ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.] BIOGRAPHY. 159 



Money was needed for such a purpose and this they commenced to accumulate. Professional 

 advice and guidance were also needed and for this they naturally turned to Mitchell, soliciting 

 him to accept the directorship and determine the character of the institution that was to be. 

 Mitchell listened, sympathized, and apparently entered into engagements with them that later 

 he was loath to fulfill. Late in the year 1S52, through Sears C. Walker, he approached Gould, 

 proposing that the latter associate himself with the Albany enterprise as colleague and eventual 

 successor to himself. The proposal was declined but in such fashion that it was more than once 

 renewed, with increasing emphasis upon the suggestion that here was a great opportunity for 

 the upbuilding of science in America, an opportunity that apparently was on the verge of failure 

 for lack of a man able and willing to improve it. In the end, after months of discussion had 

 stretched out into years, Gould, yielding, consented to ally himself with the enterprise, but in 

 such fashion that he might retain his residence in Cambridge and his active duties with the 

 Coast Survey and the Astronomical Journal. Through a nebulous and ill-attested agreement 

 between the observatory trustees on the one hand and four prominent American men of science 

 on the other, viz, Joseph Henry, Benjamin Peirce, Alexander Dallas Bache, and B. A. Gould, jr., 

 these gentlemen undertook to act, without compensation, as a scientific council for the observa- 

 tory, with Gould as their executive officer. Bache, as head of the Coast Survey, adopted the 

 observatory as one of its stations, loaned instruments to it, and stationed at Albany officers 

 who, while discharging their regular survey duties and utilizing for that purpose the facilities 

 afforded by the observatory, were free to devote, and did in fact devote to it, much of their 

 spare time. Gould was among these officers and speeddy he became known as director of the 

 Dudley Observatory, devoting to it his time and efforts, and in its service, and partly at its 

 expense, going abroad to order suitable instruments for its equipment. 



Divergent views of the value and functions of an observatory, delay, and fruitless expense 

 in its equipment, some lack of harmony within its personnel, led in time to strained relations 

 between the trustees and director, and the widespread financial depression of 1857 furnished a 

 medium admirably suited to the growth of ill will. Efforts to improve the situation were not 

 lacking. Henry, Peirce, and Bache of the scientific council, standing firm in support of their 

 fellow member, explained to the trustees that an admittedly unfortunate situation was due to 

 untoward circumstances for which the director was in no way blameworthy. A strong body of 

 local sentiment, both within and without the board of trustees, stood firmly behind the director, 

 proffering support not only to his administration of the observatory but to his other activities 

 as well. He was urged to bring the Astronomical Journal to Albany and to take up his resi- 

 dence there in a house expressly provided for that purpose. Gould, accepting these proposals, 

 moved to Albany early in 1S58. The Journal had preceded him by about a year, under an 

 arrangement and guaranty for its continued publication announced by Bache at the dedication 

 of the Dudley Observatory. The guaranty proved to be worthless and events rapidly shaped 

 themselves for worse instead of better. Following a hostile newspaper campaign of some months' 

 duration, charges of incompetence, disloyalty, and sloth were made against the director by 

 certain trustees. These were vigorously repudiated by the scientific council, which brought to 

 the director's defense the chief if not the only technical competence available for judgment 

 of the matter. 



Inevitably Gould's relations with certain influential persons became greatly embittered and 

 only a few months after taking up Ms residence at Albany, the trustees, by a divided vote, 

 declared his relations with the observatory ended. A week later they also voted to dissolve 

 the scientific council. The council and the director, holding that they possessed vested rights 

 in the matter that no action of the trustees could impair, refused to yield possession of the observ- 

 atory and, in effect, Gould became a recluse in his own home, f earing to leave it by day lest in his 

 absence it should be seized by the enemy. The trustees appear to have resorted to legal process 

 for his ejectment and then, mistrusting the law's delay, to have taken the matter into their 

 own hands with recourse to violence. Gould's statement is that on " the 30 of January (1S59) 

 I was driven from my dwelling by a hired band of rioters, acting without form or pretense of 



