Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • March 13, 2023

March 31, 1885

Our March has been terrific. The ther{mometer} has been about zero, every morning but one, for a week. I do not go out to breakfast. If you are in NY I hope you will run up to Vassar. I expect Anne in April . . .

M.M.


This is from a letter that she wrote to her brother-in-law, Matthew Barney. Matthew married Maria’s older sister and the oldest Mitchell daughter, Sally, who died in March 25, 1876 so I am sure that without saying it, Maria was checking in and had been thinking of Sally and Mathew. In the letter, she states that she has not heard from him – or Nantucket in quite some time. Matthew would remarry two years later and was buried with his second wife and her family just up the hill from the Mitchell family lot where Maria and Sally lay near their parents, brother Andrew, and their aunt, Maria Coleman. Sally and Matthew would have been visitors to Maria and her father in Lynn and the Nantucket Historical Association has an image of Matthew taken in Lynn – I like to think when he and Sally were visiting Maria and William.


JNLF

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