May 2013
3 posts
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Bread – Baked the Good Old-Fashioned Way
On Saturday, May 18th, together with Nantucket Preservation Trust, the Mitchell House hosted a fireplace and bake oven talk and demonstration in the late afternoon. Pen Austin, conservation mason, used the Mitchell House’s 1790 chimney and Sitting Room firebox and hearth to discuss the historic building of chimneys, lime mortar and slaking lime, and how to conserve or restore your historic...
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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
May 7 {1858}. I think I am not well because I perceived myself to be spiteful and cross and do not rejoice in the good fortune of others. I hope I may not become envious as I become old; and envious old maid is more than an old maid simply … .
In May of 1858, Maria Mitchell was close to completing her year abroad in Europe. She would arrive back home on Nantucket in June 1858 to a...
5 tags
Found Between Sheathing and Lathe!
A few weeks ago I wrote about the re-shingling work at Mitchell House and what the removal of the shingles revealed – carpenter’s marks, sawyer’s marks, and coils upon coils of wood shavings circa 1790.
Well, here is a sample of what was uncovered and what I saved to become part of the Mitchell House collection. The shavings had not seen the light of day since 1790 when the House was built. ...
April 2013
5 posts
5 tags
Remember the Days . . .
Of getting your new textbooks for school? In my public junior high school and high school, we oftentimes had some very old, and very well-loved (or abused) books filled with book graffiti. While cleaning the MMA Special Collection books, I came across this. Now, how many times did you see a, “Turn to page X” only to find a drawing or maybe even something less than polite. Well, obviously...
6 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
Charleston April 23. This place has a look of a city somewhat like Boston in its narrow streets but unlike Boston in being quiet as is all the south … . We left Savannah at about 6 p.m. and in nine hours were at the wharf of Charleston … .
The reading” matter of different parts of the country differs widely. Peculiarities force themselves upon you. At the west, maps of Kansas and...
4 tags
Mitchell House Gets A Facelift . . .
Or maybe we should call it a chemical peel since nothing was sagging.
With the tremendous support of grants, the Mitchell House’s southern façade is currently being re-shingled. The shingles we are all used to seeing – the dark almost black shingles of many decades – are no longer sufficient to protect the Mitchell House from weather. They have shrunk, curled, and left significant gaps between...
7 tags
More from the Special Collections
Always finding great things as I clean the books in our Special Collections. I am currently on “N” as in Nature Studies and this is what I found when I carefully opened the book. I KNEW there would be something good in there just by the cover and the whiff of its age.
The book is A History of the Earth and Animated Nature by Oliver Goldsmith. We have Volumes I and II published in 1857 and...
9 tags
Trash?
Here you see the fruits of a Sunday walk along the harbor – another of my favorite things to collect. The recent storms have swept some areas clean and in others, they have helped to deposit treasures stirred up from the bottom of Nantucket Harbor – something that once served as a dumping ground among other uses in the nineteenth century and earlier.
These are pottery shards of various ages. ...
March 2013
4 posts
6 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
March 15, 1858. Today an eclipse of the sun was to come off, and with Mr. B and the Westons I went to the Observatory of the Capitol to look at the phenomenon … . The old gent speaks no English, but the bad French of both of us made a language. He had placed three telescopes of ordinary mounting in a terrace which overlooks the Forum, and as it was very cloudy, we looked at the...
7 tags
Collecting Addiction
I must confess, I have an addiction.
I like to … collect.
Not so surprising for a historic house museum curator. My “addiction” encompasses several specific areas. I am not a hoarder, I do not collect junk in my backyard and the basement is not filled with “things.” Some people might find what I collect useless, but sometimes the simple everyday item, from a nail to an old railroad...
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Women’s History Month
March is women’s history month (though all months should be women’s history month.) At the end of March, I will be hosting a Nantucket women’s history walk so please check our calendar if you are interested in registering.
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...
6 tags
I Found Some Birds
Still cleaning books and processing archives … Look what I came across the other day rolled up in a big box with many different plans associated with the MMA’s buildings from across the ages of renovations, additions, and master plans.
This is a chart of North American birds published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1898. The twenty-six life sized bird images were created by, I...
February 2013
4 posts
4 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
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...
8 tags
Answer to "What is This?"
This is the front door latch of the Mitchell House. The mahogany used to make it came from a shipwreck; specifically the Queen, and the wood is from cargo items found on the ship. The Queen was a vessel that was broken in two when it came ashore in the area of Nobadeer on January 4, 1813. An English ship, this was certainly a prize. The Queen came into action with the American privateer,...
3 tags
What is This?
Do you know what this is and where it is located?
JNLF
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Maria Mitchell's Attic Is Moving
Greetings!
For those of you who read this blog on TUMBLR, I would like to alert you that it is now moving to the Maria Mitchell Association’s new website and will be through WordPress. I will try to still use TUMBLR but at some point, it may be removed.
So, from now on, you will be able to find Maria Mitchell’s Attic at www.mmo.org.
Hope to see you there and thanks for reading!
...
January 2013
5 posts
7 tags
Portrait of the Curator as Darth Vader
Maybe the work life of other curators can be glamorous but such is not the way of the world for a historic house museum curator among others. This is me as I appeared on January 22, 2013. What’s that you say? Where are the pearls? The glamorous outfits? The media wanting to know about the recent finds? A camera following me through exhibit halls looking at the latest exhibition of work by...
10 tags
Winter Hush
Overnight, Nantucket received about six inches of snow. Mitchell House sparkles this morning and there is a hush on Vestal Street that only snow brings.
It makes me wonder what is must have been like for the Mitchells. Being inside Mitchell House while the snow is falling transports me to another time and I like to think about what it must have been like for them. Cold I am sure but even...
9 tags
An Astronomer
I first remember her standing at the entry to Loines Observatory with a small metal clicker in her hand. It was summer and it was dark. Mosquitoes were swarming and we all smelled like bug spray. It was a Wednesday night and we had just made the long – or so it seemed in those days – journey from Tom Nevers for an Open Night – the event of the week for my family. She was sort of quiet and...
5 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
January 26, 1857 (Nantucket)
Jan 26. We left the mercury 1 deg. below zero when we went to bed last night and it was zero when we rose this morning. But it rises rapidly and now at 11 a.m. it is as high as 15. The weather is still and beautiful … Our little club met last night each with a sonnet on a subject drawn by lot from a basket full. I did the best I could with a very bad...
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In Memoriam
Over the holidays, the Mitchell House and its curator lost a dear friend, supporter, and mentor. Clarissa P. Porter was a champion of the Mitchell House and historic preservation and an enthusiastic fan of Maria Mitchell. I do not remember just when I first met Clarissa, but I must have been a teenager. Since that time, she has always been there with support, friendship, and advice. She was...
December 2012
3 posts
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Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
Dec. 26, 1854. They were wonderful men, the early astronomers. That was a great conception, which now seems to us so simple. That the earth turns upon its axis and a still greater one that it revolves about the sun. To show this last was worth a man’s lifetime and it really almost cost the life of Galileo.
Sometimes we are ready to think that they had a wider field than us for speculation,...
4 tags
Don’t Forget Your Library
This comes from a library newsletter I receive. I think it says a lot, don’t you?
JNLF
9 tags
Appreciating and Elevating the Everyday
As the curator of a historic house museum that dates to 1790, I have a deep appreciation, enthusiasm, and affection for historic architecture and objects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and earlier. I grew up surrounded by antiques and old houses. I was brought up to appreciate their simplicity, beauty, and utilitarianism. And this in turn, became a part of my occupation and what...
November 2012
3 posts
5 tags
Maria Mitchell in Her Own Words
Nov. 11, 1887
Today when I feel well it seems to me that I may, when I retire, lecture some. Every year I decline one or two invitations to lecture. The Herschels make one very long Lecture; the St. Petersburg another; Saturn a grave one, Jupiter a grave one. The visit to Cambridge, England. Just now, my electric light does not work which troubles me much.
Anne, Phebe, and I all went to the...
8 tags
The Importance of Books or “Some things should...
I came across a link to this letter from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, in a newsletter: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/some-things-should-happen-on-soft-pages.html. This library newsletter has proved to have some interesting finds and I have commented or linked to them several times on this blog. This letter from Lee to Oprah Winfrey speaks volumes about the importance of...
7 tags
Sunlight
A few weeks ago as I was vacuuming the Birth Room in preparations for closing the Mitchell House for the winter (always a depressing thing to do!), I turned and looked back into the 1825 Kitchen to see the sun streaming through the windows and casting its light and shadows across the floor. Simple. Beautiful. I thought about how this pattern of sun and shadow across the floor is something that...
October 2012
6 posts
9 tags
Storm
A few years ago, a scientist contacted me regarding William Mitchell’s meteorological journals. As an astronomer and as someone who worked for the US Coast Survey, William kept detailed data regarding the weather throughout the day, tides, storms, and of course astronomical observations. All of this was used by the Coast Survey for creating nautical charts among other things. This...
7 tags
Answer to Where is This?
This is an observatory and to be exact it is Maria Mitchell’s Observatory at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. It is now a National Historic Landmark. What you see in the niche is the bust of Maria Mitchell that was sculpted by Emma Brigham as a gift from the Vassar College Class of 1877 to the College. The MMA now has a copy (only the second one ever made from the original – the first...
3 tags
Where is This?
Do you know what this building is and where it is located?
JNLF
7 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
October 17, 1854
I have just gone over my comet computation again and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did 7 years ago when I first did this kind of work. To be sure I have only once in the time computed a parabolic orbit but it seems to me that I know no more in general. I think I am a little better thinker, that I take things less upon trust but at the same...
4 tags
October 1st
Is the 165th anniversary of Maria Mitchell’s discovery of a telescopic comet!
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What Is This?
What you are looking at is a camera shot looking into a kaleidoscope in the collection of the Mitchell House. This one was made by G. C. Bush and Company of Providence, Rhode Island circa 1870. It did not belong to the Mitchells, though most pieces in the Mitchell House did. Kaleidoscopes came about in the early nineteenth century as a way of studying the polarization of light but became...
September 2012
4 posts
6 tags
What Is This?
Can anyone tell me what we might be looking at here? It is a bit dark around the edges (which might help you figure it out). Let me know if you think you know what it is. Please send me an email at: jfinger@mmo.org.
JNLF
11 tags
The Mitchell House in Autumn
Vestal Street is quieter. There are fewer tourists, summer residents have returned to their year-round homes especially if they have children in school, and the air is cooling and becoming more crisp. For Mitchell House, we are still open for tours although on a shorter schedule (this year on Saturdays from 10-1PM), but there are still many things to accomplish before it gets cold and I have to...
7 tags
Woman’s Suffrage and Lady Gaga
This came to me from the National Women’s History Project a few weeks ago (click on the link below). I am not sure what Maria Mitchell might think of it, but it is pretty clever. Enjoy!
http://soomopublishing.com/suffrage/
JNLF
5 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
Sept. 12, 1854
I am just through with a summer and a summer is to me always a trying ordeal. I have determined not to spend so much time at the Atheneum another season. To put someone in my place who shall see all the strange faces, and hear the strange talk … . My visitors … have been of the average sort. Four women have been delighted to make my acquaintance, three men...
August 2012
4 posts
12 tags
The Answer to “Where Is This?”
The image I posted last week and here again is the newel post at the bottom of the front hall staircase in Hinchman House, the MMA’s Natural Science Museum. The small white piece you see on top is what is often referred to as a “mortgage button.” And here is where we have some issues.
Let’s start with the newel post. As time went on, the posts became more elaborate as they became a part of...
6 tags
Where Is This?
Here is a photograph of an architectural element. Can you tell me where it is? First correct answer – and this is not for employees of the MMA – receives a free gift. Please send me an email at jfinger@mmo.org with “Where Is This?” in the message line.
JNLF
7 tags
Underground Library
This came through my email via a library association’s monthly newsletter and I thought it was really wonderful to see what people read – and all on the New York City subway. Take a look and be inspired to READ a BOOK!
http://undergroundnewyorkpubliclibrary.com/
JNLF
5 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
Maria Mitchell began her travels through Europe as a young woman’s chaperone. Later, due to the bankruptcy of her father, the young woman was called home but Maria continued her trip through Europe, at one point traveling with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family whom she had met with earlier in her trip. This entry in Maria Mitchell’s journal comes from her first meeting with Nathaniel...
July 2012
5 posts
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From the Mitchell House's 2012 Summer Intern
“I am no teacher, but I give them a lesson to learn and the next day the recitation is half a conversational lecture and half questions and answers. I allow them great freedom of questions and they puzzle me daily.” – Maria Mitchell in a letter to Caroline H. Dall, December 1865
One of my responsibilities as Mitchell House Intern involves conducting history-craft “Junior Historian” classes for...
7 tags
What is This?
What you are looking at is early nineteenth century decorative floor paint found in one of the bedrooms of the Mitchell House (House) which was built in 1790 by Hezekiah Swain. While it appears to be a pattern – it is not. It is reminiscent of when seventeenth century kitchen floors were covered in sand and women would sweep patterns into the sand to make it more decorative. The sand would...
8 tags
Nesting
Mrs. M. Dove and One of Her Young
Over the years in the spring, birds occasionally attempt to nest somewhere near the Mitchell House, usually in a less than choice spot. Typically, after a day or two of attempting a nest, a bird will give up and realize that the grape arbor is not the perfect spot because it is right over the entry to the Curator’s Cottage where my office is located. The arbor...
7 tags
Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words
July 16, 1887
I went to the Unitarian Church at Nantucket. Some 20 years ago I went to the church late and went far forward to my seat. I was one of 600 persons and I felt the embarrassment of being late. When I went into church now I made the 66th person. I sat far back and I think no one turned his head. Seen from behind I knew only Mrs. Catharine Starbuck and Maria Owen. When they came to me,...
11 tags
Mitchell House Receives Its Architectural...
On the evening of June 28, the Mitchell House and the Maria Mitchell Association received Nantucket Preservation Trust’s Architectural Preservation Award!
The Architectural Preservation Award recognizes the owner(s) of an historic structure, and when appropriate one or more members of building professionals who assisted in the completion of the preservation project. Structures may contain...
June 2012
4 posts
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A Summer Internship at the Mitchell House
Mitchell House’s 2012 Summer Curatorial Intern Cleaning in Mitchell House
Each summer, one college student joins me at the Mitchell House to learn what it is like to run a historic house museum. We have a large pool of applicants for one position and it is a long and difficult process of reading through the applications, deciding on the top candidates, interviewing those candidates and...
14 tags
Maria Mitchell in Her Own Words
June 18, 1876. I had imagined the Emperor of Brazil [Dom Pedro II] to be a dark swarthy tall man of 45 years; that he would not really have a crown upon his head, but that I should feel it was somewhere around … and that I should know I was in Royal presence. But he turns out to be a large old man, say 65, broad-headed and broad shouldered, with a big white beard and a very pleasant, even...
6 tags
Awakening the Mitchell House
Unlike a teenager who is terrible about being rousted out of bed, the Mitchell House happily stretches, takes a shower, eats her breakfast, and begins her day. That said, she has to take a supremely long shower in order to make sure she is in tip-top condition for presenting herself to the public.
About five months ago in this blog, I briefly detailed buttoning up the House for the winter and...
9 tags
An Amazing Woman
Pen Austin with her two man crew getting ready to put a lime parge on the Mitchell House’s 1790 chimney, 2010.
I have had the pleasure over the last few years to work with a mason on the Mitchell House (House). Beyond well-versed in historic paint treatments and historic masonry, the other intriguing thing about this mason is that she is a woman. I am not sure how many woman work as...
