Google Honors a Massachusetts Bank's Famous Star

"Very cool."

That was Michelle Starr's first reaction when she went to google.com Thursday and saw that her historic Massachusetts bank was featured — sort of — on the search engine's home page.

Google is famous for posting interesting doodles, and its latest was of Maria Mitchell, the first woman in the U.S. to become a professional astronomer. It would have been Mitchell's 195th birthday Thursday, and Google honored her as part of its effort to highlight important women in science and technology, USA Today reports.

The doodle depicted Mitchell's discovery of a comet in 1847. She was shown peering through a telescope atop a building on Nantucket Island. That building? Well it was then, and still is, the home of Pacific National Bank of Nantucket, now a unit of Bank of America (BAC).

Starr, the aptly named vice president and manager of the banking center at 61 Main St., was pleasantly surprised by the doodle but is very familiar with Mitchell and the bank's history.

The astronomer's father, William Mitchell, was a cashier in the bank, and the family lived upstairs in the building.

The Maria Mitchell Association has marked the building's significance with a plaque, student groups visit on field trips and tourists are highly encouraged to stop by. "The bank itself is part of Nantucket's story," Starr says.

Founded in 1804, Pacific National was sold to BankBoston in 1997. The deal stipulated that the bank got to keep its name, Starr says. That agreement has been honored by a succession of owners, including Bank of America. There are no B of A signs or logos there, Starr says.

"It's not like any Bank of America branch you have ever been in," she says.