WESTON WETHERBEE

WESTON WETHERBEE

                                                 COPYRIGHT 2012 RICHARD TAIBI

An undated portrait of Mr. Wetherbee.  Image courtesy of his great granddaughter, Kathleen Ausman, who kindly furnished all the images in this biography.

Weston Wetherbee (1857-1932) lived his entire life, raised a family and observed the skies from New York State’s Orleans County.  The county is just south of Lake Ontario and due west of Rochester, N.Y.  His great granddaughter, Kathleen Ausman, informed me that Wetherbee was a Seneca Indian and had been a public servant for many years of his life.  She sent me his paragraph-long autobiography.  In it, Wetherbee wrote that he was born January 24, 1857 and was named after his father.  The 1880 U.S. census showed that he listed “carpenter” as his occupation.  He married Julia Goff in 1881 and the couple had a son, Harrison, in 1884. An 1892 newspaper clipping provided by Helen Mathes, Town of Barre historian, reported that Wetherbee had developed a thriving windmill manufacturing business.  The article also provided a thumbnail personality sketch of  him, reporting that he had a genial and honest personality and was a skilled mechanic.  He continued to manufacture windmills until 1900 because he described himself as a “windmill agent” in the United States Census of that year.  His autobiography stated that he served as a Justice of the Peace and a town supervisor all before 1900. In 1904, he was elected sheriff of Orleans County and served for three years.  So Wetherbee was an industrious, entrepreneurial, civic-minded man who led an active role in his community.  

We can glean something more of Wetherbee’s personality from the meteor observations he published in Popular Astronomy.  These writings, and others' references to him, began in 1897 and continued until 1922.  In the following 1899 quote, from his report to Popular Astronomy, it is clear that the man had a poetic flair.  In this excerpt, he describes the fate of space debris that he saw when it became a brilliant fireball meteor in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“(ordinary meteors are) so sudden and startling, almost paralyze the senses with feelings of wonder and fear, they are hardly seen before they vanish, (in) marked contrast to this seemingly tired and weary wanderer, from the unknown depths of infinity space, wasting his substance in our atmosphere, only to plunge again into the deep mysterious abyss of the future, or be reduced to star dust by coming in contact with other worlds.”

Wetherbee first published short reports of fireballs he saw in the early evenings of 1897 and 1898.  Then he published star chart drawings of Leonid meteors he saw in 1898 and 1899.  His Leonid observations emphasized how serious a meteor student he was and how enthusiastic he was to contribute to Popular Astronomy's meteor study program.  He also kept Popular Astronomy readers apprised of Perseid observations after the turn of the 20^th century.  In a 1905 article to the magazine, we learn that he made an effort to locate the place in the sky, called a radiant, where August's Perseid meteors emanate.  His wife, Julia, assisted him in recording the meteors’ paths on a star chart.  He wrote, “Meteoric Astronomy is a fascinating study and one to which I have given much attention of late years.”

Wetherbee revealed that he used an eight-and-a-half inch reflecting telescope, made by Brashear.  It appears that he explored lunar craters and mountain chains with it, according to a February 1899 letter he wrote to Popular Astronomy.  On November 16 and 17, 1899, he attached a wide-angle camera with a 5X7-inch photographic plate to his telescope in hopes of capturing a meteor trail.  Unfortunately, no Leonids appeared for him to photograph.

In 1911, a 15-year old Chicago amateur, Frederick C. Leonard, proposed the formation of an international amateur-led organization, Society for Practical Astronomy (SPA).  Further, he promised that the Society's Monthly Register would be used to publish members' observations.  He asked amateurs and professionals to join him in the SPA.  In a 1912 Popular Astronomy article, Leonard published the names of observers who had volunteered to lead various interest sections in the SPA. The list revealed that Wetherbee had volunteered to lead the comets section. 


A series of dramatic and bright comets appeared in the 1908-1910 time period and may explain why Wetherbee was lured away from meteors as a primary interest.  In 1908, a nearly-naked eye comet, Morehouse, made astronomical headlines by repeated separations of its tail from the rest of the comet.  Published photographs by Edward Emerson Barnard (1857-1923) showed the disconnections very clearly.  Then, in January 1910, astronomers were taken by surprise by the unexpected appearance of a first magnitude comet, later called the “January Comet.”  1910 continued to be an extraordinary cometary year because Halley’s Comet returned in May and the earth approached so closely that the comet's tail spanned the night sky.  Wetherbee can be excused for straying from meteors when, like many of the public, he was swept away by the siren call of bright comets.  We can imagine him using his eight-inch reflector to follow these comets and perhaps wanting to discover his own.

Wetherbee must have continued his astronomical studies after 1912.  As many observers do, he migrated to a new subject for observation: stars whose brightnesses varied cyclically, called variable stars.  In his monthly report for February 1921, Howard Eaton of the American Association of Variable Star Observers wrote that “W. Wetherbee, Albion, N.Y.” was elected to membership in the society.  Wetherbee was 64 years old in 1921. However, he may not have been an active member very long because he is not mentioned in the AAVSO’s 1924 or 1926 annual summaries of members’ activities.

Wetherbee poses with a refractor telescope. The telescope is similar to a model made by Alvan Clark and Sons, a famous telescope maker.  Date of the image is unknown.

                                                   

       Wetherbee stands at the door of his observatory.  Image date unknown.

Weston Wetherbee died October 18, 1932 according to an Orleans County genealogical website. Wetherbee's passion for astronomy may have been in his genes because his son Harrison’s obituary revealed that the son inherited his father’s interests.  His 1942 obituary reported that he enjoyed exploring the skies with a telescope, just as his father had done.

Today, aside from his publications, there is little that remains to declare Wetherbee’s interest in astronomy except a photograph that Ms. Ausman has showing him with a refracting telescope and another of his observatory.  Wetherbee's 1933 death notice in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada reported that he donated his 8-and-a-half-inch reflector telescope to the RASC in 1904.  The fate of the refractor is unknown.  

Copyright 2012 Richard Taibi

First written May 1, 2006.  Revisions and additional material added June 23, 2012.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to thank Kathleen Ausman and Helen Mathes for their contributions to this biography.  The details they contributed provided a more complete portrait of this amateur astronomer.

REFERENCES

Chant, C.A., "Death of Weston Weatherbee", Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, vol.27, 1933, p. 46.

Eaton, H., “Monthly Report of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, February 20-March 20, 1921”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 30, May 1922, p. 305.

Leonard, F. C., “The Society for Practical Astronomy: An Appeal to Amateur Astronomers”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 20, October 1912, pp. 525-528, especially p. 526.

Wetherbee, W., “October Meteors”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 5, December 1897, p. 444.

Wetherbee, W., “A Large Meteor”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 6, August 1898, p. 365.

Wetherbee, W., “The Leonid Meteor Shower, at Barre Center, N.Y.”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 6, December, 1898, pp.575-577 and p. 586.

Wetherbee, W., “Bright Meteor”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 7, March 1899, p. 168.

Wetherbee, W., “Leonids at Barre Center, N.Y.”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 8, January 1900, pp. 17-19.

Wetherbee, W., “Radiant of Perseid Shower”, Popular Astronomy, vol. 13, March 1905, pp. 167-168.

Copyright 2012 Richard Taibi

LEWIS SWIFT AND SON

This is an update of a previously unpublished article I wrote eight years ago.  It is no coincidence that I chose a father and son theme for a June posting because this month is when Father's Day is celebrated in the United States and Canada.  The small blue Roman numerals in brackets are those of the reference Endnotes at the end of the article.

LEWIS SWIFT AND SON 

                     Copyright 2012 RICHARD TAIBI 

    Many astronomy enthusiasts know of Lewis Swift (1820-1913) solely because of his comet discoveries during the late nineteenth century.  However, he was equally successful in finding hundreds of nebulas, the term used then for objects that we now know to be immense gas clouds in our galaxy, and also for entire galaxies beyond our own.  In fact, Swift discovered more of these deep-sky objects than anyone else, except for William and John Herschel[i]. 

    Scattered through Swift’s many publications are brief references to his son Edward.  Lewis revealed that Edward made his own discoveries while assisting his father at the telescope.  This article is the history of the Swift father-and-son celestial discovery team during the years 1884-1895. 

The Family’s Background

    Edward Doane Swift (1870-1935) was Lewis’ youngest son, born during Lewis’ second marriage to Caroline Doane Topping.  Edward was almost two-years-old when the family moved to Rochester, New York in 1872.  Lewis hoped that the hardware business he opened in Marathon, New York, would improve in the larger city near the shore of Lake Ontario.  For the next seven years, 1873-1879, Lewis continued his searches for comets and found three of them using his four-and-a-half-inch comet-seeker telescope.  Lewis’ successes brought him world-wide fame and honors from learned institutions and astronomical societies alike.  In 1879 he was awarded a gold medal from the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna; he was named a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the University of Rochester.   

    Swift gave frequent public astronomy lectures and encouraged the people of Rochester to view the heavenly bodies through his telescope.  Eventually, Swift’s local and international reputation attracted the attention of Hulburt Harrington Warner (1842-1923), a local patent medicine millionaire.  Warner wanted to add to his social stature by endowing a public observatory.  He asked Swift to join him in this venture by raising money for a sixteen-inch refracting telescope.  When Lewis succeeded in raising donations totaling $12,500 from Rochesterians, Warner offered to house the telescope in a grand, $100,000 limestone observatory that was to be attached to a large residence for the Swifts[ii]. The telescope, observatory and house were all built in 1882. To appreciate the construction costs, $12,500 in 1882 was worth about $275,000 in 2010 United States Dollars, and $100,000 was approximately equal to $2,200,000 in 2010[iii].

    The observatory with its sixteen-inch Clark refracting telescope was operational in early 1883, and by July 9, 1883, Swift had decided to dedicate his research hours to hunting nebulas[iv].  Lewis and Edward’s teamwork began with the inauguration of the observatory.  It is only because Lewis Swift was such an excellent self-chronicler that we know about Edward’s accomplishments.  The tale of the two working together at night during the next twelve years is an appealing account of mutual support and achievement.

Rochester Nights

    In 1884 Lewis Swift informed Sidereal Messenger magazine readers that he had discovered 197 new nebulas.  He added, “seven … were found by my son, a lad of thirteen years of age[v]."  In this way, a proud father informed the world that Edward was his partner in celestial exploration.  All 197 were additions to the nebulas already found by William and John Herschel and other European astronomers.

    Three years later,  Swift reported that the two were still collaborating. “In this work, occasional assistance has been received from my son Edward, now a lad of fifteen years, who has discovered twenty-one” of 540 nebulae found at Warner Observatory as of February 1, 1887[vi].  Actually, Swift had begun publishing lists of nebular discoveries in 1885, in Astronomische Nachrichten, a journal in which professional astronomers posted their observations[vii].  In each list, he identified every nebula his son found by adding the notation, “Edward,” at the end of its description[viii].

    H.H. Warner awarded $200 prizes to American comet discoverers.  But he also bestowed gold medals on astronomers “for scientific investigation and discovery.”  Warner relied on Lewis Swift’s judgment in making these awards.  Paternal pride undoubtedly had a role in the award of a gold medal to Edward “for discovery of nebula” before he was seventeen-years-old[ix].

    Edward’s credits appeared in most of his father’s Astronomische Nachrichten catalogues. Edward discovered his first nebula on August 8, 1884[x], and his last find was made October 17, 1891, when he was twenty-years-old[xi].  In all, Edward found forty-seven new nebulas, almost four percent of the Swifts’ total of 1240 discoveries[xii].

    We can get a sense of the Swifts’ close collaboration in one account Lewis Swift provided to Sidereal Messenger readers in 1888.   

Edward, the director’s seventeen year old son and his only assistant had discovered another (nebula)…near (the star) Vega…But stranger than these, the young tyro … found one and his father, a second (near) Epsilon Lyrae, that wonderful double-double (star) which has been a target for all the great telescopes of the world, and which astronomers have scanned without suspicion that two undiscovered nebulas were near.  (The one) seen by the younger observer was the fainter of the two, he overlooking the brighter one subsequently captured by his father[xiii].

California Comets

     In 1893 Warner’s financial empire collapsed and he could not support the observatory and its astronomer.  However, Lewis Swift found a new benefactor in Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913), who had made fortunes from industrial production methods for artificial ice and coke, a derivative of coal. During 1893-1894, Lowe was in the process of developing a mountain resort on 3,700-foot Echo Mountain in California.  He was interested in building an observatory as one of several attractions on the mountain.  Swift and Lowe struck an agreement and by 1894, Lewis, Caroline and Edward were in residence on Echo Mountain with the sixteen-inch refractor housed in a new observatory one-quarter-mile away[xiv].

    Lowe Observatory had a level roof area on which Swift’s comet-seeker could be used, just outside and adjacent to the sixteen-inch's dome.  Two anecdotes suggest that Swift and his son searched the skies together, often with one man at the eyepiece of the large Clark refractor and the other using the comet-seeker nearby.  The first is an account of how Edward found a comet on November 20, 1894.

One evening during the first year of our joint work on Echo Mountain, my son was at the great glass searching the west for nebulas, while I was outside the Observatory engaged in comet-seeking.  Finding a suspect in the southwest, I repaired to the large telescope for better examination of the object found, but, as it was only a nebula, went again to my quest while he, leaving the telescope very nearly where I had used it, resumed his work and a few minutes later whistled for me and together we watched an undoubted comet which soon showed motion, not only, but also revealed a faint, short tail.  This proved to be the long lost DeVico comet of 1844, lost for fifty-one years…[xv]

     Just a few months later, in 1895, Lewis and Edward were again engaged in sky sweeping.

On every available occasion I have made a prolonged and desperate effort to detect this exceedingly faint comet (Barnard’s comet of 1884) which has eluded observation ever since its discovery in 1844…On the morning of June 30, I observed, not far from the ephemeritic place of the comet, a faint, fairly large, nebulous object so cometary in appearance that I called in my son Edward, who was engaged in comet-seeking on  the roof  of the dark room just at hand, who instantly exclaimed, as he placed his eye to the telescope, ‘It is a beauty’…

(However, after) watching it for a half hour no motion was observed…Upon mature reflection it seemed that this body might, after all, be a comet, and, if so, undoubtedly Barnard’s.  The morning of July 3^rd found both my son and myself on hand and eager to know if the suspect still held its former place, but ere that region rose above the mountain a dense fog had enveloped us.  The next morning, that of July 4^th, the sky was beautifully clear, however, and the sixteen-inch telescope showed the triangle and the double star as we had previously seen them but the object was gone[xvi].

The Partnership Ends

     Just two months after the above episode, on August 21, 1895, Lewis Swift was again at the eyepiece of the sixteen-inch refractor.  He hoped to find the last nebula he discovered while in Rochester, so that he could determine its sky coordinates more accurately and estimate its brightness.  So, he set the telescope on the rough coordinates he had secured when in New York, hoping to recover the nebula. 

…I saw to my astonishment a beautiful comet instead of the expected nebula.  A single glance assured me of its cometary character which its motion after a time confirmed. 

    But then a discordant note occurred in Swift’s account.  Whereas all of the previous mentions about Edward had revealed the young man to be near his father’s side, this occasion was different. 

(The comet’s) announcement was delayed for several hours because of the absence of my son, Edward D., the assistant astronomer, and the only telegrapher on the mountain, who had gone on his annual vacation.  No telegram was possible until the electric car could convey me to Altadena, the nearest telegraph office, at 8 a.m.[xvii]

     We also find that Edward made no nebula discoveries in Catalogue No. 11 or in a list of forty-five discoveries that Lewis Swift published for the years 1898 and 1899[xviii].  And, Lewis’s writings from those years do not mention Edward being with him. A question suggests itself about whether Edward assisted his father after 1895?  It is to be expected that a young man of Edward’s age would begin to follow his own interests, and respond to the imperatives of seeking independence from his parents. Edward may have been busy living his own life after 1895.

    Regardless of this speculation, father and son were forced by circumstances to face the changes that life brings.  A sad one was Caroline’s death in March 1897.  For another, Lewis’ vision began to fail at age 80, in 1900. Even if Lewis’ “good eye” had not failed him, Lowe’s financial collapse sealed the observatory’s fate.  Swift’s astronomical career was at an end[xix].  Lewis’ only major material asset was the Clark telescope and he needed to sell it to finance his retirement.  The sale of the telescope meant that Edward needed to find other means to continue astronomical pursuits or find another career.

    In 1901, the astronomical world was notified that Lewis had “…disposed of his astronomical equipment to the Pasadena and Mt. Lowe Railway[xx]."  He retired to Marathon, New York to live with his daughter Mary and her husband.  Edward wrote a complimentary biography of Lewis for a volume of Marathon’s history.  It contained a complete list of Lewis’ astronomical honors.  It served as curriculum vitae for his father and served to update Marathoners about his father’s accomplishments.  Edward wrote that his father, “… has left behind him a starry, imperishable monument which will shine for untold ages to come[xxi]."  After seeing Halley’s Comet for the second time in his life  in 1910, Lewis Swift died in 1913.

    Edward’s participation in astronomy appears to have ended in 1895. Despite the fact that Lewis entrusted his observation log to Edward[xxii], there is no evidence that it prompted Edward to resume astronomical work even as a hobby.  After the California years, he moved to Buffalo, New York, which was then a thriving commercial center.  Local historical records indicate that he began a career with the Equitable Life Assurance Society of New York.  Edward began as a cashier and ultimately became assistant manager of the company’s Buffalo office.  He married in 1903[xxiii] and died three months after his wife’s death in 1935[xxiv].        

 
Copyright 2012 Richard Taibi

ENDNOTES

---

[i] Peter T. Wlasuk, “‘So much for fame!’: The story of Lewis Swift”, Quarterly journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, xxxvii (1996), 683-707, p. 683.

[ii] Ralph Bates and Blake McKelvey, “Lewis Swift, the Rochester astronomer”, Rochester History, ix (1947), 1-20, pp. 11-14.

[iii] Source: Economic History Association’s EH.net calculator feature: How Much is that? /Measuring worth:

http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php.  The cited equivalence is from the ‘Commodity’ calculator for ‘real price.’  EH.net defines ‘real price’ as a measure using the relative cost of a (fixed over time) bundle of goods and services such as food, shelter, clothing, etc., that an average household would buy.  This bundle does not change over time.  It uses the Consumer Price Index.”.  The URL was accessed June 4, 2012.

[iv] Lewis Swift, History and work of the Warner Observatory (Rochester, New York, 1887), 5.

[v] Lewis Swift, “The nebulae”, Sidereal Messenger, iv (1884), 1-4, p. 3.  Note that 'nebulae' has the same meaning as 'nebulas.'

[vi] Swift, op.cit. (ref.iv), Addenda and p. 5.

[vii] Lewis Swift, “Catalogue No. 1 of nebulae discovered at Warner observatory”, Astronomische Nachrichten, cxii (1885), 2683.

[viii]Ibid.,and  Swift, op.cit. (ref. iv), 5.

[ix] Swift, op.cit. (ref. iv), Addenda.
[x] Swift, op.cit. (ref. iv).
[xi] Lewis Swift, “Catalogue No. 10 of nebulae discovered at Warner Observatory”, Astronomische Nachrichten, cxxix (1892), 3094.

[xii] Lewis Swift, “Ups and downs, and here and there of an astronomer”, Popular Astronomy, ix (1901), 476-9, pp. 478-9.

[xiii] Lewis Swift, “New nebulae at the Warner Observatory”, Sidereal Messenger, vii (1888), 38-40, pp. 39-40.
[xiv] Wlasuk, op.cit. (ref. i), pp. 699-700.
[xv] Lewis Swift, “Accident comets”, Popular Astronomy, iv (1896-7), 138-141, p. 140.

[xvi] Lewis Swift, “Probable observation of Barnard’s comet of 1844”, Popular Astronomy, iii (1895-6), 17-19, pp.17-18.

[xvii] Lewis Swift, “How I found the comet”, Popular Astronomy, iii (1895-6), 96.
[xviii] Lewis Swift, “Catalogue no. 11 of nebulae”, Astronomische Nachrichten, cxlvii (1898), 3517; and Lewis Swift, “List No. 12 of nebulae discovered at Lowe Observatory, Echo Mountain, California, for 1900.0”, Popular Astronomy, viii (1899), 568-9.
[xix] Swift, op.cit., (ref. xi), 479.
[xx] William W. Payne, editor, Popular Astronomy, ix (1901), 224.
[xxi] Edward D. Swift, “Lewis Swift, Ph.D., F.R.A.S.”, “Grip’s” historical souvenir of Marathon (Syracuse, New York, 1901), 38-40.

[xxii] Lewis Swift, “Remarkable nebulae”, Popular Astronomy, x (1902), 160.

[xxiii] 1910 Census of the United States, New York, Erie County, Series T624, Roll 948, Book I, p. 94.

[xxiv] Irene Marks Rupp to Richard Taibi, 1 September 2000 and 19 March 2001, a letter in the author’s archives.  Ms. Rupp is a genealogical researcher living in a suburb of Buffalo, New York.

Copyright 2012 Richard Taibi

June 4, 2012