Treasure Trove!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 26, 2013

Well, we have made it into the basement of the Wing to clean out the journal stacks. I would like to give a HUGE thank you to our Education interns who pulled and boxed and moved the journals from the outside walls of the Wing basement over the course of several afternoons this summer. I now have six interior shelves to complete (and I think the liquor stores are tired of seeing me!). These journals will all be carefully combed through (for ephemera, notes, and MMA related articles), assessed, and we will decide how to process them further – hopefully all this winter.


But, as I was working near the stairs yesterday, I cleaned off the rest of a wooden shelf. Obviously, there is a little space behind this shelf under the stairs so I moved the shelf to check behind it for any things stashed away and lo and behold! I found what you are seeing in these images. When I saw the “Hinchman Nantucket Wildflowers ” stamped on these small wooden boxes, my first thought was “First edition leftovers of the book!” (Published in 1921.) Then I thought, “No silly, too small a box for that.” I opened one and saw all these small, what I at first thought were glass slides. So I thought, glass slides or negatives of the flower drawings from the book! Then I saw how many boxes – it’s a deep dark space in there – and knowing the book has not that many images, I investigated further. What I uncovered was ALL of the original printing plates for the book! That means there are 400 plus steel plates for the printing press. Very exciting!


Nantucket Wildflowers was written by (then) Alice O. Albertson and illustrated by Anne Hinchman. MMA saw to its publishing and the Knickerbocker Press, a part of G.P Putnam’s Sons printed it. Albertson was the MMA curator – back when all the departments were in the Mitchell House – from 1914 – 1931. She would marry Alfred Shurrocks (in 1929), a well-respected architect, who designed the fireproof Wing of the MMA Science Library in the 1930s. Mrs. Shurrocks was the granddaughter of Peleg Mitchell, uncle of Maria Mitchell. Mrs. Albertson also wrote Two Steps Down about her recollections of spending summers with her grandmother, Mary Mitchell (Peleg’s wife), at 1 Vestal Street. Anne, a talented artist, was her cousin and also a granddaughter of Mary and Peleg. All in the family, eh?


I hope to, sometime soon, create a small exhibit in which something like these plates can be featured so stay tuned!


JNLF

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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger June 23, 2025
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June 1851 My Dear Sister . . . . Mrs. Dassel has painted me kneeling at my telescope. It looks like Adeline Coffin and is of course not handsome. If thee was here thee would have Mitchell’s {William Mitchell Barney, son of Sally and Matthew Barney} painted at once. She has a head of a child N. P. Willis that is very lovely. She has taken a room at the Atheneum and put up about a dozen pictures – very beautiful – Isabel is lovely. She has not tried to make a portrait, but a very pretty picture . . . . She is now engaged on Abra’m Quary – he is much flattered by it and it will be a fine portrait. I think we shall buy it or a copy for the Atheneum . . . . She will paint father also for herself – having made a pencil sketch . . . .We like her very much . . . . The above is from a letter sent by Maria Mitchell to her eldest sister, Sally Mitchell Barney. In it, Maria details what everyone in the Mitchell family is up to. She includes some details about Herminia B. Dassel, an artist who came to Nantucket to paint the last Native Americans and also took an interest in the famous Mitchell family. This was of course four years after Maria’s discovery of the comet. At the time of this letter, Maria was still the librarian for the Atheneum and the portrait of Quary that she mentions possibly buying for the Atheneum, she did buy as it hangs in the Atheneum by the front door today. Another Dassel portrait of Quary is in the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association and the portrait of Isabel Draper is currently on display at the NHA’s Whaling Museum – on loan from a museum in Rhode Island. The portrait Maria states she posed for at the start of the letter is in the collection of the MMA. It was given to us in the early 1990s by Sally’s great granddaughter – the granddaughter of Mitchell whom she mentions above as well. Maria and Dassel would become good friends – Maria was named the godmother of Dassel’s daughter. And the sketch of William made by Dassel that Maria states would become a portrait? It likely did come to fruition. It made its way down a side of the family but was unfortunately lost, likely sold as part of a family estate though we do have a photograph of it and one can tell it is the brush work of Dassel. JNLF
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