverence and awe.  And until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss the question of their capacity for original work.

She is not saying that women cannot be scientists – she is saying they need to be given the opportunities. 

Maria was incredibly busy with the AAW – it took up a great deal of her time – and at the next meeting in November of that year some aspects of the meeting were wonderful according to her account –“excellent” papers, “newspapers treated us very well.  The institutions opened their doors to us, the Centennial gave us a reception.  But – we didn’t have a good time!”  It appears there was discord among the women.  A few opposed the subject of “Woman Suffrage,” but Lucy Stone was able to present her paper on the subject despite this.  And, some women felt that the West was not well represented and was overshadowed by New England, thus women representing the western states protested the nomination and election of Julia Ward Howe as president of the AAW.  But she won.  Whew!  It was not always easy and controversies constantly abounded with many schisms over time within the women’s rights movement.

I often wonder what Maria might think of the place of women today – how far things have come from her time or would she be surprised that there still is inequality?  What would she think?

In honor of Women’s History Month, visit the National Women’s History Alliance, the National Women’s History Museum, and the National Collaborative of Women’s History Sites.  These places will also point you in the directions of women’s history sites across the country and how to find out more information about all these women who paved the way for us!

Image of Eliza Codd, ca. 1895. Photograph courtesy of Nantucket Historical Association.

For several years now, we have been teaming up with the Nantucket Historical Association in March for Women’s History Month.  We visit each senior living or meeting site on island – five in all over the course of the month.  We work to unique history of the place of women in our community then and through today – an incredible legacy that in the nineteenth century and earlier was quite unusual.  We highlight women from all walks of island life, their accomplishments, and how they helped and influenced others.  You see, Maria Mitchell was not the only incredible woman that Nantucket produced. For example, Eliza Codd was the island's first woman architect - and the leading architect on island when she practiced.  Nantucket women shared their knowledge, path, support, and guidance with others both here and away and became major influences in the rights of women, women’s education, and the general place of women in society.  Pretty incredible for such a small island!

It’s sort of funny what Mother Nature does.  Granted, in this case, she had a little help by shovel or plow.  But as I made my way up Vestal Street a week ago or so, after the first round of eight inches of snow or so, I noticed this ice shape on the front stoop of the Mitchell House.  To me, it looks like a whale with its tail up in the air!  I think it’s sort of appropriate for this front stoop so I decided to share!

1881, Feb. 26.  Miss Whitney read Frances Power Cobbe’s “Lectures to Women” aloud to me.  In the main they are excellent.  I agree at almost every point.  What she says about the duty of women in veracity, in cultivating both physical and moral courage, etc., in demanding not “favor but justice” . . .

Mary Whitney would become the first president of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association.  She was one of Maria’s first students and ultimately her replacement at Vassar College.  She also took over for Maria when she left the College for a brief illness in 1880.

On her second trip to Europe in 1873, Maria would seek Frances Power Cobbe out at her home.  A suffragette, Power Cobbe was a philosopher and writer among other things, including an animal rights activist when it came to experimentation on animals.  Born into a wealthy family in Ireland, Power Cobbe would travel in Europe about the same time as Maria did in 1857, meeting some of the same people Maria would meet such as Mary Somerville (Maria’s hero and an astronomer, mathematician, scientist, and polymath) and Harriet Hosmer (sculptor).  I should not note this but Maria wrote about Power Cobbe’s large head –further stating that being a large woman, she would have a large head.  Reviewing images of Power Cobbe, I hate to say it but I cannot disagree – with my apologies to Ms. Powers Cobbe.

On August 6, 1872, the first meeting of the Nantucket Sorosis Club took place at the home of Sarah Cathcart on Main Street.  Originally founded in New York in 1868, several of its founding members were Nantucket women such as Maria Mitchell and Reverend Phebe Coffin Hanaford, and the club appropriately found its way to Nantucket where Hanaford first publicly announced its inaugural meeting from the pulpit of the Unitarian Church.  Its purpose: the “intellectual improvement of its members, by means of written essays, select readings, recitations and discussions upon the current questions of the day.”  It was Hanaford and Nantucket summer resident Rebecca Morse – members of the New York Sorosis – who developed the idea of founding a Nantucket Sorosis.  Like the sewing circles founded earlier in the nineteenth century, the development of a Sorosis on Nantucket may have been in part to aid women not only during a period of economic decline on the island, but to help those women who found that they were now losing their jobs as whalemen returned to the island for good and tried to “reclaim” the jobs of men.  It was also a logical club to have for women on the island – given the history of their playing such an integral role in all aspects of island life.  Two other island women involved with the Nantucket Sorosis Club were Eliza Starbuck Barney and the Reverend Louise S. Baker.

The main Sorosis club came about as a reaction by female journalists barred from attending and reporting on Charles Dickens’ first public lecture in the United States in New York City.  They quickly came together to created forms of support for one another in their field, expanding to include women working in a variety of other fields – science among them.  Thus, Maria Mitchell was one of the founding members when the first official meeting was held at Delmonico’s in NYC.

With a thirteen-article constitution, the Nantucket Sorosis had a board of directors with officers being elected annually.  The club hosted lecturers and orators, discussed social and political issues – particularly those of woman suffrage – and also discussed art, literature, travel, and current events.  The Nantucket Sorosis lasted approximately thirty years.  Little is known about who was involved outside of key players and when exactly the group folded and why, but the last printed material that can be located dates to 1903, and by that time most of the Nantucket Sorosis members were in their seventies and eighties.

Maria Mitchell once said, “When I see a woman sew, I think, what a capacity she has for using a micrometer!”  So, maybe what I am about to write would be a bit disappointing to her.  However, I believe she was likely pleased by what sewing circles on Nantucket could accomplish for her fellow Nantucketers.  As, the great-granddaughter of a milliner and extremely talented seamstress (she hand-smocked about twenty dresses for me when I was an infant and did all of that with rheumatoid arthritis!) and the granddaughter of two talented women of sewing and needlework, my apologies to Maria . . . . 

The sewing circles that arose on Nantucket in the nineteenth century were formed in part because of the Great Fire of 1846, which, along with the demise of whaling and the lure of the Gold Rush, helped to bring about an economic depression that would last decades and cause Nantucket’s population to decrease from its height of around 10,000 in the 1830s to fewer than 2,000 people by the late nineteenth century.  The sewing circles helped struggling families by providing them with clothes, food, and even paying their rent. 

Many of the organizations rose from within the churches of the island and all were founded, managed, and run by women.  The Ladies Union Circle of the First Congregational Church, established in 1846, was followed by similar groups, such as the Unitarian Sewing Society and the Ladies Wesleyan Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, both established in 1850.  The women gathered together to create, sew, and sell their creations to raise money for those in need and for their own churches.  The groups not only generated the money to help others; they also provided a social venue for those who remained on Nantucket and witnessed the quickly deteriorating social fabric of their island home.  The societies served as a positive network and support group for their members. 

The women’s activities, accomplished many good deeds, and one group, the Unitarians, was even able to purchase a parish house for the church with funds they raised – no small task.  Additionally, the sewing circles gave rise to other groups that many islanders heavily relied upon in the nineteenth century: the Relief Association, the Children’s Aid Society, and the Ladies Howard Society, which could date its beginnings to the era of the American Revolution.  The Relief Association is still in existence today; assisting island families in need.

The act of helping your fellow islander is something that has been a constant on Nantucket, back to when the first English came to the island to settle in 1659.  Some of it is born of the isolation of the island, but it is largely that the island is akin to one big family and that is what you do, you take care of your family.

January 18, 1858.  Before I left Marseilles I took a carriage and with Miss Shepard and the Hawthorne children visited the best parts of the city and then the seaside . . .On Sunday morning {January 17} at 8 o’clock we left Marseilles for Genoa and Leghorn, uncertain what our further destination would be.  Mr. Hawthorne’s indecision is so great that the termination of our journey together is very uncertain . . . 

I have noted before that Maria Mitchell would travel through parts of Europe with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and their children.  She expressed her frustrations with Hawthorne – as you can see above – in multiple ways.  Further on she notes, that if he had been, “as agreeable in conversation as he is in writing“ which gives you a deeper insight.  Here was America’s first woman astronomer getting an intimate experience with the Hawthorne family.  She did become quite close to Sophia and the children and I have noted before, Maria would act as their impromptu governess or teacher.  Hawthorne was finally swayed in making a decision when his daughter, Una, noted that both Maria and Miss Shepard desired visiting Rome as did she.