After attending Elizabeth Gardener's small school in her earliest childhood years, Maria attended the North Grammar school, where William Mitchell was the first principal. Two years following the founding of that school, when Maria was eleven, her father built his own school on Howard Street. There, she was a student and also a teaching assistant to her father.[9] At home, Maria's father taught her astronomy using his personal telescope.[10] At age twelve and a half, she aided her father in calculating the exact moment of an annular eclipse.[11]