Ormsby M. Mitchel - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Mitchel was born in Union County, Kentucky, but grew up in Lebanon, Ohio. He was educated in Lebanon, Ohio and afterward at West Point in 1825, where he was a classmate to Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston. He graduated in 1829, placing 5th out of 46 graduates. Mitchel stayed at West Point as assistant professor of mathematics for three years. After holding several military positions while studying law, he went to Cincinnati, passed the bar and became an attorney. He also filled the office of Chief Engineer of the Little Miami Railroad - then in process of construction. Subsequently in 1836, he became Assistant Professor of mathematics, philosophy, and Professor of astronomy at Cincinnati College, and during this incumbency achieved a national renown as an astronomical lecturer and builder of a great observatory (Cincinnati Observatory). He was instrumental in establishing the college's law school, and on his first vacation, surveyed and recommended the route of the planned Little Miami Railroad between Cincinnati and Springfield, Ohio.

Conceiving a desire to possess a fine telescope, he began by striving to awaken interest in the subject of astronomy through a series of lectures. The first was heard by 16 people; but the last was listened to by an enraptured audience of 2,000. Availing himself of the enthusiasm thus generated, he organized the Cincinnati Astronomical Society with 300 members at $25 each, and started for Europe to find his telescope. His search was long, but successful and, returning, he plunged into the struggle to secure a suitable observatory. In the person of the eccentric but immensely capable Nicholas Longworth he found a helpful coadjutor. Upon the land which was donated by Mr. Longworth (located on the summit of Mt. Adams). Professor Mitchell began the foundation of his building and John Quincy Adams, then more than 77 years of age, delivered an address at the laying of the cornerstone.

At this period of undertaking, the plucky little professor (he was small in stature and most delicately formed) has collected $3,000, and $6,500 necessary to complete his work. The times were hard and the subscriptions came in so slowly that he determined to collect them in person. Where money could not be procured, he took provisions or anything in the world that had negotiable value. This "potpourri" of valuables he marketed and turned into cash as best he could. Nor was this all that the indefatigable professor had to do. Many of his subscriptions being in work and materials no collectors would accept them as his assets and he undertook to make them available by buying all the materials, hiring all the men and superintending all the work, at which task he labored like a miniature titan. The ascent to the place of construction was steep. Therefore he built an kiln and burned the lime; he purchased a sand pit also and often shoveled its contents into the wagon with his own hands.

These herculean laborers, arduous as they were, constituted but the advocation of the busy man for, all the time, he carried on his classes, teaching five hours a day from eight until one. Each Saturday exhausted his funds and on Monday he had to begin collecting again. But, nothing daunted or discouraged the invincible enthusiast, he stuck resolutely to his task until it was done, and in March, 1845 he had the satisfaction of hoisting his telescope into place. At the time, it was the second-largest refracting telescope in the world. There was no salary attached to the office of astronomer in this new observatory and the consecrated star-gazer supported himself by civil engineering on the route of the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad (Ohio and Mississippi Railway) and by lecturing anywhere and everywhere. These lectures are among the most brilliant ever delivered in America.

For a time, Cincinnati lost his inspirational presence. In 1859, Mitchel accepted the position of astronomer of the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York (a position which he held until 1861), where he continued his pioneering work on the development of telegraphic determination of longitude. Although, he did not wholly relinquish a connection with the one he had built in Cincinnati.

Mitchel helped establish observatories for the United States Navy and at Harvard University.He also published the first monthly magazine in the United States devoted specifically to astronomy.

When the war broke out, the scholar - whose patriotism was a passion - turned soldier. He happened to be in New York when the news of the fall of Sumter came and, being asked to speak at a public meeting, poured out the deep emotions of his fervid soul in a passionate appeal whose eloquence produced an effect like that of the orations or Demosthenes, Cicero and Burke. Men and women wept aloud; the cheering drowned his words and the speech he made has been regarded as worthy to be placed alongside abolitionists Lincoln, Sumner, Phillips, and Beecher.

His previous record and this great address procured for Mitchell and high position in the US Army and his career as a soldier began. General Ormsby M. Mitchell died in 1862 in South Carolina, a victim of yellow fever, while a soldier in the American Civil War.