Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • January 14, 2019

Jan. 1, 1855.I put some wires into my little transit this morning. I dreaded it so much, when I found yesterday that it must be done, that it disturbed my sleep. It was much easier than I expected.


I have blogged later portions of this adventure before. This is the earliest account in the line – I did it backwards. Maria would try to fix the lines in her transit with her own hair, then her nephew’s hair, and finally found success in using spider webs – individual strands! Talk about patience – but also ingenuity and need! The transit was important to Maria’s work – transits are still used today including for surveying. They are used to determine the relative position of objects and lines. They are extremely precise instruments and are used to establish reference lines and provide readings of angles in precise measurements. Until she made the repairs, some of her work would have come to a screeching halt.


JNLF

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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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