Maria Mitchell's Attic

I have posted this during Women’s History Month before but because it is March and Women’s History Month, I think it’s worth repeating. It’s clever and helps to tell an important story in women’s history while giving it a bit of a 21 st century twist. It comes via the National Women’s History Project. http://soomopublishing.com/suffrage/ JNLF

March is Women’s History Month (though all months should be women’s history month.) Maria Mitchell was one of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Women (AAW), was its president (1875), and founded its Science Committee, which she chaired for the remainder of her life. When the fourth Congress of the AAW met in Philadelphia in October 1876, Julia Ward Howe (also a friend of Maria’s) was serving with Maria on the executive committee. Maria presented a paper, “The Need for Women in Science.” In it she stated, Does anyone suppose that any woman in all the ages has had a fair chance to show what she could do in science? . . . The laws of nature are not discovered by accidents; theories do not come by chance, even to the greatest minds; they are not born of the hurry and worry of daily toil; they are diligently sought, they are patiently waited for, they are received with cautious reserve, they are accepted with reverence and awe. And until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss the question of their capacity for original work. She is not saying that women cannot be scientists – she is saying they need to be given the opportunities. Maria was incredibly busy with the AAW – it took up a great deal of her time – and at the next meeting in November of that year some aspects of the meeting were wonderful according to her account –“excellent” papers, “newspapers treated us very well. The institutions opened their doors to us, the Centennial gave us a reception. But – we didn’t have a good time!” It appears there was discord among the women. A few opposed the subject of “Woman Suffrage,” but Lucy Stone was able to present her paper on the subject despite this. And, some women felt that the West was not well represented and was overshadowed by New England thus women representing the western states protested the nomination and election of Julia Ward Howe as president of the AAW. But she won. Whew! It was not always easy and controversies constantly abounded with many schisms over time within the women’s rights movement. I often wonder what Maria might think of the place of women today – how far things have come from her time or would she be surprised that there still can be inequality? In honor of Women’s History Month, take a look at other organizations that represent different women in our history and their legacies. A good place to start is the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites . JNLF

In the late nineteenth century, 1881 to be exact, Nantucket erected a monument at the burial site of some of the first English settlers on the island. But, given the times, they forgot the ladies – more than a century after Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable (sic.) to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar (sic.) care and attention is not paid to the Laidies (sic.) we are determined to foment a Rebelion (sic.), and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. (March 31, 1776) Now, given the time, this is not at all surprising. I will not now go into the history of this site – that can be for a later post – but suffice it to say that it then took almost a century more for the “ladies” to be remembered. The woman who toiled next to their husbands, worked together as two heads and four hands, who gave birth to eighty English children on the shores of an island twenty-eight-miles at sea. In 2008, I was asked to be part of a group that created a monument to the first female English settlers of the island. It stands next to the earlier stone from 1881 overlooking what was once the original settlement site, as well as Washing, Maxcy, and Capaum Ponds (once a harbor), and out into the sound. JNLF

Thursday, Mch. 4 {1869} My dear Sally, Father seems better again today and the Doctor thinks it merely a “flurry.” But he is so feeble that any “flurry” is a serious thing. He has been up an hour today, has eaten a little dinner in bed. I slept in his room last night and shall whenever it is necessary. MM. William Mitchell died a little over a month later on April 19, 1869. He had lived with Maria at Vassar College from the day she began her tenure – he was the one who encouraged her to take the job – the one who told her they really wanted to hire her and that they were not just looking for her opinion of a new women’s college. He had in fact lived with her in Lynn, Massachusetts as well. The two of them left Nantucket after Lydia Coleman Mitchell’s death in 1861. Maria gave the only bedroom in the Observatory to her father for his use – feeling it was more appropriate that way and in deference to her father, her elder. This did cause some issues – Maria was forced to make-do with by using a settee in one of the sitting areas off the dome making for a cold and non-private space. She also found that if her father needed her, she could not hear him since he was on the ground floor – on the other side of the Observatory. JNLF

Good neighbors seem hard to come by these days. And, by these days, I mean the last thirty or more years. There are still good neighbors out there but many neighborhoods are not what they once were. People tend to be more insular, inside more often on devices, not outside tending to their yards or just sitting on the front porch. Children do not run rampant over yards and fences, multiple ages playing outside until the last gasp of daylight. Grown-ups are not inviting one another over for dinner or giving each other a hand as they once did. In elementary school, my best friend’s family moved in across the street (how lucky was I?!). Our bedrooms were directly opposite one another and we developed a flashlight signal to share from our windows. After Hurricane Gloria, without power for days, our two families gathered to clean out the refrigerators and freezers before things spoiled. Our father’s grilled it all on charcoal grills so we could have a hot feast – and save the food. Does that happen anymore? We are all more focused on ourselves than one another. The MMA recently lost a good neighbor. Nancy lived on Vestal Street for twenty-five or more years with her husband in a house that was once occupied by another good neighbor. I think a little osmosis might have been at work but also, simply, Nancy was a good neighbor. I would liken her to the “Mayor of Vestal Street.” She looked out for people, paid attention, invited her neighbors for dinner, and helped them out. She certainly helped the MMA out. She offered to garden – and re-did our Astronomer’s Cottage garden and side yard. She painted window boxes. She donated an old door she had so we could replace a rotting door we had. She donated a refrigerator – still humming along nicely in one of our dorms. She welcomed a Mitchell House intern into her home to look at the grain painting in her home from the nineteenth century as the intern worked to study the grain painting in the Mitchell House’s 1825 Kitchen. She attended our events. She was a member. She helped out in other areas of the MMA with advice and support. She swept at least weekly – if not more – the stones from our driveway that constantly tumbled into the street. She gave us plants, kept her eye on things, and looked out for our staff and interns, too. She even gave me a few dresses she could not wear and a baby gift when we brought our son home. She was a mensch. Finding out about her death knocked me down. I keep expecting her to be outside sweeping or walking her beloved dog or putting a new flower arrangement in her front window. She loved her historic home and she and her husband worked very hard to preserve it and also restore details that were lost over the last 100 or more years. She was an incredibly talented and smart person and had a whole other life in Boston where she worked for many years in human resources. I could not think of a better person to have such an occupation. She always had a smile on her face and was ready with support. Good neighbors are hard to come by. I hope that Nancy and her memory inspire a few more people to be good neighbors in this world. The step, however small, which is in advance of the world, shows the greatness of the person, whether that step be taken with brain, with heart, or with hands. – Maria Mitchell JNLF

Feb. 15, 1853. I think Dr. Hall (in his “Life of Mary Ware”) does wrong when he attempts to encourage the use of the needle. It seems to me that the needle is the chain of woman, and has fettered her more than the laws of the country. Once emancipate her from the “stitch, stitch, stitch,” the industry of which would be commendable if it served any purpose except the gratification of her vanity, and she would have time for studies which would engross as the needle never can. I would as soon put a girl alone into a closet to meditate as give her only the society of the needle. The art of sewing, so far as men learn it, is well enough; that is, to enable a person to take the stitches, and, if necessary, to make her own garments in a strong manner; but the dressmaker should no more be a universal character than the carpenter. I believe MM’s words are self-explanatory, no commentary needed on my part. JNLF

We are still quietly working away. Now that the paint and plaster repairs are done, the woodwork and shelving has been conserved, and the floor has been redone in the Astronomical Study, we have turned to the concrete floors. These are being worked on by Evita Caune of Riptide Finishes – she had done Hinchman House’s cellar floor and those in the Research Center. The Observatory cellar floor is coming along and she is also working on the Pillar Room – so named because it houses the pillar that supports the telescope in the Dome Room. If there was an original finish on any of the three concrete floors – the Pillar Room, the Dome Room, the cellar under the Astronomical Study – it is gone. They applied many layers of paint that eroded and chipped with time. I do now know why the Pillar Room had a red floor at one point (took me long enough) – probably to match the red tile they put on the original wood floor in the Astronomical Study. Evita is giving us a nice clean coating in the Pillar Room and the cellar and we may have a bit more fun with the floor in the Dome Room – all of this is reversible which comes from a conservation perspective. All the interior conservation work was funded by the Community Preservation Act – as was the exterior conservation. One note – the Astronomical Study’s original floor was a total loss as far as finish is concerned. I may have noted this before. It was truly sad. The original wood floor was covered in multiple layers – tarpaper glued to the wood. Then a layer of red tile (tested and was safe), then another layer of tarpaper and glues. Then foam padding and a 1980s blue wall-to-wall carpet – they liked that carpet so much it used to be in the Astronomer’s Cottage too! We thought the tar paper beneath the tiles would be easily removed from the wood. It was not. It had basically melted and seeped into the floor so we have to lightly sand the floor and then refinish it. That was quite sad – but at least we have the original wood floor intact. JNLF

I blogged this back in 2019 but with our cold temperatures of late, I was reminded of it. Under a blanket of cold. When the ground freezes and seems like stone or metal, I am always reminded of Christina Rossetti’s In the Bleak Midwinter – a poem later turned into a hymn that is most commonly sung during the Advent season. It was one of my Father’s favorites but he found it very sad. I once saw it making him cry when I was a child. The line in particular: “Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” I was again reminded of this today (January 30, 2019) as I was the other day, and many cold winter days. The line pops into my head often in this season. Today, as I took my lunchtime walk, I went past Old North Cemetery. Everything was peaceful – everyone asleep under the blanket of a cold, iron-like earth. Windswept, quiet, grey. Grey clouds moving along the horizon with peeks of blue. The cemetery is sometimes referred to as the Gardner Burial Site – some of the earliest who were interred there were from the Gardner family and originally the site was a private family burial site for the family. Appropriate, since West Chester Street is just a few steps away and the Gardner clan as half-shares (in the early settlement of Nantucket by Europeans) lived along West Chester as they lived farther afield from the full-shares who lived closer to Washing Pond in Sherburne. The road is basically the oldest on Nantucket – leading from the original settlement at Sherburne into Town and the later settlement at Wesco – which is Town and which provided a better harbor. Maria was, of course, related to people on both sides of the aisle so-to-speak. JNLF