How Lily of the Valley Opens Memories

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 2, 2014

The Lily of the Valley at Mitchell House is in full bloom. It is just about the earliest Lily of the Valley to make its appearance on island and at Mitchell House it lives in full, blazing sun which is fairly unusual. When you walk into the rear yard, it is all you smell. It is calming and sweet and the air is full of it. I look forward to being greeted by this heady scent and to picking tiny little bouquets of it. I am not sure how old it is – I would say at least the 1930s when the cottage was added but it could date back to the nineteenth century – at least that is what I would like to believe!


Lily of the Valley was found outside the porch of my childhood home, transplanted there by my Mother I think from the home of a close family friend. This friend – more like a great aunt to me as she was my Nana’s best friend from about the age of 10 – also had French and white lilacs blooming in her yard so our home always had big bouquets of lilacs at this time of the year – one of my favorite scents. We also had two lilac bushes in our yard – the lighter purple color. One of them was extremely tall – reaching all the way to the middle of the second floor right outside the bathroom. So, when it was blooming, you could smell it through the open window but also, my Mother would simply open the screen and lean out with her clippers to cut the blooms.


My mother-in-law’s favorite flower was Lily of the Valley. She had a bit of it along the side of the garage. She and my father in law also had a very large, old Bleeding Heart plant in the backyard alongside the fence. It was beautiful. When the house sold, my husband dug it up and brought it from upstate New York all the way to Nantucket. We were nervous that the trip and  transplantation of it would bring it to an end. Supposedly, Bleeding Heart plants don’t like to be transplanted. But I am happy to report, a year later it is in full bloom and makes us happy and sad to look at it. I think it may have actually been transplanted before – from the farm where my mother-in-law grew up. Unfortunately, we will never know. I have other Bleeding Heart plants in the yard at home but the New York one is much heartier – I think given its age and because the strain is more pure.


I also grew up with Bleeding Heart plants in the yard. And one we had was also a transplant. It was given to my Mother by a woman who worked at the butcher shop she used to shop at when we were young. It’s amazing how simple things, even a plant, can bring up so many happy memories of people, events, places, and seasons.


JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • July 7, 2025
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

Keep Calm and Bird On: July 2025

July 1, 2025
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.” -Edith Andrews

The Birth of the Maria Mitchell Observatory: Celebrating Over 100 Years of Discovery

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 30, 2025
As we are now complete with the conservation of the historic Maria Mitchell Vestal Street Observatory (MMO), I thought it would be good to post a series of blogs concerning it history and activities, as well as some of the amazing people who have made it what it is over the last 100 plus years. Therefore, over the next few weeks, the focus will be on the MMO. And it is now open for tours – Monday through Saturday 11-1PM. Founded in 1902, the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) had its beginnings in the Mitchell House where Maria Mitchell was born. Over the first few years, the preservation of the Mitchell House, family artifacts, and the collection and display of Nantucket’s native flora and fauna, as well as a small library, were the key components of the MMA. Special “Moon Evenings” were held on the lawn and people observed Nantucket’s night skies using several small telescopes, including William and Maria Mitchell’s two-and-three-quarter-inch Dollond telescope. The popular evenings led to the inevitable – a desire and need to expand based on the demands of the visitors to, and members of, the MMA. In 1906, Lydia Hinchman, a founder of the MMA and a family member, purchased the house and lot adjacent to the Mitchell House. The house – once the home of William Mitchell’s father and mother – was taken down. The MMA began a dialogue with the Harvard College Observatory and its director, Edward Pickering, Ph.D. The connection to Harvard was to become essential to the success of the beginning years of the Maria Mitchell Observatory and continued a legacy of friendship and work – Maria Mitchell and her father worked with the Bonds who once ran the observatory at Harvard and the families were close friends. Besides his assistance, Pickering asked a member of his staff, Annie Jump Cannon, to assist the MMA. This “provided an indispensable collaboration for Nantucket astronomy,” with Cannon spending two weeks on the island in 1906 and 1907 lecturing and teaching. While back at Harvard, she continued to teach the students on Nantucket by mail. Cannon would go on to be recognized as the leading woman astronomer of her generation and as the founder of the MMA’s Astronomy Department. JNLF
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