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Gc 974.702 N422fr 1146207
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01145 1421
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GENEALOGY 974.702 N422FR
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OLD NEW YORK:
OR,
REMINISCENCES
OF
THE PAST SIXTY YEARS.
BY
JOHN W. FRANCIS, M. D., LL. D.
WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.
NEW YORK: W. J. WIDDLETON, PUBLISHER. M DCCC LXV.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, BY W. J. WIDDLETON. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
100 COPIES PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS. No.
ALVORD, PRINTER.
1146207
JOHN W. FRANCIS, M. D., LL. D.
A
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.
0 BY C $15.0
HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.
Canner -
ILLUSTRATIONS.
I. PORTRAIT OF DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS. Proof before letter. Engraved by CHARLES BURT, from an original pastel draw- ing by JULIUS GOLLMAN, in the possession of HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. Frontispiece.
II. PORTRAIT OF JOHN W. FRANCIS, JR. Engraved by W. G. JACKMAN, after an original painting by A. H. WENZLER. Face p. xcii.
III. VIEW OF DR. FRANCIS'S RESIDENCE, No. 1 BOND STREET, NEW YORK. Engraved by J. H. RICHARDSON, after an original drawing by J. O. B. INMAN. Face p. lxxiv.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.
JOHN WAKEFIELD FRANCIS was born the year of Wash- ington's inauguration as first President of the Republic, and died the ycar that witnessed the outbreak of the Slaveholders' Rebellion. Few American citizens, uneon- nected officially with public affairs, were more identified, through sympathy and intelligence, with the development of the country, during the important period indicated, than Dr. Francis. In some respects he stood alone, and represented a social interest and a phase of American character of which few types remain.
We are unwilling, therefore, that the mere statement of technical honors and professional services should be the sole record of so useful, honorable, and genial a life ; while those who had occasion to know personally his be- nevolent activity, were admitted to his confidence, or had frequent experience of his affectionate ministry in suffer- ing, and candid zeal in the offices of friendship, will wel- come a sincere tribute to his memory, however inadequate.
The external programme of his life, and the recorded data of his professional career, are briefly these :-
He was born on the 17th of November, 1789, in the city of New York, whither his father had emigrated from Nu- remburg, in Germany, six years previous. His mother was a Philadelphia lady, of Swiss origin. Of his school- days we have a glimpse in his Recollections of Irving, wherewith he entertained the New York Historical Society
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BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.
at the meeting held to do honor to that endeared author's memory :
"I was a boy at the same sehool with young Irving in 1797, now some fifty-two years ago. The institution was a male seminary, situated on John street, next to the Methodist meeting-house, and in the vicinity of the re- nowned John street Theatre. I remember well the ele- mentary books scattered about, so characteristic of a common English school at that period : the Columbian Orator of Bingham, and Hamilton Moore's Monitor ; the Schoolmaster's Assistant of Dilworth, and the Arithmetic of Pike, with here and there a copy of Dytch's English Dietionary. In those days ballads, on printed slips or folded in octavo half-sheets, were widely sold in the streets, and many found their way into the schoolroom ; some attributed to Burns and Alexander Wilson, some of Dibdin's famous songs ; and Mrs. Rowson's ' America,' 'Commerce,' and ' Freedom,' were in the hands of many scholars. It may be that the patriotism of the times, in Adams' administration against the French, led to the dis- tribution or toleration of this kind of literature among the boys. The leading teacher was ever insisting on the im- portanee of rhetorie, and striving to make everybody a Cicero ; he assigned to Irving the heroic lines, ' My voice is still for war ;' while I, nearly seven years younger, was given, for rhetorical display, ' Pity the sorrows of a poor old man.' The Principal stuek earnestly to Dilworth, while the Assistant, for his section of instruction, held to Noah Webster ; the slender duodecimo volume of Morse's Geography was in use. There was a special teacher of elocution, by the name of Milne ; he was the compiler of a book entitled ' The Well-Bred Scholar ;' a man of taste and a dramatic writer, if not an aetor."*
* Irving Memorial, pp. 58-60.
vii
DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS.
The death of his father made it incumbent upon the son, even in boyhood, to seek an occupation whereby liis wid- owed mother might be aided in the support of her family ; and, in accordance with a literary instinct and an intuitive sympathy with Franklin's early discipline, he became an apprentice to a well-known printer of his native city-Mr. George Long. In a brief period, however, he was cnabled to resume his studies, under the direction of two accom- plished graduates of Trinity College, Dublin-Rev. George Strebeck and Rev. George Conroy-by whom he was fitted for Columbia College, and entercd an advanced class in 1807; from this institution he received the degree of A. B. two years after, and that of M. D. in 1812. Hc com- menced the study of medicine while an undergraduate with Dr. David Hosack.
During his student-life he established the American Medical and Philosophical Register, for four years a valu- able repertory of science and biography ; long the partner of the celebrated Dr. Hosack, and the first individual who received a degree from the New York College of Phy- sicians and Surgcons, at the very outset of his profes- sional career he became identified with the educational system and the scientific journalism of the country.
In 1813 he was appointed lecturer on the Institutes of Medicine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons ; and when that institution was merged in the Medical Depart- ment of Columbia College, he was called to the chair of Materia Medica, and with characteristic liberality declined all fees for the first course of lectures, in order to spare the then inadequate treasury of the college. In order to complete his professional education, he soon visited Eu- rope, and enjoyed the instruction, the society, and, in sev- cral instances, the warm friendship of the prominent scien- tific men of the Old World, including Cuvier, Denon, and Gall, in Paris; Gregory, Playfair, Bell, and Brewster, in
viii
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.
Edinburgh ; and Rees and Abernethy in London ; he con- tributed to the former's Cyclopedia on American topics, and was offered a partnership in medical practice by the latter.
Upon his return to New York, Dr. Francis was ap- pointed Professor of the Institutes of Medicine; in 1817, of Medical Jurisprudence ; and in 1819, of Obstetrics and Forensic Medicine. Having filled these various and re- sponsible situations with signal ability and to the great pleasure and satisfaction of both the Faculty and students, Dr. Francis resigned them successively, and devoted him- self thenceforth to the practice of his profession, wherein, for half a century, he exercised a remarkable and benign influence, and endeared himself to countless families among us, and to more than our generation. In 1822, in conjunction with Drs. Beck and Dyckman, he edited The New York Medical and Surgical Journal.
Dr. Francis married, November 16th, 1829, a daughter of Sheriff Cutler, of Boston; she is a descendant of Sir Jervis Cutler, of England, and a sister of the late Rev. Dr. Cutler, of Brooklyn ; a grand-niece of General Fran- cis Marion, and related to the celebrated Charlotte Cor- day. Her mother was a friend of General Washington and of many of the distinguished heroes of the Revolution, by whom she was highly esteemcd. General Sullivan wrote a sketch of her .*
Dr. Francis held important offices in connection with all our public charities and literary Societics, and his name is indissolubly and gratefully associated with the Bellevue Hospital, the Woman's Hospital, the State Incbriate Asy- lum, the Typographical, Horticultural, Fine Arts, Etlino- logical, and Historical Societies .; He was first President of the New York Academy of Medicine (1847), and before
* Appendix I
t Appendix IL.
ix
DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS.
each of these and many other humane, literary, and scien- tific bodies, he delivered memorable addresses, illustrative of their respective objects-which, with his contributions to medical literature and the record of his personal remi- niscences, form a unique and valuable as well as interest- ing monument of his patriotic zeal and industry, and a precious source of local and characteristic information.# Dr. Francis died the 8th February, 1861, in the full pos- session of his faculties, surrounded by those most dear to him, sustained by faith, and deeply mourned by the poor, to whom he had so long gratuitously ministered, by the lovers of knowledge, of original character, of manly zeal, of disinterested sympathy, and genuine probity.
II.
It was long deemed inconsistent with thic self-reliance and humanitarian sentiment of republican and democratie faith, to lay much stress upon genealogieal claims, in tracing the lives of those born and bred in loyalty thereto. We may detect, in such memoirs, a tendency to the other extreme, and an affectation of indifference to any other lineage than that which wit and honesty redeem. But among other secondary influences of progress in liberal tastes and scientific truth, is the new interest in race and family as related to character ; and now we sedulously ex- amine and candidly indicate tho truo details of progeni- ture, not from pride of birth, but as ethnological evidence. The Gallic blood of Sydney Smith explains the buoyant and genial vein that so pleasantly modified his Saxon sense; and much that is characteristic in Moore and Ma- caulay becomes more intelligibly so by virtue of their Irish
* Appendix III.
A*
X
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.
and Scotch origin. On the same principle it is interesting to refer the individuality of traits and temperament which made Dr. Francis what is called a character, to his an- cestral home. His father, Melchior Francis, was one of fourteen children, and, as we have seen, emigrated from Nuremburg to New York at the close of the Revolutionary War ; and so natural was the association, so agreeable to himself and suggestive to his friends, that more than one of them selected a picture of the old city as the most ac- ceptable souvenir to bring him from Europe, in token of affectionate remembrance. A view of Nuremberg, for many years, hung on the walls of his chamber ; he was ac- customed to regard it with peculiar interest ; and of no spot in Germany did he question travellers with such zest. While the physique, mental organization, naïve integrity, and domestic aptitude of the Doctor, identified him with the German character, and constituted the points of differ- ence between him and more prevalent qualities of other natives of New York who traced their descent from Dutch, English, or Huguenot ancestors; there was a striking analogy between the particular community to which his father originally belonged, and his own disposition and tendencies. No one with a sympathetic imagination, ac- quainted with the picturesque and venerable city, and in- timate with Dr. Francis, could fail to associate them har- moniously together. Local attachment and respect for honest labor was so characteristic of Nuremberg, that it was, and is still designated as the Burgher City ; and it would be difficult to point out a native of New York-a city pre-eminently cosmopolitan-in recent times, who so rarely preserved and so uniquely represented this old, loyal public spirit and enthusiastic probity of the Burgher ; by whom the traditions, the credit, the pros- perity, and the local associations of his birthplace, were endeared, defended, and enjoyed, with a relish and a fidel-
xi
DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS.
ity scarcely to be imagined in our age and country, pro- verbially diffusive in sentiment and migratory by habit. The aspect, history, and associations of the place and people, are singularly congenial to the anteecdent proba- bilities of such a character. Tho favorable position of Nuremberg made it, of old, the centre of trade; and al- though this has long sinee been diverted, its trophics re- main and conserve tho social type and the physical features which make it one of the most complete illustrations of aneient municipal life and labor. Towers, gables, a mart, eseutcheons of trade, evidenees of primitive skill and in- dustry, a venerable but comfortable physiognomy, a quaint, patient, honest air, elaborate earvings-use and rectitude more than elegance and luxury-combine to im- press the observant visitor, and eause him to remember the " Gothic Athens" as the most complete and authentic relie of medieval art, domestieity, and skill. Cities, like men, have their natural language, and to the poetie mind convey an idea of human adaptation so distinet, that it seems inevitable that religious art should have flourished in Seville and Florenee, theology in Germany, sculpture in Athens, and maritime adventure in Genoa. We are apt to forget that cause and effect are often reversed in such speculations, so naturally docs a sense of the appropriate warrant these inferenees ; and, on the same principle, it scems impossible that any other city but London eould have nurtured Lamb and Dr. Johnson, that Raphael could have painted as he did out of Rome, or Chateaubriand been other than a Breton. Albert Durer, the quaint and holy limner ; Hans Sachs, the inspired cobbler ; Casper Hauser, the exceptional and mysterious speeimen of anomalous human development, fitly blend their memories with the architecture, the life, and the natural language of Nuremberg. And how aptly does Ruskin's interpreta- tion of this language associate itself with the faithful,
xii
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.
honest, loving, trustful, laborious, and genial qualities of Dr. Francis ; "Nuremberg," says the art-critic, " lias an air of contented, quaint domesticity. It is evident that they (the inhabitants) were affectionate and trustworthy ; that they had playful fancy. There is no exalted grandeur in their city ; but an imaginative homelincss, mingled with some elements of melancholy and power, and a few cven of grace."
III.
A visit to Europe is to all intelligent Americans, and especially to those inspired by intellectual enthusiasm, a memorable event; but facility of travel has made it, of late years, so common an experience as to disenchant the record of novelty and romance. Yet, before the era of Atlantic Steam Navigation, to professional men, scholars, and imaginative travelers, a visit to the Old World was regarded as a high privilege, enjoyed by comparatively few, and affording opportunities for knowledge and obser- vation that could not be too highly prized or fondly re- membered. The opening sentence of the Sketch-Book seems now like a tradition, so difficult is it to realize the significance of Irving's declaration, that " to an American visiting Europe the long voyage he has to make is an ex- cellent preparation."
No small part of the student-life of our young country- men is now passed in the hospitals of Paris and the lec- ture-rooms of Germany ; and acquaintance with foreign modes, methods, and facilities in education, is deemed a requisite means of discipline and culture : but when Dr. Francis went abroad, it was, comparatively speaking, an unusual advantage, and the better appreciated by him as occurring when experience in his profession and mature intellectual sympathies, made him alive to all the sources
DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS. xiii
of instruction and motives for inquiry. Familiar with the whole range of medieal seienee and of literary taste in his own country, he earried to Europe the most ardent Amer- ican feeling, with the truest reverenee for the shrines, the resources, and the expositors of seienee and letters, in the Old World. The period of his visit was one of remark- able historieal interest. The Navy of the United States had renewed their prestige abroad by a series of brilliant vietories over the greatest maritime power in existenee ; the proud star of Napoleon had begun to wane; the preg- nant reforms and discoveries of the nineteenth eentury were opening new vistas of truth, and new hopes for humanity ; in polities, seientifie literature, and society, fresh impulse had been given to liberal ideas and ameliora- tions in law, education, the exploration of Nature, and the cause of humanity. Brougham and Horner were parlia- mentary leaders ; Robert Burns had recently died ; Sir Humphrey Davy in chemistry, Erskine and Romilly in legal reform, and Byron in poetry, had awakened a spirit of reaetion and vitality which marked a progressive epoeh ; and to one constituted like Dr. Franeis, the sight of these men, whose American reputation had been aptly compared to the verdiet of a " kind of living posterity," was fraught with the deepest interest. He sought and found eneour- agement, in his special sphere of inquiry, in the luminous expositions of Sir Astley Cooper, Brand, and Pearson, at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, in London ; and of John Hunter, Cuvier, and Denon, at Paris; Gregory and Sir David Brewster, at Edinburgh. He listened to Bell's anatomieal illustrations, talked with Hersehell, joined the levees of Sir Joseph Banks, heard Horner speak in the House of Commons, attended the meetings of the Royal Society, and saw Gall disseet a human brain. He was in Edinburgh in the palmy days of the Friday Club, when a "striking sermon by Alison and a beautiful review by
.
.
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BIOGRAPHIICAL ESSAY.
Jeffrey " were the excitements of the week: and when the kindly, rhyming, jesting, and project-loving Dr. Alex- ander Duncan was in the flower of his green old age, and who must have been a medical original after his own heart ; for it is observed by one of his biographers that his " scientific ambition, charitable restlessness, and social cheerfulness, made him thrust himself into every thing through a long life ;" that he climbed to Arthur's Seat every May-day, until past eighty, to indite tributary verses ; was president of a bathing society, fond of gar- dens, a botanist, and always writing epitaphs, his own be- ing adopted from Macbeth-" Duncan is in his grave." Scott's fame as a poet was giving way to his higher re- nown in prose fiction ; Joanna Baillie's plays were a new revelation of female genius ; John Hunter's anatomical museum was creating an era in practical science ; physio- logical studies had begun to modify metaphysical theories ; Crabbe had initiated the appeal of literature for humble life and needs, since so triumphantly culminating in the humanc genius of Dickens ; West and Allston had won re- spect for American votaries of art, and Leslie had just com- menced his genial career. Of the companions of Dr. Francis in his attendance on the London lectures, Dr. Peter Mark Roget, since so well known for his ingenious and useful " Thesaurus," is the only survivor ; and through mutual friends and correspondence, the benign London physician kept alive to the last this pleasant association with the medical Nestor of New York. Every incident of his visit abroad, and his intercourse with the leading men of the time, remained vividly impressed upon his mind ; the anecdotes and associations thus gleaned were constantly reproduced in his conversation, and inspired the most glowing reminiscences.
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DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS.
IV.
The secnes of a man's life are as requisite to an ade- quate view of his eharaeter, as the frame of a pieture and the proper distance and light whereby to examine it. Every human being is more or less the subject of local influeneos, and his convietions and habitudes are insensi- bly modified by his surroundings. Accordingly, the plaee where and the people among whom, a life-drama is enaeted, are elaborately deseribed and diseussed in all memoirs that aspire to intellectual and moral portraiture ; and if this course is wise and needful as a general rule, it is im- peratively so in the present instanee ; for rarely does a professional man, and especially an American citizen, so fondly and fully enter into and celebrate the place of his nativity and abode as did Dr. Franeis the eity where he lived and died; a vigilant spectator of her growth, an in- defatigable explorer of her past, a pervading life in her present, and an enthusiastic prophet of her future, no one knew and felt more pride and interest in the place of his nativity, or cherished a more earnest desire that his name should be identified with its illustrious memories.
He was her living chroniele, her staunch advocate, her traditional oracle ; he knew her story by heart ; he loved her eminent sons, and gloried in her prosperity ; he keenly appreciated her natural advantages of position, soil, and climate ; her institutions, her renown, and her destiny were singularly dear to him; into her social life, in its every form and phase, he had intimately entered ; of her prominent eitizens he had made a seientifie study. Du- ring half a century, by day and night, in sunshine and storm, he had traversed her streets, not one of which was devoid of memorable associations; in all her old family mansions he had been an honored guest, and every
xvi
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.
churchyard held the remains of his loved or admired com- panions ; her preachers and doctors, merchant-princes and humorists, he could portray to the life ; and by virtue of this strong local attachment, a tenacious memory, and a relish for observation and analysis, he found here a scene fraught with intense human significance, dramatic effects, and incxhaustible reminiscence. And when we consider the local changes he witnessed and the characters he knew, and glance at New York from his birth to his death, is it surprising that he found therein such material and motive for love and knowledge ?
When Dr. Francis was a boy, Chambers street, where he first opened his office, was the limit of the thickly- settled part of the city ; Trinity and St. Paul's Churches marked the populous centre ; around the Battery, and in Wall street (where but one bank then existed), and the parallel streets, dwelt the aristocraey; and the bridge where Canal street now is, formed the usual boundary of evening walks; the Battery was the fashionable prom- enade ; around Murray Hill were farms and woodlands ; Broadway was not paved above Vesey street; preaching in the Dutch language was in vogue; Harlem was a dis- tant village ; mails from New England and Albany arrived and departed only twice a week ; there were but two news- papers published ; water was a marketable commodity ; and the streets were imperfectly lighted by oil-lamps. A copy of the New York Directory, dated the year of his birth, is a pamphlet of eighty pages; and the contrast it presents to Trow's last volume, is one of the most striking evidences of the increase of population, then estimated at thirty thousand ; while a glance at its contents reveals familiar names, and indicates who then represented society and official life. Rufus King and Theodore Sedgwick were prominent members of Congress ; John Jay, Secre- tary of Foreign Affairs ; Henry Knox, Secretary of War ;
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DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS.
George Clinton, Governor of the State ; Philip Sehuyler, Senator ; Robert Livingston, Chancellor ; and James Du- ane, Mayor. Among the lawyers are the names of Alex- ander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Depcyster, Verplanek, Mor- ris, and Bogert. Among the eitizens we find the names of Brevoort, Betts, Berrian, Bleecker, Cruger, Edgar, Duyc- kinek, Delafield, Goelet, Rhinelander, Hoffman, Lawrence, Ludlow, Murray, Ogden, Pintard, Roosevelt, Remsen, Schermerhorn, Varick, Vanderbilt, Van Zandt, Wadding- ton, and Wilkes. There were gold and silver-smiths' soeieties and mechanies' guilds. The inn kept by Fraun- ces, where Washington lodged and took leave of his offi- cers, Arnold's residence, the Walton House, Pitt's statue, the Indian Queen, famous for tea-parties, the old Sugar- House, infamous as the scene of British cruelty to Amer- ican prisoners, and Kip's country-house, where André dined with Sir Henry Clinton before starting on his fatal expe- dition, were the familiar landmarks ; fortifications built by the English, customs initiated by the Duteh, and fresh memories and characters of the Revolutionary War, made prominent the historieal associations of the seenc. In regard to the latter Dr. Francis remarked :-
" How often have I cast a lingering look at many of these worthies in their movements through the public ways, during the earlier period of this city, with here and there a Continental tri-cornered hat over their venerable fronts, a sight no less gratifying to the beholder than the fragrant wild rose scattered through the American forest. I am not now to tell you what species of knowledge these men diffused among the people, and what doctrines on lib- erty they espoused ; versed as they were in the sehool of experience, they could utter nothing but wisdom."
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