Thomas Bowles. The other partner was Nathaniel S. Griffith, a 

 watchmaker. It is possible that a tradition of instrument making 

 existed in the Bowles family even then.^^^ 



On file in the office of the City Clerk in Portsmouth are two 

 certificates of marriage made out by Thomas Salter Bowles. The 

 first is for his marriage to Hannah Ham, a ceremony performed on 

 September 21, 1809, by Joseph Walton, one of the pastors of a 

 church dissenting from the Puritan regime. Hannah was the 

 daughter of William Ham, a brother of Supply Ham (1788-1862), 

 a noted local clockmaker. Bowles may have served an apprentice- 

 ship in that shop before he married Hannah. Two other members 

 of the Ham family — George Ham and Henry H. Ham — worked as 

 watchmakers in Portsmouth in the same period. 



A search of the cemeteries has indicated that Hannah Ham 

 Bowles died in 1811, age 20. She is buried with her infant son in 

 North Cemetery.^-*' 



Thomas Bowles's second marriage certificate in Portsmouth is 

 for his marriage on September 29, 1813 — two years after Hannah's 

 death — to Abiah Emerly Bradley of Haverhill, Massachusetts. 



Little is known about the work of Bowles as an instrument maker 

 except through a few of his instruments. He is listed in the first 

 Portsmouth directory, of 1821, as a "mathematical instrument 

 maker" with a place of business on Daniel Street; his home was 

 given as Austin Street in Portsmouth. He did not appear in the 

 city's directories of 1827 and 1834. It is assumed that he may have 

 left Portsmouth in the interim, possibly to settle in his wife's home 

 town of Haverhill. 



Three instruments signed by Bowles have survived, and all show 

 signs of considerable wear. They are surveying compasses made 

 of walnut, having maple sighting bars and a silvered brass vernier 

 set under the glass. Two examples, one in the Streeter Collec- 

 tion of Weights and Measures at Yale University and one owned 

 by this writer are almost identical in size, form, and details. The 

 only variation is that the Yale example (fig. 67) has a bubble level 

 under a brass strip set into one end, an item lacking in the other 

 example (fig. 68). 



The compass card, made from a line engraving, is identical in 

 each of the three examples. A floriated fleur-de-lis on the North 



^^^ Charles W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth (Portsmouth, N. H.: 

 L. W. Brewster, 1859, 1873), ser. 1, pp. 165, 329. 



*^® Charles W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth (Portsmouth, N. H.: 

 L. W. Brewster, 1 869), ser. 2, pp. 27, 90, 93, 136, 233, 263, 277, 3 1 6, 322, 367. 



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