The Power of Memory

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 7, 2015

Little things are at play in my mind. I do not have a photographic memory but I have perhaps something similar with voice and smell and experience that holds onto the littlest things. I remember conversations with exact detail, sounds, smells, and what someone was wearing during some event or other. Unfortunately, such a memory can be a little frustrating and overwhelming, especially when someone says, “I never said that,” because I remember with clear detail what a person said or did. My niece also has such a memory. She brings things up from when she was very little or reminds someone that they actually said this, not that. To top it off, she is only eight years old! Such a memory can also be a painful because people who are no longer with us and activities you participated in with them are so fresh in your mind.


I was probably only 3 or so but I remember visiting my great-grandmother (Mama Minnie) with my father. I remember her opening the garage door – they had an automatic opener very avant-garde in the 1970s – and seeing her standing on the stoop inside. I remember the long bench in her kitchen and the gentle swooshing noise as she moved with her walker slightly dragging one of her braced legs – she had Paget’s Disease. I remember her dark living room with sofas encrusted in plastic – protection from wear and tear! I remember my other great grandmother – Other Nana – and sitting at her feet playing with the laces on her shoes as my parents and Nana worked in the basement. I was not allowed down there so I sat with Other Nana, eating gum drops out of the cow candy dish and watching “The Osmond Show.” I was less than three years old, maybe two at the most – my brother had not yet been born.


Sometimes a smell will overpower me, as if a person from my past is right there. My Nana’s perfume for instance. Or a place. At 12, I remember sitting under the Mitchell House grape arbor listening to Elizabeth Yager speak of the Mitchell family. She knew so much detail that I always thought of her being related to them. She wasn’t – but she did know cousins of Maria’s. She was probably in her 80s as she sat there on the bench talking to me. I sat on the flagstone. I remember her visor and her neat housedress in light blue and her Ked sneakers with tennis socks.


The more I remember these people the more they continue to live. I am a firm believer in that. That is why at the Mitchell House, when someone is on a tour with us, it’s more like storytelling in a way. Recounting events in the lives of the Mitchells, their own stories or words about their daily life. Bringing it to life so that we not only learn about the past, but also the people who shaped our present. Retelling the stories of Maria’s cousins and nieces and nephews – stories I learned from those who knew them (like Elizabeth) – it’s not a direct connection but it’s closer than you find in most museums. It’s unique and makes their stories my own and their stories yours as well.


JNLF

Recent Posts

From The Rear

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • November 3, 2025
I am not so sure our founders would love that title but the image is of the Maria Mitchell Vestal Street Observatory (MMO) “from the rear.” I love this image as it is really the only one we have – unless you count the one that is taken from farther away and from further into the backyard of the Mitchell House. That one allows you to see the natural slope of the Mitchell House back lawn which would be altered when they added the Curator’s Cottage. Both of the images were taken before the Curator’s Cottage was added at the back of the Mitchell House in the early 1930s – and this one you see here was taken before 1922 when they added the Astronomical Study onto the MMO. It also shows the original dome – which was copper – before it was replaced in 1951 – which is the current dome. The copper did not hold up to our climate here – salt spray, damp, fog. But the new one, shipped over from England, has held up well. The current dome was donated by Margaret Underwood Davis (MMA board president at the time), in memory of her son, Cushing Davis who was an amateur astronomer. Margaret Davis served as president from 1930-1946 and again from 1949-1953. The image tells you some other things too. For instance, the grape arbor behind the Mitchell House is supposed to be Peleg Mitchell’s (Maria’s uncle) grape vine – I have blogged about it several times before – and you can see it in this image. You can also see how the Milk Room connects to the 1850s kitchen. The 1850s kitchen was added by Peleg Mitchell Jr and it’s the first little wart you see with the white pipe attached. The next wart is the Milk Room – also added by Peleg – it’s the one with the shutters on the window. Both still exist it’s just the Curator’s Cottage was attached in the 1930s. You will see another chimney too. It appears alongside the white pipe. That is likely the original chimney to what is now the Astronomer’s Cottage at the MMA. We acquired the Cottage in the 1920s but I believe all of the additions, and the removal of the chimney, were done before we were given it.  Fun! JNLF

Keep Calm and Bird On: November 2025

November 1, 2025
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.” -Edith Andrews

Stone Monument Cleaning

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 27, 2025
I have discussed the process and importance of the proper cleaning and conservation of historic stone monuments – cemetery stones – several times before in this blog. This year’s Mitchell House intern, Talia, was also (happily) last year’s intern and due to her college graduation in early June, she missed the annual workshop I have been running concerning the proper care and cleaning of stone monuments. A stone monument enthusiast, I promised Talia we would clean a stone before she left this season. Happily, we did on September 26. We returned together to clean the stone of Charlotte Burdett, Captain of Barzillai Burdett, one of my favorites. I had come across his stone accidentally when prepping to clean another stone for the workshop in June. (I test stones about a month before I clean them to make sure the cleaner will be okay and there are not any issues with it among other things I check for.) I tested the two Burdett stones and after the workshop was over, I remained in the now fairly hard rain showers to clean his stone. At that point, I was sopping wet and I told Charlotte I would return. I always feel badly when I have to return months, or a year, later to complete the stones in a lot. We made fast work of Charlotte’s stone – a little under an hour but the Burdetts’ stones are relatively small and simple. It was also a beautiful day to complete the work. The remainder of this blog will be a bit long because I wanted to share some information on Captain Burdett. He and Charlotte had no children and I have long loved their simple, small gambrel house on North Liberty (not likely a gambrel when they inhabited it). So here we go. In the history of catboats on the island, the Dauntless is my favorite catboat, likely because the owner/captain is a Nantucket “rockstar” of mine. His small gambrel roofed house still stands along North Liberty – a favorite house of mine before I learned a “rock star” inhabited it! The Dauntless was sometimes referred to as the “star boat” because a large red star was sewn on her sail. Built and captained by boatbuilder, Captain Barzillai Burdett, the Dauntless took visitors from the wharves out to the bathing beaches and on clambakes and fishing excursions, beginning in the early 1870s. Two logs of the Dauntless attest to her being a busy boat, enjoyed not only by the passengers, but by her crew as well. The logs live at the Research Library at the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA). At least one was kept by Benjamin Sharp. When he was young, he served aboard the Dauntless with Captain Burdett. Sharp would become a revered island resident. Born in 1858, Dr. Sharp, a zoologist, was a founder of the Nantucket Cottage Hospital, served as Nantucket’s representative in the state legislature, and was an avid sailor and fisherman. In 1904, with Henry W. Fowler, he wrote T he Fishes of Nantucket . Times spent with Captain Burdett must have greatly influenced Sharp. One of the logs dates from July 2 through August 28, 1873, and is a daily record of fishing parties and clambakes the Dauntless provided. The log also includes the names of passengers and where they came from, as well as messages they left for Captain Burdett. Included in the log is this poem: When you go to a clambake, Plenty of chickens you should take, As then you have a second dish For those who do not like shell-fish, For all should indulge, as best they might, “The keen demands of appetite.” The log also has lots of wonderful, comical illustrations − largely drawn by Sharp. Burdett also built whaleboats during the heyday of whaling on the island. Fishing was also his economic mainstay. When summer was over, he would use the Dauntless to fish as many other catboat owners did. The tourist trade had come second to fishing and whaling on the island but, in many cases, may have made fishing secondary in income once tourism took off on island and became much more lucrative. In 1893, artist Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (a distant cousin of Maria Mitchell’s and one of her students at Vassar), painted a lovely double portrait of Burdett and Benjamin Pease in Burdett’s shack on Old North Wharf called “A Tale of the Sea (Captain Burdett In His Boathouse).” Today, it is in the collection of the NHA. PLEASE NOTE: ONE SHOULD NEVER CLEAN THE STONES IN A CEMETERY, WHETHER THEY ARE YOUR FAMILY’S OR NOT, WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE CEMETERY SEXTANT AND HAVING BEEN TRAINED TO PROPERLY CLEAN A STONE. There are quite a few TikToks and other social media posts and people are doing the work incorrectly and damaging and further eroding the stones. JNLF
Show More