Andrew Talcott
| Andrew Talcott | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
April 27, 1797 Glastonbury, Connecticut |
| Died | April 22, 1883 (aged 85) Richmond, Virginia |
| Occupation | Civil Engineer |
Andrew Talcott (1797–1883) was an American civil engineer and close friend of Civil War General Robert E. Lee. He did not serve during the Civil War, as he could not fight against the Union, nor fight against his brothers in the South. He traveled to Veracruz to work on the Railroad. Coming back with the President to New York for supplies he was arrested and placed at Fort Layfayette accused of being a spy for the Confederate States of America. He was moved to Fort Adams in Boston under orders of General John E Wool. General John A Dix was placed in the command of the Eastern Military Department. Knowing Captain Andrew well and believing his loyalty to the Union he was released.
Talcott was born on April 20, 1797 in Glastonbury, Connecticut. He attended West Point, 1818, graduating second in class. In the Engineers, he was garrisoned at Fort Atkinson and explored the passage to Fort Snelling in 1820. His brother was General George Talcott, Chief of the Ordnance Corps,. His granddaughter Lucia Beverly Talcott (born 1865) married the famous statistician and inventor Herman Hollerith in 1890. He is a descendant of Joseph Talcott, Colony of Connecticut Governor from 1724-1741, and John Talcott, one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut.
Talcott's career was as a military and civil engineer building forts, roads and railroads both in the States and Mexico. He started the 1824 construction of Fort Adams, at Rhode Island. In 1833 he extended a previously invented method of finding latitudinal direction. He rediscovered the method to determine a place's latitude from the stars, a method originally invented by the Danish astronomer Peder Horrebow. On further developing Horrebow's method, it subsequently came to be known as the Horrebow-Talcott Method. The so-called Horrebow-Talcott method fixed latitude "by observing differences of zenith distances of stars culminating within a short time of each other, and at nearly the same altitude, on opposite sides of the zenith."
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