Mitchell House is Open!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 24, 2013

We have had a busy opening first two weeks here at Mitchell House. After a week of training, the Mitchell House’s new summer intern, Sarah Scott − a 2012 graduate of Vassar College − is leading tours of the House, working on planning our summer Junior Historian classes for children aged 7-10, and learning the finer points of “keeping” a historic house museum. Soon, she will be assisting me with cleaning and moving the Special Collection books and working on some small research projects related to the Mitchells. We had a large number of visitors during our first week and on Saturday, I led a women’s walking tour concerning Maria Mitchell and other famous Nantucket women.

Additionally, as co-sponsors of author Amy Brill with the Nantucket Book Festival (NBF), MMA was a part of some of the activities for the NBF including the opening reception and talk, as well as the opening dinner and of course the breakfast at the Dreamland Theater where Amy read from and spoke about her debut novel The Movement of Stars inspired by the life of Maria Mitchell. Amy also spent some time at MMA speaking more about her book and meeting some of our members as we opened up the Mitchell House and the Vestal Street Observatory for invited guests.



Amy continues on her travels promoting her book – an exhausting thing to do especially when she leaves her husband and two young daughters behind for much of it – although they were able to come along to Nantucket for the weekend! But leaving them at home likely has given Amy a better understanding of what Quaker women went through when they left their young families behind to spread the word of the Quaker faith throughout America and even sometimes abroad for many months or even years at a time.


If you have not had a chance to read Amy’s novel, please do. Amy is sure to have more novels for us to read in the future. Thank you, Amy, for your time and for being so inspired by Maria Mitchell and this tiny little island that had such a far reaching influence many generations ago.

For further inspiration, please come by Mitchell House for a tour or sign a child or yourself up for one of our history/historic preservation classes! Become inspired by Maria Mitchell and the Mitchell family as Amy did. You never know what that inspiration may become!


JNLF

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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 4, 2026
May 6, 1878 Between the clouds, Miss Spalding obtained 7 photographs of Mercury on the Sun. It is comfort to me to be able to plan and do a new kind of work. The large telescope worked better than usual, Clark having just been to the Observatory. Clark, as in Alvan Clark, a man who would become the premier telescope maker in America and who built Maria Mitchell’s 5-inch Alvan Clark refractor that she purchased from him (after working with him to build it per her specifications) with money gifted to her from “The Women of America” led by Elizabeth Peabody. More than likely, it is this telescope she is referring to as she did use it in the Vassar College Observatory with her students – and it is also taking center stage in photographs, along with her (first her father’s) Dolland telescope.  Maria had decided she would photograph the Sun on every clear day, and this was one of those results. She would use these images, with her students, to study sun spots and their changes. With her students, Maria would photograph the transit of Mercury as noted above. She would also photograph the transit of Venus a few years later with her students. JNLF

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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 27, 2026
And with it, some of the heirloom daffodils I purchased for the Mitchell House last fall. A place was recommended to me by two longtime friends of the MMA and gardeners extraordinaire. It is called Old House Gardens. I ordered a small amount as we now have a plethora of voles on Vestal Street – I believe I complained about them here last year. They won’t eat daffodils so I got a few of “Butter and Eggs” (1777) and “Conspicuus” (1869) as either of these could have appeared in William Mitchell’s gardens. They were not listed in a letter from John Quincy Adams that I have mentioned before. But, Adams was not here visiting the Mitchell family when the daffodils would have been in bloom. The one pictured here is “Butter and Eggs” not completely unfurled. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 13, 2026
April 1878. The conference of Woman’s Congress officers met in Washington. Because we had one member in Washington we were invited to meet in that place. I went on at a great expense of time, money and strength . . . . We were in session at least nine hours. I think that more than half of that was used by Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Sayles. The only motion which I carried through was to pay the Secretary $200 . . . In 1878, that was a long train(s) ride to Washington, DC from Poughkeepsie, NY and Vassar College. If Maria seems perturbed, I am sure she was. As president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, and thus the Congress, she had to be at the meeting. But it appears she did not get much say in the nine hour meeting. This was also a long trip to take when she had another, even longer trip coming up in July of 1878. In that month, she would travel with students and her sister, Phebe, out west to Colorado to view the eclipse and that train and wagon ride I am sure was weighing on her mind – not just the physical trip but making her way for an important eclipse viewing event. JNLF
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