When they were married, they had nothing but warm hearts and willing hands to work together.  After a time William joined his father in converting a ship-load of whale oil into soap, and then a little money was made; but at the end of seven years he went back to school-teaching because he loved the work.  At first he had charge of a fine grammar school established at Nantucket, and later, of a school of his own.

Into this school came his third child, Maria, shy and retiring, with all her mother’s love of reading.  Faithful at home, with, as she says, “an endless washing of dishes,” not to be wondered at where there were ten little folks, she was not less faithful at school.  The teacher could not help seeing that his little daughter had a mind which would well repay all the time he could spend upon it.

While he was a good school-teacher, he was an equally good student of nature, born with a love of the heavens above him.  When eight years old, his father called him to the door to look at the planet Saturn, and from that time the boy calculated his age from the position of the planet, year by year.  Always striving to improve himself, when he became a man, he built a small observatory upon his own land, that he might study the stars.  He was thus enabled to earn one hundred dollars a year in the work of the United States Coast Survey.  Teaching at two dollars a week, and fishing, could not always cramp a man of such aspiring mind.

Brought up beside the sea, he was as broad as the sea in his thought and true nobility of character.  He could see no reason why his daughters should not be just as well educated as his sons.  He therefore taught Maria the same as his boys, giving her especial drill in navigation.  Perhaps it is not strange that after such teaching, his daughter could have no taste for making worsted work or Kensington stitches.  She often says to this day, “A woman might be learning seven languages while she is learning fancy work,” and there is little doubt that the seven languages would make her seven times more valuable as a wife and mother.  If teaching navigation to girls would give us a thousand Maria Mitchells in this country, by all means let it be taught.

Maria left the public school at sixteen, and for a year attended a private school; then, loving mathematics, and being deeply interested in her father’s studies, she became at seventeen his helper in the work of the Coast Survey.  This astronomical labor brought Professors Agassiz, Bache, and other noted men to the quiet Mitchell home, and thus the girl heard the stimulating conversation of superior minds.