Tag Archives: American Revolution

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Dr. Robert Thaxter–Dedicated Physician and Champion of the Poor

Dr. Robert Thaxter was born in Hingham on October 21, 1776, only months after the 13 American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. This was of course a year symbolic of strength, resilience and change, and the same can be said of Dr. Thaxter, who possessed this type of fortitude and a commitment to helping others that one day would claim his life.

Tranquility Lodge, 137 Main Street, Hingham

Likely born in his grandparents’ house at 21 Lincoln Street (now known as the Hingham Historical Society’s Old Ordinary), Robert Thaxter grew up at 137 Main Street in Hingham, a lovely home once called “Tranquility Lodge,” sitting just down aways on Main Street from Hingham’s 1681 Old Ship Church Meeting House.  

He graduated from Harvard College in 1798 and attended the highly selective private cadaver lectures in Anatomy and Surgery offered by the famous surgeon Dr. John Warren (1753-1815), who would go on to be a founder of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Robert Thaxter’s original admission ticket to Dr. Warren’s class is seen below.  Robert soon joined the Massachusetts Medical Society and in 1824 delivered that body’s annual oration, titled A Dissertation on the Excessive Use of Ardent Spirits.

Robert continued a family tradition as a highly respected medical doctor. He was mentored by and practiced with his father, Dr. Thomas Thaxter, in the study of medicine and surgery in Hingham. Dr. Thomas Thaxter was of deep Hingham roots, as “the family of Thaxters were among the early settlers of that town.” (The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol, XLVI., Wednesday, May 19, 1852. No.16 pg. 309)

Dr. Robert Thaxter kept detailed records of his patients. His medical diary is a treasure that the Hingham Historical Society holds in its archives. He had a unique writing style and in one journal entry describes the travels of a critically ill man who journeyed from northern Maine for medical care.

This was a demanding trip in the 19th century even for a healthy person let alone one with a critical illness. But Dr. Thaxter was a physician of both the rich and the poor and a healer with an extensive reputation as a doctor both near and far. The doctor’s notes reflect his high level of compassion for this distressed patient. His concise description of the patient’s clinical findings also shows a modernist sensibility in terms of his ability to describe clinical findings with a degree of precision. At that time, treating patients was limited by the lack of today’s medicines such as antibiotics which may have cured this patient. Dr. Thaxter did a remarkable job taking care of patients with the limited pharmacopoeia available at that time. Dr. Thaxter’s 1810 entry regarding his examination of this sick patient is as follows.

Jeremiah Ferino: Jeremiah, 28, a thin habit, (and) narrow chest, had been unwell several weeks with the ordinary symptoms of a cold an occasional haemophysis, when he exhaled himself to fatigue (and) … (and) embarked in that condition at Machias for Portland.

His complaints all increased notwithstanding which on his arrival at Portland he took stage for Boston. At Portsmouth he was stopped one day by epistaxis then … his journey to Boston, where he arrived April 14th, 1810.

That night he was unable to lie down in consequence of laborious respiration. The next day he came to Dorchester worn down by fatigue (and) disease. He was still unable to lie in a horizontal position. His respiration was so very difficult that he was obliged to sit leaning forward. He coughed very frequently (and) expectorated mucous mixed with very (fluid) blood.

To have medicines on hand as a doctor, his father, Dr. Thomas Thaxter was also proprietor of a pharmacy in Hingham, which Robert’s maiden aunt, Abigail Thaxter, ran.  (History of the Town of Hingham, 1893; Vol II, page 323; “Native and Resident Physicians” by George Lincoln.)  The Thaxter pharmacy would have had a wealth of compounds, elixirs, herbs, and other medicinal items that the young Robert Thaxter could access to treat and cure ailments of that time. Dr. Robert Thaxter’s beautiful wooden medicine chest is also in the collection of the Hingham Historical Society. His medicine chest contains thirteen mold blown glass bottles, many of them with original paper labels. The bottles are labeled with interesting ingredients such as maraschino, strawberry syrup, ginger, parfait amour, rose water, spirit of camphor, orange, oil of cinnamon, oil of cloves, and aromatic elixir. Today, most of these items would be found in our kitchen spice rack rather than our medicine cabinet.

13 mold blown glass vials
Dr. Robert Thaxter’s medicine chest

Once trained, Robert Thaxter stayed in Hingham side by side with his father and continued the medical practice. They were both driven and ambitious men but by 1809, Dr. Robert Thaxter needed his independence. He moved his medical practice to Dorchester. Not surprisingly, he was “immediately received into popular confidence which he retained until his death.” (The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol, XLVI., Wednesday, May 19, 1852. No.16 pg.309). Dr. Thaxter was married to his love of medicine and never took a wife. Once settled in Dorchester, he posted the following advertisement in the July 22, 1809 Columbian Centinel Newspaper:

NOTICE: Doctor Robert Thaxter informs the Inhabitants of Dorchester that he has taken lodgings at the residence of Mr. William Richards, where he will be ready at all times to attend to his profession. He will inoculate with kine Pox, free of expense, all persons who feel themselves unable to pay.

(History of the Town of Hingham, 1893; Vol II, page 324. “Native and Resident Physicians” by George Lincoln.)

At that time, Boston was a homogeneous and in many ways provincial society, with a deeply rooted regard for its protestant English past.  Irish immigrants now flooded into Boston hoping for a second chance in life. These Catholic newcomers, though, were seen as a threat to the norms of Boston society. Dr. Thaxter’s decision to relocate his practice to Dorchester was a bold move. He might have damaged his reputation as a doctor by leaving, but he didn’t and still returned to the area to perform surgeries (The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol, XLVI., Wednesday, May 19, 1852. No.16 pg.309).

Once settled in Dorchester his reputation took off. Dr. Thaxter’s diligence, careful medical observation, and never-ending dedication to the sick expanded his medical practice to neighboring areas. As time went on, he also was drawn to the Irish poor now arriving in Dorchester. “The Irish population gathered more thickly about him . . . .  By night and by day, he was at their beck,” (The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol, XLVI., Wednesday, May 19, 1852. No.16 pg.312)

Dr. Thaxter’s commitment as a doctor to serving the needy, poor, and especially, those from Ireland fleeing the potato famine is commendable—then and now. Those emigrating by what were later called “coffin ships” from Ireland carried poor passengers in steerage where there was a lack of food, plenty of filth and diseases running rampant such as typhus. (As described in a Hingham Historical Society lecture, “The Irish Riviera and Hingham’s Irish 1850-1950,” available for viewing here, typhus and other infectious diseases were killers without our present-day antibiotics.

Dr. Thaxter met his end doing what he believed in. “He fell a martyr to the ship fever (typhus fever), caught in attending an Irish family, just from on board ship.” (Obituary, Boston Daily Evening Transcript 11 Feb 1852).  It was said that “Dr. Thaxter never stopped helping the Irish.” (Ibid.) He had a charitably rich and spiritual life to the end. Dr. Thaxter died February 9th, 1852. He was 75 years old. (History of the Town of Hingham, 1893; Vol II, page 324; “Native and Resident Physicians” by George Lincoln.)

To learn more about the Thaxter family and its place in local and American history, please see our post One if By Land, Two If By Sea on this blog.  You might also look at the recent publication, Revolutionary War Patriots of Hingham, by Ellen Miller and Susan Wetzel, Dec 26, 2023, which details the town’s Patriots, including quite a few from the Thaxter family who left their mark in history.

Abigail (Smith) Thaxter

If you are in Hingham, you also may want to visit Dr. Thaxter’s likely birthplace, the Old Ordinary. There you can see a portrait of Dr. Robert Thaxter’s grandmother, Abigail Smith Thaxter, hanging in the parlor.

Dr. Robert Thaxter’s spirit carries on today in public service and health. This tradition of outreach and assistance to those most disadvantaged continues in the Boston area such as the work of the late Dr. Paul Farmer and the continuing work of Partners in Health, and Dr. Jim O’Connell and Boston Health Care for the Homeless, as well as numerous others dedicating their lives to helping those in need.

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October 1774: Hingham Raises a Liberty Pole

“Raising the liberty pole,” 1776 / painted by F.A. Chapman ; engraved by John C. McRae, N.Y. (Library of Congress)

1774 was a big year for young Samuel Gardner of South Hingham.  Over the course of that year, he made five short notations in what had once been his father’s diary:  that he was married on January 6; that he commenced “keeping house” on April 27; that his father, Samuel Gardner, Sr., died on November 5; and that his first child, also named Samuel, was born the following day, November 6.  The fifth entry, made on October 16, 1774, was, “Liberty pool [sic] raised.”  To have merited an entry along with the other four milestones means this, too, was an important event in Samuel’s life. 

It has long been reported that a liberty pole was raised in South Hingham.  The hill running up Main Street from Glad Tidings Plan to the vicinity of what is now South School was called Liberty Pole Hill in the 19th century, and the name was adopted for a residential subdivision, bounded by Main Street, Cushing Street, and Old County Road, that was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.  But until we located a transcription of Samuel Gardner’s diary in the papers of local historical Julian Loring, we had no written confirmation of or information about Hingham’s liberty pole.   

Liberty Pole in the Fields (New York). 1770 cartoon engraved by P. E. du Simitiere. (Library Company of Philadelphia)

What is a liberty pole anyway?  Liberty poles erected in colonial towns in the years running up to the American Revolution were symbols of dissent from Great Britain.  They were typically tall wooden masts or poles with a red flag or cap on top and often served as the sites of meetings or demonstrations.  The reference was classical, recalling stories of a pole topped with a freedman’s cap erected after Julius Caesar’s assassination as a symbol of the Romans’ freedom tyranny.  (Boston initially had a Liberty Tree, where in 1765 the Sons of Liberty hanged Andrew Oliver in effigy to protest the Stamp Act, though after British soldiers chopped it down during their occupation of Boston, it was replaced with a liberty pole.) 

Liberty poles were raised across New England in the 1760s and 1770s, sometimes in protest (for instance, of the Stamp Act or the Boston Port Act) and sometimes in celebration (for instance, the Stamp Act’s repeal  or the opening of the First Continental Congress). 

The timing of Hingham’s liberty pole–raised on October 16, 1774–is no surprise.  In May 1774, Parliament enacted the Boston Port Act, closing Boston Harbor, and other of the so-called Intolerable Acts as retribution for the Boston Tea Party.  Boston’s Town Meeting issued a call for a trade embargo against Great Britain and by mid-summer 1774, Hingham’s Town Meeting had formed a committee to draft a non-importation covenant, or agreement in solidarity with Boston to boycott goods from Great Britain and the West Indies.  On August 17, Town Meeting approved the draft covenant but stayed its execution pending action by the First Continental Congress, which had convened on September 5.  (By late October, Town Meeting had received and adopted the articles of the Continental Association, a non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption agreement against British merchants and goods, in the hopes that economic pressure might encourage Parliament to address colonial grievances.) 

On September 21, 1774, the Town heard a report of the Suffolk County Committees of Correspondence and voted its agreement with that body’s resolves, later called the “Suffolk Resolves.”  These included boycotting British goods, defying the Intolerable Acts, refusing to pay taxes, and urging the towns to raise and train militias of their own people.  Consistent with those resolves, at the same meeting, Hingham voted to recommend “to the officers of the Militia to assemble their men once in the week and Instruct them in the art of War and the Men be provided with Arms and Ammunition According to Law.” 

Enoch Whiton House, 1083 Main Street (Hingham Historical Society)

Hingham had several militia companies, roughly organized by geography.  Samuel Gardner belonged to the company under the command of Captain Enoch Whiton, a neighbor of his on Liberty Plain. (Captain Whiton’s house still stands at 1083 Main Street; as do those of Samuel Gardner, Sr., and Jr., at 1035 and 1006 Main Street, respectively.  It is remembered that Captain Whiton’s company trained in the vicinity of what is now the Marchesiani Farmlands at 1030 Main Street–right across the road from the home of Samuel Gardner, Sr. 

The militia men were undoubtedly instrumental in the raising of a liberty pole not far north of their training grounds on October 16, 1774.  Their revolutionary activity was only beginning; Captain Whiton’s company mustered and marched on April 19, 1775, when word of Lexington arrived in Hingham.  

History of the Town of Hingham, vol. I, pt. 2 (1893)

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One If By Land; Two If By Sea: the Hingham Connection

Most people are aware of Paul Revere’s midnight ride in April 1775 due to the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the hanging of two lanterns in the Old North Church steeple preceding his journey.  We at the Hingham Historical Society were delighted to learn that this event has a Hingham connection.

Thaxter Mansion, North Street, Hingham

One of the men responsible for hanging the two lanterns was John Pulling, Jr. a vestryman of Old North and a friend of Paul Revere. John was born in 1737 in Boston and was a trader by occupation. He married his first wife, Annis Lee, in Manchester in 1768. They had two children, a daughter and son both named for their parents.

Abigail (Smith) Thaxter

John’s wife Annis died in 1771. This is where the Hingham connection comes in. John married his second wife, Sarah Thaxter McBean (17461843) in January 1773. She was the daughter of Major Samuel Thaxter (1723-1771) of Hingham, a trader and veteran of the French and Indian War, and Abigail Smith (1722-1807), daughter of Samuel and Bethia (Chipman) Smith of Sandwich. Sarah grew up in the Thaxter mansion on North Street, the site of today’s St. Paul’s Church. A portrait of Sarah’s mother, Abigail Smith hangs in our Old Ordinary museum.

Pulling Tablet, Old North Church

This was Sarah’s second marriage as well. She was the widow of Duncan McBean, a West Indies planter from a family of Scottish traders. The McBeans had no surviving children. Records show that Sarah and John Pulling had three known children: Sarah (1773), Martha (ca 1780) and Richard (bef. 1782). During the Revolutionary War John served as a Captain and Commander of Ordinance Stores. On April 19 when he heard he was wanted by the British for questioning in his role aiding Revere, he, Sarah and their children fled Boston in a fishing boat, making their way to Hull. This event is memorialized on a tablet on the Old North Church. When they returned to the North End of Boston after the British evacuated in March 1776, they found their house ransacked and all their property gone. 

121-123 Main Street, Hingham

After John’s death in 1787 Sarah and her family (including the two children from John’s first marriage) returned to Hingham, where they lived until Sarah married for the third time to Thomas Reed of Abington in 1793. It is unknown where in Hingham Sarah and the children lived during that five-year period as Sarah’s childhood home, the Thaxter Mansion had been sold to Elisha Leavitt, Jr. in 1770. Perhaps Sarah and the children lived with

Parlor at 137 Main Street, Hingham

one of her younger brothers who remained in Hingham? Dr. Thomas Thaxter lived at 121 Main Street and Henry Thaxter lived at 137 Main Street. Both houses still stand today. After marrying Thomas Reed, Sarah resided in Abington until her death in 1843 at age 97.
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Joshua Winslow “Out of The Frying Pan and Into the Fire”

Portrait of Joshua Winslow (1755) by John Singleton Copley

A letter in our archives, written almost exactly 250 years ago today, provides a personal account of events leading up to the famous Boston Tea Party,  whose semiquincentennial will be widely celebrated next month.  The letter is from Joshua Winslow, a merchant and member of an ancient Plymouth County family, to Jotham Gay, son of Hingham, Massachusetts, pastor Ebenezer Gay, and himself a merchant.  In his November 18, 1773, letter to Gay, Winslow describes his appointment as one of six “consignees” authorized to receive (and pay the duty on) East India Company tea to be brought into the colonies under the newly enacted Tea Act of 1773; Boston’s resistance to the importation of that tea; and his growing sense that he might be heading “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”  Winslow and Gay were in business together and good friends, their families linked by several marriages.  When he wrote to Gay, Winslow had just returned to Massachusetts after a number of years in Cumberland, Nova Scotia.  This is only one letter in a long-standing correspondence between Winslow and Gay, but it is both evocative and timely.

Winslow first provides a clear explanation of the economic and political factors at play as a result of the Tea Act:

[M]y time has been much engaged of late in a New Affair, which, whether it has reached you or not I can’t tell, but I have said just now something of my going out of the frying pan into the fire.  This was meant to allude to a New Measure of the East India Company for introducing their teas into the several Governments in America at a lower Rate than ordinary, in order to prevent the vast Importation of Dutch Teas, which, as they do not pay the duty, are sold at a lower rate than that from England, by which means the India Company’s Teas have been accumulating upon their hands & the great door for vending the same into the Colonies in a manner Shut up.  By the Interest of my Friends I was appointed one of the Companies Agents in Boston, & if the thing is Effected, it will afford a handsome commission.  But the Country seems to be all up in arms again, & as great a Commotion at last is made about it, as there was about the Stamp Act–nay, they seem to carry opposition much higher than they did then.  All the provinces seem determined that it shall never be landed in America . . . .

Even if being sold directly from the East India Company, the tea remained subject to taxation under the Townshend duties, and thus the Americans supporting the Patriot cause did not want this lower-priced tea landing in the colonies.  The six consignees–Governor Thomas Hutchinson and two of his sons, Benjamin Faneuil, Richard Clarke, and Winslow–would be responsible for paying the duties before selling the tea on to New Englanders.

Winslow’s letter then turned to a description of some alarming events of November 3, 1773–what may be thought of as the opening chapter in the Tea Party story:

[T]o so great a height had [opposition to the East India Company tea] got in Boston, the beginning of this month, that I had an Express from my associate Mr. Faneuil on the evening of the 2nd Inst. to be in Town next day by 11 o Clock.  I set out at Midnight and rode till 9 o Clock Next Morning.  When I got to town I found the Flag up at Liberty Tree, & the inhabitants had been notified by hand bills Stuck up the day before to appear at the Tree at 12 o Clock that day to hear the Consignees resign their Commissions, & swear that they would return the Tea by the ships which brought it out.  We met at Mr. Clark’s Store, who with the Governor’s Two Sons are the other Consignees & determined that we would not go. Whereupon a Committee of the whole house came down from the Tree thro: King Street (at about 1 o Clock) to Mr. Clark’s store, where Mollineux at the head of a number demanded of us to Resign our Commissions & swear that we would Return the Tea — &c &c.  He was told we had no answer to make thereto, whereupon we were declared Enemies to the Country, & notified that we were to expect the Resentment of the People.  Accordingly soon after he left the Store, an Attack began by breaking the Doors, Pelting Stones, Dirt, &c, upon those within and attempted to break in upon us, but having a number of resolute Friends we sustained the attack & after about one hour’s siege they marched off , the chief of them at least, & we being Reinforced by a number of Friends, quitted the Store . . . .

 “Next day was pretty quiet,” Winslow continued,

but a Town Meeting was ordered for the day following — Which met accordingly but it being 5th Nov: and no small intimations of another attack that night under the sanction of its being Pope’s Night, I not being desirous of another Amusement of that Nature ordered my Chaise & left Town — nor have I been there since.

(Pope Night, a New England descendant of England’s Guy Fawkes Day, was a raucous and sometimes violent celebration; a consignee of English tea might reasonably be concerned about additional trouble.)

Back in Marshfield, Winslow expanded on his frustration:

There have been other Meetings since for the same purpose & one attack upon Mr. Clark’s House, but as the Tea is not yet arrived and until it is we are in Manner Ignorant of the Nature of the Instructions which may accompany it.  We cannot resign in Honor or Conscience; for this we are abused and stigmatized as Enemies of the Country & what not — but I need not enlarge as you will see the proceedings in the Publick Prints.

He closed on a somewhat hopeful note:

How the matter will end must be left to time.  Meanwhile, I don’t intend to go to Town again until [the tea] arrives, when perhaps there may be such Instructions therewith as may make our own way Clear, either to Resign or to Accommodate matters in such a manner as may prove Satisfactory to the People. 

We can’t be accused of a spoiler if we suggest that Winslow’s optimism was misplaced.  In his next letter to Gay, dated January 3, 1774 (also in our archives), he recounts what has become one of the most familiar stories of the Revolution:

Whether you have received my former letter or not, it is most probable you have heard by the way of Halifax of the violent lengths to which they have proceeded in Boston, with the Tea ship’t by the India Company to that port.  That when it arrived in that Harbour the people Seized upon it, & put a guard on board the Several Ships to prevent it being landed, with a determination that it should be returned from whence it came.  That the Agents, apprehensive of further ill treatment from the People, retired to the Castle for the safety of their persons sometime about the beginning of December, where they yet remain.  That the People finding the measure of returning the Tea impracticable to be accomplished had destroyed all that came in these vessels, to the amount of 342 chests, by cutting them to pieces and turning the whole of it into the Dock. whereby a Loss of about L16,000 must fall upon some body or other. 

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Boston Greets the “King of America”

General Benjamin Lincoln may have stood in for General George Washington at Yorktown, accepting Lord Cornwallis’ sword, but not all of his Hingham neighbors and friends were on his side in the Revolutionary War.  A letter in our archives from Deborah Barker of Hingham describes the reception the newly inaugurated President Washington received when he visited Boston in October 1789–and leaves no question about what she thought of the new republic and its chief executive.

Washington  toured the New England states in the fall of 1789, arriving in Boston on October 24 to an elaborate public celebration.  As pictured below, a triumphal arch, designed by Charles Bulfinch, was constructed in Washington’s honor at the west end of the Old State House, over what was later renamed Washington Street.

1789_TriumphalArch_Boston_MassachusettsMagazine Larger

Engraving published in Massachusetts Magazine in 1789. Caption on the picture reads, “View of the triumphal Arch and Colonnade, erected in Boston in honor of the President of the United States, Oct. 24, 1789.”

Deborah Barker, one of three daughters of loyalist Joshua Barker, who fought for the Crown in the French and Indian War, was not among those impressed. She had been in Boston when Washington arrived and reported to Christian Barnes of Bristol, England, her mother’s cousin, that “[t]he General as President of the United States (or in other words as the King of America) thought proper to visit the northern part of his territories.”  She continued in the same sarcastic vein:

. . . Such a movement could not be performed secretly. It was no sooner announced that he intended visiting Boston than every breast beat with rapture, joy, and exultation. The mechanicks were employed, some in erecting triumphal arches, some in painting flags expressive of their several branches of business, which the most respectable of the order were to carry forth . . . . All of the superior orders were busy in forming addresses expressive of his transcendent merit, and their great love and respect for him. The poets in writing odes and other poems asserted their abilities. . . . The military were all in motion and made a superb appearance. Thus after a week’s preparation and expectation the great the important day (in honor of which everything that an infant world could do was to be done for the Man that many of them fancyed themselves under the greatest obligation to) arrived. The people met in the Mall, formed themselves into a regular processing, each man following the flag bearing a device expressive of his employment, first the merchants, then the clergy, doctors, lawyers, & sea captains, the mechanics alphabetically, thus proceeded by the select men (they you know must always be first) they marched down prison lane and up the main street . . . .

Barker knew she had an appreciative audience for her colorful description. Christian Barnes and her husband, Henry, had been forced to flee Massachusetts in 1775 because of Henry’s British trading activities and had forfeited their substantial estate.  Banished by an Act of the General Court, they had settled in Bristol. Portraits of Christian and Henry Barnes hang in the parlor of our Old Ordinary House Museum. Christian’s has two slashes across it and Henry’s a hole in the middle of the chest; tradition claims that these inflicted by the Marlborough patriots who seized the Barnes estate. It is through Deborah Barker that these paintings came to rest in Hingham.