Life and work

Nathaniel Bowditch, the fourth of seven children, was born in Salem, Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Habakkuk Bowditch, a cooper who at one point was a sailor as well but stopped after his ship went aground in 1775, and Mary Ingersoll Bowditch. At the age of ten, he was made to leave school to work in his father's cooperage, before becoming indentured