Chloe Angeline (Stickney) Hall was born at Rodman, New York to Theophilus and Electa (Cook) Stickney on this day in 1830. She went by her middle name Angeline Stickney and before she married, Asaph Hall March 31, 1856, pursued the studies of calculus and mathematical astronomy. Funded my other women in her family she initially attended classes at Rodman Union Seminary and then New York Central College when it first opened where she majored in science and mathematics, graduating in the college’s first class in 1855. Angeline was teaching at the college where she met her future husband, Asaph, a student in her geometry and German classes. She gave up teaching when they married but continued to aid her husband at his different jobs where he was considered an expert computer of orbits. He worked at Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts and became assistant astronomer at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. where he discovered the moons, Phobos and Deimos of Mars. After viewing the images from Mariner 9, the International Astronomical Union headed by Carl Sagan named the massive cater found on Phobos after her. Known as the Stickney Crater, it is 5.6 miles in diameter and its iconic image includes that of the smaller Limtoc crater entirely inside of its rim. Angeline was instrumental in encouraging her husband to pursue the discovery of Mars’ moons. She also, home-schooled her four children who all attended Harvard University. Chloe Angeline (Stickney) Hall died July 3, 1892, and is buried in East Street Cemetery, Goshen, Connecticut.

The Halls had four children. Asaph Hall, Jr. (1859–1930) became an astronomer, Samuel Stickney Hall (1864–1936) worked for Mutual Life Insurance Company, Angelo Hall (1868–1922) became a Unitarian minister and professor of mathematics at the US Naval Academy, and Percival Hall (1872–1953) became president of Gallaudet University. Angeline Hall died in 1892. Hall married Mary Gauthier after he fully retired to Goshen, Connecticut in 1901.

For more information on the life of Angeline consult An Astronomer’s Wife, The Biography of a Aneline Hall, written by her son Angelo Hall in 1908.

As well to find out more information on the crater named after her see https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/5263/stickney-crater-phobos/.