USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume V > Part 5
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Hendrick B. Wright, who was admitted in 1831, practiced for more than fifty years. He was a man of "particularly fine presence and address; had exceptional power as a public speaker, and his sway over the jury was phe- nomenal." "On one occasion," narrates Bedford, "at the conclusion of the evidence in the case on trial, opposing counsel submitted points of law which he requested the court to embody in the charge to the jury. The judge asked Colonel Wright if he desired to submit any points, whereupon he answered, with almost dramatic manner: 'Points, your Honor! Points! What care I for points? These twelve honest men in the jury box are my points'-and so they proved." Mr. Wright had "a great power of ridicule." Judge Stanley Woodward, who had many times been opposed to him, declared "that Colonel Wright laughed more cases out of court than the average lawyer won after most careful preparation." He became prominent in politics also : was chosen to preside over the National Convention at Baltimore that nominated James K. Polk for the Presidency, in 1844; and earlier, in the State Legislature. he had been one of the most stalwart supporters of Governor Porter, in the fight to prevent the Commonwealth from repudiating payment of interest on the State debt.
Mr. Bedford's list of distinguished lawyers of the Luzerne Bar includes Volney L. Maxwell, admitted in 1831, an office lawyer of high standing; Caleb W. Wright, admitted in 1833, "a ready speaker, very self-contained and apt at repartee." and, moreover, "the author of several works of fiction of decided merit"; Charles Denison, grandson of Nathan, admitted in 1840, a very popu- lar lawyer, elected to Congress in 1862, "by the largest majority up to that time ever given to any candidate in Luzerne County"; Lyman Hakes, admit- ted April 6, 1841, who, Mr. Bedford ventured to say, "had greater success in the defense of men charged with crime than any lawyer ever had at the Luzerne Bar"; Henry M. Fuller, admitted in 1842, one of the most distin- guished lawyers of his time and cut down when seemingly in his prime of manhood and professional prestige : Lazarus D. Shoemaker, admitted in 1842, who was a capable lawyer, but more inclined to seek the excitement of politics, eventually stepping from the State Senate to the National Congress; Milton Dana. brother of Judge Edmund L. Dana, admitted in 1846; George Byron Nicholson, admitted in 1848, "one of the brightest legal lights of his day," a "past master in the art of special pleading," and most successful as a trial lawyer, only because he was well aware of his own weakness, never having been known "to argue his case to the court or the jury-that duty being per- formed by some other lawyer of ready speech, whom he associated with him-
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self for that purpose alone." Not every capable speaker is alert enough to see when his own personality begins to pall upon his audience. Attorney Nicholson apparently had this gift. Asa R. Brundage, admitted in 1849, was a very capable trial lawyer, but clung to office work; and so perhaps did not advance as far as he might have into public notice ; Garrick M. Harding, admit- ted in 1850, was "a conspicuous figure in both the civil and criminal courts of the county"; Winthrop W. Ketcham, admitted in 1850, "decidedly a self- made man," forged ahead at the bar, on the bench, and in public life by his own sheer merit; Stephen S. Winchester, a newspaperman who came to Wilkes- Barre in 1853 to practice law and edit a newspaper, succeeded as a lawyer ; Charles Pike, admitted in 1853, was an astute lawyer, partner of Hendrick B. Wright; Samuel P. Longstreet, admitted in 1855, a most careful lawyer, who succeeded well at law, failed as a business man, and finally found competence in the ministry; the brothers Edward P. and J. Vaughn Darling were both brilliant lawyers: Agib Ricketts, admitted in 1857, was the "foremost chan- cery solicitor at the bar"; Jerome G. Miller was successful in commercial law ; Robert C. Shoemaker, admitted in 1859, was a man of "high ideals and abso- lute personal integrity." "No member of the bar and no citizen of the town commanded greater respect and esteem than Robert C. Shoemaker," wrote his "closest friend," George R. Bedford.
Mr. Bedford's sketches, which should be read at length, are limited to the "Old Bar," the dividing line between "Old" and "New" being the first year of the Civil War period. Many Luzerne County lawyers have made brilliant records since that time, but, as Mr. Bedford writes: "To extend the sketches to take in any considerable portion of the very large number since admitted is simply impracticable, and any section might seem invidious." The writer of this survey of Bench and Bar is of the same opinion, but much information as to the bar of today will be found in appropriate place in the biographical department of this work.
CHAPTER L. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
Luzerne County, as originally bounded, embraced a considerable part of northeastern Pennsylvania. From the mouth of the Nescopeck Creek, oppo- site Berwick, northward to the New York line, "a distance of 150 miles by the rough bridle paths of that day," is the region in which the historian must look for trace of white settlements of the eighteenth century, if he should have a desire to base the medical history of Luzerne County properly. The journey has already been taken and recorded in earlier chapters of the current work. In Chapter XXXV will be found some mention of early physicians and preach- ers, but only passing mention, only to the extent that these pioneers came into the general subject under review. It is, therefore, advisable to go further into early records in beginning this chapter of medical history.
The first physician to practice his profession in the Wyoming Valley seems to have been Dr. J. M. Otto, for whom an Indian Runner was despatched to Bethlehem, in 1755. The Moravian missionary among the Indians, Christian Frederick Post, had, it seems, sustained a leg fracture while passing through the Wyoming Valley, and it was to attend to him that Dr. Otto came. He remained a week. then returning to Bethlehem, the Moravian settlement.
Of course, Dr. Otto cannot be looked upon as the pioneer physician of the Wyoming Valley. That honor seems to rest, and rightly, with Dr. Joseph Sprague. He came with his family from Poughkeepsie, New York, between 1770 and 1772. His name appears in the original "List of Settlers on Susque- hanna River, October, 1771." "The prospective profits from land speculation probably contributed more," says Hollister, "to bringing him hither than any expectation of professional emolument or advantage in a wilderness." For such the region was at that time. Dr. Frederick C. Johnson writes : " .... there was little opportunity in a vast wilderness like Westmoreland (by which name the region is recorded in the Connecticut records) for the practice of medicine in the earlier days. The population was widely scattered and-what was a greater obstacle to doctors than all else-hardy. The sturdy life of the pioneer had few emergencies which called for medical interference. Under these cir- cumstances, the doctors who came had necessarily to identify themselves with other callings, in order to earn a living. Like other settlers, they took up tracts of land, or 'pitches' as spoken in the language of that day. Sometimes it was for making homes for themselves, but as often it was for speculation."
The early settlers suffered mostly from fever and ague. In almost all set- tlement history of the American wilderness these "febrile disorders of the . malarial type" have been the sicknesses that have sometimes prostrated whole communities, threatening to bring to nought the determined efforts of even the sturdiest most heroic pioneers to wrest a living from the wilderness. "Fever and ague," says Pearce, "has raged at various periods along the Sus- quehanna, ever since the white man lived on its banks, and even earlier, for Shikellimus, the viceroy of the Six Nations, died at Shamokin (now Sunbury) from this malady in 1749." It is not strange that settlement history so com- monly refers to fever and ague. In those days, there were no roads. The waterways were the natural means of transportation, the access to the outer world. All else was wilderness, the dense vegetation penetrated here and there by footpaths-Indian trails that never wandered far from the water- ways, or if they did, only to tread a path to some other waterway. So the white settlers clung to the river reaches-the malarial zones.
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Fever and ague were prostrating diseases, but not nearly so dreaded, by Indian or white, as smallpox. The French, when in occupation of that part of Pennsylvania which is in the Ohio Valley, found that smallpox was epidemic in the Indian towns. They hoped that it would spread to hostile Indian tribes of the region, if not to other humans that were challenging their right to the region-the English colonists of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Smallpox, again, was the disease that swept away the winning strength, the conquering spirit, of those heroic Americans who, in 1775, essayed to capture Quebec and add Canada as the fourteenth confederated colony. Whether or not the retreating remnants of that disease-ridden army in 1776 may be deemed to have been the principal carrying agents of the disease, certainly smallpox in 1776 and 1777 was epidemic in many parts of the thirteen colonies. It swept over the little settlement at Wyoming in 1777, the infection, it is said, being brought from Philadelphia. Dr. Johnson, in his "Pioneer Physicians of the Wyoming Val- ley," a paper contributed to the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society's Proceedings in 1888, writes as to this first epidemic in the Wyoming Valley as follows: "Vaccination being then unknown, the only means for combatting the disease was innoculation. Great alarm prevailed, but a town meeting was held and measures were taken to fight the disease with the utmost vigor, the result being to allay the public fear and to keep the disease within bounds. Persons desiring this protection could not receive the virus at their own homes, but were compelled to resort to a pest-house, one of which was estab- lished in each township, half a mile from a traveled road. As far as possible these rude hospitals were quarantined."
Indians feared smallpox more than aught else, and whites seemed instinc- tively to look upon Indians as the chief carrying agents of the dreaded malady. Pearce gives the information that when the marauding Indians entered Forty Fort on the day of the massacre, the quick-witted women cried out "Small- pox!" in the hope of frightening the Indians away. Unfortunately, the ruse did not succeed, and the Indians went on with their bloody work.
Typhus fever was present in the valley in 1778, says Pearce. In 1780, according to Miner, an endemic fever prevailed. "It was widespread in extent and distressing in its severity. An unusually hot summer was followed by an autumn of unprecedented sickness. On the Kingston side of the river, the prevailing malady was fever-remittent and intermittent, of a particularly severe type," writes Dr. Johnson. "Dr. Wmn. Hooker Smith skilfully dis- pensed calomel, tartar emetic and Jesuit bark, and the number of deaths, though considerable, bore a very small proportion to the great number afflicted. In the next year, 1781, typhus was again present, adding to the dis- tress caused by the remittent and intermittent fever. Lydia, the wife of Colo- nel Zebulon Butler, died of typhus. A servant of Capt. Mitchell fell dead at the fort. A son of Capt. Durkee died of nose bleed." A contagious disease called "putrid fever," raged in the settlement in the spring of 1778. The wife of Dr. William H. Smith died of it. So the pioneer physicians were called upon to combat the ravages of diseases that baffled their knowledge of medical science. As a matter of fact, medical science was still, to all intents, in the "dark ages"-at least by comparison with the astounding steps forward into enlightenment it made in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the phenomenal advance medical science has made in the first quarter of this.
Miner says that Dr. Sprague was in the Wyoming Valley as early as 1770, further that this "may be regarded as the date of the first settlement of Wyom- ing." When Dr. Sprague first viewed the town plot, it "was covered with pitch pines and scrub oak." A stockade at Mill Creek fenced in the inhabi- tants. Besides the wife of Dr. Sprague, Wilkes-Barre Township then had only five white women in residence. Within the settlement of about an acre, the whole community dwelt. The men, armed and ready for any emergency, left
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the stockade each morning, going to their farm lots. At sundown, or before, they returned. There were only a few log houses within the stockade, and of those Dr. Sprague's was the largest. Because of its size, and also probably because of the diminutive proportions of Dr. Sprague's professional earnings, the house was also the boarding house of the settlement. Much of the good doctor's time was given to other than professional affairs. "For bread they used corn meal." writes Miner, "as the only mill in the settlement was a samp mortar for pounding grain. Dr. Sprague would take his horse with as much wheat as it could carry and go out to Coshutunk (Cochecton) on the Dela- ware to have it ground. A bridle path was the only road, and seventy or eighty miles to mill was no trifling distance. While at the Delaware settle- ment having his grist ground, he would buy a few spices and a runlet (small cask) of Antigua rum. The cakes baked from the flour, and the liquor, were kept as dainties for some special occasion, or when emigrants of note came in from Connecticut.
"No furniture, except homemade, was yet in the settlement. Venison and shad were plenty, but salt was a treasure. All were elate with hope, and the people for a time were never happier.
"But soon work came for Dr. Sprague. Zebulon, a son of Capt. Zebulon But- ler, died, also two daughters of Rev. Jacob Johnson, and Peregrine Gardner and Thomas Robinson. Lazarus Young was drowned in bringing up mill-irons for the Hollenback mill. At this time the Indians were numerous about the set- tlement, some of them very friendly, belonging to the Moravian Society. For about two years the people made their headquarters at the fort, then became numerous and feeling secure, they scattered over the valley." As a matter of fact, there were no Indian towns in the Wyoming Valley, which had been unattractive to them "after the tragic death of Teedyuscung in 1763." Those Indians that came to the fort were from the encampment at Friedenshutten (Wyalusing).
There are many township records that relate to Dr. Sprague. One reads : "Wilksbury, Sept. 30, 1771. Voted in town meeting that Doctor Joseph Sprague shall have a settling in one of ye five towns." On December 17, 1771, at a town meeting at Wilkes-Barre, it was resolved "that Joseph Sprague (and others named) have each a settling right in ye township of Lackaworna." Another town meeting minute reads: "At a meeting of the inhabitants of Wyoming, legally warned and held at Wilkes-Barre, January 21st, 1772, it was Resolved, that Dr. Joseph Sprague shall have a settling right in the Township of Wilkes-Barre provided he gives bond for Fifty Dollars to Capt. Butler and the rest of the Committee for the use of the Company." He executed a satisfactory bond within a month, as the records show.
Dr. Sprague did not become one of the permanent residents of Wilkes- Barre. Hollister writes: "Of the yet uninhabited forest, called in the ancient records 'Ye Town of Lackaworna,' Dr. Sprague was one of the original pro- prietors. . ... For a period of thirteen years (1772 to 1785), with the excep- tion of the summer of 1778, Dr. Sprague lived near the Lackawanna, between Spring Brook and Pittston, in happy seclusion, practicing medicine when opportunity offered, and in fishing, hunting and farming, until, with the other Yankee settlers, he was driven from the Valley in 1784 by the Pennamites. He died in Connecticut." Miner says that Dr. Sprague died in Virginia, and other records testify to Dr. Sprague's presence, as a resident, in Wilkes-Barre in 1774 and 1776.
That Dr. Sprague speculated to some extent in land is indicated by the record of "May 27, 1772. Joseph Sprague, of Wilkes-Barre, conveys to Jere- miah Blanchard, of Coventry, Kent County, Rhode Island, for £ 50, one set- tling right 'in township of Lackawanna, so called.'" In the final distribution of lots to the proprietors of Wilkes-Barre, in the spring of 1772, Dr. Sprague
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drew four lots. In March, 1774, he was living on Lot. No. 30, Third Division of Wilkes-Barre; and a realty transaction of 1776 indicates that he was still upon that lot. In October, 1776, he sold "the whole of said lot on which I now dwell-to extend from the Centre Street (now Main Street) eastward." The purchaser was Darius Spofford. On March 9, 1774, Dr. Sprague deeded to Dr. Samuel Cook, of Poughkeepsie, New York, thirty-five acres at Jacob's Plains. This sale was not completed, apparently, for in July of the same year Dr. Sprague sold it to Dr. William Hooker Smith, for £ 100.
From Wyoming, on November 25, 1786, Dr. Sprague addressed a letter to the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, complaining of the injustice heaped upon the Connecticut settlers by Pennsylvanians. "The true State of afares here at Wyoming is," he wrote, "a total Rejection of government." However, he had not taken contentedly to the Trenton decree, and he was somewhat out of favor in Pennsylvania governmental circles.
The reviewer must not end his sketching of Dr. Sprague's life until Eunice (Chapman) Sprague, his second wife, has been brought into the picture, for she, too, was among the pioneer practitioners of the Wyoming Valley. At some time between 1786 and 1790 Mrs. Sprague, of Wilkes-Barre, filed in the Luzerne County Court a libel in divorce against "Joseph Sprague of sd Wilkes- Barre, Practitioner of Physic." The libellant addressed "the Hon. Thos. McKean, Doctor of Laws, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Penna, and his Associate Justices of the same Court," setting forth that her grounds for divorce were "barbarous and cruel treatment." The divorce was granted, and "Granny" Sprague, as she was affectionately known, lived on in Wilkes- Barre, in active obstetrical practice, almost to her death, in April, 1814, when she was eighty-two years old. Dr. Frederick C. Johnson writes: "The influ- ence of her husband's medical skill was not lost on the wife, and when thrown on her own resources she engaged in midwifery, and practice among children, for which by nature she was well fitted."
Dr. Hollister writes of her as follows: "Dr. Sprague's widow, known through the settlement as Granny Sprague, returned to Wyoming in 1785, and lived in a small log house then standing in Wilkes-Barre on the southwest corner of Main and Union streets. She was a worthy old lady, prompt, cheer- ful and successful, and at this time the sole accoucheur in all the wide domain now embraced by Luzerne, Lackawanna and Wyoming counties. Although of great age, her obstetrical practice as late as 1810 surpassed that of any physician in this portion of Pennsylvania. For attending a case of accouch- ment, no matter how distant the journey, how long or fatiguing the detention, this sturdy and faithful woman invariably charged one dollar for services rendered, although a larger fee was never turned away if anyone was able or rash enough to pay more."
Dr. William Hooker Smith, who took up residence in the Wyoming Val- ley soon after the coming of Dr. Sprague, was of better public record than the latter. Dr. Smith was born in 1724, and is of Wilkes-Barre record in 1772. Soon afterwards, he acquired land and settled, he and his son-in-law, James Sutton, purchasing, on February 1, 1773, three tracts in Kingston Township. Dr. Smith's house-lot of five acres was No. 29. His son-in-law settled at Jacob's Plains (now Plains). This perhaps was the land that Dr. Smith acquired from Dr. Sprague in July, 1774.
Possibly, no professional rivalry existed, but certainly those two pioneer physicians of the Wyoming region did not recognize that they, as a medical fraternity, should stand together as models of peace, amity and professional accord. Dr. Smith was a justice of the peace, also Associate Justice of Com- mon Pleas, in 1787. Dr. Sprague was also connected with the court, but in the humble office of crier. Whether his offense was in the courtroom or outside
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is not stated, but Dr. Sprague certainly aroused the judicial ire of his confrere in medicine, as the following entry on the docket of Justice Smith shows :
Be it remembered that on the 29th day of October, 1788, Joseph Sprague of the county of Luzerne, mason, is convicted before me, one of the Justices of the Peace, etc., of swearing seven profane oaths, by the name of God, and I do adjudge him to forfeit for the same and for each oath, the sum of 5 shillings.
To the gaol keeper of the County of Luzerne: You are hereby required to take the body of Joseph Sprague and keep him in close custody the time appointed by an Act of this State intitled an Act to prevent vice, immorality etc., dated in 1786 unless he the said Sprague shall pay the several sums, with the cost to wit-5 shillings for each oath.
WM. HOOKER SMITH. (L. S.) Justice of the Peace.
These two physicians, in 1772, were the only two practitioners in a terri- tory of one hundred and fifty miles-from Cochecton on the Delaware to Sun- bury. Hollister writes of Dr. Smith as follows: "The doctor was a plain practical man, a firm adherent to the theory of medicine as taught and prac- ticed by our sturdy ancestors of those early days. He was an unwavering phlebotomist. Armed with huge saddle-bags, rattling with gallipots and vials and thirsty lance, he sallied forth on horseback over the rough country calling for his services and many were the cures issuing from the unloosed vein. No matter what the nature or location of the disease, bleeding promptly and largely, with a system of diet, drink and rest, was enforced on the patient with an earnestness and a success that gave him a widespread reputation as a physician."
Dr. Smith is of military record. He was with Sullivan in the march north- ward in Iroquois country in 1779; and from July 3, 1778, until the end of the war, Dr. Smith was the post surgeon at Wilkes-Barre.
As to another of the activities of Dr. Smith, Johnson writes: "The then hidden mineral wealth of the Wyoming Valley and adjacent territory, now making Luzerne County the fourth in importance in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was early recognized by this pioneer physician. Dr. Smith was a man of many eccentricities, but he was a generation ahead of his time in recognizing the existence of our subterranean mineral treasures, and in making purchases of lands, of little market value then, but destined to become sources of great wealth when the deposits of coal should become known. The use of coal, except as it had been burned under a bellows blast in the smithy's forge of Obadiah Gore, was wholly unknown, and its availability for domestic fuel was not recognized until Jesse Fell discovered in 1808 that anthracite coal could be burned in an ordinary grate, without the aid of a bellows or other artificial draft. Yet we find Dr. Smith, as early as 1791, purchasing the right -the first in our local annals-to dig iron ore and mine stone coal near Pitt- ston. The first purchase was made of a Mr. Scott, of Pittston, for the sum of five shillings, Pennsylvania currency. Numerous other such investments were made by Dr. Smith throughout the valley between 1791 and 1798, the result being to stamp the purchaser as an enthusiast and to make him the object of ridicule.
"He located permanently on the Lackawanna two or three miles above Pittston, at a place since known as Old Forge, from the fact that he and his son-in-law, James Sutton, erected a forge there in 1789, for converting ore of the locality into iron. The forge produced iron for several years, the product being floated down the Susquehanna to market. The ore was, however, lacking in quality and quantity, competition had sprung up at Slocum Hollow, now Scranton, and the enterprise had to be abandoned. Dr. Smith removed up the Susquehanna to a point near Tunkhannock, where he died July 17, 1815, at the age of ninety-one years."
Perusal of some of the correspondence of Dr. Smith indicates that he was a man of superior education-much superior to his fellow-pioneer, Dr. Sprague,
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who in the communication before quoted wrote: "Know one Dare to say one word in behalf of government . ... as he would amedely fall a Sacrifice to Lawles and arbartary Power ; for this Reason thar is many good Sitezens" and so forth. No such illiterate evidences are seen in Dr. Smith's compositions. On of his last literary efforts might be quoted-his will. It was written in his own hand in 1810, and reads :
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