Annie Jump Cannon

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • January 7, 2015

A few weeks ago, Annie Jump Cannon was the featured Google “doodle.” Google featured Maria Mitchell as the doodle a few years ago to celebrate her birthday and has been doing a good job of featuring well-known and lesser-known woman who have made a difference in our world.


Annie Jump Cannon was among the founding members of the MMA but she was also instrumental in the development of our astronomy program. With a growing desire to further develop a fledgling astronomy program in 1906, the MMA began a dialogue with Harvard University’s Observatory and its director, Edward Pickering, Ph.D. The connection to Harvard was to become essential to the success of the beginning years of the Maria Mitchell Observatory and continued a legacy of friendship and work – Maria Mitchell and her father worked with the Bonds who once ran the observatory at Harvard and the families were close friends.

Besides his advice and assistance, Pickering asked a member of his staff, Annie Jump Cannon to advise and assist the MMA. This “provided an indispensable collaboration for Nantucket astronomy” with Cannon spending two weeks on the island in both 1906 and 1907 lecturing and teaching. While back at Harvard, she continued to teach the students on Nantucket by mail. Cannon would go on to be recognized as the leading woman astronomer of her generation and also as the founder of the astronomy department at the MMA.


Completed in 1908, the Maria Mitchell Observatory now was in need of a permanent astronomer. An Observatory Committee was developed and chaired by Annie Jump Cannon. From 1909 through 1911, the Association was able to employ an astronomer to teach classes, observe, provide lectures, and open the observatory for public observing for approximately a month each summer. As the demand grew, the MMA realized that a more extensive program was needed and the Astronomical Fellowship Committee began to raise funds for an Astronomical Fellowship Fund. With the support of many generous donors and a matching gift from Andrew Carnegie, by 1911 the MMA had the funds it needed to support the fellowship and began its search for an astronomer who would conduct research and provide lectures, classes and open nights for the public from mid-June through mid-December. The fellow would spend the remainder four months in research and study – every fourth year a full year of study would be spent in an American or European observatory.


With Pickering, Cannon developed the Harvard Classification Scheme, an attempt to organize and classify stars by temperature. She was one of many women whom Pickering hired to reduce data and carry out astronomical calculations. She would go on to become the Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard. She received a regular Harvard appointment but just two years before she retired – she was named the William C. Bond Astronomer. Today, there is the Annie Cannon Prize which is awarded to women astronomers who have made outstanding contributions in astronomy.

 

JNLF

Recent Posts

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

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 20, 2025
1854, Oct. 23. Yesterday I was again reminded of the remark which Mrs. Stowe makes about the variety of occupations which an American woman pursues. She says it is this, added to the cares and anxieties which keep them so much behind the daughters of England in personal beauty. And today, I was amused at reading that one of her party objected to the introduction of wood floors in American housekeeping, because she could seem to see herself down on her knees, doing the waxing. Throughout Mrs. Stowe’s book there is an openness which I like, no pretense in affectation, religious cant but it is honest habit and not affectation.  While this was written many years before, Maria Mitchell and Harriet Beecher Stowe must certainly have been at least acquaintances as they shared things in common. While Beecher Stowe was not a member of the Association for the Advancement of Women, as Maria was (a founder and a term as president), her sister was actively engaged in several of the organizations that Maria was a part of and there must have been some cross-pollination there. Harriet Beecher Stowe, while working towards women’s rights, focused on slaves’ rights and was not an active member of many of the women’s organizations that her sister was a part of. Maria and Harriet shared friends and acquaintances in common and Mitchell made sure that Uncle Tom’s Cabin quickly appeared on the shelf of the Nantucket Atheneum when it was first published. JNLF

A Gardener’s Woes

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 6, 2025
It used to be that whatever the deer or bunnies ate at my home garden, I could plant with relief in Town in the Mitchell House garden. But, over the years, it has become more difficult as we have a plethora of bunnies – multiple complaints made here in this blog – and deer that are now coming into Town year round. They have resorted, in winter, to eating ivy and while ivy is considered invasive, it has been a long-time, reliable ground cover in Town – as in a hundred or more years. Now, we have voles – which do have cycles where their population booms for a year – or two – but we have not had them in the MMA gardens at least in my memory. Now, we do and I worry about them devastating the garden in front of the Observatory which is a large, native species garden we have worked on for many years. I know climate change is definitely playing a role – it’s affecting the birth cycles of voles and allowing them to have potentially more broods. Its also potentially affecting some of their predators that may not be as prevalent and thus fewer voles are being eaten. In any case, we have tunnels galore, which is why I was happy to have ONE blossom on the heirloom morning glories I plant for Mitchell House every spring. Out of 500 or more seeds – I got one lonely blossom! The voles are attacking my own personal garden – the last two summers – and I have lost many of the mainstay lilies and perennials that have been there for forty years – or they have shrunken due to their root systems being undermined and eaten. Roses are failing too. So if anyone has better ideas then solar hummers, live trap, kill trap, or Juicy Fruit gum – let me know – poisons not allowed! JNLF Update: Got four more blossoms - but still!
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