The Autobiography of William Mitchell

The Autobiography of William Mitchell 17 Written in His 77th Year

As one of the outstanding citizens of Nantucket, William Mitchell was a teacher, business man and scientist, who was successful in all three fields. As the father of the famous woman astronomer, Maria Mitchell, he was her first teacher, and, upon retirement, he spent his last years in her home. The manuscript was written in his 77th year, and is in the possession of the Maria Mitchell Association. This organization has given permission for its use in the issues of Historic Nantucket.

It is the form of a reminiscence addressed to his daughter, Phebe Mitchell.

My dear Phebe,

In compliance with thy suggestion & my promise, I now begin the story of my life, intending also to give thee, as well as I am able, an account of thy mother to whom, under Providence, I am indebted for the prolongation of that life & most of its enjoyments. I do not propose to speak of my virtues or my vices. Of the former it would not become me to speak; for the latter I hope to be forgiven. Nor do I mean to speak of my capabilities or my want of capacity. Whatever of these may have been the estimate of other men, they were the meted gifts of a good Providence. I mean only to speak of the events and experience that have marked a long life. But, when I speak of thy mother I shall not fail to speak of her virtues and capabilities, not only because they were both remarkable, but because myself & my offspring have been the favoured recipients of these qualities, the one by example and precept, the others by the same & by inheritance also.

I was born at Nantucket on the 20th of the 12th mo. 1791 & on the spot where the Methodist Church now stands. The house was a quaint old building, modernized in 1805, & taken down in 1822. My parents, Peleg & Lydia Mitchell, were both natives of the island, & my mother sprang, on her mother's side, from one of the earliest settlers of the place. They were exemplary members of the society of Friends, my father being many years an Elder in the church. They educated their children in the same faith, & most of them retained the peculiarities of the sect in mature life.

The easy circumstances of my father enabled him to give to his children the best education that the period & the place afforded, neither of them having been sent abroad; and three of them became teachers.

The earliest event of my life of which I have recollection, is the recovery from a fit of sickness which was then called "The throat distemper" and which I have supposed might have been the "Putrid sore throat". When I grew strong enough again to walk about the room, my father promised that he would have a little cart made for my amusement. The carpenter employed in this interesting matter was

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HISTORIC NANTUCKET Edward Allen, the great-grandfather of the present Elizabeth Hutchinson of Lynn. Well do I remember the joy I felt when the wife of the carpenter appeared at the door and took from under her long coating cloak the promised vehicle. The tape string being attached by my sister, my father covered the floor of the carriage with silver dollars, the currency of the day. I do not intend to give thee the events of my life thus minutely, but mention this because it is the first thing remembered.

On the first day of the year 1795, being then 11 days over three years of age, I was first put into a school taught by Dinah Spooner, a terror to evil doers & far from being an angel to those who did well. I can to this day well remember how my knees trembled when first called to her to recite the alphabet, following the positively electrified end of her knitting needle. I do not recollect when I graduated from this seminary, nor exactly at what period I entered a school taught by Edward Freeman, a savage with no redeeming trait of character. Nearly seventy years after, one of my schoolmates could scarcely refrain from tears at the recital of some of his own sufferings at the hands of this cruel man. My next teacher was Nathan Comstock, late of New York City, of whom I can speak in more favourable terms. No one of these teachers, however, inspired me with a love of any branch of learning, but a distaste for all books, and yet my father's description of natural phenomena often filled me with enthusiasm, & I never have forgotten his calling me to the door in my eighth year & showing me the planet Saturn. My age at this period I many years afterward calculated from the position of the planet. But the claim, if I have any, to learning rests on my own exertion late in my teens.

I had a strong desire to enter Harvard College, and my father encouraging it, I agreed with Timothy Coffin to prepare me; but circumstances arose which inclined me otherwise, and however important a liberal or collegiate education might have been to me, (and no one can estimate it more highly) I have always justified the course which I took.

When fifteen years old I prevailed on my father to let me learn a cooper's trade, a very injudicious movement as he then supposed it might prove to be, and although contrary to his expectation, I acquired the art and for a short time pursued it as a business; but I never possessed the strength necessary for so severe an employment.

I then became an assistant teacher, and after a few months Principal of the same school at the age of 18. This undertaking was very successful & I pursued it with so much zeal that my health was injured & I reluctantly gave it up for a more active employment, & afterwards assisted my father in the oil & soap business in connection with coopering, till the war with England in 1812 put an end to the arrangement; but after the peace of 1815 it was resumed and continued till the Autumn of 1822.

As within the period of my life which I have attempted to describe

A U T OBIOG RA PH Y O F W ILL IAM M ITC H E L L 1 9

there was an event of much more importance than any to which I have alluded, I deem it proper to give a separate account of it. (The following was inserted in the autobiography by his daughter Phebe: During the War of 1812, Nantucket was almost like a besieged town. The coasting vessels which brought supplies to the inhabitants were taken by privateers - so that commerce was virtually stopped. Prices of provisions rose consequently to an alarming extent-and every effort was made towards getting a livelihood out of the land and sea. People ploughed up the commons outside of the town, and planted corn and potatoes. My father has frequently pointed out to me the spots on the open common where the ground was still rough with the scars left by the hills of corn. Of course, when the war ended, business returned to its old channels. Some of the merchants who had made money out of the necessities of the people and had laid in large stocks of flour and other things not produced on the island, met with financial ruin when the news of peace suddenly brought prices down.

My grandfather lost heavily in the war but he was always in comfortable circumstances and I believe left some property at his death. P.M.K.)

I think it was in the Spring of 1804, being then about 13 years of age, that my father sent me to Captain Andrew Coleman's for some pumpkin seeds which the latter had brought from Brazil or Patagonia. When I entered the house, the family were just taking their seats at the supper table. The Captain, his wife, & two daughters. One of the young ladies particularly attracted my attention. I received the pumpkin seeds from the father, while the daughter unconsciously planted in my youthful bosom the seeds of affection, and from that moment I never ceased to love and honour her. Although this family belonged to and attended the same religious meeting that I belonged to, it being large, I do not remember that I had ever known them before.

From this time no opportunity was neglected to cultivate the acquaintance of the daughter that had so impressed me, and six years afterwards we were engaged to be husband & wife at such future period as should find us of proper age & condition; and I can never forget the characteristic stipulation of thy mother that our parents should be consenting to the arrangement, more than two years before the consummation of the union.

We were married on the tenth day of the twelfth month 1812 & lived together 48 yr., 06 mo. 27 days & blessed far beyond the ordinary lot. Much of the health & vigour which I now enjoy-and all that my children & grandchildren now are, physically & morally, under a good Providence, are attributable to that talented & excellent woman. Never in the whole course of our matrimonial experience did I witness a single word or deed of dissimulation, and such was her reverence for truth, that I always believed that she would never have told a falsehood to a child to save its life. Never were the duties of wife and mother more faithfully & conscientiously performed.

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She was a person of rare understanding, as well as inflexible, uprightness, and it was these qualities beaming in her expression that sank so deep in my youthful heart on the occasion of my errand to her father's house.

She was an intense reader in her youth. For the use of the books in two circulating libraries she served each as librarian until she had read every volume. The substance of her reading through the day was related to her associates in the evening, myself being frequently of the number. The cares of her family took the place of her books in later years; but after her children reached maturity, her reading was resumed. Dickens was her favorite author in his department of literature, and nothing written by him escaped her. I have never had a doubt that her last sickness originated in an attempt to read by late twilight. She was feeble for several years, after a life of uncommon exemption from sickness, & until her youngest child had reached maturity; and although her mind had been wandering for three months, there was reason to believe that a few hours before her death there was a season of quiet serenity. A marble block in the form of a scroll marks her resting place in a small enclosure in the Unitarian burial ground at Nantucket, and the inscription upon it was designed to be precisely what her own taste would have dictated, free from all display viz.

" L y d i a C . M i t c h e l l , w i f e o f W m . M i t c h e l l " .

As she was only known to thee as early as middle life, I may be permitted to speak of her person in youth. Her form was perfect in its proportions, rather tall and slender, & early, as in later life, she was very upright. Her step was always short & her motions quick. Her face was not what would be called handsome. Her features were well formed; but her skin was slightly freckled. Her eyes were her commanding feature. It was in these that the great qualities of her mind & heart could be so easily read. Her dress was always according to the manner of Friends, having been some years an Overseer in the society & Clerk of its meeting. White dresses were evidently her prevailing taste while young, and in these she often appeared as elegant in person as beautiful in form.

When we were married the country had been six months in war with England & my father's property was chiefly invested in the whaling business, & the ships were liable to be intercepted by British cruisers which infested the coast, & he lost all except a small sum which he had insured after the war began, at the rate of 50 per cent premium. My parents nevertheless advised us to marry and spend the Winter with them. My father owned a small farm about a quarter of a mile South of Siasconset, and here in the Spring of 1813, we commenced housekeeping-poor but happy. I cultivated the little farm & lived very poor indeed. I went fishing from the village and worked between tides, "the world forgetting & by the world unknown", and raised corn and potatoes on land which by the gradual encroachment of the sea, no longer exists. In the Fall, we moved into town and kept house in the chambers of my aunt Phebe Starbuck in Liberty Street, & here on the