USA > Connecticut > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 26
USA > Rhode Island > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 26
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In response to the calls for aid to those suffering from disaster or pestilence, he was ever foremost and successful in urging his fellow-citizens to respond, as witnessed by the contributions sent to the sufferers from fire in Chicago, Wisconsin,
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and Michigan; to those by flood from the Mill River disaster in Massachusetts, and to the sufferers from yellow fever in the South. The several sums thus contributed during his terms of office amounted to more than $100,000.
An earnest and active Whig in early life, occupying at one time the chairman- ship of its State Central Committee, he remained true to that honored political organization until its final dissolution, even leading its " forlorn hope" of revival in the nomination of Bell and Everett in 1860. He soon afterward allied himself with the Democratic party, taking at once a prominent and influential position in its ranks, and assisting to fight some of the sharpest and most stoutly contested political battles ever witnessed in the State.
He was married, October 5th, 1858, to Julia W. Coley, daughter of the late John H. and Matilda Beach Coley ; three children are the issue of this marriage : William Kirkland, born July 28th, 1860; Matilda Coley, born November Ist, 1861, and Josephine Miles, born March 10th, 1865-two of whom only survive, the oldest dying March 31st, 1864.
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ARSONS, USHER, M.D., of Providence, R. I. Born in Alfred, Maine, August 1 8th, 17SS. He was the youngest of nine children, of whom William and Abigail Frost (Blunt) Parsons were the parents. His father was a farmer, and a lineal descendant of Joseph Parsons, who arrived in this country from England in 1635, and settled first at Springfield, and afterward at Northampton, Mass. His eldest son, Joseph, was a prominent citizen and trader in the latter place, and his eldest son, Joseph (third), graduated at Harvard College in 1697. Joseph Parsons (fourth) was the eldest son of Joseph Parsons (third), graduated in 1720, and was minister at Bradford, Mass., from 1726 to his death in 1765. Hc was the father of six sons, of whom William, the fifth, was born at Bradford in 1743, and ultimately settled in Alfred, York County, Mainc, where he died, August 4th, 1826. William Parsons married Abigail Frost Blunt, daughter of Rev. John Blunt, of Newcastle, N. H. Mr. Blunt's wife was the daughter of the Hon. John Frost, and of his wife Mary, who was the sister of Sir William Pepperell.
The boyhood of Usher Parsons was spent in his native neighborhood, where he attended the village school in winter, and worked on his father's farm in summer. In May, ISoo, he was sent to Berwick Academy, which he attended for about a year. Afterward he was employed as clerk in retail stores at Portland and Wells, now Kennebunk. On May 6th, 1807, he began the study of medicine in the office of Dr. Abiel Hall, of Alfred. There he saw a little practice, studied the anatomy of the human framc, and read Cullen's First Lines, and the works of Darwin and Brown. His progress, however, was seriously retarded by the necessity of helping on the paternal farm, and of teaching school in Alfred and adjacent towns. In the autumn of 1809 he had already attended a course of anatomical lectures delivered in Fryeburg, Mainc, by an educated and enthusiastic Scotch physician-Dr. Alexander Ramsay. Inspired by the lecturer, young Parsons determined to obtain the degrec of A.M. and M.D., and to become a teacher of anatomy. Latin and Greek were diligently studied, but the prospect of obtaining a collegiate education outside the walls of college secmed too distant to allow him to carry out all his ambitious plans. Hle therefore resolved to resume his medical studies, and afterward to complete the clas- sical as time and opportunity afforded. In July, 1811, he went to Boston, boarded with his brother-in-law, General Samuel Leighton, then representative in the General Court from Elliot, at the " Market Tavern," and put himself under the instructions of the eminent surgeon, Dr. John Warren, brother of General Warren, who fell on Bunker Hill, and father of Dr. John Collins Warren. His attainments were sufficiently ample by the 7th of February, 1812, to warrant the censors of the Massachusetts Medical Society in approving and licensing him as " a practitioner in medicine."
War with England was impending, and offered opportunities of professional
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service to young medical men. His first attempts to obtain a commission were discouragingly unsuccessful, but at length he obtained one, as surgeon's mate in the navy, by the friendly aid of Dr. Josiah Bartlett, member of Congress from New Hampshire. It was dated July 6th, 1812. An order from the Navy Department to report for duty on board the corvette John Adams, at New York, followed soon after. In September, in common with the officers and most of the men on board that vessel, he volunteered, to enter an expedition under Commodore Isaac Chauncey. The exact nature of the service required was unknown to most of them, although it was conjectured to be frontier duty on the great lakes. The troops set out from Brooklyn Navy Yard in sloops for Albany on the 24th of September, reached that city on the 29th, and travelled thence to Buffalo in wagons, and on foot, arriving at their destination on the 17th of October. Through the following winter and spring, 1812-13, he was in charge of the hospital at Black Rock, near Buffalo, and was called upon to contend with an epidemic pleuro-pneumonia, in addition to the general list of wounds and diseases. The failure of an attempt to storm a British battery on the Canada side of the Niagara River added much to his surgical labors, as the wounded were put under his care. In May, 1813, the American operations were more successful, and issued in the capture of the entire Niagara frontier. On the 28th of that month Dr. Parsons and about twenty others crossed the river, received the surrender of Fort Erie, and were treated with great hospitality by the remaining inmates.
In August, 1813, he sailed with Commodore Perry's little squadron from Black Rock to Sandusky, and anchored in the islands of Put-in-Bay. Himself, the other two surgeons, the Commodore, more than half the officers, and many of the men, were ill of bilious remittent fever. "More than one hundred lay sick without any medical aid." Dr. Parsons himself " never was so much cmaciated." In this sadly weakened condition they were obliged to face the somewhat superior force of the enemy. In the severe battle that followed, on Friday, September 10th, the flagship Lawrence received a most destructive fire from the British squadron, and by 2:30 P.M., "when not another gun could be worked, or fired, . . Captain Perry
hauled down the fighting flag, which bore this motto, Don't give up the ship, repaired on board the Niagara, and there raised it again. In ten minutes after," wrote Dr. Parsons in his private diary at the time, "we struck to the enemy. Captain Perry made all sail with the Niagara, which hitherto had kept out of the action, and in fifteen minutes passed in among the British squadron, having the Detroit, Queen Charlotte, and Lady Prevost on the starboard side, and the Hunter on the larboard side, and silenced them all, and ten minutes before three they hauled down their colors. Two small vessels attempted to escape, but, being overhauled, struck a few
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minutes after three." Eighty, out of a hundred and fifty men, composing the Lawrence's erew, were killed and wounded. Dr. Parsons had some narrow escapes during the action. Five cannon-balls passed through the room in which he was attending to the wounded, and two of the patients whose wounds he had dressed were killed before the close of the action. As Drs. Horseley and Barton, the other surgeons, were disabled, the entire care of the sick and wounded devolved upon him. After the engagement, these, together with many of the British prisoners, were conducted to Erie and placed in a hospital, of which Dr. Parsons remained in charged for nine months. In common with the other commissioned officers of the fleet, he received the silver medal voted by Congress, and also his share of prize-money, which he used to pay off his educational debts. Commodore Perry also became his warm friend, and the foundation of future professional eminenec was broadly and deeply laid.
For about a month in 1814, Dr. Parsons served as surgeon of the Seventeenth Pennsylvania Militia, then on duty at Erie; on the 15th of April he was promoted to the rank of surgeon, and in June took part in the unsuccessful attack on Fort Makinae; in December he accepted the position of surgeon in the new frigate Java, under Perry, with whom he served till the close of 1816. On the 4th of February, in the Straits of Gibraltar, he suffered the fracture of the right knee-pan, while in discharge of professional duty. He visited Gibraltar, Malaga, Port Mahon, on the Island of Minorea, Algiers, Tunis, and the ruins of Carthage, Tripoli, Messina, Palermo, and Naples. While at the latter place he repeatedly examined the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. In January, 1817, the Java returned to the United States, bearing a new treaty with Algiers, and on the 3d of March reached Newport. From that place Dr. Parsons went to Providence, carrying with him letters of introduction from his gallant commodore, and contemplating eivil praetiee in that city. In November, he attended leetures at the medical school in Boston, and in March, 1818, received the degree of Doctor of Medieine from Harvard University. In the same year he published a "Surgical Account of the Naval Battle on Lake Eric," in the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery ; and also joined the Massachusetts Medical Soeicty.
In July, 1818, he sailed from Boston as surgeon of the frigate Guerriere, Cap- tain Thomas Macdonough, to St. Petersburg; from thence to different ports on the Mediterranean, where he greatly enlarged the sum of his astronomical and medical knowledge. On July 15th, 1819, at Gibraltar, he received permission from Commo- dore Charles Stewart "to return to America, or make a trial of the air of the north of Europe," on account of ill-health. Leaving Gibraltar on the 20th, he visited Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, and Florence successively, and took great delight in the
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anatomical preparations in wax that he examined in the latter city. From Florence he went to Rome, and inspected the hospitals, with other objects of intercst, in the ancient capital of the Cæsars. On the 29th of September he arrived in Paris, and spent some months therc, attending the lectures of Dupuytren, Larrey, and others on surgery, and of Gay Lussac, and other professors, on chemistry. Ile also made the acquaintance of Cuvier. Many medical books and instruments were added to his stores in Paris, and among them Laennec's treatise on auscultation, with a stetho- scope of the original pattern, now a curiosity of medical history, and certified to have been "examined and used by Laennec." With Professor Richard Owen, the eminent British comparative anatomist, he also formed an intimate friendship. From Paris he repaired to London, in December, became acquainted with Sir Astlcy Cooper, Abernethy, and other distinguished surgeons and savans, and made plans for the formation of a museum of comparative anatomy. On the 28th he sailed from Liverpool, reached Boston early in 1820, and in May of that ycar was ordered to service at the marine barracks in Charlestown.
Dr. Parsons accepted the chair of anatomy and surgery in Darmouth College in August, 1820, contributed to the creation of a museum of human and compara- tive anatomy, and lectured there for about twelve months. He also published the Sailor's Physician, a medical guide for use on merchant vessels, which was extensively sold, and, under the changed title of Physician for Ships, passed through five con- secutive cditions, revised and improved-the last of them bcing issued in 1867. In December, 1820, he visited the medical schools of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and heard lectures from the principal professors, in connection with them -still intending to prepare himself for anatomical teaching. In April, 1822, Dr. Parsons settled in Providence, and for a while was partner in medical practice with Dr. Levi Wheaton. On the 23d of September he married Mary Jackson, daughter of Rev. Abiel Holmcs, D.D., of Cambridge, Mass., and author of the Annals of America. Mrs. Parsons died Junc 14th, 1825, leaving an only son. In April, 1823, Dr. Parsons resigned his commission in the navy. In 1822 he was appointed Professor of; Anatomy and Surgery in Brown University, and in 1826 published an introductory lecture on anatomy and physiology, as branches of general cducation. His connection with Brown was necessarily severed by President Wayland's wise policy of obliging all the professors to devote themselves exclusively to collegiate duties. In 1831 he published a volume on the Art of Making Anatomical Prepa- rations.
Dr. Parsons, writes his biographer, Charles W. Parsons, " rosc gradually to a very prominent rank in his profession. Besides his varied opportunities, which brought him to the beginning of civil practice with more than usual experience and resources
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he had many qualities of body and mind that fitted him for medical life. His early training in naval serviee, and the predominanee of the reflective powers fitted him rather for the office of consulting physician, and for eases of exceptional diffi- culty, than for the ordinary run of daily medical practice. . . . As consulting physician and surgeon, he was very widely known in Rhode Island, and neighboring parts of other States. . His naval experience had turned his attention partie- ularly to surgery. In European hospitals, he appears to have observed surgical cases almost exclusively. As an operator, he was more marked by eaution than dexterity, and was particularly methodical in the preparation and arrangement of instruments and dressings. In the American Journal of Medical Science, 1848, he published a summary of large surgical. operations. He reports fifteen cases of herniotomy, with eleven recoveries." In operative surgery he was unusually successful. While in active practice, he gave instruction to more than fifty private pupils in medieine, and also had private disseeting elasses in winter.
In 1843 he visited Europe for the third time, bought several valuable instru- ments and anatomieal preparations in Paris, where his son was at school, and received many polite attentions from eminent surgeons and scientists in London. He joined the Rhode Island Medieal Society in 1823, and in 1837 was cleeted president for three years. He wrote the biographies of many of its deceased members, and contributed many valuable papers to its transactions. When the American Medical Association was formed, in 1847, Dr. Parsons was present as a delegate, and took an active part in its proceedings. He was well known, through his writings, to many of the members, and attended its meetings in Baltimore, Boston, Cineinnati, Charleston, Richmond, New York, St. Louis, and Philadelphia sueeess- ively. In 1853 he was eleeted first viec-president, and in 1854, at St. Louis, discharged the duties of the absent president, at the early part of the meeting. He was also an honorary member of the medical societies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and South Carolina.
Dr. Parsons was an industrious writer on professional subjeets. Four of the Boylston prizes were awarded to him, viz .: "For dissertations on Periostitis, 1827; on Encuresis Irritata, 1828; on 'the connection between cutaneous diseases which are not contagious, and the internal organs,' 1830; and on Cancer of the Breast, 1835." Different medical journals were frequently enriched by contributions from his pen. In 1831 he was appointed Professor of Obstetrics in Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and lectured there in the following winter. In the establish- ment of the Rhode Island Hospital, of which he had long been an eloquent and effective advocate, he bore a leading part ; contributed one thousand dollars to its funds, three hundred volumes to its library, and left one hundred dollars to it in
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his will. " He was at first appointed at the head of its consulting staff." His active mind investigated the claims of all sciences cognate with that to which his life was given. The general principles of phrenology commanded his concurrence, even while he opposed the extravagant claims of the so-called science. In 1837 he was chosen the first president of the Rhode Island Natural History Society, whose charter he had obtained. Temperance was effectively advocated by him in several places, and education received his aid . in the delivery of addresses on physiology. In 1840 he lectured before the American Institute of Instruction at Providence, on the connection and reciprocal influence of the brain and stomach. Poetry, history, and works of travel specially interested him. In purely imaginative literature he had little interest. Of the Bible he had ideas peculiar to a very small class of readers, and believed that "the Christian religion would gain by excluding some of the books." " As a rule of life," he wrote, " and a history of God's government and the plan of salvation, an abridged volume might be formed for general circulation, which would embrace all that is essential." The religious liberalism of his grand- father, the minister at Bradford, was expanded in him. Brought up in the faith of the Puritans, he nevertheless identified himself with the communion of the Protestant Episcopal Church, attended the ministry of the gospel in churches of different denominations, and was remarkably regular throughout his busiest years of practice in public religious worship.
In politics, Dr. Parsons seldom took an active part. IIe voted with the Whigs, gave his sympathies to Thomas W. Dorr in his endeavors for enlarged suffrage in Rhode Island, but rallied to the support of the existing government when those endeavors assumed a revolutionary character. At the outbreak of the great rebellion, in 1861, he volunteered his services to Governor Sprague, and was commissioned as surgeon of the Providence Horse Guards in June. The varying fortunes of the terrible struggle were watched with keenest interest to the close. In 1868 he cast his last vote for Grant and Colfax. As a genealogist he was indefatigable. In 1838 he printed an outline of the Gencalogy of the Family of Joseph Parsons, and in 1849 a somewhat elaborate memoir of Major Charles Frost, his great-great-grand- father. His most important literary undertaking was the Life of Sir William Pepperell, the captor of the French fortified town of Louisburg in 1745, and the only native of New England who was created a baronet during our colonial period. Ile also left in manuscript a history of his native town of Alfred, and for many years interested himself in studying the remains, language, and customs of the aborigines in Rhode Island. His written works on that subject are of permanent valuc.
By his letters, addresses, and pamphlets on the naval engagement in Lake Eric,
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Dr. Parsons vindicated the fair fame of Commodore Perry, and his claims to the credit of victory in that famous encounter. "He was a corresponding member of the historical societies of Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, and Wis- consin ; the American Antiquarian Society ; the Academy of Natural Sciences, etc. Ile was an active member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and was its first vice-president for Rhode Island, from September, 1864, till his death. He joined the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1S25, and was a useful member of it, making many contributions to its collections, and reading several papers at its meet- ings." In 1858 he read a historical address at the anniversary of Perry's victory at Put-in-Bay, and on September 10th, 1860, was the historical speaker at the dedication of that hero's monument in the city of Cleveland, Ohio.
For several years before his death, Dr. Parsons was almost wholly withdrawn from active practice. His noble powers of body and mind failed gradually, and on the morning of December 19th, 1868, he died, at the age of eighty years and four months. The Hon. Samuel G. Arnold, president of the Rhode Island Historical Society, closed his necrological notice of Dr. Parsons in the following year-June Ist, 1869-with the appropriate words: "Loved in life and honored in death, his memory will be revered by all who value those high qualities of manhood which were united in his character."
HEW, ABRAM MARVIN, M.D., Superintendent of the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane, Middletown, Conn. Born September 18th, 1841, in Leroy, Jefferson County, N. Y., being the youngest of a family of cleven children. His father, Godfrey J. Shew, was born in Johnstown, Montgomery, now Fulton County, N. Y., October 8th, 1789, and died at Watertown, N. Y., October 5th, 1863. Ile was one of the most active and influential farmers in Jefferson County, N. Y., and contributed largely to the development of that part of the State. Genial, industrious, frugal, and a devoted member of the Presbyterian Church, he was always held in the highest esteem by his neighbors and friends, who repeatedly manifested their confidence in his probity and talents by calling him to occupy local positions of trust and responsibility.
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Godfrey J. was the eldest son of Jacob Shew, who was born in Johnstown, N. Y., April 15th, 1763, and died at Albany, N. Y., January 23d, 1853, at the advanced age of nearly ninety years. Able, aetive, and laborious, he sustained several important publie trusts-and among them that of Representative to the New York Legislature in 1818-with eredit and sueeess. His experiences in the Revolutionary War were singularly thrilling and eventful. On the 3d of June, 1778, together with his father, two brothers, and twelve other compatriots, he was carried eaptive into Canada. After his liberation he rendered efficient service in the struggle for national independence. His exertions were mainly confined to the Mohawk Valley, in which he discharged the exciting and perilous duties of a Ranger.
Jacob was the son of Godfrey- Shew, a German nobleman, who arrived in America during the year 1750. While on the way his vessel was nearly ship- wreeked in a violent gale, which lasted for several days. All the passengers were employed in working the pumps, both by day and night, to save the ship from foundering. Godfrey Shew and his two German companions vowed that if spared to reach the land, they would not again venture upon the ocean. Shew after- ward became the first permanent settler at the Fish House, Fulton County, N. Y.
The mother of Dr. A. M. Shew, nee Betsey Beecher, was the second daughter of Abram and Lydia Day Beeeher, of Kent, Conn. She was born in Northampton, Fulton County, N. Y., April Ist, 1798; and was married to Godfrey J. Shew at the same place, September 24th, 1815. She died at Middletown, Conn., May 12th, 1876. Her grandfather, Abram Beeeher, was born in Woodbridge, Conn., April 28th, 1768, and died in Sharon, Conn., June 10th, 1812.
Dr. Shew, when eleven years of age, removed with his parents to Watertown, N. Y. There he received his academie education, at the Jefferson County Insti- tute, under the tuition of the Rev. John Sessions, and Professor M. P. Cavert. His intention to matriculate at Union College, Seheneetady, was overruled by the commencement of the great rebellion in 1861. Opportunities for extensive usefulness in the patriot armies soon presented themselves, and that in the line of his chosen profession. IIe had already spent one year in preparatory studies, under the direction of Dr. James K. Bates, of Watertown, and decided at onee to forego classical culture and to enter upon immediate collegiate preparation for medieal duty. This he did at Jefferson Medieal College, Philadelphia, where- throughout his entire course of instruction-he was enrolled among the pupils of Professor W. H. Paneoast. He also received great encouragement and aid from the late Professor Robley Dunglison.
In 1862 Dr. Bates, who was then Inspector of Prisons, offered to Dr. Shew
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the office of assistant physician at the New York Asylum for Insane Convicts, at Auburn. The acceptance of this post, which he held for twelve months, was the turning-point of his professional career, and gave that special cast to his studies and medical pursuits which has made him eminent among the benefactors of the race. On the expiration of his services at Auburn, he returned to Philadelphia, prosecuted his studies with diligence, and graduated with honor. Insanity was the subject of his thesis at the epoch of graduation.
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