Lewis A. Swift was born on February 29, 1820 at Clarkson, Monroe County, New York. He was the sixth of the nine children of General Lewis and Anna (Forbes) Swift. He was descended from William Swift, who settled at Watertown, Massachussets, before 1634 and later moved to Sandwich, Massachussets.
Education
Lewis Swift attended Clarkson Academy for three years, walking two miles each day on crutches in order to do so. Swift was awarded the degree of Ph. D. from the University of Rochester.
Career
From 1838 to 1846 Lewis Swift helped to make horse rakes, an invention of his father's. He then became a lecturer on scientific subjects and in 1851 entered business at Hunt's Corners, Cortland County, New York. Becoming interested in astronomy, he began about 1855 a survey of the heavens with a somewhat damaged 3-inch lens purchased for five dollars, for which he made an eyepiece and mounting.
This lens being accidentally broken, about 1860 he purchased a 41/2-inch lens made by Henry Fitz. With this telescope, mounted on a platform attached to his barn in Marathon, New York, where he was then living, he discovered his first comet (1862 III).
In 1872 he entered the hardware business at Rochester, New York, and there, with his telescope stationed on the roof of a cider mill, he continued to search for comets. The necessity of removing optical parts when the telescope was not in use finally resulted in the breaking of the flint disk, which was replaced by one from Alvan Clark and his sons.
Between 1884 and 1893 he appears in Rochester directories as astronomer at the Warner Observatory, built and supported by H. H. Warner of Rochester, manufacturer of proprietary medicines. Upon the failure of Warner's business in 1893, the instrumental equipment was moved to the observatory built by the inventor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe on Echo Mountain, California.
Swift continued his work there until about 1901, when his failing health compelled his retirement to his earlier home at Marathon, New York, for the remainder of his life.
During the eclipse of 1878 he observed two objects at first thought to be intramercurial planets, about which a similar observation was made by James Craig Watson.
Though Swift continued to maintain his conviction of the reality of his discovery, the observation was never confirmed. Among his publications are "Appearance of the Great Comet of 1858" (Astronomical Journal, Nov. 2, 1858), "Entdeckung eines neuen Cometen" (Astronomische Nachrichten, Nov. 19, 1889), "The Merope Nebula" (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, January 1882), "Double Meteors, " (The Sidereal Messenger, August 1882), and "Observations on the Secondary Tail of the Pons-Brooks Comet" (Ibid. , February 1884).
Lewis Swift was a member of the British Astronomical Association, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Personality
Because of an accident in his thirteenth year that permanently lamed him and incapacitated him for farm work. In exposition Swift was clear and direct, and to those seeking his counsel he was kindly and helpful.
He lived a simple, frugal life and was capable of great physical endurance.
Connections
Lewis A. Swift was twice married, first to Lucretia Hannah Hunt on June 26, 1850, and second to Caroline Doane Topping on August 24, 1864. He had two children by his first marriage and three by his second, the youngest of whom, Edward D. T. Swift, discovered comet 1894 IV.