Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 26, 2017

June 21, 1883. I set out on the Mary Power on June 18 th for Boston, got to N.Y. at 11a.m. and went on board the boat at once.  I disliked my stateroom and decided to go by land as it stormed.  I left N. Y. at 10:30 and worried half-sleeping through a hot night.  I reached Kendall’s just as they were at breakfast.  How glad I was to find them all well, and the same at the Dame’s and the Barney’s the next day.

 

Today I have been at the Bond’s to look at chronometers want one at $200 which has been tested and is only about 6 years old.  Its rate is remarkably steady even when at sea.  Also, I bo’t a mantle, a head dress and a fancy pink shawl . . .

 

As I have noted before, though born on an island, Maria did get seasick on occasion.  I too – even though I have travelled between Hyannis or Woods Hole and Nantucket since I was 1 ½ years old – get sick as well in rough seas.  Thus, I am not surprised she changed her mind.  The rough seas added to her distaste for the stateroom that she would stare at for a day or so seasick.  Why not go by land?!  Upon reaching Boston, she arrived at the Kendall household – the home of her sister Phebe and her husband Joshua.  The Dames and Barneys were family as well.  Her oldest sister, Sally, had married Matthew Barney.  With Sally now long deceased, this reference to the Barneys may be Maria’s nephew William Mitchell Barney, Sally’s son.  And the Dames refers to Maria’s youngest sister, Kate, and her family who lived in Lynn, MA.


A trip to Boston was to see family but also to make purchases in a place that was slightly more familiar.  A place where she knew the telescope and chronometer makers and had a relationship with them.  A chronometer was a clock that could be taken to sea and not be affected by the roll of the ship – thus she notes how “remarkably steady” it is.  Something that would be quite important for a chronometer.


JNLF

Recent Posts

E. Dorrit Hoffleit, Ph.D.

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 8, 2025
Dorrit Hoffleit began her tenure at the MMO in 1957. A graduate of Radcliffe, Hoffleit earned a Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1938. During World War Two, she worked for the U. S. government on missile trajectories and joined Yale’s Astronomy Department in 1956. Her directorship of the MMO allowed her to work part of the year on island and the remainder at Yale with the two organizations sharing her salary. She was the principal author of the Yale Bright Star Catalog – work that was continually added to over fifty years – and her work also focused on the study of variable stars. Hoffleit continued in the path of Harwood with research and public outreach, and bringing worldwide recognition to the MMO. Among her many accomplishments on behalf of the MMO, Hoffleit is known for her work with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a grant she received in 1957 to allow for the summer training of female undergraduate students in astronomy. This was the pilot project for the national program of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in various branches of science and technology, launched by the NSF in 1990. The MMA became a permanent REU site in astronomy, which is funded by the NSF based on periodically submitted proposals. Today, the MMO continues to have a lasting effect on its students. More than five percent of all the U.S. women becoming Ph.D.s in astronomy have participated in the MMA REU program. The probability of a current MMA REU student (either female or male) to become a Ph.D. is approximately sixty percent. Approximately fifty current professors of astronomy in the U. S. have participated in the REU program at the MMA. Hoffleit who retired from the MMO in 1978, continued her connections to the MMA up until the last weeks of her life. She passed away in 2007 at the age of one hundred. JNLF

Astronomical Study

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 25, 2025
With Margaret Harwood’s growing collection of glass plates of the night skies needing better storage and Harwood in need of a warm place to work in the fall and spring, the Hinchman family gave $5,000.00 towards the construction of a study and storage area at the MMO. The MMA was able to raise the remaining $1,500.00 needed and the Astronomical Study was built in 1922 between the Observatory and Mitchell House. The Astronomical Study was built as a memorial to Eliza R. Mitchell, the Treasurer of the MMA from 1905 to 1918, and a family member. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 18, 2025
August 17{1857} Today we have been to the far-famed British museum. I carried as “open sesame” a paper given to me by Prof. Henry asking for me special attention from all societies with which the Smithsonian {is} connected . . . . The art of printing has brought us incalculable blessings, but as I looked at a neat manuscript book by Queen Elizabeth copied from another, as a present to her Father I could not help thinking that it was better than worsted work! On August 2, 1857, Maria Mitchell and the young woman she was accompanying as a chaperone, Prudence Smith, arrived in Liverpool England for their European tour. Maria Mitchell’s “open sesame” was a letter of introduction – she went with several. She would find that the doors were thrown open for America’s first woman astronomer – she was that well known in America and abroad. She would become quite close to Sir George Airy, the British Astronomer Royal, and his wife Richarda, as well as the astronomical Herschel family. JNLF
Show More