In Memoriam: Joan Manley

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 13, 2021

I cannot tell you when Joan Manley first popped into my life but she is pretty much there from the beginning of my MMA experience which goes back over thirty years. She was a long-time MMA supporter and served on the MMA’s Board of Managers for many years, as well as the Preservation and Repair Committee for more years than I can count. She was a fixture and always there to help out.

 

Joan and the MMA’s librarian Jane Stroup, also ran the Garden of the Sea down the street and around the corner from the MMA.  Joan made sure that the MMA’s buildings were always dressed for summer with pots of plants on each porch and entry. Joan was a quiet but strong person. She had an opinion but mainly kept it to herself. In my mind, she is always wearing khakis – sometimes khaki shorts – and a button down, rolled up at the elbows. Once or twice I remember a wrap-around skirt for a special occasion. But it was the khakis and button down that were sort of her uniform. 


When Jane and Joan sold their house and the garden, the garden went to the Nantucket Land Bank which today allows everyone to continue to enjoy its open space on the corner of Angola Street. That’s how Jane and Joan operated. Even though the greenhouse and outbuildings are gone, the house and the garden will forever be Jane’s and Joan’s to me. When they moved they went out to Sherburne Commons and I would still see Joan here and there. After some thoughts to moving off island, Joan did decide to stay and while I didn’t see her regularly, it was nice to know she was here. She gave several pieces to the MMA, including a painting of the rear of the MMA Science Library (now Research Center) by Bob Durand and a carving by Jane of an owl head in marble. Jane also sculpted and her brother, John Stroup, was an artist as well.


Poor health led Joan to leave island in the last year. She went to be near her niece whom she was living with when she passed away. Joan had asked me to take care of Jane and John’s headstone in the cemetery which I have done and will continue to do for her – and them. It will be sadder now knowing that Joan is not with us. 


The step, however small, which is in advance of the world, shows the greatness of the person, whether that step be taken with brain, with heart, or with hands. – Maria Mitchell


JNLF

Recent Posts

Mallow!

By Jascin Leonardo Finger • August 31, 2026
I’m sure you’ve seen it as you trek about the island – near the beaches and ponds. This image is of the swamp or marsh mallow that we have on Vestal Street in our garden out front of the Observatory. It can grow in drier places – though it’s not as lush as at Capaum Pond or out in Quaise. It’s in the Hibiscus family – and is fairly tropical looking and always a delight to see.  “When in bloom, one of the most showy plants of the Island, for a mass of the magnificent, large flowers on the edge of a blue pond causes one’s heart to thrill at the wealth of deep pink colour . . .” from Nantucket Wild Flowers, Alice O. Albertson (cousin of Maria Mitchell), 1921. JNLF

A Piece of a Clay Pipe

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 24, 2026
I have always wanted to find a piece of a clay pipe. I know – weird – but if you have ever read any of my blogs here for the MMA then you know I have a thing for pottery shards. I sort of figured I would not find a piece of a clay pipe – not even a piece of a stem. But the other day, walking in a place where I have found quite a few shards, I found a piece of clay pipe! Now, I’m not talking about water pipes – I am talking about tobacco pipes. And I know very little about clay pipes. Yes, I am a curator of a historic house museum, but this family did not smoke. They were Quaker and among the many things they abstained from, tobacco was one of them. Therefore, I am not up on clay pipes so I am doing a bit more research.  For one, age can be determined by the width of the hole inside the pipe. So based on this one, I would say it’s fairly late. Since they were so fragile, and those holes pretty small, if it got filled with tobacco, the person just broke off the stem creating a shorter pipe and one that was not clogged with tobacco. Apparently, stems could be recycled – in fact, 15,000 broken stem pieces were uncovered at a historic walkway at Colonial Williamsburg – they were used as fill! And pipes were made into the early twentieth century – falling out of favor around World War One. It makes sense – they were cheap, easy to make, and affordable. Typically, one could last a few years – unless you dropped it of course. An,d pipes were used by men, women, and (eh, em) yes, children. I can see that Nantucket may not have had a lot of tobacco smoking residents – not just that some were Quaker – but because of the Quaker influence. I t does not mean people here do not smoke – I just think there may have been fewer smokers on the island in the nineteenth century and earlier. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 17, 2026
August 19 {1857}. There are four great men whose haunts I mean to seek, and on whose footsteps I mean to stand: Newton, Shakespeare, Milton, and Johnson. To-day I told the driver to take me to St. Martin’s, where the guide-book says that Newton lived. He put me down at the Newton Hotel, but I looked in vain to its top to see anything like an observatory. I went into a wine-shop near, and asked a girl, who was pouring out a dram, in which house Newton lived. She pointed, not to the hotel, but to the house next to a church, and said, “that’s it – don’t you see a place on the top? That’s where he used to study nights.” It is a little, oblong-shaped observatory, built apparently of wood, and blackened by age . . . .” Blackened no doubt by the wood ash and soot found in the air throughout over-crowded nineteenth century London. We always think about London being very foggy in the nineteenth century but frankly a lot of it was wood and coal ash as the nineteenth century grew older, particularly as factories developed and belched all of that into the air – think Sherlock Holmes in the 1880s. But Maria Mitchell, while starting in Europe as a young woman’s chaperone, also knew that this tour of Europe was a great learning experience – the equivalent of a college education she could not have. Doors were thrown open to her around Europe – in particular at all of the observatories that dotted the continent. She was not just well-known – she was famous. JNLF
Show More