Chamber Pot?

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • October 30, 2023

I wrote this quite a few years ago but it’s sort of fun and worth a repeat!

This spring, thanks to a generous grant, we were able to replace the cedar board fence behind the Mitchell House that was in long need of replacement. It was likely from the late 1960s and did its part for a very long time. Part of the area where this fence runs was once the home of “Neighbor North” as the Peleg Mitchell Junior family called it. Neighbor North was the Mitchell family outhouse and was located in the north part of the backyard. Mary Mitchell, wife of Peleg Jr, surrounded it with nasturtiums in summer and Peleg himself planted a grape vine that grew over it (I mentioned this in a previous post). 


As with any digging in the Mitchell House yard, or even a hard rain, pottery shards are often revealed and as you might know from another previous post, I love pottery shards. As you can see in this image, there is an overwhelming amount of one design of pottery and we can assume it is all from the same piece. Since it is in the area of Neighbor North, I believe this may be the remains of a chamber pot that was brought in the morning to be emptied in the outhouse but never made it back into the Mitchell House because it was dropped or accidentally shattered during the process of emptying. These are the white, blue, and brown striped shards. I have also found a straight, thick piece that could be a portion of the handle of a chamber pot. You can see other pieces too in this image. They could be chips from other chamber pots that were damaged in their emptying process or were discarded in the outhouse hole when broken. Or, simply, other pottery pieces that were tossed behind the outhouse when they were damaged beyond use or could not be made into a “make-do.” What’s a “make-do” you ask? Now that is for another blog. But keep this in mind, even the simplest and smallest piece of “trash” can tell you something about the people who came before us and what the site it is found in was used for or even the economic status of a family. A little piece of trash can be another woman’s treasure – in many ways, including knowledge!


JNLF

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Mallow!

By Jascin Leonardo Finger • August 31, 2026
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A Piece of a Clay Pipe

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 24, 2026
I have always wanted to find a piece of a clay pipe. I know – weird – but if you have ever read any of my blogs here for the MMA then you know I have a thing for pottery shards. I sort of figured I would not find a piece of a clay pipe – not even a piece of a stem. But the other day, walking in a place where I have found quite a few shards, I found a piece of clay pipe! Now, I’m not talking about water pipes – I am talking about tobacco pipes. And I know very little about clay pipes. Yes, I am a curator of a historic house museum, but this family did not smoke. They were Quaker and among the many things they abstained from, tobacco was one of them. Therefore, I am not up on clay pipes so I am doing a bit more research.  For one, age can be determined by the width of the hole inside the pipe. So based on this one, I would say it’s fairly late. Since they were so fragile, and those holes pretty small, if it got filled with tobacco, the person just broke off the stem creating a shorter pipe and one that was not clogged with tobacco. Apparently, stems could be recycled – in fact, 15,000 broken stem pieces were uncovered at a historic walkway at Colonial Williamsburg – they were used as fill! And pipes were made into the early twentieth century – falling out of favor around World War One. It makes sense – they were cheap, easy to make, and affordable. Typically, one could last a few years – unless you dropped it of course. An,d pipes were used by men, women, and (eh, em) yes, children. I can see that Nantucket may not have had a lot of tobacco smoking residents – not just that some were Quaker – but because of the Quaker influence. I t does not mean people here do not smoke – I just think there may have been fewer smokers on the island in the nineteenth century and earlier. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 17, 2026
August 19 {1857}. There are four great men whose haunts I mean to seek, and on whose footsteps I mean to stand: Newton, Shakespeare, Milton, and Johnson. To-day I told the driver to take me to St. Martin’s, where the guide-book says that Newton lived. He put me down at the Newton Hotel, but I looked in vain to its top to see anything like an observatory. I went into a wine-shop near, and asked a girl, who was pouring out a dram, in which house Newton lived. She pointed, not to the hotel, but to the house next to a church, and said, “that’s it – don’t you see a place on the top? That’s where he used to study nights.” It is a little, oblong-shaped observatory, built apparently of wood, and blackened by age . . . .” Blackened no doubt by the wood ash and soot found in the air throughout over-crowded nineteenth century London. We always think about London being very foggy in the nineteenth century but frankly a lot of it was wood and coal ash as the nineteenth century grew older, particularly as factories developed and belched all of that into the air – think Sherlock Holmes in the 1880s. But Maria Mitchell, while starting in Europe as a young woman’s chaperone, also knew that this tour of Europe was a great learning experience – the equivalent of a college education she could not have. Doors were thrown open to her around Europe – in particular at all of the observatories that dotted the continent. She was not just well-known – she was famous. JNLF
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