Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 22, 2013

Maria Mitchell, ca. 1865


Charleston April 23. This place has a look of a city somewhat like Boston in its narrow streets but unlike Boston in being quiet as is all the south . . . . We left Savannah at about 6 p.m. and in nine hours were at the wharf of Charleston . . . .


The reading” matter of different parts of the country differs widely. Peculiarities force themselves upon you. At the west, maps of Kansas and Nebraska thrust before your eyes everywhere. At the South Miss Murrays letters are in every book store, tho’ you may ask in vain for Mrs. Browning’s poems. But everywhere Boston and New York are the standards of excellence. Boston seems to me more talked of at the South than New York. It was evidently the admiration of the South for its education and the horror for its irreligion . . . .


April 28. Charleston. Nothing can exceed the hospitality shown to us. We have several invitations each day and calls without much limit . . . .


April 29 . . . . Charleston is full of ante-revolution houses and they please me. They were built when there was no hurry. They were built to last. They have lasted and they will last yet for the children if their present possessors . . .


Maria Mitchell traveled into the American South and West in 1857 as a young woman’s chaperone and governess. Prudence Smith was her charge and they also travelled to Europe in 1857 and 1858 – the American tour being the first leg of their two year plan. I include this snippet from Maria’s journals in part because of her mention of the homes in Charleston. It coincides nicely with the fact that we just completed re-shingling the southern façade of Mitchell house on April 12th. And, I like her comments about Boston and New York and her quest for Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry. While these are light, she would later make more strongly worded negative comments about the South.


JNLF

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Bang, Clang, Hiss!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 26, 2026
I grew up, quite literally, with hot water radiators in a Colonial Revival from the 1920s.  There was a huge boiler in the basement that chugged and blew hot belching air. It took up one whole area of the basement and I avoided it. I could hang over on the stairs and stare at its flames at the bottom. It scared me. It not only kept the basement very warm but also very dry. While the house had been built in an area that began to slope at our property, between the furnace and the clever drainage system installed by the builders of the house in the 1920s, our basement was always dry. My mother, the queen of rebates (this is the 1970s and 1980s), had her “rebate and coupon table” right in front of this furnace. I remember it always glowed – and I would not doubt that it still had some asbestos around some of its pipes. Maybe another reason I stayed away – perhaps I was warned away at an early age not just because I could burn myself! One of my fondest memories of this house was the clang and hiss of the heaters in the winter. It made me feel instantly cozy, as if I was wrapped in a nice warm quilt. If I was in bed at night and it was snowing, all the more warmth and cozy feeling. It was comforting and a sound and feel I still associate with snow and winter. The street light and the snow falling, spiraling down in that pinkish gold of the light – and the hoped for snow day to come! Forced air systems just don’t do the same thing. And, they suck all the moisture out of the house to boot! They do keep a house quite warm though – but still not the same – and I miss that humidity as do my plants. I reflect back on the hot water radiators – those old cast iron loopy radiators with the valve and perhaps a radiator box to cover them – as it if they kept me super warm. They didn’t. We kept our house at 63F – a lesson I still follow – and it was a big old Colonial-style house so it could be drafty. One reason we had a Franklin stove in our family room and quilts for nighttime television watching! So many times over the course of a winter, I think of that house where I spent about twenty years of my life, and remember the, “Bang, Clang, Hiss!” of the radiators and the coziness they projected. And while, it wasn’t always warm, it was a lot warmer that the Mitchell House would have been in February! JNLF
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