Ghosts of the Past and Those of the Future

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 25, 2017

Somebody is in our house. They sit among our furniture. They open and close the shades just as we did. They walk up and down our stairs, climb to the roofwalk, watch the same patterns of sun fall across the kitchen floor. They hear the wind as we did and the birds in the grape arbor. They hear the rainfall on the roof of our house and witness the darkness outside as it creeps inside.


Have you ever thought about those who came before you in your own home? I often do. I think about the people who lived in my parents’ 1780s tavern and the people who stayed the night or drank a pint of ale before the firebox in what was likely the tavern room and now serves as the large and sunny family room. I certainly think about this at the Mitchell House. I wonder what the Mitchells think of my presence – that the house is a museum that honors their daughter, sister, cousin, niece. 

 I wonder how they feel about us being here. Literally touching their belongings (with gloves on!) and talking about them and their belongings and how they lived in the house and what they thought. Whether we have everything as accurately as we think. How a private Quaker family feels about being on display. How they feel about visitors traipsing across their kitchen floor, marveling at the grain painting or the tiny narrow back stairs.


What will people think when we are gone?


JNLF

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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger May 27, 2025
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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger May 19, 2025
May 27. {1857} There is this great difference between Niagara and other wonders of the world, that is you get no idea from descriptions or even from paintings. Of the Mammoth Cave you have a conception from what you are told, of the Natural Bridge you get really a truthful impression from a picture. But Cave and Bridge are in still life, Niagara is all activity and change. No picture gives you the varying form of the water of the change of color; no description conveys to your mind the ceaseless roar. So too the ocean must be unrepresentable to those who have not looked upon it. Maria Mitchell would tour the Mammoth Cave and the Natural Bridge during her trip to the southern United States as Prudence Swift’s chaperone – I have written of these travels and Prudence before. Niagara Falls is a place she likely saw on her way to visit her younger sister Phebe Mitchell Kendall, who once lived with her husband in Pennsylvania. I was a bit surprised that she feels the way she does about the Cave and Bridge being well-represented by images but I do kind of se her point. But Niagara, the ocean, any moving body of water – she is right. You don’t fully comprehend it until you hear it, touch and taste it, see its colors, and feel it splash, sprinkle, or mist across your face. Niagara certainly mists across your face – sort of like a breezy day at the beach and the salt mist that slowly builds across your face and coats the beach grass so that it shimmers in the sunlight. JNLF
By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger May 12, 2025
I have been watching it. Waiting. Today, I was rewarded with the scent as they have now started to open. From late fall, all through the winter and early spring, there is a very large patch of dirt with traces of roots and purple-like portions of some sort of plant. Then, they slowly start to send their shoots forth – up from that dusty pile of dirt come little greenish pips that become the leaves. Then, you start to see the stems tightened against the leaves and then lovely chartreuse buds are visible that then turn to white and slowly open from top to bottom. As soon as they star to open, I wait. Knowing that one morning I will walk by soon and then I will get a delicious waft of Lily of the Valley. I have written about this patch at the Mitchell House before. I have always been fascinated by the fact that these grow in full sun – they have no shade whatsoever. And this patch is old. I’m not sure how old – I do not think late nineteenth century but possibly – or maybe very early twentieth century. We have one or two images in the collection from the early 1900s but one does not show the ground, and the other not so much either. I also think this is one of the earliest flowering patches of Lily of the Valley on island – let me know if you’ve seen others this early. And in FULL sun to boot! But in any case, today was the day – May 5, 2025 – that I got the first waft. Saturday when I was here, they were not ready yet. But now, they are! And when I smell it, I know why it was my mother-in-law’s favorite flower. JNLF
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