Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • March 16, 2020

March 12, {1855}.  What a change a fortnight has made.  I have passed through a fortnight of great anxiety in nursing my Mother.  I have never been a believer in a special Providence, but when I saw her recovering I felt like giving thanks to God and when anyone says to me “how is your mother,” I felt like saying “Better, thank God” instead of “thank you.”


Lydia Coleman Mitchell partially recovered from an illness that would last for six years and that made Maria Mitchell her mother’s nurse.  As the single daughter who lived at home, societal norms dictated this – though we all know that Maria would of course do this no matter what.  It was only her trip to the southern United States and Europe that would draw her away – with Lydia left under the attentive care of one of Maria’s younger sisters, Phebe Mitchell Kendall who had married in 1854.  Such circumstances still exist today – as was just recently discussed on a local NPR piece.  While it’s not necessarily only the women carrying for aging parents or sick family members, it is still very much on families to take care of the seriously ill and aged – health care costs and costs associated with long-term care and nursing homes or retirement communities are out of reach for many.


As I have noted before, Maria did not believe in a god – she saw her god – her religion – in nature.  But she obviously felt there was some higher plane – some higher being – that could have had some sort of influence as her mother’s illness was not something she thought she would even partially recover from.  I realize my god is nature – the world around us – and I came to that in part because of my Father and his beliefs.


JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 29, 2025
Sept. 25, 1854. . . . The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious, and the best that can be said of me is that I have not pretended to what I was not.  I think of two things when I read this. One is that Quakers believed in being industrious and not wasting time. The second point makes me think immediately of Holden Caulfield – The Catcher in the Rye if you don’t know that character’s name – and his various references and discussions to “phonys” as he refers to them though Maria’s mention here is not entirely in the same vain. A materially successful Quaker was one who was living “in the light,” as Quakers referred to it. Even if gifted with material wealth, Quakers still lived frugally and were a hard working group of people. As Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur noted, “Idleness is the most heinous sin that can be committed in Nantucket . . . for idleness is considered as another word for want and hunger.” If you were not productive and industrious, you would starve – and it would affect others in the community since isolated Nantucket acted as a corporate family economy – everyone was relying on one another for survival. While Maria is also not necessarily going to this depth of industrious it is a Quaker ethic that was strongly imbued in her. She certainly was a hard worked with numerous accomplishments to her name and many different projects completed even by 1854 at age thirty-six. And don’t forget October 1 st is the anniversary of Maria’s comet discovery – October 1, 1847. JNLF
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