Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • July 15, 2014

Lynn July 8, 1868


My Dear President {Raymond},


My habit of grumbling has become so chronic, that I feel disposed, as I put your note down, to fret, that three such tasteful persons as yourself, Miss L{yman} and Miss A{very} had not settled all my domestic questions for me, and acted as upholsterers.


If you had done it, I haven’t a doubt I should have fretted at that. And the weather is quite too warm for such active exercise as a fit of extra fretting! I want – in the room in which the clock is {this was a room immediately off the dome via a small staircase and used by Maria as a sitting room and bedroom – not its original intention and very drafty}, four or five respectable chairs, and a lounge or sofa. If you ask what I mean by respectable, I reply “I do not know.”


I am as ignorant of furniture as of music. I want such a state of things in that room, which is the one into which the families of Trustees come, that those families shall not reproach me in regard to my “style” – which has happened in two cases.


From her home in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she and her father would return in the summer for several years, Maria sent this letter to the president of Vassar College where she had been professor and head of the observatory since 1865. This was not the first nor the last letter in complaint not just about salary, but in how the Observatory was equipped, and how much it was lacking in serving as a suitable dwelling place – what an observatory is not meant to be. The lounge served as her bed for many years and the drafts from the dome were likely incredible. And I can only imagine what was said to her by the families of Trustees, Trustees themselves, and the parents of her students – it reflected poorly on her and yet it was the college’s fault, not her own, that she was left to try and make something out of nothing. And when one is also trying to fundraise for one’s department as Maria was, appearance does count. This was a constant battle for her during her tenure at Vassar and one that was never fully resolved, no matter how beloved she was.


JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 4, 2026
May 6, 1878 Between the clouds, Miss Spalding obtained 7 photographs of Mercury on the Sun. It is comfort to me to be able to plan and do a new kind of work. The large telescope worked better than usual, Clark having just been to the Observatory. Clark, as in Alvan Clark, a man who would become the premier telescope maker in America and who built Maria Mitchell’s 5-inch Alvan Clark refractor that she purchased from him (after working with him to build it per her specifications) with money gifted to her from “The Women of America” led by Elizabeth Peabody. More than likely, it is this telescope she is referring to as she did use it in the Vassar College Observatory with her students – and it is also taking center stage in photographs, along with her (first her father’s) Dolland telescope.  Maria had decided she would photograph the Sun on every clear day, and this was one of those results. She would use these images, with her students, to study sun spots and their changes. With her students, Maria would photograph the transit of Mercury as noted above. She would also photograph the transit of Venus a few years later with her students. JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 13, 2026
April 1878. The conference of Woman’s Congress officers met in Washington. Because we had one member in Washington we were invited to meet in that place. I went on at a great expense of time, money and strength . . . . We were in session at least nine hours. I think that more than half of that was used by Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Sayles. The only motion which I carried through was to pay the Secretary $200 . . . In 1878, that was a long train(s) ride to Washington, DC from Poughkeepsie, NY and Vassar College. If Maria seems perturbed, I am sure she was. As president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, and thus the Congress, she had to be at the meeting. But it appears she did not get much say in the nine hour meeting. This was also a long trip to take when she had another, even longer trip coming up in July of 1878. In that month, she would travel with students and her sister, Phebe, out west to Colorado to view the eclipse and that train and wagon ride I am sure was weighing on her mind – not just the physical trip but making her way for an important eclipse viewing event. JNLF
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