Ah, We Are Open!!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 24, 2014

And the breezes are moving through the Mitchell House. We have flung open the doors and fresh air is better circulating through the House as it moves from the front and 1825 Kitchen doors and breezes up through to the third floor and out the roofwalk hatch as it did in the Mitchells day. We are dusted, and cleaned, and scrubbed. The tall case clock is again ticking, as is the chronometer. Both these artifacts really make the Mitchell House feel as though it is alive and that you might spy one of the Mitchells – William or Maria in particular – bent over the chronometer getting ready to rate the chronometer of a sea captain.


Our summer intern, Claire Payne, who will be a senior at Oberlin College, is already hard at work learning the finer points of cleaning a historic house museum and its artifacts, planning for some exciting Junior Historian classes for the summer, and she has just completed the development of a fun “Seek and Find” scavenger hunt for the younger set when they visit the House with their families.

The garden is blooming – you should see the foxglove – they are enormous! – and William would be overjoyed at the colors. Many of the plants were once found in his own garden here at 1 Vestal Street. I have planted Morning Glories and Nasturtiums again, as well as Sweet Peas. We also have a Tunbergia vine which William could have had at some point. Such a plant was also found in Thomas Jefferson’s garden, so it’s been “kicking” around in gardens for centuries. Many of us also know it by the name Black-eyed Susan Vine. Lupines are out and I am hoping that the Hollyhocks flower this year – they are biennials so not sure if they will flower this year.


So, come take a look and join us for a tour – make it an annual pilgrimage to learn what is new, say hello, meet this year’s summer intern, and hear what we were up to all winter.


JNLF

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Dorrit Hoffleit began her tenure at the MMO in 1957. A graduate of Radcliffe, Hoffleit earned a Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1938. During World War Two, she worked for the U. S. government on missile trajectories and joined Yale’s Astronomy Department in 1956. Her directorship of the MMO allowed her to work part of the year on island and the remainder at Yale with the two organizations sharing her salary. She was the principal author of the Yale Bright Star Catalog – work that was continually added to over fifty years – and her work also focused on the study of variable stars. Hoffleit continued in the path of Harwood with research and public outreach, and bringing worldwide recognition to the MMO. Among her many accomplishments on behalf of the MMO, Hoffleit is known for her work with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a grant she received in 1957 to allow for the summer training of female undergraduate students in astronomy. This was the pilot project for the national program of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in various branches of science and technology, launched by the NSF in 1990. The MMA became a permanent REU site in astronomy, which is funded by the NSF based on periodically submitted proposals. Today, the MMO continues to have a lasting effect on its students. More than five percent of all the U.S. women becoming Ph.D.s in astronomy have participated in the MMA REU program. The probability of a current MMA REU student (either female or male) to become a Ph.D. is approximately sixty percent. Approximately fifty current professors of astronomy in the U. S. have participated in the REU program at the MMA. Hoffleit who retired from the MMO in 1978, continued her connections to the MMA up until the last weeks of her life. She passed away in 2007 at the age of one hundred. JNLF

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August 17{1857} Today we have been to the far-famed British museum. I carried as “open sesame” a paper given to me by Prof. Henry asking for me special attention from all societies with which the Smithsonian {is} connected . . . . The art of printing has brought us incalculable blessings, but as I looked at a neat manuscript book by Queen Elizabeth copied from another, as a present to her Father I could not help thinking that it was better than worsted work! On August 2, 1857, Maria Mitchell and the young woman she was accompanying as a chaperone, Prudence Smith, arrived in Liverpool England for their European tour. Maria Mitchell’s “open sesame” was a letter of introduction – she went with several. She would find that the doors were thrown open for America’s first woman astronomer – she was that well known in America and abroad. She would become quite close to Sir George Airy, the British Astronomer Royal, and his wife Richarda, as well as the astronomical Herschel family. JNLF
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