Where Was The Maria Mitchell Association In 1918?

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 27, 2020

As a historian and curator, I am often thinking about the past and how it affects the present day, how it affects different situations, and the similarities. I also like to look at how people react to the same or similar situations in different eras. The Coronavirus/COVID-19 Pandemic situation is no different for me.


I peruse our old MMA annual reports quite often for various bits of information whether it be from a standpoint of something that happened at the MMA, perhaps work that was done on the buildings or information about staff members of many years ago. While I have been around for quite a bit of time (thirty years plus), I was not obviously around in the 1920s or 1940s (even though I may seem of a different era to some) and thus need to take a look back. The annual reports are always a good place to start before I head into the Archives.


I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at our annual reports of the early 1900s and through the 1930s because of the more recent work we have done on our Science Library – now our Research Center re-opened in 2018 – and the conservation and restoration work that we are hoping to complete to the Maria Mitchell Vestal Street Observatory with several grants. So, I took a walk back to 1918 because I do not remember reading much about the “Spanish Flu Pandemic” of 1918-1919. On Nantucket, the 1918 Pandemic was prevalent – most notably during the “second wave” in the Fall of 1918. I only found one mention of the 1918 Pandemic in the annual reports and that was in our first astronomer’s, Margaret Harwood, report on the Observatory. In it, she mentions having to cancel the open nights in November 1918 due to the flu on Nantucket. That’s it. No other mention. The Boston-area was hard hit during this “second wave” – with a belief that Fort Devens was one of the major places to see the resurgence in the Fall of 1918 as soldiers came from across the country on their way to and from Europe.


Miss Harwood did focus on the war in her reports of the time – she had taken quite a bit of time off to assist the Red Cross and other entities in the efforts to support the troops. Of note, in articles that I have read about this period, the war did continue to – obviously – take center-stage keeping the flu pandemic relegated to interior pages of the newspapers. Most of the people who survived the flu pandemic – my great grandfather, a pharmacist, caught it and survived – are gone and if they are still with us today they were infants or young toddlers. One woman who recently passed away at 102 years old, survived the Pandemic of 1918 only to lose her life to the current Pandemic. What was curious – I’m not even sure what word to use – is that she lost her infant twin in the 1918 Pandemic. Both lost to a flu pandemic – but 102 years apart.


I guess my point here is that we as an island, a country, a world, have been through quite a bit to put it mildly – both then and now. The MMA survived through the pandemic of 1918-1919, the Great War, the stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, and World War II among many other catastrophic and world-altering events. The MMA moved and renovated William Mitchell’s former schoolhouse into the MMA Science Library in 1918 and 1919 and added a Wing to the Science Library in the midst of the Great Depression. My friend and mentor and the MMA’s former Ornithologist, Edith Folger Andrews, stepped in as the biology teacher for Nantucket high school students when their science teacher was drafted in World War II. The MMA made it through other uncertain times and stock market recessions and lows, including the Great Recession of 2008. After this, no one will be untouched, our world will be different, but we will all still be here – including here at the MMA where we will continue to be to help you learn more about the world around you – from land to sea to sky.


Wash your hands. Cover your mouth and nose. Be well. Stay safe. Stay at home unless you are an essential worker.


JNLF

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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

The Ice Man Cometh

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 10, 2026
This is a blog of the past. I often think of this “story” when it’s hot and humid out. So here it is again. The past few weeks have been very un-Nantucket as far as the heat and the extreme humidity. When I was a child and even a teenager, I remember that we always wore long pants and even sweaters in the summer evenings on island. This does not seem to be the norm any longer unfortunately. The heat also leads me to think about staying cool and what generations before us did to preserve food. Long before modern refrigeration, ice was used for preserving foods. Although the use of ice brought an end to salting and drying fish for local markets, with railroad development and western expansion in the 1850s, salt fish was still being shipped to inland domestic markets as well as abroad. As the fishing industry grew on Nantucket and elsewhere, however, so did the need for ice to keep the catch fresh for market. On Nantucket, when a hard freeze produced ice of the necessary thickness, blocks were cut from Maxcey’s and Washing Ponds and the North Head of Hummock Pond and stored in nearby icehouses. This was a fairly long and tricky process that took skill to make sure the ice was the right thickness and that one did not fall through the ice. Mainland icehouses typically used sawdust for insulation, but Nantucket ice was insulated with beach grass, seaweed, and eelgrass—sawdust not being readily available here. The iceman would drive his cart around the streets with usually a gaggle of children trailing behind – or hitching a secretive ride on the back of the cart – hoping for a piece of ice to suck on and cool off with – back when something that simple was a pure delicacy. When electricity was introduced on Nantucket in 1889, cutting pond ice was no longer necessary. Captain John “Jack” Killen built the first ice-making plant, on Straight Wharf, opening it on May 5, 1902. Several other plants, including that of the Island Service Company, followed—all operating until the Great Depression. Nantucket’s early ice-making plants were established primarily for packing fish and shellfish, which were shipped in barrels or fish boxes layered with ice. Fishermen both on and off-island would stock up on ice before going out on long trips, and it is said that island ice was of a much higher quality than that from plants off-island—perhaps because of the purity of Nantucket’s water. Some people still cut ice. My parents had an elderly friend, now gone, and his family owned – and I assume still owns – a camp of cottages from the 19 th century up in New Hampshire. In the winter, the entire family shows up to harvest ice and store it in the icehouse. The ice is then used in each of the cottages during the summer since they have no electricity or plumbing. It is an art that is almost gone but happily there are still a few who have passed down the knowledge and skill for harvesting ice. I recently took a look at his obituary and was blown away – I remember him for ice harvesting – but wow what a life! One of service and seeking justice. JNLF

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