Living, Breathing

Website Editor • November 17, 2020

I think I have mentioned this before. The ticking of the tall case clock in the Mitchell House, its ringing on the hour, always makes me feel like the Mitchell House is alive. It is when I have to stop the clock for the winter that the House goes dormant. It’s a sound that I become quite use to when it is running – the ticking and ringing. It always makes me chuckle to myself when the Mitchell House intern first starts work in late May. It takes them a few weeks to discern the difference between the clock and the front door bell but then, they get it. (Don’t worry – I don’t let them “run” for the door – I tell them, “No! It’s the clock. You’ll get used to the difference.)


The tall case was a wedding gift from William Mitchell’s parents to William and Lydia on their wedding day. Made in Boston by John Deverell in 1789, it’s a year older than the House. William and Lydia gave the clock to Phebe Mitchell Kendall upon her marriage in 1854. Phebe left t to her only child, William Mitchell Kendall who then left it to the Mitchell House in his estate in 1941. I am not sure how William’s parents came to the clock – perhaps it was their clock as William and Lydia married in 1812 so by then the tall case (no, not called a grandfather clock!) was twenty-three years old.


On its face it rotates the phases of the Moon and shows the seconds and the date. It’s a seven-day clock, but I wind it twice per week (always, holding my breath as it is 231 years old!) It has wonderful inlays around the bonnet top and the case where the door to the pendulum and weights are located. And its face is enameled. It’s a simple – very appropriate for a Quaker family – tall case clock with just a touch of “extras” – a bit of color and a bit of decoration.

I put it to bed a few weeks ago – I wait pretty far into the fall as I hate to stop it. But when I do, I tell it to have a good winter and that I will see it when I wake it in the spring.


JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 16, 2025
June 1851 My Dear Sister . . . . Mrs. Dassel has painted me kneeling at my telescope. It looks like Adeline Coffin and is of course not handsome. If thee was here thee would have Mitchell’s {William Mitchell Barney, son of Sally and Matthew Barney} painted at once. She has a head of a child N. P. Willis that is very lovely. She has taken a room at the Atheneum and put up about a dozen pictures – very beautiful – Isabel is lovely. She has not tried to make a portrait, but a very pretty picture . . . . She is now engaged on Abra’m Quary – he is much flattered by it and it will be a fine portrait. I think we shall buy it or a copy for the Atheneum . . . . She will paint father also for herself – having made a pencil sketch . . . .We like her very much . . . . The above is from a letter sent by Maria Mitchell to her eldest sister, Sally Mitchell Barney. In it, Maria details what everyone in the Mitchell family is up to. She includes some details about Herminia B. Dassel, an artist who came to Nantucket to paint the last Native Americans and also took an interest in the famous Mitchell family. This was of course four years after Maria’s discovery of the comet. At the time of this letter, Maria was still the librarian for the Atheneum and the portrait of Quary that she mentions possibly buying for the Atheneum, she did buy as it hangs in the Atheneum by the front door today. Another Dassel portrait of Quary is in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association and the portrait of Isabel Draper is currently on display at the NHA’s Whaling Museum – on loan from a museum in Rhode Island. The portrait Maria states she posed for at the start of the letter is in the collection of the MMA. It was given to us in the early 1990s by Sally’s great granddaughter – the granddaughter of Mitchell whom she mentions above as well. Maria and Dassel would become good friends – Maria was named the godmother of Dassel’s daughter. And the sketch of William made by Dassel that Maria states would become a portrait? It likely did come to fruition. It made its way down a side of the family but was unfortunately lost, likely sold as part of a family estate though we do have a photograph of it and one can tell it is the brush work of Dassel. JNLF

At Long Last!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 9, 2025
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