Miss Mitchell’s Students: Mary Watson Whitney

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 30, 2019

Standing under the canopy of the stars, you can scarcely do a petty deed or think a wicked thought.


Maria Mitchell’s influence reached far and wide and remained strong through many generations of not just her own students but the students of her students.  Her immediate galaxy was of course the women who took her astronomy and mathematics classes at Vassar College.  She instilled in her students a lifelong love of learning and the knowledge that as women, they had the power, strength, and knowledge to be the future of women scientists and educators in the world.  Some would go on to great accomplishments and some would go on to quietly influence other young learners of the world – spreading Maria’s legacy farther afield.


Over the next few blogs, I would like to share with you some of Maria Mitchell’s students.


The first is:


Mary Watson Whitney, 1847-1921

The Hexagon: Maria Mitchell’s First Astronomy Class. Mary Whitney seated at center.


Born the month before Maria discovered her comet, Mary Whitney would be in Maria’s first Astronomy class at Vassar.  She would also serve as her former teacher’s assistant and later her replacement when Maria left Vassar in 1888.  Like Maria, Whitney had a love for the natural world and was an excellent mathematician; she grew close to both Maria and William Mitchell.  After leaving Vassar, Whitney taught school, attended – by invitation – mathematics lectures at Harvard as the only woman allowed to do so, and would be named the first president of Vassar’s alumnae group.  Vassar awarded her a master’s degree in 1872.  She travelled to view the eclipses with Maria and when Maria became more frail, returned to Vassar to serve as her assistant.  She accepted a research position at Harvard’s observatory giving it up to return again to Vassar to take Maria’s place where she worked until her retirement in 1915.  Whitney would serve as the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association’s first president.


JNLF

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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 13, 2026
April 1878. The conference of Woman’s Congress officers met in Washington. Because we had one member in Washington we were invited to meet in that place. I went on at a great expense of time, money and strength . . . . We were in session at least nine hours. I think that more than half of that was used by Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Sayles. The only motion which I carried through was to pay the Secretary $200 . . . In 1878, that was a long train(s) ride to Washington, DC from Poughkeepsie, NY and Vassar College. If Maria seems perturbed, I am sure she was. As president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, and thus the Congress, she had to be at the meeting. But it appears she did not get much say in the nine hour meeting. This was also a long trip to take when she had another, even longer trip coming up in July of 1878. In that month, she would travel with students and her sister, Phebe, out west to Colorado to view the eclipse and that train and wagon ride I am sure was weighing on her mind – not just the physical trip but making her way for an important eclipse viewing event. JNLF
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