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MAGES30 NOVEMBER 2019 • SKY & TELESCOPE
O
ne clear evening, an older brother carried three-year-
old Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel outdoors to behold
the golden crescent Moon in the star-fi lled heavens.
The brother later recalled, “With the apparent gravity of a
savant, almost with a gasp, you exclaimed: ‘Mans can’t make
moons.’... This was your fi rst lecture.”
Mitchel never set out to be an astronomer — indeed, his
twenties were spent trying out various professions. But the
skills he developed doing other things became essential to his
success in founding and funding the Cincinnati Observa-
tory, and in inspiring passion for astronomy and observato-A captivating speaker and educator, Ormsby
MacKnight Mitchel helped popularize astrono-
my in America in the mid-19th century.ries throughout 19th-century America. Moreover, as recent
scholarship reveals, Mitchel was not merely a world-famous
popularizer but also a respected research astronomer.Born Scholar
Mitchel was born in Morganfi eld, in western Kentucky, in late
July 1809, the youngest child of farmer/homesteader parents.
The Kentucky acreage was poor and diffi cult to work. When
he was two, his father, John Mitchel, died suddenly of stroke;
his widowed mother, Elizabeth McAlister Mitchel, sold their
land, freed their slaves, and moved the family to southwestern
Ohio to live with her older, married children. There, Mitchel
attended primary and secondary schools that had been
opened in 1815 and 1818, respectively, by his eldest brother.
By all accounts, Mitchel was a child prodigy, an avid
reader who mastered Greek and Latin. Drawn to the stage,
he joined his school’s thespian society and debating club.
Elizabeth tried to apprentice him to a trade when he was 13,
but he ran away and found a job with a shopkeeper.Orator
Stars
of the
O. M. MITCHEL by Trudy E. Bell