I. Amasa Holcomb 

 1787-1875 



A>nasa Holcomb was born in 1787 , the year John 

 Fitch demonstrated his steamboat before the Consti- 

 tutional Convention assembled at Philadelphia, and 

 three years before the death of Benjamin Franklin. 

 Two of Holcomb' s telescopes remained in the attic of 

 the family home in Southwick, M.assachusetts, until 

 1933, tvhen they ivere offered by his descendants to the 

 Smithsonian Institution} With them came a manu- 

 script book of meteorological and astronomical notes, 

 and the folloiving short sketch of the life of Holcomb, 

 unsigned but almost certainly autobiographical. It 

 appears to have been tvritten ivhen the subject ivas 

 about SO years old Q867^. 



THE SUBJECT of this notice was born June 18, 1787. 

 The place was Simsbury Connecticut previous to 

 1768. That year Simsbury was divided and his 

 birth place fell in Granby Con. that being the name 

 of the new town. It remained so until 1804 when 

 the line between Connecticut and Massachusetts 

 was moved further south and his birth place fell in 

 Southwick Massachusetts. The house was about a 

 quarter of a mile north of the new state line, and on 

 a road about half a mile west of the main road from 

 Westfield to Simsbury and Hartford. Here his 

 father and mother lived and died, having lived in 

 three different towns and two different states without 

 changing the place of their residence. Here Amasa 

 was born and past his early youth. His grand father 

 and grand mother on his fathers side lived and died 

 in a house about thirty rods further south, on the 

 same road. His grand fathers name was Elijah, 

 and was a son of Nathaniel Holcomb 3d, and married 

 Violet Cornish of Simsbury Con. daughter of Capt. 



James Cornish. His fathers name was Elijah Hol- 

 comb Junr. He was a farmer and cooper. In the 

 latter part of his life his father became involved in 

 debt, and mortgaged the farm. His son Amasa 

 paid the debt and the father Elijah Holcomb Junr 

 occupied the farm until he died Oct 5th 1841. The 

 grandfather on the mothers side was Silas Holcomb 

 a son of Judah Holcomb 1st and grandson of Na- 

 thanial Holcomb 2d[.] He lived in the northwest 

 part of Granby, near Hartland line, where he owned 

 a large farm and beautiful home. He kept a park 

 for deer and cultivated fruit, and made raisins. He 

 married Mary Post of Hebron Connecticut, and in 

 this beautiful place they lived and died. There 

 Lucy Holcomb the mother of Amasa was born in 

 1767. During her short life, she was one of the 

 excellent ones of the earth, and labored for the 

 welfare of her children by instruction and example, 

 until she died August 31 1800. In a very hot day 

 in 1797, she attempted to get some cattle out a field 

 of wheat. The men were at work in a distant field, 

 too far off to Icnow about it. She became heated, 

 and never recovered, though she lived three years. 

 During the last year of her life she became so re- 

 duced, that for a long while she could not speak a 

 loud word, but she could and did whisper some 

 good advice to her children. Her son Amasa never 

 forgot it, and he always remembered his mother 

 with affection and gratitude. She had two sisters 

 but no brother. The house where she was born is 

 still standing, but has passed out of the family. The 

 house where his father and mother [lived and died] ^ 

 spent their married life, and where he was born, 

 has been taken down, and a new house built on the 

 same place by his brother Newton Holcomb who 

 now owns the old home stead. Here Amasa spent 

 his early youth and school days. There was not a 

 schoolhouse in the district where he lived, until he 

 was past having any use for a common school. The 

 schools were kept in dwelling houses, one part was 

 occupied by the family, and the other part by the 

 school. In these schools were taught, reading, 

 spelling, writing and the first rules of arithmetic. In 

 some of them a little english grammer was taught. 

 Climena Holcomb, Lois Gains, Bethuel Barber, 

 Samuel Frasier, and James L. Adair, in the order 

 in which they are named, were his teachers. At the 

 age of fifteen he was asked to take a school in Suffield 

 Connecticut. He was inspected and passed and 



1 For a list of these, see appendix, p. 184. 2 Words crossed out in manuscript. See figure 1. 



160 BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



