Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • November 10, 2014

1872. Nov. 4. Sorosis.


Lunch was at noon, but it was noon neither mean nor apparent {a reference to mean solar time and apparent solar time} but a Sorosis noon.


Some 100 guests arrayed themselves around tables or around the walls of the room. Mrs. Wiler presided at the central table with Miss Faithfull on her right and jenny June Croty on her left. AT the same table were Dr. Emily Blackwell, Dr. Mary Putnam and Mrs. Bullan of the Revolution . . . . A question for discussion then came up whether most good would be exerted by Sorosis if it had a special aim or aimed only at a general expression of views . . . .


Maria Mitchell was one of the founding members of SOROSIS, a woman’s group that formed in 1869 in response to female journalists being barred from a press conference and dinner held for Charles Dickens on his first trip to the United States. In response, women reporters, authors, educators, doctors, and scientists and others came together at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City, forming Sorosis where women could discuss topics of the day and further the educational and social activities of its women members and other women so that all could be helped. It was the first professional women’s club in the US. Sorosis would expand to have smaller groups around the country, including here on Nantucket, and island born women such as Anna Gardner and the Reverend Phebe Hanaford were members. Maria’s humor is readily apparent – note her beginning lines – obviously Sorosis meetings and luncheons did not start on time.


JNLF

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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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