Lewis Swift discovered NGC 19 = Sw. II-4 on 20 Sep 1885 with the 16" refractor at Warner Observatory. His description reads, "eeF; lE; in [the] center of 3 vF st forming an equilateral triangle, two of them double." There is no obvious candidate at Swift's position but 74 seconds of RA east and 8' north is UGC 98. Similar offsets in RA and Dec yield identities for NGC 21, 7831 and 7836, all discovered the same night (NGC 6 also shares the same offset in RA). Furthermore, his description of the surrounding stars matches this galaxy. Hermann Kobold suggested this identification when he measured its position in 1898 at Strasbourg with the 18-inch refractor. Heber Curtis found it again on a photograph taken with the Crossley reflector in 1912-13 and reported it as new ("not noted in the NGC).

NGC 19 is mislabeled as NGC 21 in RNGC, PGC and UGC (and software Megastar) and not assigned a NGC designation in MCG and CGCG. Finally, RNGC misclassifies NGC 19 as nonexistent because of the error in Swift's position. See Corwin's Notes.

400/500mm - 17.5" (10/17/87): faint, fairly small, slightly elongated SW-NE, diffuse. A mag 15 star is 1' SW. Located 9' S of mag 6.8 SAO 53694. This galaxy is misidentified as NGC 21 in RNGC and UGC and NGC 19 is listed as nonexistent in RNGC.

Notes by Steve Gottlieb