Part 2

The subject of this notice was born June 18, 1787. The place was Simsbury Connecticut previous to 1768. That year Simsbury was divided and his birth place fell in Granby Con. that being the name of the new town. It remained so until 1804 when the line between Connecticut and Massachusetts was moved further south and his birth place fell in Southwick Massachusetts. The house was about a quarter of a mile north of the new state line, and on a road about half a mile west of the main road from Westfield to Simsbury and Hartford. Here his father and mother lived and died, having lived in three different towns and two different states without changing the place of their residence. Here Amasa was born and past his early youth. His grand father and grand mother on his fathers side lived and died in a house about thirty rods further south, on the same road. His grandfather’s name was Elijah, and was a son of Nathaniel Holcomb 3d, and married Violet Cornish of Simsbury Con. daughter of Capt. James Cornish. His fathers name was Elijah Holcomb Junr. He was a farmer and cooper. In the latter part of his life his father became involved in debt, and mortgaged the farm. His son Amasa paid the debt and the father Elijah Holcomb Junr occupied the farm until he died Oct 5th 1841. The grandfather on the mothers side was Silas Holcomb a son of Judah Holcomb 1st and grandson of Nathanial Holcomb 2d. He lived in the northwest part of Granby, near Hartland line, where he owned a large farm and beautiful home. He kept a park for deer and cultivated fruit, and made raisins. He married Mary Post of Hebron Connecticut, and in this beautiful place they lived and died. There Lucy Holcomb the mother of Amasa was born in 1767. During her short life, she was one of the excellent ones of the earth, and labored for the welfare of her children by instruction and example, until she died August 31 1800. In a very hot day in 1797, she attempted to get some cattle out a field of wheat. The men were at work in a distant field, too far off to know about it. She became heated, and never recovered, though she lived three years. During the last year of her life she became so reduced, that for a long while she could not speak a loud word, but she could and did whisper some good advice to her children. Her son Amasa never forgot it, and he always remembered his mother with affection and gratitude. She had two sisters but no brother. The house where she was born is still standing, but has passed out of the family. The house where his father and mother [lived and died][12] spent their married life, and where he was born, has been taken down, and a new house built on the same place by his brother Newton Holcomb who now owns the old home stead. Here Amasa spent his early youth and school days. There was not a schoolhouse in the district where he lived, until he was past having any use for a common school. The schools were kept in dwelling houses, one part was occupied by the family, and the other part by the school. In these schools were taught, reading, spelling, writing and the first rules of arithmetic. In some of them a little English grammar was taught. Climena Holcomb, Lois Gains, Bethuel Barber, Samuel Frasier, and James L. Adair, in the order in which they are named, were his teachers. At the age of fifteen he was asked to take a school in Suffield Connecticut. He was inspected and passed and took the school. A large portion of the pupils were older and stouter than he was, but they had the good sense to submit to be governed and taught, and good progress was made. But before this a great impulse had been given to his mind. He had an uncle Abijah Holcomb that went to sea about 1798 and never returned. Abijah had fitted for college and left a valuable collection of books. Some of them were classical, and some scientific. Here he found books on Geometry, Navigation, and astronomy. Amasa had free access to these books, and they opened a brighter world before him. He went into these studies with great pleasure, and a mind fully awake, but _alone_. None of these branches were taught in any school to which he had access. He had so far progressed without help, in Geometry, Surveying, navigation, Optics and Astronomy, that at the great Solar eclipse in June 1806 he could make astronomical computations, and was prepared to observe the eclipse with instruments of his own making. The stars were visible during about four minutes of total darkness. He computed, and published, an almanac for the next year 1807, and also for the year 1808. He went into the business of surveying land about this time. He loved to climb the mountains, and enjoyed fine health. In the year 1808 he married Miss Gillet Kendall, a daughter of Noadiah Kendall of Granby Connecticut. She was one of the best of women, and had no enemies, but was beloved by every body who was acquainted with her. For a while he took students into his own house, and taught them such branches as each one had engaged to be instructed in. Julius M. Coy of Suffield, studied surveying—Levi —— also from Suffield studied Navigation, and soon went to sea, and after a while command[ed] a vessel. Benoni B. Bacon of Simsbury, studied Surveying and astronomy, Joseph W. King of Suffield, studied surveying—Henry Merwin of Granby studied Surveying, Jefferson Cooley, a graduate of Yale College, studied surveying and civil engineering. He had also students from Granville Mass. But the school interfered with his other business, and he discontinued it. He manufactured about this time a good many sets of surveyors instruments—compasses, chains, scales, protractors, and dividers, some for his pupils and some for others. He also manufactured, magnets, electrical machines, leveling instruments, and some others. He was greatly attached to the business of surveying, and had more applications than he could attend to. He was compelled to leave it in 1825, and go into the business of civil engineering, which also in a few years, gave way for the business of manufacturing telescopes. At the commencement, he never thought of its ever becoming a business of profit. About the year 1830 he had completed an achromatic telescope, which he took to New Haven, and asked Prof. Benjamin Silliman to look at it. He did so, and at once took an interest in it, and published a notice of it in the American Journal of science, of which he was editor. He manufactured principally Reflecting telescopes, of the Herschelian kind. About the year 1833, he began to have orders for telescopes. Among these orders was one from William J. Young, a celebrated Philosophical instrument maker of Philadelphia, who wanted two small diagonal metallic reflectors for two Transit instruments that he was making. Mr Holcomb made the articles wanted, and thought he would take them and a telescope and visit Philadelphia. Mr Young introduced him to the late Sears C. Walker, and Mr Walker introduced him to Mr Hamilton, Actuary of the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania, and the Actuary appointed a committee to examine the telescope. He selected the committee from the standing committee on Science and the Arts of the Institute. Mr Patterson of the Mint, Alexander D. Bach superintendent of the Coast survey, Dr Robert Hare the chemist, James P. Espey, Sears C. Walker, Isiah T. Lukens and some others. These were among the first scientific men of America. The committee examined the telescope, and compared it with others of European manufacture. The Report of that committee may be found in the Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol. 14 p. 169. The next year 1835 he took a larger telescope to Philadelphia, and offered it to the same committee for examination and comparison with European telescopes. That Report may be found in the Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol 16 p. 11. The next year 1836 he presented a Telescope 14 feet long to the same committee. Their report may be found in the Journal of the Franklin Institute Vol. 18 p. 312. These Reports furnish the best information in regard to the performance of these telescopes. The committee gave them a high character, and they were sold in almost every state in the Union. One went to Seramp in the East indies, and one to one of the Sandwich islands in the Pacific ocean. While he was pursuing his labors as Engineer, and manufacturing Telescopes, and other instruments, in 1839 the news reached this country from Paris, of Daguerre’s great discovery of taking pictures on silver plates by solar light. The discoverer had not then succeeded in taking likenesses from life. Holcombe immediately commenced experimenting and soon succeeded in taking portraits, on silver plates, made sensitive to light by Iodine. There was soon a great demand for instruments to take portraits. He had for a considerable time as much as he could do to supply the applications he received for these instruments, from 1839 to 1845. As the calls for these instruments lessened he continued the manufacture of telescopes. He was the first that sold a telescope of American manufacture. All the telescopes used in this country before 1833, had been obtained in Europe. It had been said that they could not be made in this country. He had been greatly assisted in his sales, by the influence and recommendation of scientific men. It was soon discovered that telescopes could be made in America and about 1845, one after another went into the business, and there is now no further need of going to Europe for telescopes, as good ones can be made in the United States as can be made in Europe. The whole market was in his hands during thirteen years. During this time the business was good and paid well. The competition afterward reduced the profit. In 1816 he was chosen select man and assessor in his own town, which office he held during four successive years, and held the office occasionally by subsequent elections. In 1832 he was chosen to represent the town in the Legislature of Mass and he was reelected three successive terms. In 1852 he was elected to the State senate. In 1833 he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the county of Hampden, which office he has held every year since, and his last commission does not expire until May 1875, at which time, if he should live to see it, he will be but a few days less than 88 years old. In 1837 he received from Williams College the Honorary degree of A.M. In 1831 he was ordained a minister in the Methodist Episcopal church. He preached constantly on the sabbath during many years, and afterward occasionally until he was eighty years old.

_II._ Henry Fitz, 1808-1863

_Julia Fitz Howell_

_Henry Fitz died suddenly through an accident in 1863, when he was in his 55th year. His widow closed his shop in New York City and moved the equipment to Southold, Long Island, where it was used by his son to complete certain contracts in progress. Thereafter it remained essentially as it was until nearly the present time, when the shop was offered to the U.S. National Museum of the Smithsonian Institution by Mrs. Julia Fitz Howell, granddaughter of Fitz. The decision to construct a new Museum of History and Technology made it possible to accept this generous offer, and the complicated project of transferring the shop and reassembling it was accomplished in 1957 through the assistance of Mr. L. C. Eichner.[13]_

_Although a few duplicate items were eliminated, the shop is essentially complete, including such items as Fitz’s account books, the small rouge box he used to polish lenses in the course of a walk, and his door key. Through the assistance of Mr. Eichner and Mr. Arthur V. A. Fitz the Smithsonian has obtained a comet-seeker telescope and Fitz’s first instrument, a small draw telescope._

_The following biographical sketch was written by Mrs. Howell on the basis of papers in the possession of the family._

Henry Fitz, inventor and telescope maker, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on December 31, 1808. Little is known of his mother, Susan Page Fitz, except that she was probably of Scottish ancestry. His father, Henry Fitz, Sr., was a hatter by trade and the youngest son of Mark Fitz, who for several years represented his city in the Massachusetts General Court.

Newburyport was then a prosperous and fast growing maritime community and the Fitzes, though not among its wealthy citizens, were a public spirited and reasonably prosperous family. As in other sections of New England, the War of 1812 made great changes in this pleasing picture. The town’s shipping and ship-building had been brought almost to a standstill and all its business suffered disastrously. After the war recovery was very slow. Since few needed or could afford new beaver hats, Henry Fitz in 1819 took his wife and three small children first to Albany, New York, where he worked at his trade for awhile, and later to New York City.

To young Henry, aged eleven, New York was an exciting and stimulating place and he watched all its activities with eager interest. The father found the city stimulating in a different way. An enthusiastic Universalist, he met in New York many persons with similar leanings. He soon established a religious weekly, _The Gospel Herald_, which he edited for several years. It is therefore not surprising that young Henry was set to learning the printer’s trade, but although he rapidly became skilled, he didn’t especially like the trade. What he most enjoyed about it was tinkering with the machinery of the shop. In this his mechanical ability soon became evident. When his father relinquished his editorship, Henry, then nineteen, gladly turned to different work.

He chose locksmithing, which he learned speedily and well in the shop of William Day of New York. The years 1830 to 1839 found him travelling between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans, following the activities of the building trades and trying by long hours and austere living to save money for a locksmith shop of his own. For the sake of both health and pocketbook, he never rode if he could walk, neither drank nor smoked, ate little meat, and lived chiefly on graham bread and water.

Evenings were spent in reading, study, and the pursuit of hobbies, chief of which was astronomy. His diaries and letters of this period show him buying telescopes and lenses and carrying them with him on his travels. He first made a telescope in 1838, a reflector, with which he delighted to show the stars and planets to his friends. The well-known Reverend Clapp of New Orleans referred to him in a public address as “the young locksmith who knew more about the heavenly bodies than anyone else in the United States.” Henry was pleased with this compliment, even while deprecating the enthusiasm which prompted it.

Although he saved money, his work did not bring him the financial or other rewards that he had hoped for. In spring of 1839 he appears to have worked as a speculum maker with Wolcott and others—one of them may have been his acquaintance John Johnson—and to have read of Daguerre’s work in photography. To learn more of these experiments, as well as to inquire into optics and optical glass, he sailed to Europe in August of that year, taking passage by steerage.

He returned to New York in November 1839 and in that month, according to the testimony of his son Harry, made a portrait with a camera invented by Wolcott. This camera portrait he believed to be the first ever made. In 1840, after more experimenting, he set up a studio in Baltimore, where his father was then living, and spent several years there “taking likenesses.” At the same time he continued to work with telescopes and lenses. His first refractors were built there, instruments he later referred to as crude affairs.

While in Baltimore he took a step which marks the beginning of the final phase of his career. In June 1844 he married Julia Ann Wells of Southold, Long Island, whom he had known for about a decade and with whom he had long corresponded. Julia was a woman of unusual ability and personality, less scientific than he but more literary and artistic, and no less intelligent. With her to encourage him, he continued his experiments in telescope building. A year after their marriage they moved to New York, where he was to spend the remainder of his life.

That summer he prepared a 6-inch refracting telescope for exhibition at the Fair of the American Institute, held annually in New York. This carefully constructed instrument, with its ingenious tripod and its achromatic objective—which he had made himself, correcting the curves by a process of his own invention—won the highest award of the Fair, a gold medal. It was the first of many such medals he was to earn. His telescope also received favorable notice from scientists and astronomers, among them Lewis M. Rutherfurd, a wealthy New Yorker and trustee of Columbia College. Rutherfurd immediately ordered a 4-inch refractor for his own observatory. His interest and example soon brought orders from others.

From this time on, Henry Fitz devoted most of his energies to building telescopes. Cameras were not altogether abandoned. He continued to make them and to instruct others in their use. He invented a camera lens that was patented posthumously. He was one of the founders of the American Photographical Society and remained interested in it all his life. But from 1845 on, cameras became secondary; he built them between telescope orders.

During the years that followed he constantly improved the quality of his lenses and the accuracy and speed with which he could “execute the true curves,” as he expressed it. He used better and better glass. In his early experiments he had taken what came to hand—ordinary tumbler bottoms, for instance. In his 1845 prize winner he combined Boston-made flint with French plate glass. But the Boston flint proved too veiny for any but small lenses and he soon was importing both crown and flint. He designed and built machines, run by foot power, on which he could train employees to do much of the labor of lens making, always reserving the final polishing for himself. He increased the size as well as the quality of his lenses. By 1856, he was making 12½-inch refractors, which according to Prof. Loomis, were as large as any that had then been made in Munich. He built later, still larger ones, of which one was a 16-inch instrument made for Mr. Van Duzee of Buffalo. It was his ambition to make a 24-inch one, but this project, for which he had made careful plans, he did not live to complete.

One of his early successes was a 3¾-inch telescope for the Government of Haiti. By a happy accident the objective for this instrument proved to be exceptionally fine and provided a standard which he tried to meet in all his work. The telescopes of European opticians became another measuring stick. It was a matter of both personal and patriotic pride to him that he, an American locksmith untrained in optics, had been able to invent his own process for making so complex and difficult a thing as an achromatic lens, and that he was able to manufacture telescopes to compete with those of European make. He sometimes contracted to make a telescope equal in performance to an imported one of similar size, usually at a lower price. The 6¾-inch telescope made in 1849 for Lt. J. M. Gilliss to use on an astronomical expedition to Chile passed such a test and greatly enhanced Henry Fitz’s reputation. Another that met such a test was the 13-inch instrument made for the Allegheny Association at Pittsburgh in 1861.

His telescopes were procured by private observatories not already mentioned, among them that of Van Arsdale, in Newark, and of Campbell, in New York. For Rutherfurd he made several, including a 9- and a 12-inch instrument. The latter is now at Columbia University. Among the telescopes made for colleges were a 12-inch one for Vassar and another for the University of Michigan. Besides these and other important instruments he made many of smaller size—4, 5, 6, and 8 inches.

Most of the time, he was handicapped by lack of capital with which to develop his business. The savings from locksmithing days he had, on his father’s advice, invested in Baltimore real estate, but found it difficult to raise cash on this property when he needed it. With the many orders that came in, this situation gradually improved, though he always continued to supervise all phases of the process and to work 12 to 16 hours a day himself. As soon as his eldest son, Harry, was old enough, he taught him all he knew. The boy proved an apt pupil and a great help. By 1863 Henry Fitz felt secure enough to give up renting, and had a house built for his family and business in 11th Street, not many blocks from his friend and patron, Mr. Rutherfurd. Plans for the future looked bright. However, the family had hardly moved into the new home when disaster befell. A heavy chandelier fell on the master of the house, causing injuries which in a few days proved fatal. Henry Fitz died on October 31, 1863, at the height of his career, leaving to carry on his work a widow and six children, the oldest a girl of eighteen, the youngest an infant.

His son Harry, not yet seventeen, was able satisfactorily to fulfill the outstanding contracts. In this he had the backing and advice of Mr. Rutherfurd. In fact, Harry continued the business, though on a smaller scale, for some twenty years. Eventually he became a teacher of drawing, pursuing this occupation for over forty years more.