Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 07.djvu/426

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MITCHELL

MITCHELL

the 24th Wisconsin volunteers in 1861, was pro- moted 1st lieutenant on the staff of General Sill, ami was subsequently made chief of ordnance on tlie staff of Gen. Absalom Bayard and served until 1864, when his eyesight failed, forcing him t;> resign. He was a state senator, 1872-73 and 187.>-76. He was married July 11, 1878, to Harriet, laughter of Abraham Becker of South Worcester, N.Y. He was president of the Milwaukee school b'jard, 1884-85; a member of the Democratic national committee, 1888-92, and chairman of the Democratic congressional committee in 1892. He was a Demx* ratio representative from the fourth district of Wisconsin in the 52d congress, 1891-93, and U.S. senator, 1893-99. He was presi- • lent of the Wisconsin State Agricultural society, and the Northwestern Trotting-Horse Breeders' igers of fche National Home for Disabled Volun- teer Soldiers from 1886, and vice-president of the board in 1895. He was president of the 24th Wisconsin regimental organization for some years, manager of the Milwaukee Home for Disabled Veterans ; vice-president of the Marine National Bank of Milwaukee, Wis., and an officer or stockholder in other commercial and financial institutions of his native city.
 * iss(x;iation and a member of the board of man-

MITCHELL, Lucy Myers, archaeologist, was born in Oroomiah, Persia, March 20, 1845 ; daugh- ter of the Rev. Austin H. Wright, for twenty years a missionary and physician among the Nestorians. She was educated at Mount Holyoke seminary, Mass., 1859-64, and in 1864 went back to Persia with her father, returning to the United States in 1865. In 1867 she was married to Samuel S. Mitchell, an artist, of Morristown, N.J. They spent the greater part of their married life in Europe where she acquired a knowledge of the Syriac, Arabic, French, German and Italian l;inguages, and where she began her philological r»»searches. In 1873, while in Leipzig, she became interested in the study of classical archsBology, which she continued in Rome, Florence, Munich, Berlin and London. She gave a series of lectures to women in Rome, Italy, 1876-78, on Greek and Roman sculpture ; was elected a member of the Imperial Archieological Institute of Germany in 1884, being the second woman admitted, and wliile in Berlin, 1884-86, made a special study of Greek vases and vase paintings for a work on that subject. She was in Switzerland for the benefit of her health, 1886-88. She prepared a dictionary of the modern Syriac language, the un- published manuscript of which is owned by the University of Cambridge, England. She is the author of a History of Ancient Sculpture, and its companion volume of plates, Selections from An- cient Sculpture (1883). She died in Lausanne, Switzerland, March 10, 1888.

MITCHELL, Margaret Julia, actress, was born in New York city in 1832. She first appeared in children's roles in Burton's Chambers Street thea- tre. New York city, and in 1851 played Julia in acted in " Kathie O'Shiel " ; " Satin in Paris " ; "The Young Prince"; "The French Spy"; "Love's Chase" (1854); " Fanchon " (1860); " Mignon Lorie, The Pearl of Savory '* ; " Little Barefoot"; "Nan the Good-for-Nothing " and "Jane Eyre", winning especial recognition as Fanchon. She was married, Oct 15, 1868, to Henry Paddock, and traveled as a star under his man- agement. She subsequently retired from th© stage, and made her home at Elberon, N.J.
 * ' The Soldier's Daughter." She subsequently

MITCHELL, Maria, astronomer, was born in Nantucket, Mass., Aug. 1, 1818 ; daughter of Will- iam and Lydia (Coleman) Mitchell, birthright members of the Society of Friends. She attended the school kept by her father and later became a student and assistant of Cyrus Pierce. Her father was a professional astronomer employed to rate the chronometers of the great fieet of whalers that sailed from Nantucket in those days, and in his observatory she serv- ed as recorder before she was fifteen years of age. In time, father and daughter, amply supplied with instruments by Har- vard college, the U.S. Military academy and the coast survey, ventured upon sys- tematic explorations of distant star groups and nebulae. Miss

Mitchell discovered a new comet in 1847, and' received the gold medal offered by King Fred- erick IV. of Denmark to any one discovering a telescopic comet. The Cantons of Switzer- land voted her a similar recognition and a bronze medal was struck for her by the republic of San Marino, Italy. She was employed in the astronomical work of the coast survey occasion- ally, and when the American Nautical Almanac was instituted by the government she was placed on its regular staflF of computers. She traveled in Europe, 1858-59, and while in England was a guest at the Royal Observatory and at the home of Sir John Herschel. In Scotland she visited Rear- Admiral Smythe, and on the continent she was everywhere received with cordial sympathy. She even made an inspection of the papal obser- vatory under a " dispensation," denied to Mrs. Mary Fairfax Somerville, the English scientist..

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