Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 2066
William Cranch Bond left the public school at an early age and became an admirable workman. At the age of fifteen (1804) he constructed a satisfactory shop chronometer, and at about the same time a quadrant, which was also a very serviceable instrument. His attention was turned to astronomy by the remarkable total solar eclipse of 1806, when the sun was hidden for no less than five minutes. The comet of 1811 was discovered inEurope, but with no knowledge of that discovery, Bond discovered it independently. He loved science for itself, and cultivated it with a private passion–he had been observing the great comet of 1811 for months before his observations came to the knowledge of Professor Farrar of Harvard and Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch ofBoston.
Farrar and Bowditch, who were planning an observatory for Harvard, gave Bond the mission of making examinations of the building atGreenwichwhen they learned that he was planning a trip abroad in 1815. In 1819 he married for his first wife his cousin Selina Cranch in Kingsbridge,Devonshire. They had six children: William Cranch Bond Jr., Joseph Cranch, George Phillips, Richard Fifield, Elizabeth Lidstone, Selina Cranch. After his wife’s death in 1831, William Cranch Bond married her elder sister Mary Roope Cranch, who left no children.
The first house that he owned was inDorchester. The only parlor was sacrificed to science and converted into an observatory. A huge granite block, some tons in weight, rose in the center of the room, and the ceiling was intersected by a meridian opening. There were stone blocks in the gardens and neighboring fields as well for the tupport of instruments, meridian marks,etc. Life was not easy, and he spent his evenings as a watchmaker to meet the current household expenses. In 1838 when he received an appointment from the United States Government to cooperate with the exploring expedition of Com. Charles Wilkes, although his equipment was amply sufficient, he added new buildings and a new suite of instruments. In a short time a new observatory was erected inDorchesterand was fully equipped for investigation of magnetic and meteorological elements.
Then in 1839 he reluctantly moved toCambridgeto take the position of Director of the Harvard College Observatory, which however afforded no salary until the year 1846. Until then life continued much the same with Bond having to earn his living with jobs outside astronomy. His sons helped out in the Observatory as they had in theDorchesterhome. William Cranch Bond, Jr., died an untimely death in 1841, and his father was deprived of an able assistant. George P. Bond helped his father and succeeded him as Director of the Observatory when Bond died in 1859.
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