Dr. April Beisaw to Speak as Featured Guest for the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association Science Speaker Series

Kelly Bernatzky • July 12, 2021

On July 21 at 7pm, the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) is hosting a live lecture presented by Dr. April Beisaw. Her talk, “Taking Their Water for Our City: Archaeology of New York City’s Watershed Communities” is part of our FREE Science Speaker Series and will be held via Zoom.


The New York Times regularly runs articles explaining why New York City has “the champagne” of city tap waters -- it comes from pure and rural mountains. However, there is nothing natural about NYC’s water. To create the water system, thousands of people lost homes and businesses, and had to sue the City for compensation. To maintain the water system, those living around reservoirs are encouraged to sell their lands, creating landscapes of abandonment where only the wealthy can remain. Over the last nine years, Beisaw and her Vassar College students have hiked portions of the city-owned watershed to document the ruins of lives cut short by a distant City. In what was left behind, researchers can begin to estimate the price that rural people paid for providing clean water to City residents. Mapping of the land takings has also revealed patterns to the destruction, such as the loss of many woman-owned lands and businesses that once thrived along the Ulster & Delaware Railroad.



Dr. April M. Beisaw is an associate professor of Anthropology at Vassar College in New York’s Hudson River Valley. She began studying the New York City water system upon arriving at Vassar in 2012. As an archaeologist, Dr. Beisaw seeks out the material remains of past peoples whose stories have been forgotten or gone untold. As an avid hiker, she prefers to explore the woods off-trail. Her water research has been published in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology and in the edited volume Contemporary Archaeology and the City Creativity, Ruination, and Political Action (McAtackney and Ryzewski - Oxford Press). Dr. Beisaw’s other publications include Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones: A Manual (Texas A&M Press) and The Archaeology of Institutional Life (University of Alabama Press).

 

To register for this event, please follow the link below:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_R7w3uXizSvyv_sUyhO7zXg

 

For the full Science Speaker Series schedule, please visit our website here:

https://www.mariamitchell.org/science-speaker-series

 

This series is generously presented by our lead sponsor, Bank of America, and additional sponsors, Cape Air, Cisco Brewers, and White Elephant Resorts.

 

The Maria Mitchell Association is a private non-profit organization. Founded in 1902, the MMA works to preserve the legacy of Nantucket native astronomer, naturalist, librarian, and educator, Maria Mitchell. The Maria Mitchell Association operates two observatories, a natural science museum, an aquarium, a research center, and preserves the historic birthplace of Maria Mitchell. A wide variety of science and history-related programming is offered throughout the year for people of all ages.

For Immediate Release

July 8 2021

Contact: Kelly Bernatzky, Development Associate

kbernatzky@mariamitchell.org

Recent Posts

The Ancient Vine

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 11, 2026
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. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 4, 2026
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. JNLF

Spring Has Sprung!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 27, 2026
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. JNLF
Show More