In 1845 Mary Merrow died, and four years later Moses Tuttle remarried and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Charles Wesley Tuttle was an amateur astronomer who constructed his own telescope, and on a visit to the Harvard Observatory so impressed William Cranch Bond that by 1850 he was hired as an assistant observer.
Charles was soon replaced at Harvard by his younger brother Horace, who joined Truman Henry Safford, Sidney Coolidge, and Asaph Hall as observatory assistants.
He dabbled in applications of the new Morse Code, and invented a method of signaling long distances by "light flashes".
He is credited with inventing a new method for the insertion of rifled steel cores into brass or iron cannon.
With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Horace Tuttle enlisted in the 44th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and served at New Bern, North Carolina.
He continued to make astronomical observations during the war, reporting on the 1864 appearance of Comet Tempel 1864 II from the deck of the Catskill.
After the war Tuttle was sent to South America, Europe, and the Pacific, making scientific observations on Naval survey vessels.
In 1871 Tuttle served under Commodore George Dewey as astronomer on the survey of the coast of lower California.
As Captain of the US Revenue Cutter Bear, Francis Tuttle was ordered to the rescue of 14 ships of whalers trapped in ice off Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1897.
He spent the next five years on border surveys of Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, for the General Land Office.