-13, and of the army during the campaign of 1813 on St. Lawrence river. He was brevetted brigadier-general, 19 Feb., 1814, for meritorious services, and was superintendent of the U. S. mili- tary academy from November, 1816, till January, 1817, but re- signed in November, 1818, with other offi- cers, on the appoint- ment of the French general, Simon Ber- nard, to the charge of investigating and modifying the coast defences. He was U. S. surveyor of the port of New York in 1818-27, then a civil engineer in the U. S. service, and superin- tendent of harbor im- provements on the lakes in 1829-'45. In
the winter of 1830-1
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he constructed the railway from New Orleans to Lake Pontchartrain over an almost impassable swamp, in 1839 he was chief engineer of the Harlem railroad in New York, and in 1841 he was appointed by President Harrison on an embassy of peace to the govern- ors of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. In 1851-'2, with his son. McRae, he made the tour of Europe, and recorded his observations in a diary, in which is also a complete history of West Point academy. He contributed valuable articles to the scientific journals. See Charles B. Stuart's " Lives and Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America" (New York, 1871). — His brother, William Henry, engineer, b. in Taunton, Mass., 6 Nov., 1800; d. in New York city, 7 April, 1879, was graduated at the U. S. military academy in 1819. He had previously been ordered, as a cadet, in 1818, to join Maj. Stephen H. Long's Rocky mountain expedition, with which he served till 1821. He was employed in the early surveys for the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, and for various railroads, and in constructing a map of post-offices and post-roads, and in 1832 became brevet captain and assistant topographical engineer. For the next, ten years he- was employed on the geodetic survey of the Atlan- tic coast, being in charge of river and harbor im- provements in New England in 1837-'42. and resi- dent and constructing engineer of the Massachu- setts Western railroad (now part of the Boston and Albanv) in 1836-'40, and becoming full captain in 1838. From 1844 till 1849 he was assistant to the chief of topographical engineers, and' during this period, with Gov. John Davis, of Massachusetts, he made an examination of the Illinois and Michigan canal, of whose board of trustees he was president from 1845 till 1871, and which he assisted to com- plete. In 1847-'9 he was engaged in designing and constructing the first Minot's ledge light-house, which was swept away in a gale in April, 1851. This was the first iron-pile light-house in the United States. In 1849 Capt. Swift resigned from the army, and he was afterward successively president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore, the Massachusetts Western, and the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroads. During his last fifteen years he resided in New York city. — Another brother, John, became brigadier-general of New York militia, and was killed, 12 July, 1814, after cutting off a picket of the enemy near Fort George, Canada.
SWIFT, Lewis, astronomer, b. in Clarkson,
N. Y, 29 Feb., 1820. He was educated at Clarkson
academy, where he completed his course in 1838,
and then turned his attention to farm work. His
father died in 1846, and, thrown upon his own re-
sources, he studied magnetism and electricity, and
for four years lectured on these subjects in Cana-
da and the western states. He returned to farm-
ing in 1850, but soon began again to lecture on the
wonders of the microscopic world, which he illus-
trated by means of a calcium light. All of his ap-
paratus was constructed by himself and parts of it
were of his own invention/ In 1854 he established
a hardware-store in Cortland county, N. Y., which
in 1872 he moved to Rochester, where he has since
resided. Meanwhile, he became interested in as-
tronomy, and, building his own telescope, he began
to make observations. His first work was in 1858,
on Donati's comet, and his first astronomical paper
was on this subject. For years he eagerly scanned
the heavens for new comets, and in 1862 the great
comet of that year was discovered by him. In
1869 he observed at Mattoon, 111., a total solar
eclipse, and, making particular study of the pro-
tuberances and corona, secured some valuable re-
sults. Two years later he found another comet,
but it had been seen earlier in Europe. Three
times since he has caught brief glimpses of comets
that no other observer has ever seen. After his
removal to Rochester he discovered comets in
1877-'9, for which he thrice received the comet
prize, a gold medal valued at sixty dollars, from
the Imperial academy of sciences in Vienna. Hul-
bert H. Warner of Rochester, knowing under what
disadvantages Dr. Swift was laboring in pursuing
his astronomical studies, offered to build for his
use an observatory, provided the people of the city
would raise a sum sufficient to get him a refractor
of sixteen-inch aperture. Nearly $12,000 were
contributed, and the telescope is doing service in
the great dome of the
observatory, which, to-
gether with the at-
tached residence for
the family of the di-
rector, cost, exclusive
of the instrument,
nearly $100,000. In
1880 Dr. Swift found
a comet with a period
of five and a half
years, and in 1881 he
discovered two others.
For the former he re-
ceived a special prize
of $500 from Mr. War-
ner, which is the larg-
est sum ever awarded
for the discovery of
any heavenly body,
and for the latter in
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1882 he received the Lalande prize of 540 francs from the French academy of sciences. Besides the foregoing, he independently discovered Winnecke's comet in 1871, Coggia's in 1874, and the Brooks- Swift comet in 1883, there being in the latter case a difference of fifteen minutes in favor of William R. Brooks. In 1878 he observed the total eclipse of the sun at Denver, Col., and he saw at that time what he thinks were two intra-mercurial planets. His report of this discovery excited great interest and much controversy on both continents. Since he assumed in 1882 'the directorship of the War- ner observatory, he has found about 700 new nebula?, which entitles him to third place as dis-
