USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 28
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BLAKEFORD, May 15, 1813.
Dear Sir :- I received your handbill and congratulate you and your friends on the clear, and to me, entirely satisfactory statement of your conduct when in the hands of the enemy, in the character of a prisoner: and I feel it due to you and myself as well as to the eternal and im- mutable principles of justice, to assure you I was not one of those who were ready to give a verdict in your case before I heard the evidence nor was I disposed to believe that a patriot today could be a patricide to-morrow. But, sir, console yourself with the well-known truth, that however conspicuous you are in the Republican ranks, by so much the more ready the enemies of your country will be to destroy your fair
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fame with the envenomed shafts of slander. It has been the lot of your predecessors, in all ages, and your contemporaries in the field of patriot- ism. * [signed]
Robert Wright.
Mr. Gibson was exonerated by the public authorities and indeed by everyone, but those biased by party prejudices, from all blame in the matter, though his enemies were only too glad to use the circumstances to annoy or injure him in public esteem. Of the curious sequel to this story, his giving some cannon to the people of St. Michaels, and their being used to repel the British at the time of their attack on that town in August 1813, an account is given in the article referred to, bearing the title "Jacob Gibson's Prank," and therefore need not be repeated.
Mr. Gibson after the close of the war of 1812-15 ceased to take that active part in practical politics which had been his pleasure through life. He cannot be said to have lost interest, but his interest was that of a spectator of the game, rather than that of a participant. He was like the gladiator, who victorious in many fights had withdrawn from the lists, and was now gazing from the seats of the amphitheatre upon the combatants below him, but with an almost irrepressible longing to leap again into the arena and join in the fray. The war had been a school to him. It had liberalized his mind; it had changed his esti- mates of men. It had possibly caused him to misdoubt himself. He had found the Federalists whom he had loved to hate were not the politi- cal renegades he had fondly believed them to be; and had learned that they might differ from him and yet be patriotic. With the decline of the Federal party, and its loss of power to offer successful resistance to Democratic principles, came to him the indisposition to contend, and contention was his political life. Age too began, as it does with all healthy minds, to soften the asperities of his disposition, and temper his judgments of men. With age came bodily infirmities. Those towering passions of his which were the sign and the result of a strong vitality, began to react upon a body so rugged and sturdy as to appear proof against the ordinary ills of the flesh. His health began to fail some years before his death. But his high spirit, which was never subdued, made its customary vigorous fight against his last enemy as it always had done against all his other enemies. But stricken with immedicable disease he succumbed, and being beaten he threw up his hands to death, January 7th, in the year 1818. His body lies at Marengo, where he was born and where he had lived. His grave is marked by no memorial stone, but tradition had perpetuated and is likely to perpetuate for a
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long time to some the memory of this strong-minded, stout hearted, large bodied man.
If this narrative of the principal events in the life of Jacob Gibson has failed to make a clear impression upon the mind of the reader of this eccentric but notable man, certainly the object of this memoir has not been attained, and probably any further attempt to delineate that character would be useless. No man that ever lived in this county, of whom there is any record or memory, possessed such prominent and well marked traits. No man ever took so little care to disguise them by any affectation or conceal them by any artifice. He was really what he seemed to be. There was no necessity for looking beneath the sur- face-no need of a refined analysis, to understand him. His outward conduct was the mirror which reflected the inner man, and in this was seen without distortion or flattery his mental form and features: in this was seen his unfaltering self-reliance, his intense egotism, his singular independence of thought and action, his intrepidity, moral and physical, his fortitude in difficulties, his perseverance against obstacles, his imperious will that overbore all opposition, his oppugnancy and con- tentiousness, which caused him to love controversy and strife, carried even so far as personal collision, his entire naturalness which no educa- tion had, and no association could subdue to conventionalities, his bluntness, at times amounting to ferocity of manners, his extreme plain- ness to which may be added his occasional boisterousness of speech, his subservience to his prejudices, his submission to his masterful passions, and lastly, and above all his vigorous intellectual qualities, the most noticeable of which was his robust common sense.7 These certainly do not combine to form a beautiful and amiable character : only a rare and a strong one. Not one to be imitated, but one to arrest attention. Perhaps too little has been said of his gentler traits, for strange as it may appear, such traits he had. There remains to this day, written and traditional testimony of his disinterested kind- ness to his neighbors; of the laborious pains he would take to oblige his friends, or acquaintances. He was not implacable in his anger, but was always ready for a reconciliation with and kind offers to an enemy who would make concessions. If to the strong he was often
7 His contemporaries, his political enemies as well as friends, had a high esti- mate of his abilities, whatever they may have thought of his moral qualities- Mr. Nicholas Hammond, a man of singularly well balanced judgment of men and things, when asked his opinion of Mr. Gibson, said: "He has a very rude but a very strong mind."
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a terror, to the feeble he was always a support. If to the arrogant he was imperious, to the humble he was compassionate. If with the rich he was exacting, to the poor he was charitable, not with the ostentatious charity of his gift of corn, but in many "little unremembered acts of kindness," the public took no note of, and scarcely he himself.
Mr. Gibson was twice married, first to a Miss Caulk of Delaware, and secondly to a Miss Reynolds of Calvert county. By each of these children were born to him, of whom these survived the father: Frances, the child of the first wife, who married Dr. Tilton of Delaware; Dr. Edward Reynolds Gibson, a man of fine cultivation, but of an unprac- tical turn of mind-a dreamer and a doctrinaire, who removed to Florida, but subsequently became an editor of the Telegraph at Wash- ington;8 Annie, wife of Joseph W. Reynolds of Delaware; Harriet, who was the wife of Thomas P. Bennett, of Talbot county; Mary, who was the wife of Dr. James Tilton, after the death of her sister Frances; and Mr. Fayette Gibson who inherited the homestead at Marengo, and what is more, many of the traits of character that distinguished his no- table father. From many of these children families have sprung, mem- bers of which have arisen to distinction by that vigor of intellect which may be easily traced to such a sturdy ancestry as derives from Jacob Gibson, the first, or Jacob Gibson the last of the name in Talbot.8
8 A curious story is told of this worthy and intelligent gentleman, which is worth repeating. He was left executor of his father's will, but a settlement with the heirs was procrastinated so long that their patience became exhausted. Dr. James Tilton, his brother-in-law, came down from Delaware for the purpose of securing a settlement. In no humor for trifling he went to Marengo to find Mr. Gibson, out in the harvest field to be sure, yet not with his hands superintending the work, but sitting under the shade of a tree surrounded by his books. When he saw Dr. Tilton approaching he rose hastily and ran to him as though he would cordially welcome him. Instead, however, of his employing the usual terms of salutation or greeting, he exclaimed with animation: "Doctor, Doctor, I have just devised a plan by which the British may pay off their national debt without adding a single penny to their taxation." The Doctor replied in terms more forc- ible than proper: "Damn your plans for paying the debt of England. You had better be devising a plan to pay off some of your father's debts, and the shares of your brothers and sisters in his estate, or you will be made to do so."
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DR. ENNALLS MARTIN
DR. ENNALLS MARTIN
1758-1834
Scire potestates herbarum usumque medendi Maluit, et mutas agitare inglorius artes.
-VIRGIL.
At all times the destroyers of men, and not their preservers have borne off the higher honors and the greater rewards. Those who hurt, and not those who heal have received the most praise and pay. There were Machaon who, as Homer tells us, sucked the clotted blood from the wound of Menelaus,
-" and sovereign balm infused Which Chiron gave and Æsculapius used;"
and aged Iapis, who, as Virgil says, of all the proffered gifts of Apollo preferred to know the powers and uses of healing medicines, and who, by his unostentatious skill restored Œneas to the ranks of battle. What insignificant personages are these in song and story compared with those great leaders whom they cured? And yet the poets tell us they were brave as well as wise. It is in the power of all to call over a long cata- logue of the heroes of the battlefields of our Revolution; but how many of the names of those other heroes of the hospitals can be mentioned, who not less devoted, not less self-sacrificing, not less patriotic, without glory plied their silent art for the alleviation of suffering or the saving of life. Warren won his title to fame by dying at Bunker Hill a soldier, not a physician. Rush is remembered as the signer of the Declaration of Independence, not as the surgeon-general of the Army of Independence. Shippen is known, if known at all beyond his profession, as the founder of a great school, not as the Director General and organizer of the medi- cal department of the incipient government; and if posterity shall hear of Craik, it will be of him as the attendant upon Washington upon his deathbed at Mount Vernon, and not as the surgeon-in-chief to the same great man at the head of his army at Yorktown. Talbot has had her hero of this class, who served his country during her times of trial, in that line of honorable duty to which he had been called, with the same small meed of praise. Of him is it now proposed to present a brief memoir, that, perchance, by it, the name of DR. ENNALLS MARTIN may be res- cued from entire oblivion.
The very respectable family to which this gentleman belonged, and which besides himself, has given several other distinguished men to
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the State, has been seated in Talbot county from the very earliest days of its settlement. Of three brothers who emigrated from Hertfordshire, England, about the middle of the seventeenth century, two settled in Maryland and one in Virginia. The founder of the family in Talbot was Thomas Martin, who was the grandfather of Dr. Ennalls Martin. He came into possession of the land, by patent or purchase, now known as "Hampden," in Island Creek Neck, and this long remained the seat of the family. Upon this estate was born August 23rd, 1758, the sub- ject of this memoir, his father being Thomas Martin, the second of the name and lineage, and his mother a Miss Ennalls, of Dorchester county. The very retired neighborhood, and indeed the county itself of his birth affording at that time few advantages for higher education, he was at a very early age sent to the Academy at Newark, a school then acquiring excellent reputation, and afterwards organized as a college. Here he is said to have shown those studious habits that continued with him through life, and to have distinguished himself by his facility in the ac- quisition of the Latin and Greek languages in which he became proficient. After completing the usual course of studies in this Academy, he was in 1777 removed to Philadelphia, to enter upon his professional studies, it having been resolved by his parents to train him up as a physician. The Revolutionary war was then in progress. Young Martin shared in the patriotic order which inspired so many of the young men of the time. Dr. William Shippen, to whose instruction in the art and science of medi- cine, he had been consigned by his parents, was in this year, by appoint- ment of General Washington, made Director-General of the medical department of the army. There was pressing need in that department for assistant surgeons and medical cadets: Dr. Shippen was ready to perceive how he might turn to profitable account to the colonies the enthusiasm for liberty, and the eagerness for professional knowledge displayed by his pupil; so Martin was placed in that division of the military service which had charge of the preparation and dispensing of medicines. This was in accordance with the medical curriculum of the times, when a course of practical pharmacy was the necessary initiation into the higher departments of the profession. But a privilege was grant- ed to Medical Cadet Martin, to attend lectures during the season of winter, when his services were not in such demand as during the active campaigns of the army. He proved himself to be a skillful apothecary, as well as an apt scholar. Upon the recommendation of his preceptor he was during the year duly commissioned, by Congress, Hospital Sur- geon's Mate, and his commission dated from June 1st, 1777. He was
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assigned to the Hospital at Bethlehem, Pa., then the principal hospital for the main army, having Dr. William Currie for an associated sur- geon's mate, a gentleman who subsequently became well known to the profession for his contributions to medical literature. His duties did not call Martin into the field to follow the army, and his medical studies were not interrupted. Indeed, he could hardly have been placed in more favorable circumstances for prosecuting those studies, for he was permitted during the winter to attend lectures in the Medical School at Philadelphia, which had but recently (1765) been established, and to which Doctors Shippen and Rush were giving, as professors, its first distinction. At the same time the army hospital gave him oppor- tunity for the observation of disease at the bedside, for witnessing the great surgical performances of the operating table, and for watching the results of medical treatment.1
Assistant Surgeon Martin remained at Bethlehem during the greater part of the war, virtually indeed, until its close, not resigning until 1782, sometime after the surrender of Yorktown in 1781. His services there- fore extended over a period of about five years, and during that time it is said of him, that he was never absent from his post, except when at- tending lectures, but twice, once to visit his parents in Maryland, and once to repair to Saratoga, in obedience to orders, for the purpose of superintending the removal to the hospital at Bethlehem, of the sick and wounded of the armies, after the defeat of Burgoyne, by General Gates, in October, 1777. For his faithful and persevering performance of duty at Bethlehem, like other of the officers of the Revolution, he was very inadequately paid by Congress. There was compensation however in the valuable instruction which he received, and many years later, his native state of Maryland, in recognition of his patriotic devotion and his useful services, and also in consideration of the depreciation of his pay from Congress, voted him the sum of 475£, 30s, 9d,2 an act of liber- ality and justice which did not meet the entire approbation of that portion of his fellow citizens with whom he was not in political accord, and which subjected those gentlemen who sustained it in the General
1 At this date (1777) Dr. Walter Jones was Physician General of the Hospi- tals, and Dr. Benjamin Rush was Surgeon General of the Hospitals of the Middle Department, while Dr. John Cochran was Physician and Surgeon General of the army of the same department .- LOSSING's FIELD BOOK, Vol. 11, p. 33.
2 In the act, this amount was given for services from June 1, 1777, to February 16, 1780. Why no compensation was given for the remainder of his term, which did not end until 1782, is not clear.
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Assembly to the censures of the economists of the day. Dr. Martin, throughout his life, was accustomed to speak of the time spent at Beth- lehem as the most pleasant and profitable part of his career, having had ample opportunities for the study of his profession, agreeable work, pleasant society, and, what his brother officers in the field could not always obtain, excellent fare, derived from the wild game which abounded in the neighborhood.
While attending to his duties as hospital surgeon he had been able to attend two full courses of medical lectures at the Philadelphia School. The skill which he displayed as a dissector persuaded Dr. Shippen, the professor of anatomy, to appoint him demonstrator to the class; and he had applied himself with such zeal and ability that he was occasionally permitted, in the absence of the professor, to lecture in his stead. He was accustomed when speaking of this portion of his life, to refer to the difficulties of procuring subjects for anatomical dis- section, as a great impediment to the pursuit of this department of medical science. The indignation of the people against the professors and students for their efforts to obtain the necessary material, was not founded wholly upon a regard for the dead, but upon superstitions, of which there are remains to this day. The degree of Bachelor of Medi- cine had been conferred upon him, and when about to leave the medical school to which he had rendered his services quite equivalent to the hon- ors conferred, Dr. Shippen, his preceptor, offered him many inducements to remain in the city of Philadelphia and to continue his connection with the institution. It was proposed to him that he should accept the chair of adjunct professor of Anatomy; but this was declined, as he was persuaded that a general practice in his native county would prove more remunerative than the emoluments of such a position, even though coupled with such rewards as might be derived from the exercise of his profession in a large city. That he committed an error of judg- ment, he in after years was ready to confess, and this he attempted, in- effectually, as will be seen in the sequel, to remedy. It is venturing little to say that upon a wider field than that in which he exercised his un- doubted abilities, he would not have remained the obscure country physician, but would have acquired eminence in his profession for both learning and skill. It was the intention of Dr. Martin, after receiving his first degree to apply the next year for the final degree of Doctor of Medicine. This purpose he never carried out, but many years later the University of Maryland, conferring this honor upon him, unsolicited, received honor in return, by this generous act.
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In "the memorable year of 1783," as he calls the year of the acknowl- edgment by Great Britain of the independence of the United States, Dr. Martin took up his residence in Easton, Talbot county, Mary- land, and entered actively upon the practice of his profession in all its branches. He had brought with him a reputation for learn- ing acquired in the best school and under the best instructors of the country; and for skill in the observation and treatment of disease and injury obtained by long attendance in the army hospital. To these advantages he added the influence of a large family connection of the first respectability. His success was assured from the beginning, and this success but increased his diligence, attention and devotion to both the science and the art of medicine. While he continued to be a stu- dent of the best literature of his profession, he was a yet more diligent student of nature in her abnormal operations. The young physician must almost necessarily rely for guidance upon the teaching of others, but as the materials for independent opinion and conduct accumulate, the ability to free himself from the shackles of mere authority, and routine, and to adopt a course of thought or action that is marked out by his own reason or the indications of his own observation, belongs only to those of superior order of mind. When that course has been proven by the tests of time, such independence and perspicacity are the marks of the highest order of professional intelligence. These marks were exhibited by Dr. Martin. At a time when the dicta of Dr. Rush were almost as supreme in this country, as were the aphorisms of Hippocrates, of old, he presumed to call them in question. In particular he dared to doubt the propriety of applying the precepts of the sanguinary code of this great teacher to the treatment of certain inflammatory affections and forms of fever. Although he was of the independent character of mind, he was not one who found justification for his disregard of authority in his own impulses. It was not from a mere spirit of differing that he differed. Few men showed greater willingness to learn from others; but again few men showed a greater reluctance to obey directions, that were not accompanied by reasons for obedience. He was self-reliant, but did not disdain assistance.
His methods of treatment were, in general of the heroic character. They were decisive, not expectant. His remedies were drastic, his doses were formidable, and their results were unequivocal and palpable. Even his manner towards his patients was rough-almost brutal. He had a thorough conviction of the efficacy of medicine in the cure of disease when properly administered. He prescribed with that decision which
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was born of this conviction, and of his own competency. None of those doubts that harass the sceptical, or that paralyze the timid practitioner affected him in his therapeutics. He fully believed in his art and in himself; and he would permit no one who employed him to express or show any doubt of the value of either. His strong will and self-assertion impressed almost everyone with a conviction of his ability: and if there was any reluctance upon the part of the sick to use the remedies he prescribed, he overcame that reluctance by a resort to physical compulsion. He has been known to seize a hesitating or unwilling patient around the neck, and while holding his nose with one hand pour his hideous draughts down his throat, when he opened his mouth to gasp for breath. Such conduct as this, and the like, instead of injuriously affecting his practice, was taken to be only an eccentricity if not really an evidence, of superior genius. No physician but one who thought he had reason to think his services indispensable could have dared to do much that tradition relates of Dr. Martin, whose rough manners and fearful dosing are yet remembered almost with trembling by the older members of this community.8
The practice of Dr. Martin, when at its height extended over the whole of this county, and into those adjoining. His services in consulta- tion were thought to be of especial value. He may have owed a part of his reputation among the people as a consulting physician to the fact that he was as little regardful of professional as of social etiquette, and without much regard to the feelings, or the interest of his brethren.
3 The following anecdote will illustrate his bluntness of manner. It is believed to be thoroughly authentic: Mr. Tilghman, of "Hope," a wealthy and promi- nent citizen of the county, was thought to be extremely ill. Doctors Tristram Thomas and Dr. Ennalls Martin were attending in consultation upon his case. On a certain day, Dr. Thomas was the first to arrive at the house of Mr. T., and was met at the door by Mrs. T., who stating that her husband was easily disturbed by the slightest noise, requested that he would draw off his heavy riding boots and put on slippers, which were provided for him. Dr. Thomas, who was one of politest men of his day, and the gentlest of physicians, assented with the utmost complaisance, and having substituted the slippers for his boots glided noiselessly into the sick chamber. Soon after Dr. Martin arrived, of whom a similar request was made by Mrs. T. He looked at her intently, as though he did not under- stand her meaning, saying, "What did you say, Madam?" She repeated the re- quest. Then with the utmost abruptness he said, "Poo, Poo! Madam, you must be a fool!" and without taking further notice of her, he went stamping up stairs into the sick man's presence, apparently making more noise than usual with his heaviest of heavy boots. It does not appear that this conduct received any severe reprobation.
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