The Cabinet of Curiosities

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 8, 2016

From this year’s Mitchell House Intern, Nikki Lohr, Vassar College Class of 2017.

In the Mitchell House sitting room stands William Mitchell’s writing desk, seven feet tall. When Maria was a child, she probably would have opened its cabinet doors to find shelves stacked with books and astronomy papers. Today, Mitchell House visitors will find the desk transformed into a cabinet of curiosities. In it, we installed a temporary exhibition about Maria’s travels. You’ll see photos of objects usually only found in the MMA archives, including pictures of Maria on her travels and a letter written from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Maria while she and the Hawthorne family traveled together in Rome.


Though Maria is remembered as a trailblazer of the heavens, she was just as pioneering on Earth. She traveled all over America and Europe in an age when a train ride from Chicago to St. Louis could take twenty-three hours and stage coaches plowed forth at a whopping six miles per hour.


Maria sailed to Europe twice, in 1857 and 1873. There, she visited over twenty-five cities in eight countries. She even ventured as far as Russia. In 1857, she took a four-month long grand tour of America. She journeyed out to the barren prairie lands of the Midwest and then south. After seeing New Orleans, she commented, “I think the Union cannot last.”

Perhaps most extraordinary, Maria sometimes traveled unaccompanied or only with women. At first, this made her wary. In May 1857, she visited Mammoth Cave, a massive natural monument in Kentucky. She wrote in her diary, “I was a little doubtful about the propriety of going into Mammoth Cave without a gentleman as protector, but if two ladies travel alone they must have the courage of men.”


By the time she reached Rome in 1858, she was happy to go it alone. She visited the Coliseum, the Vatican, and the Roman Forum – sites that must have resonated with her since she taught herself Latin at the Nantucket Atheneum. On January 24, 1858, she wrote to her sister Phebe: “I could scarcely believe that I really stood among the ruins, and was not dreaming! I really think I had more enjoyment for going alone and finding out for myself.”


So come by Mitchell House today, and learn more about Maria’s travels!


(And see the superb small exhibit created by Nikki with help from our student volunteer, Avery Hylton! JNLF)

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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger June 23, 2025
An older term, that we seem to not use that much anymore but maybe that’s in part because not many people “put things by” anymore. It is having a bit of a resurgence as people try to return to the garden and focus on local produce. My in-laws used to spend a lot of time – before I knew them – canning and preserving many different things – from jellies to string beans that became “dilly beans.” I, on the other hand, do not can produce. Frankly, I fear messing up the process and making my family sick. So, for now, I stick to making refrigerator jams and pickles. I have made some chive vinegar – that is frankly, amazing, and a brilliant shade of pink! But in any case, Bartlett’s Farm opened for pick-your-own strawberries on June 7 and I made my way over on June 8. My son has been asking for strawberry jam since about February – I told him I wait for fresh and local but he wanted some so badly he was begging for store bought. I almost caved but then I told him – out of season and they taste like cardboard – and also made a LONG journey to get to us. Once people ate with the seasons – now we do not have to with trains, planes, and ships crossing all over. It is also, why, oftentimes, fruit has no flavor. Produce is picked often before it ripens and “ripens” as it ships – or with sprays – and since many varieties have been crossed with others or engineered, we have lost the taste. I remember tasting a peach a few years back from North Carolina – fresh off the tree. After rubbing it to get all the “fur” off, I bit into an exquisite peach that tasted like a peach of my youth. So, Maria was not eating a strawberry in January but she was eating them in June – local and full of flavor. And likely, putting some by as well. JNLF
By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger June 16, 2025
June 1851 My Dear Sister . . . . Mrs. Dassel has painted me kneeling at my telescope. It looks like Adeline Coffin and is of course not handsome. If thee was here thee would have Mitchell’s {William Mitchell Barney, son of Sally and Matthew Barney} painted at once. She has a head of a child N. P. Willis that is very lovely. She has taken a room at the Atheneum and put up about a dozen pictures – very beautiful – Isabel is lovely. She has not tried to make a portrait, but a very pretty picture . . . . She is now engaged on Abra’m Quary – he is much flattered by it and it will be a fine portrait. I think we shall buy it or a copy for the Atheneum . . . . She will paint father also for herself – having made a pencil sketch . . . .We like her very much . . . . The above is from a letter sent by Maria Mitchell to her eldest sister, Sally Mitchell Barney. In it, Maria details what everyone in the Mitchell family is up to. She includes some details about Herminia B. Dassel, an artist who came to Nantucket to paint the last Native Americans and also took an interest in the famous Mitchell family. This was of course four years after Maria’s discovery of the comet. At the time of this letter, Maria was still the librarian for the Atheneum and the portrait of Quary that she mentions possibly buying for the Atheneum, she did buy as it hangs in the Atheneum by the front door today. Another Dassel portrait of Quary is in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association and the portrait of Isabel Draper is currently on display at the NHA’s Whaling Museum – on loan from a museum in Rhode Island. The portrait Maria states she posed for at the start of the letter is in the collection of the MMA. It was given to us in the early 1990s by Sally’s great granddaughter – the granddaughter of Mitchell whom she mentions above as well. Maria and Dassel would become good friends – Maria was named the godmother of Dassel’s daughter. And the sketch of William made by Dassel that Maria states would become a portrait? It likely did come to fruition. It made its way down a side of the family but was unfortunately lost, likely sold as part of a family estate though we do have a photograph of it and one can tell it is the brush work of Dassel. JNLF
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