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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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • November 9, 2026
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Applesauce!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • November 2, 2026
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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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