You Are a Rock!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 3, 2016

I have to say, I did tell this rock you see here, “you are a rock!” the other day. That was, after I had gone back over to the Mitchell House and I was alone of course.


For maybe eighty or so years, this rock was doing a serious job. It was a big support. I am not kidding you. The other day, I was handed this rock by the mason – Wayne Morris and his mason tender, his daughter Andrea – while I stopped in to check on the work in the basement of our soon to be Research Center. Andrea pulled the rock out of a bucket. Wayne said, “You know where that was?” Turns out this rock was filling a void between a support beam and a concrete block – basically acting as a filler to hold it all in place.


Now, before we all exclaim, “What?!” we have to think about when and how this was done. It was done in the 1920s, so the gentleman who did this was likely born in at least the 1870s. That – and his growing up and beginnings of work life – being a time when he would have learned from and been trained by carpenters and others who worked in the mid-nineteenth century. So this rock, while something we would not do today, was a perfectly acceptable building material in the 1920s still.

I have seen this before – not just in our historic MMA buildings but all around Nantucket and even off-island. I sit on the board of a very old organization here on the island and recently when we had work done to a building we found boulders and large rocks being used to hold up building and landscaping components from the nineteenth century. Heck, there are still many foundations on island that are rubble or even one rock holding up a long expanse of a sill. It works, still does, may very likely to continue to work even when we are all dead and gone. They knew how to build then – with limited building technologies compared to today.


Despite all this, the rock is not going back. But it will live on as a testament to the builders of our past!


JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

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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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 6, 2026
Well, actually replace the roof! With funding from the Community Preservation Act and the work of Lydon and Sons, Inc. the Mitchell House is getting a new roof. The current one had come to the end of its useful life. A cedar roof can last a long time – longer than asphalt – and is more historically accurate. The roof we are removing was installed in about 1992 – replacing a roof from the 1930s that was not cedar but a combination of materials that actually yes, did last sixty years. The unfortunate issue has arisen that the roofwalk (walk) has to be replaced. This is NOT the original walk – nor that old of a walk. It’s likely from the 1970s or so and has been cobbled at over time. It’s not a functioning walk – no one is allowed on it – but the Mitchell House needs it none the less. Maria Mitchell and her father, William, likely used the walk for astronomical observations – in addition to the yard – but the walk is also protected as part of the preservation easement on the House. Walks – NOT and NEVER called widow’s walks – were used for preventing and putting out chimney fire and roof fires. In a place where wood was expensive and had to be brought from “the main” these were purely utilitarian. What good Quaker (or non-Quaker) would build a platform for his wife to stare out to the harbor to see if her husband was on his way home? The other issue is that the walk was completely resting on the ridge board – and actually was notched to accept the pitch and tip of the ridge board so they couldn’t work around it. I suspect this may have been the ways walks were once built – and also a crafty and smart thinking carpenter who came up with the idea. It makes the walk lower. But between that issue and the age of the walk and then the blizzard of February 2026 that packed gusts over 83 MPH (that’s Category 1 hurricane winds) the walk gave in. Balusters had been knocked out and the railings were loose and pulling away from the posts. So, we will also be working with Barber and Sons to create a new roofwalk – and they agreed to do this for us quickly which is also no small feat given how busy everyone is these days. So from the bottom of the Mitchell House’s heart (and mine) a big thank you to Chris Lydon and Lydon and Sons and crew, Barber and Sons / Beau and Nate Barber, the Community Preservation Committee, and Nantucket Preservation Trust (our easement holder)! JNLF

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