USA > New Hampshire > Colony, province, state, 1623-1888: history of New Hampshire > Part 36
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Dr. Josiah Bartlett, of Kingston, was elected president of the State in 1790, succeeding John Sullivan. Dr. Bartlett was very distinguished in the early annals of the State. He was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts,in November, 1727, studied medicine,
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settled in Kingston, and soon acquired a large practice by his skill in surgery, and in the study of the human frame. He was early noted for uprightness and decision of character.
Governor John Wentworth gave him the command of a regiment of mili.ia.
In 1765 Dr Bartlett was first elected a representative from Kingston to the legislature, where he soon became distinguished, as a leader of the opposi- tion.
In February, 1775, Dr. Bartlett received a letter notifying him that his name had been erased from the commission of the peace for the county of Rockingham, and that he had been dismissed from his' colonelcy in the militia. Other patriots were treated in the same way.
In the summer of 1775 Dr. Bartlett was chosen a delegate to the Conti- nental Congress, and he set out for Philadelphia in the following September.
When Congress decided to take a vote on the subject of independence, they begun with the northernmost colony, New Hampshire. Dr. Bartlett's name was called first, and he voted in the affirmative. The other members were then appealed to in rotation until they came to Georgia, the southernmost colony. The president of Congress, John Hancock, was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence. Josiah Bartlett was the second who did so.
In 17So he was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas.
In 1782 he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court, and he held that position until 1788, when he was made chief justice of the Supreme Court.
It does not appear that he had any special legal training for the bench, but few of the judges had in those days. But he had many of the requisites that generally go far towards the making of a sound justice, viz., honesty, good sense, and a large knowledge of books and men. In the somewhat un- settled state of the colonies, judges were not so much called upon to resolve fine points of law as they are at the present time.
Dr. Bartlett was elected president of the State in 1790, and also in 1791.
When the new constitution went into effect, in 1792, the title was changed to that of governor. Dr. Bartlett was elected governor in 1792 and in 1793, thus being the first governor of the State.
In 1792 Governor Bartlett was one of the electors of president and vice- president.
In 1794 he retired from the gubernatorial chair. He was also elected to the United States Senate, but could not accept because of poor health. He was a staunch Federalist in politics, an active member in, and president of, the New Hampshire Medical Society.
He was a man of fine figure, being six feet in height, and of erect bearing. His face was thoughtful and expressive, and he had handsome blue eyes. He wore his auburn hair in a queue, and had a white stock at his throat, and ruffles on his wrists. He wore knee breeches, black silk stockings, and low shoes with silver buckles, the prevailing style for gentlemen at that time. He was affable, but dignified, in manner. In religion he was a Universalist.
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In Kingston, at a little distance back from the large and well-kept green, on higher ground, stands the imposing, old-fashioned house built by Josiah Bartlett. White oak was the material chiefly used in its construction. On the other side of the common stands the village tavern. Just beyond the old hostelry lies that part of the hamlet which slowly but surely encroaches upon the busy portion.
In one corner rest the remains of Josiah Bartlett, who died of paralysis May 19, 1795, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. A simple monument of cut granite marks the spot, a fitting covering for one of New Hampshire's most honored sons.1
Josiah Bartlett commenced the study of medicine with Dr. Ordway when only sixteen years of age. But prior to this he obtained a rudimentary knowledge of Latin and Greek. He soon exhausted Dr. Ordway's meager library, and subsequently other libraries in that section, among which was Rev. Dr. Webster's of Salisbury. After five years of study, Dr. Bartlett settled in Kingston in 1750, and commenced the practice of his profession.
That fine discretionary judgment which ever characterized his public life was early manifested in his methods of practice as a physician. He was a close and careful observer. Early in his professional career he discovered errors in the then accepted pathology and treatment of disease. Believing that his own life was saved in a severe fever by a quart of cider, which he persuaded his watchers to get in the night, against the explicit orders of his physician that drinks should not be administered, he ever after discontinued the barbarous practice which allowed patients burning with a fever to die of thirst.
That terrible scourge now known as diphtheria appeared in this country for the first time at Kingston, with fearful fatality. The orthodox method of treatment for the disease was by bleeding, emetics, depressing drugs and starvation -under the belief that the malady was inflammatory in its charac- ter. Dr. Bartlett again saw error in this conception of the pathology of the disease, and with a boldness that always followed his convictions, inaugurated a method of treatment diametrically opposite to the one endorsed by the pro- fession. He resorted to tonics and antiseptics, with a sustaining diet, and met with a degree of success that had not before characterized the treatment of the " throat distemper."
These incidents in his professional life almost constitute marking stones in the progress of medicine in this country. Indeed, Belknap and other historians have made a record of fis marked success in the treatment of the malignant " throat distemper.",
The mantle of distinction was first placed upon him while a tireless and conscientious worker in the ranks of the medical profession. The history of his unparalleled career indicates that he possessed a fixity of purpose -that of fidelity to present duty -in whatever capacity in life the course of events placed him. This quality was first manifested in the laborious routine of medical practice ; and its appreciation by the loyal citizens of the Province,
I Rev. Daniel Rollins.
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coupled with his recognized ability, led him step by step into nearly every official position within their gift.
Prior to 1791 no medieal society or organization .existed in the State. During that year Dr. Bartlett, then president of New Hampshire, with eigh- teen associated, all physicians of eminence and ability, obtained a charter for the New Hampshire Medical Society. The document shows the handiwork of his master mind and his recognition of the importance of education to the physician. In proof of this reads the second preamble, which occurs near the middle of the enacting sections of the charter : -
" And whereas it is clearly of importance that a just discrimination should be made between such as are duly educated and properly qualified for the duties of their profession, and those who may ignorantly and wickedly admin- ister medicine whereby the health and lives of many valuable individuals may be endangered, or perhaps lost to the community. Be it therefore fur- ther enacted," etc.
This admirable charter was signed by " Josiah Bartlett, president," on February 16, 1791. By its provision he was to call the first meeting of the society, which he did on the 4th day of May following, at Exeter. The manu- script records of that meeting say : " Present - His Excellency Josiah Bart- lett, Esq., Joshua Brackett, Ifall Jackson, Nathaniel Peabody, John Rogers, Ebenezer Rockwood, William Cogswell, William Parker, jr., Benjamin Page, and Isaac Thom, members." One will recognize these names as men of eminence in the earlier history of New Hampshire, whom Josiah Bartlett chose and received as associates in the profession.
Dr. Bartlett was elected president of the New Hampshire Medical Society at its first meeting, and held the office for two years and then declined a re- election. The society passed resolutions thanking him for his inestimable services, to which he replied with the following letter : -
" Gentlemen of the New Hampshire Medical Society :-
"The unexpected resolve of thanks presented me by your committee, for the small services I have been able to afford the Medical Society, I consider as an instance of the polite attention and regard they mean to pay to such persons as may in any manner endeavor to promote the public happiness.
" I have long wished that the practice of medicine in the State (upon which the lives and healths of our fellow citizens depend) might be put under better regulations than it has been in times past, and have reason to hope that the incorporation of the New Hampshire Medical Society (if properly attended to by the fellows) will produce effects greatly beneficial to the community by encouraging genius and learning in the medical sciences and discouraging ignorant and bold pretenders from practising an art of which they have no knowledge.
"That the members of the society may be useful to themselves and the public, and enjoy the exalted pleasure of satisfaction that arises from a conscious- ness that they have contributed to the health and happiness, not only of their patients, but, by communicating to others the knowledge and cure of disease,
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to the general happiness of the human race, is the ardent wish. Gentlemen, of your very humble servant, "JOSIAH BARTLETT.
" Concord, N. H., June 19th, 1793."
This letter was his last communication to the New Hampshire Medical Society. He founded it, drew its charter, shaped its by-laws and regulations, and saw it properly organized upon a basis that guaranteed its perpetuity, before his lamp went out.1
At the June session of the legislature, 1790, William Plumer objected to John S. Sherburne's taking his seat as a member, on the ground that he was a pensioner of the United States, and held the office of district attorney under the general govern- ment. During the discussion Sherburne shed tears, which so influenced the members that he was allowed to retain his seat. He had been a preacher and had become a lawyer, and had lost his leg while in the army. He was a man of talents, gentle- manly in his manners and insinuating in his address. He was afterwards elected to Congress, and held for many years the office of district judge. The State constitution, established three years later, settled the question thus raised by excluding from both branches all persons holding any office under the United States.1
The attempt to impeach Judge Woodbury Langdon occu- pied considerable of the time of this and the next legis- lature. After many delays the impeachment was finally dropped, the judge having resigned his seat on the bench and accepted an office under the United States. Many believed that the impeachment proceedings arose from private pique and personal interest. Jeremiah Smith, a rising young lawyer, this being his third term, conducted the impeachment for the House.
The legislature, which prided itself very little on its patronage of literature, appropriated £50 towards the expenses of Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap's " History of New Hampshire."
The attempt to lay a direct State tax warmly recommended by the treasurer was defeated after a severe struggle by a single vote. The argument used against the motion was that the trea- surer used the funds of the State for his private emolument ; while the friends of the measure claimed that the public had no concern in the matter, except to see that his bondsmen were good.
I Dr. I. A. Watson.
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His course on this measure alienated William Plumer from the leading Exeter politicians, while agreeing with them in general politics, and made him ultimately a centre of anti-Exeter influence.1
Exeter was for many years the political capital of the State. John Taylor Gilman, Nicholas Gilman, Nathaniel Gilman, Oli- ver Peabody, Samuel Tenney, Benjamin Abbott, George Sulli- van, Benjamin Conner, who though less known was a great party manager, and, later, Jeremiah Smith, possessed an aggregate of talents and information, and a weight of character and influence, which could be cqualled in no other part of the State.1
So little was the general interest felt in politics at this time that only one in seventeen of the inhabitants of the State took the trouble to vote.
2 The land which now comprises the town of Bartlett was granted by Governor Wentworth to several persons, among whom were William Stark and Vera Royce, for services rendered in Canada during the French and Indian war. Captain Stark divided his share into lots, giving large tracts to persons who would settle them. Two brothers by the name of Emery, and a Harriman, were the first permanent settlers. Settlements had been begun during this time in most of the locations in the vicinity of the mountains. In 1777, but a few years succeeding the Emerys, Daniel Fox, Paul Jilly, and Samuel Willey, from Lee, made a settlement in what is known as Upper Bartlett, north of those already located. They commenced their settlement with mis- fortune as well as hardship. Their horses, dissatisfied with the grazing along the Saco, started for their former home in Lee.
Hon. John Pendexter removed to the town from Portsmouth at an early period of its history, settling in the southern part near the Conway line. Here he resided the remainder of his life, dying at the advanced age of eighty-three years. He and his wife came a distance of eighty miles in midwinter, she riding upon an old, feeble horse, with a feather-bed under her, and an infant child in her arms, he by her side, hauling their household furniture upon a hand-sled. Nor was it a well-prepared home to
I William Plume , Jr.
2 E. A. Philbrick.
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which they came, -a warm house and well-cultivated lands, - but a forest and a rude log cabin.
The town was incorporated in June, 1790, and named in honor of Governor Bartlett.
GIANT STAIRS, BARTLETT.
1 Cardigan lifts its silvery head thirty-one hundred feet above the sea level. At its base stood the dwelling-house and farm- buildings of Colonel Elisha Payne. He was born in 1731, and reared in the State of Connecticut, and probably graduated at $ Governor Walter Harriman.
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Yale College. The township of Cardigan was granted in February, 1769. The grantees were Elisha Payne, Isaac Fellows, and ninety-nine others. The first settlements in the township were made in 1773, by Payne, Silas Harris, Benjamin Shaw, David Eames, and Captain Joseph Kenney. Payne at this time was forty-two years of age. The town was incorporated by the name of Orange, in June, 1790. Payne went back into the dense wil- derness, far beyond the reach of any human habitation, and se- lected a swell of good, strong land for his farm, near the base of the mountain.
Payne was a trustee of Dartmouth College from 1784 to 1801, and was its treasurer in 1779 and 1780. His connection with the college explains the fact, that when the small-pox broke out at Dartmouth, subsequent to 1780, the afflicted students were carried to this remote and lonely mountain-seat for treatment. Payne had removed to East Lebanon, and settled on the shore of Mascoma Lake, before this occurrence. Several of the stu- dents died and were buried, but no stone marks the place of their peaceful rest. The Payne house, from this time forward, was called the Pest House, and was used as such, at a later day, 'by the authorities of Orange.
Payne had a son, Elisha Payne, jr., who graduated at Dart- mouth, and. who was a man of character and ability. He was the first lawyer to open an office in Lebanon. This office was at East Lebanon, which was then the chief village in that town. He served in both branches of the legislature of this State, but died at the early age of about forty-five.
Elisha Payne, senior, was a man of strong mind and great decision of character. He was the leader, on the east side of the Connecticut river, in the scheme to dismember New Hamp- shire and annex a tract, some twenty miles in width, to Vermont. In July, 1778, he was chosen, under the statutes of Vermont, a justice of the peace for the town of Cardigan, in a local town- meeting held that day. He was a member of the "Cornish Convention " of 1778, and of the "Charlestown Convention " in 1781. He was representative from Cardigan in the Vermont legislature, under the first union, in 1778, and was representative
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from Lebanon, under the second union, in April, 1781. In Oc- tober of the same year he was chosen lieutenant-governor of Vermont, by the legislature of that State, then in session at Charlestown, New Hampshire. In this legislature, fifty-seven towns west of the Connecticut and forty-five towns on the New Hampshire side of that river were represented.
When the bitter and prolonged strife between the two juris- dictions, New Hampshire and Vermont, was nearing the crisis, and Bingham and Gandy of Chesterfield had been arrested by Vermont officials for resisting the authority of that State, and thrown into jail at Charlestown, and Colonel Enoch Hale, the sheriff of Cheshire county, had proceeded under orders from the president and Council of New Hampshire to release them, and had been seized and summarily committed to the same jail, and the militia of New Hampshire had been put on a war footing to rescue Hale and the other prisoners at Charlestown, Governor Chittenden of Vermont commissioned Elisha Payne of Leba- non, the lieutenant-governor, as brigadier-general, and appointed him to take command of the militia of that State, to call to his aid Generals Fletcher and Olcott, and such of the field officers on the east side of the Green Mountains as he thought proper, and to be prepared to oppose force to force. But bloodshed was happily averted. The Continental Congress took hostile ground against the scheme to dismember New Hampshire, and General Washington put his foot upon it. In this dilemma the authori- ties of Vermont, for the sake of self-preservation, relinquished their claim to any part of New Hampshire, and in February, 1782, the second union between the disaffected towns on the west side of this State and Vermont came to an end.
In addition to the offices already named, Payne held that of chief justice of the Supreme Court of his cherished State, Ver- mont, a State then stretching from the head-waters of the Pemi- gewasset to Lake Champlain.
After a life of adventure, of strange vicissitude, of startling success and crushing defeat, Elisha Payne quietly fell asleep in East Lebanon, at the age of seventy-six years. He was buried in the unpretending cemetery near his place of residence in that
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village. His wife, a number of his children, and other members of the family, in all seven persons, were inurned in the same cemetery lot ; but about a quarter of a century ago, in the late fall, there came a fearful storm, and the gentle brook whose course lies along the border of this receptacle for the dead sud- denly became a rushing torrent, and, breaking from its channel, swept in among the quiet sleepers and carried away most that remained of the Payne family. Winter closed in, but the next spring such bones as had not found a lodgment at the bottom of Mascoma Lake, as it is usually called, were gathered up, all put into one box and redeposited in the earth in another part of the cemetery, whereon has been erected, by family relatives, a substantial and appropriate monument. And so ends the story of a life of stern conflict and romantic incident.
The winter session of 1791 was devoted chiefly to a revision of the statutes, with a view to a new edition of the laws. Among the bills introduced was one for the punishment of blasphemy. The committee reported the old law, in substance, but Mr. Welman, who had been a preacher, moved as an amendment that any person " convicted of speaking disrespectfully of any part of the Bible should have his tongue bored through with a. hot iron." Sherburne seconded this motion in a vehement speech, declaring that he should be better pleased with death as the pen- alty for so atrocious an offence. As Sherburne was thought to be an unbeliever, and was free in his remarks on Scripture and his ridicule of the clergy, his address was thought an effort to bring out Plumer on the unpopular side. Fearing the amend- ment would pass Mr. Plumer did speak against it in his eloquent and impressive style, and did succeed in defeating it, though not by a large majority. "Whipping, branding and other mutilations of the body were punishments then inflicted by the penal codes of most of the States, and the zeal of a Christian community saw nothing revolting in their application to the support of religious truth. " 1
It was during the preceding session that Mr. Plumer, who was a popular leader in the House, introduced a bill to tax State notes,
I Wil'iam Plumer, Jr.
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a measure combated by the Exeter party, who were largely inter- ested.
" Your influence, " said one of them to him, "may carry the bill through an ignorant House, as you can carry anything else there, but it will be rejected by the Senate. " " We shall see," was the quiet reply. The bill passed the House and was sent to the Senate, but was lost. It passed the House a second time, was enacted by the Senate, and became a law. A member of the House, not from Exeter, afterwards boasted that he had pocketed the first bill.
At the November session of the legislature at Portsmouth the most important business was the incorporation of a bank. The Bank of the United States had recently been established, and there were only three State banks in the country, - one in Boston, one in New York, and one in Philadelphia.
At this time the legislature was in the practice of frequently interfering with the business of the courts, by granting new trials and prescribing special rules for the trial of a particular action. A ludicrous instance of the exercise of this sovereign power occurred in the western part of the State, in a case involving the ownership of two pigs. The legislature passed an Act to set aside the finding of the court, but the justice, an old soldier of the Revolution, convinced by the arguments of Jeremiah Mason that the legislature had no right to interfere with his ruling, would not grant a new trial ; and the pig action gained extensive notoriety and tended to bring such special Acts of the legisla- ture into ridicule and deserved contempt.1
A convention having been called to revise the constitution of the State, the elections took place in August, and the conven- tion met early in September, 1791. The importance of the object drew together many of the ablest men of the State. The discussion, not of laws merely, but of constitutional provisions, and the fundamental principles of government, gave to the de- bates an interest not often felt in legislative proceedings. The debates, though long and able, were never published, and the journal of the convention furnishes but an imperfect account of
1 Jeremiah Mason.
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what was done, and still less by whom it was done. Even the yeas and nays are only given in two or three cases. From the " Life of William Plumer," a member of the convention, one can obtain some account of the proceedings of the body. Among the members were John Pickering, Edward St. Loe Livermore, Dr. Samuel Tenney, James MacGregore, Moses Leavitt, Christopher Toppan, Nathaniel Rogers, General Joseph Cilley, John McClary, Abial Foster, Timothy Walker, Colonel Nathaniel Head, John Calfe, Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, John Waldron, Ebenezer Thomp- son, Thomas Cogswell, Ebenezer Smith, Zachariah Chandler, Joshua Atherton, Jeremiah Smith, Major Benjamin Pierce, Major Caleb Stark, Rev. Jonathan Searls, Daniel Newcomb, John Duncan, Samuel Livermore, Elisha Payne, Captain Nathaniel White, Moses Chase, Nahum Parker, Timothy Tilton, and others, -strong men, having the future best interests of the State con- stantly in mind.
1 The old constitution was taken up by sections, and its provi- sions altered or amended, and new clauses added, or old ones stricken out, at the will of the convention, till the whole had been revised. This occupied the first ten days of the session. William Plumer and Jeremiah Smith were the most conspicuous members of the convention. The former was then a young man, just com- ing into notice, having been admitted to the practice of law only four years before, yet there was no one who took so active a part or who had greater influence in that body. By his industry and perseverance, his energy and decision, and, above all, by the force and accuracy of his discriminating mind, he acquired, before the close of the convention, a weight and authority in that body which no other man possessed. " He was," said Judge Livermore, "by all odds the most influential man in the convention ; so much so that those who disliked the result called it Plumer's constitution, by way of insinuating that it was the work of one man, and not the collective wisdom of the whole assembly." The manuscript volume in the State House which relates to the convention is mainly in the handwriting of Mr. Plumer and Mr. Smith. Both of these men were at this time comparatively young, ambitious
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