Tuttles of Harvard College Observatory part 2

Issue 6, January 2012 The Antiquarian Astronomer

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anti-tail pointed to the Sun, and the head of the comet was arrayed with rapidly shifting jet-like rays. The Harvard logbooks from July to September 1862 contain many detailed sketches of comet jet activity.135 H.P. Tuttle and Asaph Hall observed it for position with the Great Equatorial and each computed its orbital elements and ephemeris. 136 In 1867, Giovanni Schiaparelli proved that this comet was the parent of the August Perseid meteors.137

Three nights prior to Tuttle’s discovery, Lewis Swift (Marathon, NY) found the same comet, though Swift thought that he was observing Bond’s comet of 3 May. But a week later, Swift read in the 22 July New York Times that ‘A telescopic comet was dis-covered at the Observatory of Harvard College, by Mr. H.P. TUTTLE, on the evening of the 18th, at a

little past 10 o'clock’. Now suspecting that he may have discovered Tuttle’s comet, Swift immediately wrote to Lt. James Gilliss, U.S. Naval Observatory providing an approximate position and inquiring whether ‘the comet [he] found was the old or a new comet’.138 Gilliss wrote back:

The object which you saw on the evening of 15th was most probably the Comet announced by Prof. Bond as discovered by Mr. Tuttle on the evening

of the 18th. That discovered by Mr Bond on the evening of [3 July] . . . was not in the neighbourhood of the pole on the 15th.139

Swift now pressed his own claim to discovery, launching a dispute with Tuttle over priority that would last four decades.140 In recognition of the two independent discoveries, this comet is known as Comet Swift-Tuttle 1862 III. Minor Planet Discoveries

Though not as visually spectacular as comets, the minor planets discovered by H.P. Tuttle generated more excitement and media coverage at Harvard. Only two other Americans had ever discovered minor planets: James Ferguson at the Naval Observatory in 1854, 1857, and 1860, and George Searle at Albany, in 1858. On the evening of 6 April 1861, Tuttle instituted a systematic search for new minor planets. Copying a small section of the ‘Atlas Écliptique’ of Jean Charcornac, which showed stars to the thirteenth magnitude, Tuttle would laboriously compare his telescopic views, looking for interlopers.141 At 1:40 a.m. on the morning of 10 April, Tuttle found his first minor planet, near the star β Virginis. He estimated its magnitude as 13-14.142 Tuttle invited former Harvard College president, Observatory benefactor, and member of the Visiting Committee Josiah Quincy to name the planet, which became 66 Maja, after the Pleiades star and mother of Mercury.

On the next night, Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in the first act of the American Civil War. Against the backdrop of the outbreak of civil war in America, The Boston Courier in its editorial, commented:

A NEW PLANET. It is with great pleasure that we record the discovery of a new planet at Cambridge by Mr. Tuttle. This is the first planet ever discovered in this vicinity, and while the discovery confers great honor on the discoverer, our ancient University is hardly less honored. For centuries the civilized world has been doing homage to the names of great discoverers in celestial space, and to the nations which gave the birth or support, in the Old World; and it is peculiarly gratifying that one of those rare events which challenge such admiration should now occur among us. Especial-ly is this gratifying at a moment when our great Republic is shaken to its very foundation by the force of internal convulsions. The noble science of astronomy rises to a loftier height, through the gloom and darkness which now envelope us, and from its serene eminence proclaims its immortality

Fig. 29 Comet 1862 III – view with the

Great Refractor, 17 Aug. 1862 (H.P. Tuttle).

Comet-seeker 1859-1860 [sic], Memorandum book M.16, Harvard Observatory Archives KG-11365-264, unpag.

Fig. 30 Tuttle’s comets over

the Cambridge Observatory.

H.P. Tuttle’s personal memorandum book, U.S. Naval Observatory Library,

p

95 The Antiquarian Astronomer Issue 6, January 2012

amidst the ruins of empires, and preserves a people from oblivion.143

One year later, Tuttle repeated his performance with the discovery of minor planet 73 at 3 a.m. on 8 April 1862. Tuttle was ‘revising [a] chart made for planet discovery’, using the Great Equatorial, when he found this thirteenth magnitude object (once again near β Virginis!). Tuttle had ‘searched about twelve nights requiring two hours for each revision’.144 G.P. Bond measured its position with the Great Equatorial, with some difficulty due to clouds.145 J. Ingersol Bowditch, Observatory patron and member of the Visiting Com-mittee, was selected to name the planet, and he chose Clytie, spurned lover of Apollo (now known by the German form, Klytia). Jupiter

Horace P. Tuttle left some fine drawings of Jupiter in the Equatorial logs for March and April 1860. This observation from 27 April 1860 shows how he was gifted with a keen power of observation.

New Nebula Discovered by H.P. Tuttle

As a by-product of comet sweeping, the Harvard comet hunters catalogued new diffuse and extended objects. H.P. Tuttle contributed several, including in-dependent discoveries of Auwers 17 (NGC 1333, 5 Feb. 1859), NGC 2655, (8 Apr. 1859), Auwers 45 (NGC 6791, 27 July, 1859), and an ‘elongated faint nebula’ (NGC 6643, 1 Sept. 1859).146

The Search for Planet Vulcan

In March 1859, Edmond Lescarbault, a physician in Orgeres, France, reported observing the transit of a planet-like body across the disk of the Sun Urbain

Le Verrier, Director of the Paris Observatory had pro-posed the existence of an inter-Mercurial body and was convinced that ‘Planet Vulcan’ had been discovered. Another transit was predicted for March 1860. Edward C. Herrick, librarian and treasurer at Yale College wrote to G.P. Bond requesting that the Sun be monitored for a possible transit of Vulcan as predicted by Le Verrier.147 Perhaps to allay Tuttle’s discouragement at comet seeking, G.P. Bond offered to let him trade his comet seeking duties for daily

Fig. 31 Jupiter, 27 April 1860,

7 pm to 8 pm by H.P. Tuttle.

Equatorial Book, H.34, Harvard Observatory Archives KG-11365-188, unpag.

Fig. 32 ‘Discovery of the new planet Vulcan’.

Good Words (Edinburgh: Alexander Strahan, 1860),

Fig. 33 New spot on the sun (not a

planet!) 6 March 1860, H.P. Tuttle.

Equatorial Book H.32, Harvard Observatory Archives KG-11365-186, unpag.


from the last report of the Observatory Committee that there was but little more for him to achieve in cometary discovery.154

Conclusion

For the Harvard College Observatory, the years 1850-62 were nights and days of labour and occasional moments of glory. The Tuttles, as tireless observers, expert computers, and good promoters, added new elements to the known heavens and fame to their institution. In the pages of the Astronomische Nach-richten, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Sidereal Messenger, Brunnow’s Astronomical Notices, and Silliman’s American Journal of Science and Arts the Tuttle discoveries would endure. Contemporary newspapers across the country had often sung the praises of the Harvard College Observatory and its astronomers. Three of Horace P. Tuttle’s comets were found to be parents of the Perseid, Leonid, and Ursid meteor showers, and for these alone his name endures.

A Popular Astronomy reviewer of Edward Hold-en’s Memorials of William Cranch Bond and of his son George Phillips Bond remarked that it ‘closes with a list of 190 proper names, embracing a very large number of the most prominent men of science in Europe and America who were acquaintances or correspondents of the subjects of these memoirs’.155

The Observatory’s close ties with the international astronomical community would be of immensurable benefit to its next director, Joseph Winlock, who would struggle with inadequate instruments, loss of most of the staff, the deaths of its greatest patrons, and a sour post-war economy.

At the dedication of the Yerkes Observatory in 1897, Simon Newcomb noted that it is not ‘the mere erection of an Observatory’ that ‘can mark an epoch in scientific history’, but rather ‘the character of work done by astronomers away from it as well as in it’.156 The Great Comet of 1843 indeed brought an obser-vatory to Harvard College. But it would be the observations of Saturn, of eclipses and lunar occul-tations, of spots on the Sun, of zone stars, comets and minor planets by the Bonds, the Tuttles, Coolidge, Hall, and Safford that would bring about the ful-filment of the Observatory’s greater purpose: the establishment of its lasting collaboration with the greatest astronomers of the world.

Epilogue

Major Phillip Sydney Coolidge, 16th Infantry, U. S. Army, great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson, was killed at the battle of Chickamauga, Georgia, 19 September 1863. His battle sword was recovered by Confederate forces and eventually returned to his twin brother, Algernon.

George Phillips Bond was seriously ill with tuberculosis for the last year of his life. He struggled to complete what would have been his masterpiece, a volume on observations of the Orion nebula, and suc-cumbed in February 1865. He was thirty-nine. The Board of Visitors to the Observatory, in their annual report, lamented their loss. ‘With the name of George Phillips Bond will always be associated goodness as well as greatness … his short life was an ornament to the moral and a shining light to the scientific world’.

Fig. 35 H.P. Tuttle, 1888

Staff Photographs, U.S. Naval Observatory Library.

Fig. 36 Harvard College Observatory, by

Isaac Smith Homans – 1851.

American Journal of Science & Arts, Second Series, 12 (35), Sept. 1851, p.296.


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Shortly before he died, the Royal Astronomical Society of London awarded its gold medal to Bond. He did not live to see it, but was informed by friends of the award.157

Among his many contributions to astronomy, Asaph Hall discovered the moons of Mars at the U. S. Naval Observatory in 1877, where later his son Asaph Jr. was also employed. Hall retired in 1891 and returned to Harvard in 1896, where he taught celestial mechanics until 1901. He died in November 1907.

Truman Henry Safford was expected to succeed G.P. Bond as third director of the Observatory, but was not chosen. Instead he became at age 28 the director of the Dearborn Observatory in Chicago, until its funding evaporated in the great fire of 1871. He spent the next several years as astronomer with the Wheeler survey of the western states. In 1876 he became professor of astronomy at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he died in 1901.

Charles Wesley Tuttle’s law practice prospered. He was appointed U.S. Commissioner, and practiced before the U.S. Supreme Court. He served for years as a board member of the New England Historic Genea-logical Society, authoring many works of genealogical history. In 1880 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College.158 He died unexpectedly on a Sunday morning in 1881. His wife Mary Parks survived him nearly six years. On Charles’s tombstone in Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamai-ca, Massachusetts a bronze plaque reads ‘Astra Castra, Numen Lumen’, ‘the stars my camp, the deity my light’.

Horace Parnell Tuttle survived General John G. Foster’s 1862 campaign in North Carolina with the 44th Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, where he was known as ‘Old Stars’. He served for over ten years as paymaster in the U.S. Navy, helped capture the British blockade-runner Deer at Charleston Harbour in 1865, and independently discovered Comet Tempel-Tuttle at the U. S. Naval Observatory in 1866. Dartmouth College awarded him an honorary degree (Master of Arts in Science) in 1866.159 Harvard College then repeated the honour in 1868.160 In 1875 Tuttle was dismissed from the Navy, but immediately rehired by the U.S. General Land Office as the astronomer on the Newton-Jenney survey of the Black Hills, Dakota Territory. ‘Captain Tuttle’ spent ten more years surveying in Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming, and returned to Washington, D.C. in 1884, where he lived as a surveyor, bookkeeper, writer, and postal deliveryman. With his own Brashear reflecting comet seeker on the roof of the U.S. Naval Observatory, he

independently discovered Comet 1888 V (Barnard), November 1888.161

Elizabeth Higgins Jeremiah was thirteen when H.P. Tuttle died at her home in East Falls Church, Virginia, in August 1923. Tuttle, never married, had boarded with her family for nearly forty years, and her mother, Elizabeth Tuttle Maus, was named for him. In 1985, Mrs. Jeremiah recalled H.P. Tuttle:

We all called him the Captain. We didn’t know if he really was one. He had a beard like Santa Claus, and he used to sit out in his chair and tell us stories of the stars in the heavens. He called me ‘Sunflower’ and my sister was ‘Butterfly’.162

In the century and a half since H.P. Tuttle left the Harvard College Observatory, not another comet or minor planet would be discovered at Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts.163 The location of Tuttle’s unmarked grave in Oakwood Cemetery, East Falls Church, Virginia has since been lost.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the staff of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, in particular Michael Blake and Will Graves of the Wolbach Library, Alison Doane, Curator of Astronomical Photographs, and Dr. Owen Gingerich, senior astronomer emeritus. A special note of appreciation is offered to the late Dr. Brian G. Marsden, whose interest in the Tuttles led to many years of enlightening and entertaining discussions on cometary history.

Ruth Ayers of the Historical Society of Newfield, Maine, guided me through early life in Newfield, Maine. Timothy X. Salls, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, provided generous access to the papers of Charles Wesley Tuttle. Sally Boskin and Gregory Shelton of the U.S. Naval Observatory Library provided their ever-proficient help.

Notes & References

1. Newetowne, Massachusetts became Cambridge on 2 May 1638 by General Court order. It is believed that this tribute arose from a number of Magistrates and Elders of the Court, who were educated at Cambridge University. Page, Lucius R., History of Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston: H. O. Houghton & Co., 1877), p. 43.

2. Jones, Bessie Zaban and Boyd, Lyle Gifford, The Harvard College Observatory, The First Four


Directorships, 1839-1919 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p.1.

3. Holden, Edward Singleton, Essays in Astronomy (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1900), p.318; Fourteen Annual Report of the President of Harvard College on the State of the Institution for the Academical Year 1838-39, (Cambridge: Folsom, Wells and Thurston, 1840), p.17.

4. Jones and Boyd (1971), pp.40 and 56. 5. Kronk, Gary W., Cometography, A Catalog of

Comets, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2003), 129-33.

6. Silliman, Benjamin, ‘Notice of the Great Comet of 1843’, The American Journal of Science and Arts (1843), 44, 412-17.

7. ‘The comet’, Boston Evening Transcript, 21 March 1843, p.2.

8. Schnechner Genuth, Sara, ‘From heaven’s alarm to public appeal, comets and the rise of astron-omy at Harvard’, in Elliott, Clark A., and Rossiter, Margaret W., Science at Harvard University: Historical Perspectives (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1992), 28-43; ‘The comet’, Republican Farmer (Danbury, Connecticut), 21 March 1843, p.2.

9. Maine Cultivator and Hallowell Gazette, 25 March 1843, p.5.

10. ‘Professor Peirce’s lecture on the comet’, Boston Courier, 27 March 1843, p.1

11. Jones and Boyd (1971), p.49. 12. Bond, W.C., ‘History and Description of the

Observatory’, Annals of the Astronomical Obser-vatory of Harvard College [hereafter Annals] (Cambridge: Metcalf and Co. 1856), 1 (1), p.43.

13. Dean, John Ward, Memoir of Charles W. Tuttle (Boston: Privately printed, 1888), p.5.

14. Wentworth, John, The Wentworth Genealogy (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1878), p.284; ‘Shipwreck’ John Tuttle, from Devonshire, England, sailed on the galleon Angel Gabriel, which sank in a storm off Pemaquid Point, Maine, 15 August 1635. Riess, Warren C., Angel Gabriel: The elusive English galleon, (Bristol, ME: 1797 House, 2002).

15. Charles’s siblings were: Freeman (1831-1901), Mary (1833-1866), Joel (1835-1874), Horace (1837-1923), Ira (1840-1843), Francis (1842-1923), and (paternal half-sister) Georgia (1854-1856). His stepsister was Sarah B. Waite (1840-1892).

16. Dean (1888), p.4. 17. Ibid.

18. ‘Hints to amateurs in astronomy respecting the construction of telescopes’, Dick, Thomas, The Practical Astronomer (London: Seeley, Burn-side, and Seeley, 1845), 563-67. Fifty years later Shute still had possession of this telescope; today its disposition is unknown. Shute, Alan H., personal communication, September 2011.

19. Dean (1888), p.5. Evidently it was a polite remark.

20. Stevens, A., ‘An Intellectual Prodigy, Truman Henry Safford’, The Ladies’ Repository (Cincin-nati), 9, 7 (April 1849), 98-102.

21. ‘Mr. T. H. Safford, Mathematician and Astronomer’, The Round Table (New York), 3 (44), (28 July 1866), 467-467.

22. Ibid., p.468. 23. Hoyt, Albert Harrison, Capt. Francis

Champernowne, The Dutch Conquest of Acadie, and other Historical Papers by Charles Wesley Tuttle (Boston: John Wilson and Son, University Press, 1889), p.47.

24. Ibid., p.9. 25. ‘Genius Rewarded’, reprinted in the New

Hampshire Sentinel, 2 February 1851, p.1. 26. Bond, William Cranch, ‘Observations on the

Planet Saturn Made with the Twenty-three foot Equatorial, at the Observatory of Harvard College, 1847–1857’, Annals (1857-1867), 2 (1), p.48.

27. Leverington, David, Babylon to Voyager and beyond: A History of Planetary Astronomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.256. In 1723 John Hadley observed the dusky ring and also realized that it could not be merely a shadow of one of the bright rings. ‘Obser-vations on Saturn and Jupiter’, Eames, J., and Martyn, J., Philosophical Transactions (from the year 1719, to the year 1733) abridged and disposed under general heads, (London: J. Bro-therton, 1734), 221-22.

28. Bond, William Cranch, ‘Observations on the Planet Saturn’, (1857-1867), op. cit., p.50.

29. Tuttle, C.W., entry for October 1850, Harvard College Observatory Memorandum Book - [hereafter HCO] M.20, Harvard Depository, Harvard University Library [hereafter HD-HUL] KG-11365-268, unpag.

30. Bond, William Cranch, (1857-1867), p.62. 31. Ibid., p.79. 32. Bond, W.C., ‘Report of the Director to the

Visiting Committee of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University, 1848’, Annals (1856), 1 (1), p.129.


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33. HCO M.7, HD-HUL KG-11365-256, p.68. 34. Tuttle, C.W., ‘Seeking for Comets’ (1858). 35. On 29 August 1850 Bond discovered comet 1850

II. Bond’s entry in the comet-seeking log is notably terse: ‘Aug. 29th Found a Comet’. HCO M.20, HD-HUL KG-11365-268.

36. Tuttle, C.W., HCO M.20, HD-HUL KG-11365-268, entry for 30 October 1850.

37. Theodor Brorsen (1819-1895), at the observatory of John Parish, Senftenberg (Žamberk, Czech Republic).

38. John Adams Whipple (1822-1891), noted Boston photographer, made many groundbreaking im-ages of the Moon, planets, and bright stars with the Bonds.

39. Tuttle, C.W., entry for 19 August 1851, HCO M.20, HD-HUL KG-11365-268, unpag.

40. Astronomical Journal (1851), 2 (32), p.51. 41. Tuttle, C.W., HCO M.20, HD-HUL KG-11365-

268, entry for 27 August 1851. 42. Ibid., entry for 20 November 1851. 43. Astronomical Journal (1852), 2 (41), p.131. First

discovery by J. Charcornac, Marseille. This was Comet 1852 II; the 1852 return of Encke’s comet was Comet 1852 I.

44. Advertisement, New Hampshire Patriot, July 7 1852, p.3.

45. Tuttle, C.W., letter to the editor, Burt’s Among the Clouds (Mt. Washington, N.H.), 14 July 1882.

46. ‘Procul, o! procul este, Profani!’ Literally, ‘Stand aside, ye unsanctified.” From the prologue to Virgil’s Aenead, book 4.

47. Astronomical Journal (1853) 3 (56), p.60 and 3 (57), p.72.

48. Tuttle, C.W., entry for 8 March 1851, HCO, M.20, HD-HUL KG-11365-268, unpag.

49. New York Times, 3 May 1853, p.8. 50. Bond, W. C., ‘Zone Catalog of 5500 stars

situated between the equator and 0º 20' north declination, observed during the years 1852-53’, Annals, 1, 2, (Cambridge, Metcalf & Co. 1855).

51. Harwood, Margaret, Bond Zones of Faint Equatorial Stars, (Cambridge: published by the observatory, 1913), 194-95.

52. Bond, W.C., (1855), pp.5-6. 53. Bond, G.P., Memoranda for Observatory Report,

HCO, M.30, HD-HUL KG-11365-277, p.26. 54. Dean (1888), p.16. 55. Bond, W.C., ‘Report of the Director to the

Visiting Committee of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University 1854’, Annals (1856), 1 (1), p.179.

56. Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Harvard University, 1636-1915 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1915), p.829.

57. Charles W. Tuttle Papers (MSS 187). R. Stanton Avery Special Collections Department, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, MA, (www.amerianancestors.org).

58. Fifty-one clocks were carried on the later trips. The Boston Traveller reported incorrectly: ‘We believe that in the two first series of these observations the very large number of six hundred chronometers was employed…’ (Daily National Intelligencer, 11 June 1855).

59. ‘Mexico’, New York Herald-Tribune, 4 May 1858, p.3.

60. Bartky, Ian, Selling the true time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p.42.

61. Dean (1888), pp.16-17. 62. Tuttle spent most of his life unaware of his true

age! He provided Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography with ‘March 24, 1839’ as his birth date and in August 1862 claimed age 23 when enlisting in the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. In 1904 and 1907 Tuttle wrote to the U.S. Pension Office admitting that he had been incorrect, and that C.W. Tuttle had obtained his actual birth date, 17 March 1837, from his mother ‘a few days before she died in 1845’, there having being no written record of the date. (Pension record 29265, Record Group 15, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.)

63. ‘An Astronomer Enlists’, Lowell Daily Citizen and News, 30 August 1862, p.2.

64. The 1858-59 Harvard Catalogue does not list Tuttle as a student of Harvard, nor of the Lawrence Scientific School, nor of the Astro-nomical Observatory. A catalogue of the officers and students of Harvard University, for the Academical year 1858-59, second term, (Cam-bridge, MA: Sever and Francis,1859).

65. HCO, H.23, HD-KUL KG-11365-177, p.2. 66. Hall, Angelo, An Astronomer’s wife, the Bio-

graphy of Angeline Hall, (Baltimore: Nunn & Co., 1908), p.80.

67. Holden, Edward S., Memorials of William Cranch Bond, director of the Harvard College Observatory, 1840-1859, and of his son, George Phillips Bond, director of the Harvard College Observatory 1859-1865 (San Francisco: CA Murdock, 1897), p.183.


68. HCO, H.21, HD-HUL KG-11365-175, 33-34 and 50-51.

69. For longitude determination from lunar occultations, see Peirce, Benjamin, ‘Report on the method of determining longitude by occult-ations of the Pleiades’, Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey showing the progress of the survey during the year 1855, Appendix 42, (Washington, A. Nicholson 1856), 267-74.

70. Robert Treat Paine (1803-1885), member of the Visiting Committee, was a long-time patron of the Observatory, to which he left his entire fortune. He was also an experienced astronomer. (Jones, Bessie Zaban, ‘Diary of the two Bonds: 1846-1849’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 15, No. 4, October 1967, 373). A ‘telescope on stand, by Lerebours; aperture 3 inches’ is number six in the ‘List of instruments furnished by Harvard College Observatory for observation of the total eclipses of 1869 and 1870’, (Annals (1876), 8, p. 57). Noël Jean Lerebours (1764-1840) and his son Noël Paymal Lerebours (1807-1873) were opticians to the Observatory of Paris.

71. HCO, H.38, HD-HUL KG-11365-179. 72. Hansen, P., Tables de la lune, construites

d’après la principe Newtonien de la gravitation universelle (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1857).

73. HCO, H.25, HD-HUL KG-11365-192, p.475. 74. HCO, H.29, HD-HUL KG-11365-183, unpag. 75. HCO, H.37, HD-HUL KG-11365-191, unpag. 76. ‘The solar eclipse’, New York Times, 20 July

1860. 77. Tuttle, H.P., (personal journal) Comet Seeking

Sept. 23 1857, (no pagination), U.S. Naval Observatory Library. That the comet was ‘seen at Harvard’ was reported in The Weekly Herald (New York), 23 May 1857, p.1.

78. Robert van Arsdale at Newark, New Jersey preceded Tuttle’s discovery on 25 March. (‘A Comet’, New York Herald, 1 April 1857, 11).

79. ‘The Brorsen Comet’, New York Weekly Herald, 23 May 1857, p.5.

80. Ibid. 81. ‘The Comet’, Lowell Daily Citizen and News, 22

June 1857, p.2. 82. ‘The new periodical comet’, New York Herald-

Tribune, 18 May 1857, p.5 83. HCO, H.23, HD-HUL KG-11365-177, p.193. 84. Ibid., 202. 85. Ibid., 220.

86. Tuttle, H. P., ‘Comet Seeking Sept. 23 1857’, U.S. Naval Observatory Library.

87. Ibid. 88. HCO, H.24, HD-HUL KG-11365-178, p.304. 89. Kronk (2003), p.256. 90. Tuttle, H.P., ‘Comet Seeking Sept. 23 1857’,

U.S. Naval Observatory Library. 91. Tuttle, H.P., ‘Comet I 1858 Memorandum’,

Smithsonian Institution Archives, RU 7081, William J. Rhees Collection, Subject Files, 1839-1945, Box 3.

92. Newburyport Herald, 12 February 1858. 93. This letter survives only because it was passed to

H.P. Tuttle, who pasted it into one of his per-sonal comet logbooks.

94. Tuttle, H.P., ‘Comet I 1858 Memorandum’, op. cit.

95. Tuttle, H.P., ‘Comet Seeking Sept. 23 1857’, op. cit.

96. Ibid. 97. HCO, H.26, HD-HUL KG-11365-180, p.518. 98. Ibid., 525. 99. In 1974 Brian G. Marsden linked observations

between 1858 and 1951, finding a period of 5.35 years, and making it one of the shortest of the short period comets. Marsden, B.G., Quarterly Journal Royal Astronomical Society, 15 (1974), pp. 450-51; cited in Kronk (2003), p.265.

100. Tuttle, H.P., (personal journal) ‘Comet Seeking June 20th 1858’, unpag., U.S. Naval Observatory Library.

101. Bond, G.P., Account of the Great Comet of 1858, Annals, 3 (Cambridge: Welch, Bigelow, and Co., 1862).

102. On the previous night, Richard F. Bond and his sister, Selina Cranch Bond had seen the new tail. HCO, H.28, HD-HUL KG-11365-182, addendum to notes for 2 October 1858.

103. Ibid. 104. HCO, H.28, HD-HUL KG-11365-182,

addendum to notes for 5 October 1858. 105. Tuttle, H.P., (personal journal), op. cit. 106. Ibid. 107. HCO, H.27, HD-HUL KG-11365-181. 108. Boston Traveller, Boston Daily Advertiser, 6

September 1858; Boston Herald, Portsmouth Journal, 11 September 1858 (unpaged clip-pings).

109. Dover Enquirer, 14 October 1858. 110. Hoyt (1889), p.40. 111. Tuttle, H.P., (personal journal), op. cit. 112. Ibid.


102

113. ‘Miscellaneous Intelligence’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 19 (5), p.191.

114. ‘Foreign honors to Americans’, Boston Evening Transcript, 1 April 1859.

115. American Journal of Science and Arts, second series, 28, November 1859, 119-20.

116. HCO, H.29, HD-HUL KG-11365-183. 117. Holden (1897), p.177. 118. ‘Third Comet of 1860’, Astronomical Journal

(1860), 6 (136), p.127. 119. ‘Comet-seeker 1859-1860’, HCO M.16, HD-

HUL KG-11365-264. 120. ‘From a letter of Professor G.P. Bond’, Astro-

nomical Notices, (Albany), 20, 30 June 1860, p.160.

121. ‘Elements and Ephemeris of Comet III 1860’, Astronomical Notices, (Albany), 20, 30 June 1860, p.161.

122. Bond, G.P., (1862), Plate 50, p.362. 123. Tuttle, H.P., (personal journal) Comet Seeker,

Sept. 11 1860, unpag., U.S. Naval Observatory Library.

124. Kronk (2003), p. 802; Kowalczyk, J., Astronomische Nachrichten, 75, No. 1787, January 1870, p.165; Astronomische Nachrichten, 55 (1301), March 1861, p.79.

125. Thatcher, A.E., ‘Is it a comet?’, New York Herald, 7 Apr 1861, p.10; Bond, G.P., ‘The Thatcher comet’, New York Herald, 13 April 1861, p.4; ‘Discovery of a new comet’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 21 (6), p.192.

126. Tuttle, op. cit. 127. Tuttle, H.P., ‘The comet of 1861’, The New

Jerusalem Magazine, 34, No.3, September 1861. The New Jerusalem Church was founded in 1792 in Boston by Christians who based their faith on the teachings of Emauel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Some of the Tuttles were Swedenborgians.

128. Mitchell, W., Quincy, J., Winthrop, R., Paine, R., Bowditch, J., Report of the committee of the overseers of Harvard College appointed to visit the observatory in the year 1861, (Boston: Press of Geo. C. Rand & Avery 1862), p.8.

129. Tuttle, H.P., (personal journal) ‘Comet Seeking June 20th 1858’, unpag., U.S. Naval Observatory Library.

130. ‘Extract from the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, 5 Feb. 1862’, Boston Daily Transcript, undated newspaper clipping in HCO M.30, HD-HUL KG-11365-277, p.23; ‘A

Great Telescope”, New York Herald-Tribune, 5 April 1862, p.8.

131. Bond, G.P., HCO, M.30, HD-HUL KG-11365-277, p.29.

132. Ibid., p.31. 133. Ibid., p.32. 134. Astronomische Nachrichten, 58 (1374), August

1862, p.89. 135. HCO, H.47, HD-HUL KG-11365-201. 136. Astronomische Nachrichten, 58 (1382),

September 1862, p.223. 137. Schiaparelli, J.V., ‘Sur la relation qui existe entre

les comètes et les étoiles filantes’, Astronomische Nachrichten (1867), 68 (1629), 331-32.

138. Letter from Lewis Swift to Com. J.M. Gilliss, 22 July 1862, Record Group 78.2, Records of the Naval Observatory, Letters received, 1840-1885, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

139. Letter from J.M. Gilliss to Lewis Swift, 26 July 1862, Record Group 78.2, Records of the Naval Observatory, Letters sent, 1842-84, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

140. See, for examples, Popular Astronomy (November, 1898), pp. 186, 417, 562-564, and 585; and (January, 1899), 13-16.

141. Charcornac, J., Cartes écliptiques formant l’Atlas de l’Observatoire de Paris (Paris: Paris Observatory 1856).

142. HCO, H.40, HD-HUL KG-11365-194. 143. ‘A New Planet’, Boston Courier, 11 April 1861. 144. Bond, G.P., HCO, M.30, HD-HUL KG-11365-

277, p.25. 145. HCO, H.45, HD-HUL KG-11365-199. 146. Bond, G.P., List of New Nebulae and Star-

Clusters seen at the Observatory of Harvard College, 1847-1863 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Welch, Bigelow, and Co. 1863), 5,7; Steinicke, Wolfgang, Observing and Cataloguing Nebula and Star Clusters: from Herschel to Dreyer’s New General Catalogue (Cambridge, England, University Press, 2010), 126-29.

147. Holden (1897), 177-78. 148. The Merz refractor was replaced by a 5¼-inch

Alvan Clark refractor in 1869. Annals (1876), 8, p.31.

149. Tuttle, H.P., ‘Reminiscences of a search for “Vulcan” in 1860’, Popular Astronomy (1899), 7, 235-37.

150. Ibid. 151. Letter from Asaph Hall to Capt. J.M. Gilliss, 27

August 1862, Record Group 78.2, Records of the Naval Observatory, Letters received, 1840-1885, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.


152. Mitchell, W., Quincy, J., Winthrop, R., Paine, R., Bowditch, J., Report of the Committee of the Overseers of Harvard College appointed to visit the Observatory in the year 1862, (Boston: Press of Geo. C. Rand & Avery 1863), pp.8-9.

153. ‘An Astronomer Enlists’, Boston Evening Transcript, 29 August 1862.

154. ‘Astronomical discoveries of 1862’, Daily True Delta, 8 March 1862.

155. ‘Book Notices’, Popular Astronomy, 5 (8) (Nov-ember 1897), p.358.

156. Newcomb, Simon, ‘The aspects of American astronomy’, Popular Astronomy, 5 (7) (Dec-ember 1897), p.447.

157. Holden (1897), pp.76-77. 158. General Catalogue of Dartmouth College

(Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College, 1890), p.166.

159. Ibid. 160. Harvard Alumni Directory (Boston: Harvard

Alumni Assoc., 1919), p.721. 161. George A. Hill, ‘A new form of Comet-Seeker’,

Sidereal Messenger, 7 (6), (June 1888);

Astronomical Journal, 8 (184), (3 November 1888), p.128.

162. Telephone conversation with the late Elizabeth Higgins, 1984.

163. Marsden, Brian G., private communication, August, 2010.

The Author

Richard E. Schmidt began his astronomical career in 1971 as a photographic parallax observer on the 66-cm Clark refractor at the Leander McCormick Observatory, University of Virginia. In 1975 he was appointed astronomer with the Nautical Almanac Office, U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, DC. Since 1989 he has been with the Time Service Department, USNO. Thirty years ago he discovered H.P. Tuttle’s Harvard comet seeking logs among the rare book collection at USNO. Schmidt, who lives with his wife Margaret under their own rooftop observatory in Washington, DC, is currently at work on at work on the definitive biography of the Tuttles.


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g{x TÇà|ÖâtÜ|tÇ TáàÜÉÇÉÅxÜ Journal of the Society for the History of Astronomy

Contents of Issue 6, January 2012

Airy’s Greenwich Staff

Allan Chapman...........................................................................................................................4

Joseph Harris of Trevecka: Scientist, Artisan, Servant of the Crown

Martin Griffiths........................................................................................................................19

Astronomical and Atmospheric Observations in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in Bede

Heinrich Härke……………………………………………………………………………….34

John Phillips’s astronomy 1852-67: A pioneer of comparative Planetology

Roger Hutchins ………………………………………………………………………………44

‘A large chunk of glass’: The 98-inch mirror of the Isaac Newton Telescope, 1945-1959

Lee T. Macdonald....................................................................................................................59

The Tuttles of Harvard College Observatory: 1850 – 1862

Richard E. Schmidt...................................................................................................................74

Copyright© 2011 Society for the History of Astronomy ISSN 1740-3677

Tuttles of Harvard College Observatory part 2

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Transcript of Tuttles of Harvard College Observatory part 2