Representative women of New England/Maria Mitchell
MARIA MITCHELL, Ph.D., LL.D.— Maria Mitchell, astronomer of worldwide fame, discoverer of a comet in 1847, and for more than twenty years a member of the faculty of Vassar College, was a native of Nantucket. Born August 1, 1818, the third child of William and Lydia (Coleman) Mitchell, she grew to womanhood in her island home, where she long remained an iidiabitant, on every clear evening repairing to the observatory on the roof of the house to sweep the heavens with a telescope.
On the paternal side she was grand-daughter of Peleg, Sr., and Lydia (Cartwright) Mitchell, and on the maternal side grand-daughter of Andrew Coleman, who was a great-grandson of John and Joanna (Folger) Coleman. This remote ancestress, Joanna, was a daughter of Peter Folger and sister to Abiah Folger, who married Josiah Franklin and was the mother of the illustrious Benjamin Franklin. Peter Folger emigrated from Norwich, England, in the seventeenth century, and in 1663 settled in Nantucket, where he became a citizen of prominence, being a teacher, surveyor, clerk of the court and recorder, and "the scholar of the conununity."
Of Richard' Mitchell, who came from the Isle of Wight and was the progenitor of the Nantucket family of this name, Maria was a descendant in the sixth generation, the ancestral line being: Richard,' who married Mary Wood; Richard,^ born in 1686, who married Elizabeth Tripj); Richard,^ who married Mary Starbuck; Peleg/ who married Lydia Cartwright; and William,^ the father above men- tioned, who married Lydia Coleman.
Wlliam Mitchell and his wife belonged to the Society of Friends. Mr. Mitchell was a man of scholarly tastes and attainments, a teacher by profession, afterward cashier of a bank. He served as a member of the State Senate, as one of Governor Briggs's Council, and for a long time as one of the overseers of Harvard College. His favorite science was astronomy.
Maria Mitchell in her early years attended schools — first public and then private schools—taught successively by her father and the Rev. Cyrus Peirce, an educator of high repute, best known in later days as the first principal of the first normal school in New England.
At the age of sixteen Miss Mitchell became assistant in Mr. Peirce's school in Nantucket. This was succeeded for a time by a private school of her own; and after that she served for nearly twenty years as librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum, doing much to direct the taste in literature of the Nantucket youth of the period. She herself, as stated by her sister, Phebe Mitchell Kendall, compiler of her "Life, Letters, and Journals," which is the source of the information that follows, was an inveterate reader.
The original investigations in astronomy, pursued by her with ardor from girlhood up to the time of her professorship, had for their most notable result the discovery on October 1, 1847, of a telescopic comet. For this discovery she received in 1849 from King Frederic VII. of Denmark the gold medal which had been offered by his father, Frederic VI., in 1831. For nineteen years she acted as computer for the American Nautical Almanac. In 1865 she accepted the chair of astronomy at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., becoming also director of the observatory. From this time on until her resignation at Vassar in January, 1888, on account of failing health, she was an important factor in the movement for the higher education of women, a work into which "she threw herself, heart and soul," for its sake giving up " in a great measure her scientific life." Her father, with whom after her mother's death she had lived in Lynn, spent four happy years with her at Vassar, his death occuring in 1869. Although Professor Mitchell's resignation was not accepted, she declined the offer of a permanent home at Vassar, and returned to Lynn, where she died June 28, 1889.
She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; the New England Women's Club; the New York Sorosis; and the Association for the Advancement of Women, of which she was the president in 1875 and 1876. Referring to the two annual congresses of the Association held during her official term, one of its founders says of Miss Mitchell: "She is remembered with especial affection by those who were with her on these occasions. Her tact and ability as a presiding officer were remarkable, and her judgment regarding the matter to be presented to the public was very valuable. At the congress held in Philadelphia in the centennial year it was desired by some that the meeting should be opened with prayer. Miss Mitchell decided, to the general content of the assembly, that a few minutes should be devoted to the silent prayer of the Friends."
She was three times the recipient of honorary degrees, the third being the LL.D. conferred by Columbia College in 1887.
She made two trips abroad, the second in the summer of 1873, when she went to Russia, visiting St. Petersburg and other cities and the government observatory at Pultowa. While a true lover of her own country as pre-eminently the land of freedom and self-government, she looked for and saw the good in other lands. As she expressed it: "We travel to learn; and I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own — as in the art of Italy, the learning of England, the philosophy of Germany."
Her faith in the coming woman led her to write, " When the American girl carries her energy into the great questions of humanity, into the practical problems of life, when she takes home to her heart the interests of education, of government, of religion, what may not be hoped for our country! "