Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
Maria Mitchell, ca. 1865
Nantucket, Mass. June 28 {1857}
My dear Miss Dix,
I expect to leave for Europe in the Arabia on July 22nd. Can you do anything for me, in the way so common, of giving good advice. I will try to be more mindful of it than recipients usually are. I expect to travel with a young girl and without gentleman and shall be most grateful for any information as to any peculiar trials which may be thrown our way . . . .
Before she began the second leg of her journey as chaperone to Prudence Swift (they had first traveled in the South of the United States that spring), Maria Mitchell made sure she had letters of introduction from American scientists to Europeans of distinction – particularly mathematicians and astronomers she would want to meet. Always learning, Mitchell also made sure she had spoken with people to understand the situations in which she and Prudie would be traveling and living. Thus, this letter to Dorthea Dix. Mitchell had met Dix several years before, in 1853, when Mitchell was the librarian of the Atheneum. When she came to the island, Dix asked particularly to meet the famed woman astronomer. And she in fact made a donation of eleven of her books on prisons and state hospital reforms to the Atheneum’s collection.
JNLF
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