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 6
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"I recommend my soul to Almighty God that gave it to me, nothing doubt- ing but that I shall be finally happy. My destiny, I believe, was determined unalterably before I had existence. God does not leave any of his works at random subject to change, but in what place and when and how I shall be happy, I know not. Now to the sacred spring of all mercies and original foun- tain of all goodness, to the Infinite and Eternal Being, whose purpose is unal- terable, whose power and dominion is without end, whose compassion fails not, to the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity and dwells in light. be glory, majesty, dominion and power, now and forevermore. Amen." Some of this composition is in the phraseology of the Common Prayer Book of the Church, but much of it is original and indicates a cultured mind. Dr. Smith comes almost into the exalted class of the learned sages of mediaeval times, in one respect. He gave considerable study to alchemy, and, late in life fully believed that he had discovered the secret of transmuting base metals into gold. A few years before his death, he went so far as to publish a book on the subject. Its title page reads: "Aichymy Explained and Made Familiar : or, A Drop of Honey for a Despairing Alchymist; Collected from the Alchymist's Rock or Philosopher's Stone. By Wm. Hooker Smith, M. D., Putnam Town- ship, Luzerne County, Jan. 1, 18II. Printed for the author." Possibly, Dr. Smith had higher hopes than of turning iron-ore at Old Forge into iron. In any case, however, Dr. Smith comes into Luzerne County history chiefly as a physician. Miner sums up Dr. Smith's life, when he writes, in Appendix, p. 43: "Dr. Smith filled a large place in public estimation at Wyoming for nearly half a century. A man of great sagacity and tact, as well as of an excellent education, his influence was extensively felt and acknowledged. For many years he held the front rank as a physician."
A daughter of Dr. Smith married Dr. Lemuel Gustin, who had studied medicine under Dr. Smith. Gustin may have come at the same time as Smith. It seems that he was born in Connecticut in 1749, "and came to Wyoming about the time he attained his majority." At the time of the death of his wife, of putrid fever, in June, 1778, their daughter was three years old; so it would seem that Dr. Gustin was in the Wyoming Valley prior to the Revolution. Some months before the death of his wife, Dr. Gustin, on March 10. 1778, bought a house-lot of Israel Walker, in Kingston.
Both Dr. Smith and his son-in-law Lemuel Gustin come as surgeons notably into the Battle of Wyoming records. Dr. Gustin "was one of the last to leave the bloody field." After the battle, Dr. Gustin and his father-in-law put their families "on a raft or rude boat and escaped down the Susquehanna." Dr. Gustin settled at Carlisle, and there practiced medicine until his death, in 1805. This worthy pioneer physician is referred to in a Cumberland Valley history, "Men of Mark of Cumberland Valley. Pa.," as "a man of great strength and activity, as well as of courage." The sketch continues: "While the Indians were plundering Forty Fort one attempted to take some property or apparel from the doctor. He resisted and giving the Indian a trip, threw him to the ground. The other Indians were so much pleased at the doctor's courage and activity that they handed him a rope and said: 'Indian is a drunken dog. Tie him!'"
The records are not quite clear as to some of the names that come into medical history. Anderson Dana was in the region not long after the coming of Dr. Smith, it would seem. Bradsby's "History of Luzerne County," page
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213, states that when, in 1773, the Connecticut settlers organized the Town of Westmoreland, "a subscription paper was circulated to raise a sufficient sum to induce a physician to locate in the (sic., and) practice among them, and this brought Dr. Anderson Dana." He does not come further into medical records, but comes quite prominently into the legal records. as one of the two pioneer attorneys of the region. He was killed at the Battle of Wyoming.
The name, Anderson Dana, however, comes into the record of another similar effort to induce a physician to settle among them. Dr. Johnson says that, in 1773, Dr. John Calkins visited the Wyoming Valley. He came from New London, Connecticut, and the people, "desirous of inducing him to settle among them. drew up a subscription," which proposed "to pay Dr. John Cal- kins, in case he should settle among us in the quality of a physician, the sum set opposite to our names, the money to be laid out in land for his benefit and use." Among the signers was Anderson Dana, whose subscription of £2.8s.od. was the largest. According to Miner, Calkins was "a noted surgeon." Appar- ently, the prospect was not especially appealing to Dr. Calkins, for two years later further encouragement was held out. On September II, 1775, Anderson Dana and Jabez Fish conveyed to Dr. John Calkins a parcel of land, the con- veyance paper reading: "In consideration that Doctor John Calkins settle in the District of Wilkes-Barre in Westmoreland. as a physician, do give to said John Calkins one certain parcel of land lying in said District of Wilkes-Barre." Whether Dr. Calkins settled in Wilkes-Barre is somewhat doubtful, but he was certainly in the district often during the years 1775 to 1788. He boarded himself and his horse with Elisha Blackman, at somewhat irregular intervals over this period. Steuben Jenkins told Dr. Johnson that in his opinion, Dr. Calkins "did not locate at Wilkes-Barre, but settled at Cochecton, on the Delaware, from which point he made occasional visits to this locality.'
Another early physician about whose residence there is doubt is Dr. Sam- uel Cook, who in 1777 deeded a lot in Hanover Township to John Staples. In 1774, Dr. Joseph Sprague sold a lot to "Dr. Samuel Cook, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y." The transaction, however, was not carried through. Dr. Frederick Johnson connects this Dr. Samuel Cook with a "Dr. Cook," who advertised in the Wilkes-Barre "Advertiser," March 31, 1815, "that he had returned to his former residence in Bridgewater, Susquehanna County." where he would "attend to all the calls in the line of his profession." But. Stocker, in his "Centennial History of Susquehanna County," states that "the first regularly educated physician in Bridgewater" was Dr. James Cook, who practiced there for sev- eral years after 1810. Blackman's "History of Susquehanna County" also gives the name as James; so it hardly seems that the Dr. Cook, of Hanover Township record in 1777, and the Dr. Cook, of Bridgewater record in 1815, can be one and the same.
Dr. Shadrach Darbee was recorded as "of Westmoreland," in a deed executed on November 5, 1777, by William Darbee, his father, of Connecticut residence. And at that time, Elisha Noyes Sill, a boy of sixteen, was in Cap- tain Durkee's company at Wyoming. The Sill family later returned to Con- necticut, and there the boy of Wyoming days was now a man, and eventually became "a distinguished physician," writes Miner. Sometime before the Wyoming massacre, also, there was, in Exeter Township, a Dr. John McMil- lan, graduate of the University of Dublin. He is not of further record, and this completes the record of all physicians who were of the Wyoming region prior to the massacre.
If one might draw inferences from one incident of medical history, the region took many years to recover from the effect of 1778. In the Pennamite strife of 1788, "during an encounter between the contending factions at Wysox, one Joseph Dudley was wounded," writes Miner. "Pickering thus
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describes it: 'Dudley was put into a canoe and taken to Wilkes-Barre, a dis- tance of perhaps sixty or seventy miles. The doctor was sent for, but had no medicine. I had a small box of medicine that had been put up under the care of my friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush. Of these, upon application of the physician, I furnished all he desired. But Dudley survived only two or three days.'"
During the last two decades of the eighteenth century, the following new names come into the lists of medical practitioners: Matthew Covell, Joseph Davis, Nathaniel Giddings, Anna Morse, Franklin Cressey, Benjamin Smith, Charles E. Gaylord. Oliver Bigelow, C. P. J. Cristel and Samuel Johnson. Dr. Matthew Covell was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, in 1760, "settled in Wilkes-Barre when a young man and practiced medicine there during the remainder of his life." Caleb Wright describes him as "a tall, slim man . . . . highly educated and for a long time was the reigning functionary of his pro- fession. He had the field almost to himself." On May 18, 1813, he died of what the newspapers called "the prevailing fever." Dr. Joseph Davis settled in the Wyoming Valley in 1787. and died at Spring Brook in 1830, aged ninety- eight years. His remains were taken to Wilkes-Barre for interment. Hollis- ter says that Dr. Davis died at Slocum Hollow, and Dr. Throop, in his history, also connects Dr. Davis with Slocum Hollow, saying that Dr. Davis was the first doctor in that village; but a granddaughter of the latter contradicts both statements, believing both to be errors. She says that "there was no physician nearer Slocum Hollow in 1800 than Dr. Giddings, at Pittston"; also that Dr. Davis "practiced medicine in Wilkes-Barre until 1813, when he removed up the Lackawanna River to Spring Brook." Dr. Nathaniel Giddings is said to have been "a lad of 18" when he settled in the Wyoming Valley in 1789. After a year or two in Plymouth Township, he removed to Pittston, where he prac- ticed for the remainder of his life. He died in 1851, aged eighty years. "He at Pittston Ferry and Dr. Robinson at Providence, were the only physicians between Wilkes-Barre and Carbondale." By one testimony, Dr. Giddings "was a specimen of the complete New England gentleman in his day. His social powers were of the very first order. .... In his profession he stood unrivaled at the time of his advent . He had the largest and best selected private library."
Apparently Dr. Giddings did not practice in Plymouth. Colonel Wright says that "the first physician residing in Plymouth, so far as he knew, was Dr. Anna Morse, a stout lady of 200 pounds," who "invariably prescribed for all disorders a hemlock sweat and a dose of calomel and jalap." "Primitive physics for pioneer people" may have been her slogan.
Dr. Charles E. Gaylord was only three years old when the Gaylord family came from Bristol, Connecticut, in 1773, and settled at Plymouth. His brother, Asher, was killed in the Wyoming massacre, and for a period the family returned to Connecticut. There, Charles Eleazer was educated, and there he studied medicine, under Dr. James Henderson. In 1792, he returned to Penn- sylvania, settling in Huntington Township. Mrs. Hartman, in her sketches of the Huntington Valley, says that Dr. Gaylord "was probably the first phy- sician who located in Huntington Valley as a permanent settler." He prac- ticed for more than thirty years, though not all the time, it seems, in Hunting- ton. On December 6, 1816, the Wilkes-Barre "Gleaner" displayed a profes- sional announcement which reads :
Dr. Charles E. Gaylord informs the inhabitants of Kingston and vicinity that he intends removing to Kingston soon to practice his profession as a Physician and Surgeon. He has long been in practice in Huntington Township.
Wright says that Dr. Gaylord "had an excellent reputation as a physician and surgeon," that he was considered "one of the ablest physicians in old Westmoreland."
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A Bavarian. Charles Francis Joseph Christel, settled in Salem, Luzerne County, in 1797 or 1798. He studied medicine and began to practice in Hunt- ington in 1800 or 1801, making his home in Harveyville. He practiced in the Huntington Valley for twelve years, and then removed to Buttonwood, Han- over Township. In 1822, in Hanover, he became an innkeeper, but still prac- ticed medicine. However, in 1825, he moved to Wilkes-Barre, and there, until his death, was a hotel keeper, conducting the Wyoming Hotel, which stood where the Christel Block was erected in 1882.
According to the "Wilkes-Barre Gazette and Luzerne Advertiser" for Janu- ary, 1798, Dr. Oliver Bigelow was then in practice in Kingston. Johnson says that he "practiced for a time on Ross Hill, Plymouth, then at Wilkes-Barre, and subsequently removed, about 1800, to Palmyra, N. Y." Dr. Franklin Cris- sey's name appears on the Hanover Township assessment for 1799. Appar- ently he lived there. Bradsby says he "located at Plymouth." Dr. Samuel Jameson, who began to practice medicine in his native township. Hanover, in 1799, was just ten months old when his mother took him in her arms and fled down the Susquehanna after the Wyoming massacre in 1778. When danger seemed over, they returned, but his father, John Jameson, was destined to be killed by Indians four years later, near the Hanover Green burying-ground. Dr. Samuel Jameson practiced in Hanover until his death, in 1843. Harvey describes him "as a man of amiable character and of sound judgment and integrity." Johnson says: "He lived about one mile north of Nanticoke, on the River Road, since known as the Dr. Harry Hakes' place. Squire Jameson (a justice of the peace for many years) was one of the best and most favor- ably known of the early physicians, and his was the place where the over sanguine farmers were bled by the same hand that pulled the teeth and ears of our bashful grandmothers."
Dr. (better known as Captain) Benjamin Smith, grandson of John, one of the original proprietors in the Susquehanna Purchase, and son of Captain Timothy, who "was a leading man in the Susquehanna Company, at their meetings in Hartford, before settlement was made in Wyoming," lived the greater part of his life in Kingston. Captain Benjamin Smith "was a man of singular benevolence and an admirable nurse of the sick." Miner says he was "a practicing physician for a number of years in Kingston." His public spirit in practice brought him to his death, for when, in 1815. "the typhus fever pre- vailed throughout the country, he threw himself in the midst of it, took the disease and died." Death came on January 19, 1816, when he was fifty-seven years old. At that time, his son. John, was also a physician.
Dr. John Smith, one of the early presidents of the Luzerne County Medical Society, which was founded in 1861, was born in Kingston in 1789, and died in Wilkes-Barre eighty years later-a long and useful life spent almost wholly in Luzerne County. For twenty-one years, from 1815, he practiced in New Troy (Wyoming), removing in 1836 to Wilkes-Barre. The county seat, then a place of 1,500 inhabitants, already possessed three active physicians-Drs. E. L. Boyd, Thomas W. Miner and Lathan Jones-but Dr. Smith retained some of his old practice. and in later years extended it until it reached from Pittston to Nanticoke. He took active interest in public affairs, was justice of the peace for several years, prothonotary and clerk of the courts for a period, councilman of Wilkes-Barre for several years, once president of the borough council, and for a time president of the school board.
The first decade of the nineteenth century brought the following into medical practice in Luzerne County: Lewis Collins, Dr. Schott, Mason Crary, Davis Dimock, Ethel B. Bacon. Dr. Lewis Collins, of Litchfield, Connecticut, settled in Salem in 1801. One of his daughters married Dr. Virgil Diboll ; another espoused Judge Oristus Collins. The Dr. Schott who was practicing in Kingston soon after 1800 was a son of Captain John Paul Schott. Dr.
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Mason Crary, after studying medicine in Albany, New York, came to Luzerne County in 1804. From 1806 to 1814 he practiced in Berwick, and afterwards in Wilkes-Barre, the local paper carrying his interesting announcement, in July, 1814. It reads .:
Dr. Crary will attend to the practice of Physic and Surgery in Wilkes-Barre and the adja- cent town; having had an opportunity of a regular study under the direction of eminent physi- cians, and having since had an extensive and successful practice for a number of years in city and country, he flatters himself that by assiduous attention he may merit public approbation.
He was an enterprising doctor, and optimistically advertised his pills and other preparations. One of his advertisements in July, 1814, reads :
Dr. Crary informs the public that he has removed his family to the house laterly occupied by Judge Gibson in Wilkesbarre, and has just received a fresh supply of genuine drugs and medicines. Crary's Antiseptic Family Physic in Pills will be sold by the dozen or single boxes ; great allowance by the dozen and the money returned at any time if the pills are not damaged. Storekeepers will find it to their advantage to keep a supply of the above cheap and safe Family Physic. He is not ambitious of being called a half-price Physician, yet he disapproves of rais- ing wages in consequence of ardent spirits being a little higher ; he prefers taking a little less stimulus and using more industry ; his charges shall be as low as any regular bred practitioner, always favoring the industrious and virtuous poor, and discharge his duties without prejudice or partiality, either religious or political. He will not, under any pretence, call to see other physicians' patients and endeavor to prejudice them against their physician. He gives advice, either written or verbal, gratis at his shop. Wilkes-Barre, July 1, 1814.
Dr. Crary also kept boys of the neighborhood busy, pinching off from the mass of calomel, jalap and rhubarb in his mortar as much as they could roll between finger and thumb into a pill of normal size. These went out to suf- fering humanity as "Dr. Crary's Anti-Bilious Family Pills." They did not seem to hurt his professional practice, for during the next decade his practice "extended for miles up and down the Susquehanna," and, indeed, became "so arduous as to require an assistant." Dr. Lathan Jones took this capacity, and in 1824 bought the practice, Dr. Crary returning to Salem, where he continued as a practitioner until about 1845, in excellent repute ; indeed, "in fevers, his success was . almost marvelous." He died in 1855, aged seventy-five years.
Davis Dimock, "the pioneer Baptist minister of the Valley," gave much medical service during the first half of last century. He had studied medicine, and after being ordained to the ministry in 1804, "went from settlement to settlement through the forest preaching the gospel." His medical services "were frequently called into action." "Finding it an aid rather than a detri- ment to his gospel ministry, he continued more or less to practice medicine during subsequent life," writes Dr. Johnson of the venerable preacher, whose long life ended at Montrose in 1858, when he was eighty-two years old.
Dr. Ethel B. Bacon, who married Anna, daughter of Captain Daniel Hoyt, of Kingston, in 1809, was in practice at Wyoming for some time. before removing to Tioga County.
The second decade of last century-an especially arduous decade of recur- ring epidemics-brought many physicians into practice in Luzerne County. Among them were Drs. George W. Trott, Samuel Baldwin, Eleazer Parker, Robert H. Rose, Joseph von Sick, Reuben Montrose, Asa C. Whitney, Ebene- zer Chamberlain, Henry Green, Orlo Hamlin, John Smith and Dr. Moreland. Typhus, or, as Dr. Edward Covell described it in 1819, a""pulmonic fever," took eleven lives in Wilkes-Barre during the winter of 1815-16, and it was "epidemic over the country generally." Dr. Benjamin Smith succumbed to it, and Dr. George W. Trott died while in busy Wilkes-Barre practice in 1815. Dr. George W. Trott was in Wilkes-Barre practice in 1810, when he married Lydia, sister of Isaac Chapman, the first historian of Wyoming. During his practice, Dr. Trott, writes Judge E. L. Dana, "acquired little more than a reputation, a practice and a long list of uncollectible accounts." His widow,
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and their daughter, five years old, were unprovided for in 1815, but the widowed mother, by teaching, maintained herself and daughter, and the latter eventually became the wife of Chief Justice George W. Woodward. Dr. Samuel Baldwin, who is of Wyoming record in 1807 and of Wilkes-Barre practice in 1810, later removing to Forty Fort and eventually, in 1821, going out of the county altogether, was an eccentric man who seemed more engrossed in his hopes of inventing perpetual motion than in his medical practice. Dr. Eleazer Parker practiced in Great Bend for a few years before, in 1810 settling at Kingston. In an age when alcohol was often prescribed and freely imbibed, Dr. Parker's attitude was remarkable. "He was a teetotaler and never pre- scribed alcohol in a practice of 60 years," writes Johnson. In 1808 "he suc- cessfully performed tracheotomy and removed a watermelon seed from the windpipe of a two-year-old child." He died in Susquehanna County in 1877. when about ninety-five years old. Dr. Robert Hutchinson Rose, who owned 100,000 acres of land in Susquehanna and western adjoining counties, was an English gentleman who graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsyl- vania, but with no idea of practicing. He built a baronial home at Silver Lake, Susquehanna County, and there lived the life of an English Lord of the Manor. His descendants still live in Montrose. Dr. Joseph von Sick came, with good credentials, to Wilkes-Barre in 1810, and became active in public affairs ; so active, indeed, as treasurer of Luzerne County, that his accounting came under question in 1815. The family left Wilkes-Barre a few years later. Dr. Reuben Montross, who settled in Exeter in 1812, and eventually gained wide repute in the setting of bones and for queer cures that were "something on the faith cure order," was credited "with almost miraculous gifts." One old settler spoke of him as follows: "Yes, I remember Dr. Montross. He went up to Nehemiah Ide's ; the old lady had been bedridden for seven years, but before he left her he ordered her to go down and bring him cider from the cellar. and she did. Yes, she was well for years after. . He had great power and I do not understand it. He did not give much medicine." In later life, Dr. Montross practiced in Wyoming County, where he died in 1857. Dr. Asa C. Whitney. regarded as one of the most skillful and daring surgeons in the valley, was a New Englander who lived in Bradford County before com- ing to Luzerne in 1810. A year earlier he had married Betsey, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel George Dorrance. He lived at Kingston, but later bought the Sinton home, corner of Hazle Avenue and Park Avenue, at Wilkes-Barre. There he lived, and in Wilkes-Barre he practiced until 1824, when death took him while scarcely yet in his prime. Dr. Orlo Hamlin, a young physician. came with his wife to Providence in 1813, thinking that the community and neighborhood might have ailments enough to support one physician, but, as Dr. Hollister says, "this locality, fresh with ozone from the forest, offered so little compensation to a profession without need of appreciation among the hardy woodmen, that the doctor removed the next year to Salem, Wayne County." In 1814 or 1815, a Dr. Moreland set up in practice at Plymouth. In 1816, Dr. Ebenezer Chamberlain succeeded him, beginning a practice which extended over a half century. He held several public offices, and was an esteemed Plymouth townsman until his death, in 1866.
Dr. Isaac Pickering, who in 1820 married Nancy, daughter of Judge Jesse Fell. came to Wilkes-Barre from Massachusetts. Later he was of Pittston practice, and still later of Huntington, but eventually he took his family to Michigan, where he died. A man of huge stature and commanding personal- ity. Dr. Pickering was a skillful practitioner, but apparently restless. It is said that he was a graduate of a medical college. There were few so qualified then in the backwoods; indeed, there were very few medical colleges. Dr. Francis Carey and Dr. Virgil Diboll were practicing in the Wyoming Valley in the 'twenties, but both moved away. Dr. Lathan Jones, who bought the
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practice of Dr. Crary in 1824, practiced in Wilkes-Barre for more than forty years after, widely respected as a citizen and generally esteemed as a physi- cian. Dr. Andrew Bedford, father of Attorney George R. Bedford, was born in Wyoming in 1800, and died at Waverly, Pennsylvania, in his ninetieth year. He, too, was a graduate of a medical college -- Yale-and he began his profes- sional career at Dundaff in 1825. In 1826 he settled at Waverly, but did little or no professional work after 1840. Thereafter, he gave most of his time to public affairs, but he maintained a drug store in Waverly, and one of his sons continued it until about twelve years ago. Dr. Thomas W. Miner, born in Wilkes-Barre in 1803, graduated from the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania in 1825. From that year until he died, in 1858, Dr. Miner prac- ticed in the Wyoming Valley, skillfully following his profession and actively entering into public affairs, acting indeed as one would expect a cultured, well-informed reputable physician to act-as a leader in his community. Dr. Silas Robinson received more encouragement in Providence than his prede- cessor, Dr. Orlo Hamlin. For almost forty years, from about 1822, Dr. Robin- son practiced in a field in which for many years he had no competitors. Dr. Hollister writes of him : "During his long practice, he always carried his own medicine, which he purchased in Wilkes-Barre, at the nearest drug store, nineteen miles away. He always went on foot, no matter how great the dis- tance or urgent the case. A colt once ran away with him and never after- wards would he ride in a wagon. He always carried his rusty turnkeys to twist out teeth. He had two peculiarities, one was to always read the Bible at the bedside of his patient, and the other was his great habit of profanity. He would rarely utter a sentence without an oath. He had no competitor in the field, while Dr. Nathaniel Giddings, at Pittston Ferry, Dr. Andrew Bed- ford, of Abington, and Dr. Thomas Sweet, of Carbondale, were his nearest colleagues." Dr. Sweet was practicing in Carbondale as early as 1823.
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