Notable Cousin · via the maternal line
1818-1889 · The first American woman astronomer and the first woman professor of astronomy (Vassar). Discovered a comet in 1847. “Miss Mitchell’s Comet”, and was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Relationship
Maria Mitchell is the 5th cousin, 6 times removed of John, Perry, and Patrick Long.
Through Tristram Coffin (c. 1605-1681), founder of Nantucket. Maria Mitchell descends from the Nantucket Coffin-Folger families; the family descends through Tristram’s son John Coffin (via his daughter Hannah) and the Gardner → Macy → Folger → Perry line.
Tristram Coffin (c. 1605-1681). founder of Nantucket; the shared ancestor. This is the single shared ancestor that connects Maria Mitchell to John, Perry, and Patrick. FamilySearch PID: L8BH-G24.
Both lines descending from the most recent common ancestor, Tristram Coffin. Research-in-Progress markers flag generations not yet enumerated. Click any PID to open the FamilySearch record.
Computed at 5th cousin, 6 times removed under the FS-verified 12-step depth, from the famous-relatives walk, at the boundary of the archive’s ≤5th-cousin inclusion filter, so graded SOURCED rather than VERIFIED and stated with that caution. The shared anchor Tristram Coffin (L8BH-G24) and the family’s own line are verified; Maria’s own record is L6LD-14C; her intermediate Coffin/Folger generations are not re-enumerated PID-by-PID here and none are invented. This page supersedes the earlier ‘tradition tier’ listing on /famous.
“October 17. I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven 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 time I trust myself much less. The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.”[1]
Seven years after her discovery of the comet of October 1847.
“Aside from the study of astronomy, there is the same enjoyment in a night upon the housetop, with the stars, as in the midst of other grand scenery; there is the same subdued quiet and grateful seriousness; a calm to the troubled spirit, and a hope to the desponding.”[2]
Part of the entry headed "Dec. 5, 1854."