Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • March 18, 2019

March 2, 1857. I left Meadville this morning at six o’clock in a stage-coach for Erie. I had, early in life, a love for staging, but it is fast dying out. Nine hours over a rough road are enough to root out the most passionate of that kind.


This trip was her return, likely from her meeting Prudence Swift and her father, to discuss the possibility of Maria being Prudie’s chaperone through the South if the United States and then Europe – adventures I have recounted via Maria’s words numerous times in this blog. I can see where the adventure of staging might be fun but after a while not so much. Like a long car trip that’s fun a few times but not so much once you keep doing it. I know those trips! But I have to say, still far more comfortable in a car – Maria recounts the bumps and falling onto people next to her – and popping up to the roof, hitting her head, and then falling forward on to people across form her. A little too close and personal indeed!


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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