Honoring Our Veterans

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 23, 2017

Work begins.


On May 16, 2017 from 6-8PM, I had the honor of working with Nantucket Girl Scout Troops 80978 and 81174.  For over a decade, I have been working to clean the stones of not just the Mitchells, but other Nantucketers buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery with the Prospect Hill Cemetery historian, Paula Levy.  She and I first crossed paths when I offered a stone cleaning workshop via the Mitchell House and she was one of the attendees.  Since then, we have cleaned roughly twenty or so stones and worked on a restoration project to restore the fences at two family plots, one of them being the Mitchell family plot.

Work continues.


Our work together brought about a discussion of Memorial Day services.  The Sons of the American Legion and the island Scouts all come together to put flags and red geraniums at the graves of island veterans.  The Memorial Day Parade ends with a service at the Soldiers’ Lot burial site.  We thought it would be nice for the Scouts to play a larger role in attending to the veterans and also to provide them with some background on them and a sense of ownership.  So, I reached out to some scout leaders and the Girl Scout troops noted above joined in.  The Legion provided the funds for the supplies and Paula came and spoke to them briefly about the Soldiers’ Lot and the men buried there.  And then, I gave them another brief overview of how to clean – this time hands-on rather than explaining it at a meeting.  Then, we got to work – Scouts, Scout leaders, mothers.  We managed to clean the stones of all the men interred there – Civil War veterans, WWI veterans, VietNam veterans and more.  About eighteen monuments were cleaned of their lichen and mosses and protected from further damage.  The stones will lighten some – the point is not to make them pristine or bright white.  And the lichen has been removed thus stopping further damage from it.  You will note a few that are whiter than others – several are newer stones and others may have been cleaned in the past by others though it looks like they were done with harsh chemicals unfortunately.  Remember, never clean stones without permission from the cemetery sexton.  DO not clean stones of people other than your family. And most importantly, make sure you have been trained first and have the right tools, specifically a cleaner that is appropriate for the work (bleach is a BIG no-no).


Thank you to the Scout and the Legion, as well as troop leaders and parents!

Work completed.


JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • February 17, 2026
1881, Feb. 26. Miss Whitney read Frances Power Cobbe’s “Lectures to Women” aloud to me. In the main they are excellent. I agree at almost every point. What she says about the duty of women in veracity, in cultivating both physical and moral courage, etc., in demanding not “favor but justice” . . . Mary Whitney would become the first president of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association. She was one of Maria’s first students and ultimately her replacement at Vassar College. She also took over for Maria when she left the College for a brief illness in 1880. On her second trip to Europe in 1873, Maria would seek Frances Power Cobbe out at her home. A suffragette, Power Cobbe was a philosopher and writer among other things, including an animal rights activist when it came to experimentation on animals. Born into a wealthy family in Ireland, Power Cobbe would travel in Europe about the same time as Maria did in 1857, meeting some of the same people Maria would meet such as Mary Somerville (Maria’s hero and an astronomer, mathematician, scientist, and polymath) and Harriet Hosmer (sculptor). I should not note this but Maria wrote about Power Cobbe’s large head –further stating that being a large woman, she would have a large head. Reviewing images of Power Cobbe, I hate to say it but I cannot disagree – with my apologies to Ms. Powers Cobbe. JNLF

Nantucket Sorosis

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • February 9, 2026
On August 6, 1872, the first meeting of the Nantucket Sorosis Club took place at the home of Sarah Cathcart on Main Street. Originally founded in New York in 1868, several of its founding members were Nantucket women such as Maria Mitchell and Reverend Phebe Coffin Hanaford, and the club appropriately found its way to Nantucket where Hanaford first publicly announced its inaugural meeting from the pulpit of the Unitarian Church. Its purpose: the “intellectual improvement of its members, by means of written essays, select readings, recitations and discussions upon the current questions of the day.” It was Hanaford and Nantucket summer resident Rebecca Morse – members of the New York Sorosis – who developed the idea of founding a Nantucket Sorosis. Like the sewing circles founded earlier in the nineteenth century, the development of a Sorosis on Nantucket may have been in part to aid women not only during a period of economic decline on the island, but to help those women who found that they were now losing their jobs as whalemen returned to the island for good and tried to “reclaim” the jobs of men. It was also a logical club to have for women on the island – given the history of their playing such an integral role in all aspects of island life. Two other island women involved with the Nantucket Sorosis Club were Eliza Starbuck Barney and the Reverend Louise S. Baker. The main Sorosis club came about as a reaction by female journalists barred from attending and reporting on Charles Dickens’ first public lecture in the United States in New York City. They quickly came together to created forms of support for one another in their field, expanding to include women working in a variety of other fields – science among them. Thus, Maria Mitchell was one of the founding members when the first official meeting was held at Delmonico’s in NYC. With a thirteen-article constitution, the Nantucket Sorosis had a board of directors with officers being elected annually. The club hosted lecturers and orators, discussed social and political issues – particularly those of woman suffrage – and also discussed art, literature, travel, and current events. The Nantucket Sorosis lasted approximately thirty years. Little is known about who was involved outside of key players and when exactly the group folded and why, but the last printed material that can be located dates to 1903, and by that time most of the Nantucket Sorosis members were in their seventies and eighties. JNLF

Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association NSF-REU Interns Attend 247th American Astronomical Society Meeting

February 5, 2026
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