As soon as possible the widow, Julia Ann Wells Fitz, sold the city house and bought a farm in Peconic, Long Island, near her birthplace, where she managed to raise her family. All the children showed marked ability. Louise, the only daughter, married Silas Overton of Peconic, and used her talents in home and community. The second son, Benjamin, became a noted painter before his early death in 1890. Robert’s reputation as a fine mechanic was county-wide. Charles was a prominent business and civic leader in Suffolk County. George became a physician and inventor and was for a time Professor at Harvard. All married, and there are now living in the United States about fifty descendants of Henry Fitz, telescope maker.
A number of his instruments, though made a century ago, are still in use.
III. John Peate, 1820-1903
F. W. Preston and William J. McGrath, Jr.
Although John Peate was born when Holcomb was only 33, and before that pioneer telescope-maker had produced his first instrument, he lived well into the time when American telescope-making had come of age. Before Peate’s death George Ellery Hale had begun his career as a promoter of large telescopes; indeed, the Yerkes 40-inch refractor was completed a year prior to Peate’s delivery of his own magnum opus, a 62-inch reflector, to The American University. For 34 years the University sought funds to finance the installation of this mirror, until it finally became obsolete as a result of advances in the technology of glass mirror making.
In 1934 it was sent by the American University to the Smithsonian Institution. About this time Dr. F. W. Preston undertook the difficult task of reconstructing Peate’s career and particularly the story of the great mirror. His results were published in the Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society in 1936.
With the gracious permission of Dr. Preston and the Bulletin, this article has been condensed, and augmented, for publication here by William J. McGrath, Jr., of the United States National Museum staff.
John Peate, bricklayer, Methodist minister, and amateur extraordinary in the art of telescope making, was the first born of Thomas and Mary Peate.[14] He was born on May 6, 1820, in the small northern Irish town of Drumskelt. When John was seven, his father, a mason, emigrated to Quebec, Canada, the first of several moves to cities in Canada and the United States, terminating in 1836 in Buffalo, New York, where the father was to spend the last seven years of his life.[15]