Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • December 17, 2018

December 2 nd . {1857}  I spent all of yesterday in seeing the outside of Paris.  First in a carriage, then on foot, then in carriage again: from ten in the morning till ten at night I was sightseeing.  It is really a magnificent city.  Edinburgh is picturesque but Paris is splendid.  The streets like the Champs Elysees and Rue Rivoli are beautiful now, and in summer must be charming . . . .


December 7 th .  In Paris, you have room to look at things.  In London, you have not. . . . So at Versailles, you see the palace from the magnificent grounds as a whole.  A building in London is seen by corners.


I cannot help but laugh at that last line.  It makes me wonder what she would think of Boston – or even Nantucket – in 2018!  But she is right – some places you can still see everything – and a building as the architect envisioned – but not in many places any longer.


By this time, her charge – Prudence (Prudie) had been forced to return home due to her father going bankrupt by the Panic of 1857.  Maria would travel on alone – and with the Hawthorne family who have been mentioned in these blogs before.


JNLF

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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 28, 2025
Lynn, Ap. 25 1869  My dear President, I am not sure I told you how long I must be away from the College. If I took only the Sunday’s rest, it would be possible for me to reach the Obs. By Tuesday, but I feel the need of more than one day of quiet, before I enter upon the new and incomprehensible life before me . . . William Mitchell died on April 19, 1869 and for the first time, Maria Mitchell was alone. Save for her trip to the southern United States and Europe in 1857 and 1858, her father was always by her side. She did not know much of a day in her life without him nearby and she knows that. It was difficult for her – and her siblings worried about her and this new world she was now in. She had been – expect for that trip – the caregiver for both of her parents. Her mother, Lydia Coleman Mitchell, died in 1861 on Nantucket and Maria had cared for her as well. She was the child who became the caregiver of the family – both in her youth as her siblings sought her out for care, humor, love, and adventures while their mother was busy with younger children and household duties – and then her parents as the only child who did not marry and remained by their sides. JNLF
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