Among Good Company

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 15, 2014

The other day, a new biography about Maria Mitchell appeared at my door. Now this one is not for everyone . . . well, I guess it could be for everyone but it is really aimed at the pre-kindergarten to first grade set. If you are an adult, it will take you about two minutes tops to read! Since the publisher used several of our historic images, they are required to send us one free copy for the Archives. As you can see, Maria is in good company – a broad mix of women – and I am hoping that list grows!


We have had quite a few requests for image use this year – both for children’s books – although this one is the only one that is just about Maria and no one else – and for articles and adult history and science books. We have also had a few researchers using Maria Mitchell’s papers. They include a woman researching Henry David Thoreau’s time on Nantucket – he and Maria crossed paths a few times – and a man researching the eclipse of 1878. Maria travelled to Denver to observe the eclipse, taking along a few of her students and her sister, Phebe Mitchell Kendall, who recorded the event with sketches and watercolors. The Archives receives fees when photographs are used and if I complete transcriptions of the papers. This helps to support their conservation. So, I am expecting the Mitchell House mail to be a bit full over the next months as more publications arrive!

 

JNLF

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July 31, 1883. I had two or three rich days! On Friday last I went to Holderness, N.H.. to the Asquam House; I had been asked by Mrs. T to join her party. There was at this house Mr. Whittier, Mr., and Mrs. Cartland, Professor and Mrs. Johnson, of Yale . . . The house seemed full of fine, cultivate people. We stayed two days and a half. And first of the scenery. The road up to the house is a steep hill, and at the foot of the hill it winds and turns around two lakes. The panorama is complete one hundred and eighty degrees. Beyond the lakes lie the mountains.  The Asquam House sat atop Shepard Hill and was built in 1881. A hotel, it has space for fifty guests, it was located near Squam Lake and became part of a summer enclave that developed there in the later part of the nineteenth century. Today, the area is a National Historic Landmark, but sadly, the hotel was demolished in 1948. Maria would have been familiar with these people seen here – and others I did not include – but particularly John Greenleaf Whittier who was something of a family friend. He was close to one of her younger brothers, William Forester. JNLF

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