Moses Bond was born December 29, 1786 in Framingham, Mass. He attended school in Framingham and planned to go on to college, however when his sight began to fail at age twelve he was forced to give up hope for a college education. When he was fourteen, Bond was apprenticed to a hatter in Waltham, Massachusetts, but continued to study, particularly mathematics, his favorite subject. At the age of eighteen, with the help of Edward Preble, he convinced his father to buy the remainder of his time as an apprentice and to let him pursue a "sea faring life." Bond then traveled to Boston to learn navigation from the well know mathematician Osgood Carleton. In March of 1806, at the age of nineteen, he began his first sea voyage on the ship Levant, belonging Mr. E. Preble and under the command of William Sihbar.
Bond's first voyage lasted fourteen months, in which time the Levant sailed in the Mediterranean and to Calcutta carrying various cargoes. He finally returned to Massachusetts in April 1807 to find that his second oldest sister had married and died while he was away, and that his good friend William C. Fuller had also passed away. After only three weeks in Massachusetts, Bond joined the crew of the Adamant . He worked his way up to second mate and then, in 1808, to first mate.
On the Adamant, Bond sailed around Europe and Africa and for the first time, he encountered privateers. In the summer of 1808, the Adamant and the Ann of Alexandria were captured by Maltese Pirates. After suffering through "the most daring outrage practiced by th[ese] Barbarian[s]," the ships were seized and taken to Malta. Bond later returned to Framingham, Massachusetts, and married Harriet Loring. They had a daughter, but in 1814, Harriet died giving birth to a stillborn son.
From the guide to the Moses Bond journal, Bond, Moses journal, 1808-1814, 1808, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)
