SARAH CONNELL GOES TO THE DARTMOUTH COMMENCEMENT OF 1809

Dr. Spalding is a long-time resident of Portland, Maine and has served as President of the Maine Medical Association. [Editor]

Whilst I was studying the career of the founders of the Maine Medical Society of 1820, I came across a curious book entitled the "Diary of Sarah Connell Ayer." In spite of its shortcomings, a defective index for one thing, and no dates at the head of the pages for another and few elucidations of the persons mentioned in its .columns, I found here and there some leading items to connect the writer with the history of Dartmouth College in a very unusual and most romantic manner.

Know then, without further prelude, that at five o'clock on Sunday morning August 20, 1809 Sarah Connell of Concord, New Hampshire helped her father, Captain John Connell into the family chaise, jumped in herself, flicked the whip, said "Get up" to the sturdy horse between the shafts and father and daughter were off for the Dartmouth Commencement, an outing which they were making at the urgent and repeated invitations of Samuel Ayer, also of Concord. Young Ayer was a great admirer of the sweet Sarah, a graduate of the College in the class of 1807 and now acting as a tutor to the students and making a beginning in his medical studies. Captain Connell was a sea captain born in Philadelphia; and after many voyages along the Atlantic coast, he had retired from the sea living at Newburyport, later on at two small villages near Concord, and finally in that capital city itself. Sarah Connell, his daughter, was born and educated in Philadelphia also, was now about nineteen years of age, and had moved from place to place with her parents in their wanderings in search of a farm as a means of living; Sarah was very pretty, very petite, and boasted even that she never weighed over ninetyeight pounds, and often as few as ninety.

Sarah and her father made their way along in the dewy morning toward the festivity looming before them, and arriving at Pembroke, they put up their chaise and took breakfast in the hospitable mansion of Dr. Peterson who had treated Sarah for a broken ankle when she was younger, and also cared for the health of other members of the family. In the Peterson home was a son, William by name, another admirer of the fair Sarah, who, when William told her that this was the saddest day of his life, for he expected to leave for Montreal soon and would never see her again, gave him a rapid kiss; and when he said, "Another," she put her fingers to her lips and said, "Hush! I hear somebody coming."

After a kindly meal and another sweet farewell to William, Sarah and her father drove off amidst lovely scenes as far as Salisbury where they stayed over night with another medical family, the Emersons of that village.

Starting off early the next morning so as to reach Dartmouth in good season, they met with an accident in the way of breaking a tug in the harness. Sarah jumped out, found a boy to help her with a rope with which the tug was soon repaired, and then the boy was rewarded with a tip of five old-fashioned copper cents which, at that era, were about ten times the weight and value of the little copper cents of today, and so seemed a very handsome gift.

The Connells enjoyed, on this second day also, a most charming ride alongside of brooks purling with a recent shower, seeing autumnal leaves beginning to tinge the green trees, and the mountains; and at Enfield, the Shaker village, they stopped for a while, enjoying it with the Emersons who had also come along, bound for the College. After gazing at the odd life in the village, they continued on, entered .Lebanon City, and early in the afternoon reached the lower end of the Town of Hanover where they were welcomed by a nice young fellow by the name of Israel Putnam of Concord and soon to graduate, and by his side stood Tutor Samuel Ayer.

When I was living in Portsmouth at the age of nine, the Rev. Israel Putnam who had been pastor of the North Church there years before, came back to make a sort of farewell address in taking leave of the ministry; and I remember very distinctly being carried to hear the old pastor pray and preach in the oldfashioned elongated style. This old man was the boy who came to welcome Sarah Connell.

He studied law after graduating, and had also dabbled in medicine, but finally embraced theology and was preacher for twenty years at Portsmouth and later on in Danvers, Massachusetts. He was trustee of Dartmouth College and a prominent figure at all Commencements for many years.

Samuel Ayer was, as already stated, a tutor who was also studying medicine in his spare moments under the care of the well known Dr. Nathan Smith; and as a favorite of the President, John Wheelock, he was rooming and boarding in the presidential mansion.

These two young men, Putnam and Ayer, walked alongside the chaise of the Connells to the home of Deacon Daniel Fuller, where they introduced them to several ladies, Miss Rosina Fuller, a daughter of the house, and also Miss Sally Putnam and others. The boys, Ayer and Putnam, went along the street to tell the President of the arrival of their friends; and as the ladies came down into the parlor a half hour later, dressed in their best, they were greeted most kindly by the President who invited them all, including Captain Connell and his daughter, to supper at his hospitable home. This was John Wheelock soon to be in hot water with the trustees of the College and to make the name of Daniel Webster famous in college litigation.

In her diary, Sarah Connell tells us that there were many guests at the President's tea, but that she enjoyed the chance to meet them all, although a bit timid at first.

In the evening, Miss Thorndike called on the Connells with her brother Henry who was soon to graduate from the College lege and later to become a well known iron founder on a large scale in Ohio in a town named after him. With them, too, was Miss Woodbury, probably the sister of Hon. Levi Woodbury, of whom, we shall at once, hear more.

Commencement began the next morning in the Meeting-House with an oration by Mr. Buell, after which Sarah and her father went into the College Building, known of today as Dartmouth Hall. With her were Dr. Zadoc Howe, famous in Concord medical life, and other college men. The student Buell of the oration, was also there. He practiced long, as a lawyer in Glen Falls, New York; and there also hovered about the handsome Sarah a yrung fellow by the name of Francis, who became a lawyer of fame in Royalton, Vermont, and who died on his fifty-eighth birthday.

After looking over the books and cabinets of minerals, pictures and papers in Dartmouth Hall, Sarah was escorted back to the College Church where she listened to an oration by Levi Woodbury of the graduating class, the subject of which I regret not yet to have discovered. After Woodbury left the platform, he came along to where Sarah was sitting and whispered in her ear, "This is getting sort of dull, isn't it? Let's go and drive over to Norwich and have some fun."

Norwich, by the way, is written and pronounced in the old-fashioned way "Norridge" in her diary. We can all recall the "man from Norridge who burnt his mouth from eating cold plum porridge."

This drive in Vermont they enjoyed very much; and in after years Sarah must have thought very kindly of it as connected with Levi Woodbury who was to become, in her time, Governor and Senator from New Hampshire, and Secretary of the Navy; and after she was dead, he was Secretary of the United States Treasury and a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Woodbury was also the logical candidate for the presidency in 1852 as the "favorite son" of New Hampshire, but unfortunately he died before the meeting of the national convention, and Franklin Pierce, also of New Hampshire, was nominated and elected.

Levi Woodbury, permit me to add, had, as I remember him as a child of six in Portsmouth, a fine bearing, and was a magnificent figure in my eye, and in the public eye, and in public opinion. But, old family letters tell very funny stories of his political schemes. Possibly the schemes, however, in which he succeeded, were no more despicable than those in which his political opponents failed.

Returning from the drive, Sarah and Mr. Woodbury went into the church again and listened to another oration from Mr. Parrish on "Ambition"; and in the evening early, there was an address on "Music," by Mr. Brown, later on a singer of high renown in Portsmouth, and connected with the Handel Musical Society. The "abbreviated oratorio of 'Samson' was very well sung."

Samuel Ayer, the tutor, walked home with them from the concert hall. In her diary, Sarah wrote, "I found him the same very interesting and pleasant man I have known so long."

Wednesday was another day of Commencement with the very prominent "Dialogue" by Lomax and Wildes which Sarah, in her diary, characterizes "as the most vulgar and indelicate thing I ever heard in my life."

Young Lomax, I should say at this point, was later a noteworthy figure in South Carolina, in nullification times and an antagonist of that movement. He won a seat in the State Legislature on this propaganda and was a candidate for a second term but was defeated. Nevertheless his aims against nullification finally prevailed.

Wildes, his opponent in the divorce dialogue, was much sought after in later years, as referee in litigated cases, and acted in many such instances in Massachusetts, serving often with great satisfaction to all concerned.

Following the dialogue, there was a beautiful oration by Israel Putnam on "The Connection between Virtue and National Prosperity" which, from Sarah's diary, "was delivered in a most pleasing manner."

On the first evening of the Commencement there was a ball which they all attended from Deacon Fuller's, together with Israel Putnam and Sally Putnam, and from which they came home about one o'clock in the morning. On another evening there was a second ball at which Sarah Connell danced with many boys whose names she could not always remember for her diary. The music was excellent and Sarah danced "many voluntaries" (the fashionable dance of the day) with several partners. The collation was also superb, and they remained until four or five o'clock in the morning when they wandered home with the Fullers and stayed up for Israel, but as he did not appear, they "finally retired to our rooms pretty well tired out."

One or two of the boys with whom Sarah danced at this beautiful ball, deserve mention, although so long a time has passed since they were here; and we note first the name of Samuel Long who became a general in the Army before he went on the retired list. Stuart, another partner, became famous in American history, for, settling in Illinois, he was challenged to a duel. When it was rumored that Stuart would not allow a bullet to be loaded into his pistol, his opponent put one in his and Stuart was killed. The murderer, as he was generally called, was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged as a common criminal. Although the Governor was importuned to commute the sentence, he remained firm. The duellist was hanged and no other duel ever occurred in the State of Illinois, so it is said.

During the few spare hours of her visit to Hanover, Sarah Connell also had a drive .along by the river on the New Hampshire side, with Israel Putnam; but she does not say in her diary that she had a "better time" than with young Woodbury over in Vermont.

There are many other names interspersed in Sarah Connell's account of her visit to Dartmouth, but this paper must not be overloaded with the names of too many students whom she never met again.

So we reach Friday, the last day of the vacation, when Sarah and her father and the ladies living in the Fuller home, together with Israel Putnam and Samuel Ayer, dined together; and setting off for Salisbury passed the night there, meeting amongst other notable personages on their way from Hanover, Governor Jeremiah Smith and his wife who were well known in the history of the State.

On the following day, Sarah and her father continued their journey and met at Boscawen Samuel Long, the Commencement boy whom she had so much admired at Dartmouth, and others. Finally home was reached and in the evening young Ayer dropped in to pay his respects and to inquire if the Commencement of 1809 had been as he hoped for, the perfect success which he had planned out so carefully before hand.

This ends the story of Sarah Connell's visit to Dartmouth in 1809, but is only the beginning of more, for when Ayer went back to Dartmouth in September, Dr. Nathan Smith, our most famous American teacher of medicine, took him in hand, followed him up in his medical studies, and a year later said to him, "Now, Sam, there is Dr. Lyman Spalding of Portsmouth, my most famous scholar. He has just been to Philadelphia spending the winter with those lights in medicine, Rush, Wistar, Physick and Caldwell. He writes to me that it is the most wonderful course of medical instruction in this country and fully equal, according to what he has heard, to anything abroad. You go and get your degree at Philadelphia to add to ours at Dartmouth," and this he did in 1810.

After obtaining his degree, "Mr. Ayer confessed his love for me" as Sarah Connell demurely puts it in her diary; and they were married on a Sunday morning in May, 1810, before breakfast. Afterward they went to church and after dinner to Sunday School and again after supper to still another service in the church, for that was the way of doing it a century ago.

And now before Sarah Connell and her young doctor husband go forward to a medical career in which I still hope to interest you, let me say that from her diary I find that during her life in Concord, my grandfather, Enoch Parrott and his brother, John Parrott, a Senator from New Hampshire, dined in company with Dr. Nathan Smith and others in the hospitable home of the Connells in Concord. Now, what comes next? you will ask; and I say, "Can't you guess the reason why lam interestd in the Ayers?" Why, Samuel Ayer brought his young bride on their honeymoon to Portland, walked to and fro for ten years through the same streets through which I walk now almost daily, and I can almost fancy seeing them as passers-by.

It was no less a man than Dr. Nathan Smith who advised Dr. Ayer to settle in Portland; whilst another College friend, Eleazer Wheelock Ripley, a lawyer in Portland at that time and later a celebrated general in the United States Army, also told this promising young doctor that Portland was a desirable locality for a capable physician. Ripley, by the way, married Miss Love Allen of Pittsfield; and many jokes were made on her affectionate name.

Dr. Ayer soon became a force in Portland medical and political circles, and his wife was famous for her religion, she being a devout admirer and attendant upon the prayers and sermons of the Reverend Edward I'ayson who prayed an hour on every Sunday morning and preached for an hour and a half, afterwards, and whose prayers and whose sermons, for those who seek after true religion and piety, can to this day be read almost verbatim in the diary of Mrs. Ayer,—the original of which is now in the State Historical Library at Concord, New Hampshire.

This reminds me that throughout this lifelong diary, Sarah Connell never mentions her husband as "Doctor" but always as"Mr. Ayer" and occasionally as "Sam" and "Samuel." She laments every now and then his lack of religion and in the secret of her chamber mourns for his false way of living. On another page, let me say, that she remarks on the "women flirts" of that era and says "that one of them, a great friend of hers and the daughter of Dr. Porter of Saco, loved to listen with becoming blushes, to the unpleasant indelicacies of talk between the young people of the day."

The Ayers came then, as I have said, to Portland, lived first on India Street at the lower end of the town, then the fashionable district, and later on in Monument Square of today, in a house partly occupied by Dr. Nathaniel Coffin, Jr., who helped Dr. Ayer to many promising night calls which he no longer cared to attend owing to his troublesome asthma.

Dr. Ayer soon had much practice and amongst his most interesting cases, I note fingers, hands and in one instance, both arms blown off in a premature explosion of cannons either on a Fourth of July celebration or as fired for some political procession.

The most noteworthy historical patient under the charge of Dr. Ayer was Lt. Kirvan Waters of our Navy who was wounded in the combat between the "Enterprize" and the "Boxer," off Seguin Island. He suffered from a severe necrosis of the femur and finally died despite consultations with the best available surgeons near and far. The funeral of this officer was largely attended by the children of the town who, under the leadership of Mrs. Ayer, preceded and followed the coffin of the unfortunate officer bearing wreaths of flowers which they deposited upon his grave in the Eastern Cemetery. This grave is still to be seen in our days, where it is kept in good condition by patriotic women.

Backed up by his college education and tutoring, Dr. Ayer became a very clever man and practiced with great success, the ordinary medical and surgical work of that era; but after awhile he went into politics. This may have been due to his pleasant manner, his agreeable voice, and his ability to speak; but more probably still from his connection with Governor Hill of New Hampshire who had married his sister, and with Rufus King the first Governor of Maine, to be, after the Separation.

Let me here look aside from medicine, to this period in the history of Maine, this Separation from Massachusetts, and say briefly that for many years Massachusetts had dominated the Province of Maine under ancient charters and that the people, angered by the behavior of the Massachusetts politicians, did all they could to obtain a Separation so that Maine should become an independent State. In this movement Dr. Ayer was a very prominent figure for half a dozen years; and oftentimes, as a member of the General Court of Massachusetts in Boston at the State House, his voice was heard echoing the complaints of the oppressed people of Maine. Dr. Ayer went into politics, also to promote his practice and ultimately obtained his reward as we shall presently see.

Intermingled with his career in politics was also that of appointments into the Army and Navy during the War of 1812 and continuing until six years later. In these offices he found the condition of the sailors on warships coming into Portland Harbor very serious from scurvy, accidents and frostbites. He examined also recruits for the Army and did such excellent work that he was appointed what we now call contract surgeon of the Army. He wrote on the state of affairs at camps in the Province of Maine as well as in neighboring States, and was a first-rate man for examining recruits for the Army and Navy.

It happened in the War of 1812 that Dr. Ayer's college friend Lawyer Ripley, was . appointed General of the United States volunteers and it was he, who obtained the Army and Navy appointments for Ayer. Ripley did excellent service in the war at Lundy's .Lane, for instance, but fell into loggerheads with General Isaac Brown, the Commander in Chief of the United States Army about 1817. General Brown saw that he could get no chance for revenge for his grievances on the Second-in-Command of the United States Volunteers, General Ripley, so he tried to get at him through his friend Dr. Ayer. That gentleman who had been appointed into the Army on the understanding that he should continue his medical practice in Portland and not be ordered away, was astonished one day to receive orders to proceed to New Orleans for duty.

Against this he remonstrated but despite his protests and the arguments of his friends in Washington, he was again ordered to be ready to transport his family to that distant post. Rather than do that, he resigned.

In an instant he was in money difficulties because his services to the State and his medical services to the sailors in the various ports in Maine and to soldiers in military camps, had so interfered with his practice that he was at his wit's ends to obtain a living income and so he applied for a post or office under Government employ. He expected at one time to be appointed either Collector or Postmaster in Portland and in a letter he asked, if he did not obtain either of these positions, for the collectorship of the Passamaquoddy District, embracing Eastport, Calais, etc., of to-day. It is amusing to look into Dr. Ayer's letters to Governor King and to see his hints and suggestion that he wanted to be appointed to Passamaquoddy Bay if he was named neither Collector nor Postmaster of Portland, but that he would be more than pleased to go to the Bay as that was what he really wanted, the Bay which has now become prominent in Maine's history for a tidewater superpower. Finally the Collectorship of Portland went as a reward to one politician and the Postmastership was, in spite of the investigation carried on by the United States Attorney, Ether Shepley, grandfather of my good wife, retained by its occupant. And thus Dr. Ayer was appointed to the PassamaqUoddy District as a reward for his services to the United States and to the New State of Maine, and he moved to Eastport about 1823.

Before we go with him to that District and distant center of politics and medical practice let us gather up a few new threads of the Porland life of the Ayers. They enjoyed visits from President Wheelock of Dartmouth, from General Ripley, from Army and Navy officers on furlough from the War of 1812 and from various physicians best known of whom was our famous Dr. Nathan Smith. Owing to what Smith called the "eniquatance interferences of the Sheriff of Grafton County," Dr. Smith was leaving Hanover and settled in New Haven where he lectured at the Yale School of Medicine, he also visited the Ayers at various times on his way to and from the Bowdoin School for Medical Instruction and Dr. Ayer was present in Portland at a celebrated trial of a man for murder under the following circumstances:

Two men quarreled over a bill for repairs to a wagon owned by one of them but finally he and the man doing the job, agreed that each one should grab the other by the old-fashioned stock wound about their necks (serving as a collar and necktie combined) with their left hands and then with their right hands strike at one another until one of them gave in. A boy looking on, screamed and ran for help almost in an instant for one of the opponents at an early blow fell to the ground apparently dead and when other witnesses arrived he was dead. At the trial for murder, Dr. Smith thought that the history of a diseased heart proved an accidental death due to the compression around his neck caused by the stock, and upon his testimony, the survivor in the fight received a light sentence of one year in prison for manslaughter.

Dr. Ayer was much interested in the foundation of the Maine Medical Society of 1820, and was its first Secretary. He was also elected to the high position of overseer of Bowdoin College and filled that for several years.

Finally the Ayers were off to Eastport by schooner and arriving there safely, they settled down for life. Here, they were visited at various times by General Ripley, Governor King, Dr. Nathan Smith, or Warren of Boston, some distinguished Navy and Army officers and by many celebrated men and women of the day as friends of himself and of his pious wife, who was a light for religion in Maine for many a year and an example for the rest of us to follow.

The most extraordinary acquaintance which Dr. Ayer made in his new home was with Dr. Micajah Hawkes of Machias, well known in the world of medical litigation as the hero of Lowell vs. Faxon and Hawkes, which went through two trials in the Supreme Court of Maine and was finally ordered out of Court by the Bench. This was a case of dislocation of the femur which Dr. Hawkes set but which, owing to the bad behavior of the plaintiff who moved too soon out of his bed afterward became badly dislocated again and could never be set properly. Dr. Warren of Boston was consulted by Lowell, the plaintiff, and expressed an opinion greatly differing from those of Dr. Faxon and Dr. Hawkes. Twenty years later the case was proven differently for a post mortem examination of the remains of Lowell was made and those interested in the case of Lowell vs. Faxon and Hawkes (Faxon being merely a figurehead as he never treated Lowell at all) can see, in the Warren Anatomical Museum of Harvard, the pelvis and femur of Lowell showing that none of the surgeons were correct in their diagnosis. We can only say that X-rays of today would have easily shown the precise state of affairs. Dr. Ayer, it may be also said, attended Dr. Faxon in his last illness.

Dr. Ayer soon became intimately acquainted with all of the physicians in that part of the country and, being from Portland, land, was often called in consultation as a learned man. On some of these visits he went by land and then again by water, the distances being long and the dangers in winter great.

Doctor and Mrs. Ayer entertained the various army, navy and revenue officers coming into Eastport, and their home was the gathering place for celebrated guests during the next ten years. Dr. Ayer received much attention as a good obstetrician, tie was careful with the forceps, had some successful cataract couchings, operated properly on a cross-eyed boy, and "trephined" with great success a mastoid "full of pus" as they say in our days. He was also honored, as a last resort, by being asked to look at the mutilated body of a man who, as he expressed it, had been blown to pieces by the premature explosion of a cannon at a national celebration.

Mrs. Ayer, our good Sarah Connell, was his faithful companion, prayed much for him, prayed much for the neighbors and especially for the sick. She acted as nurse and was a most kindly assistant in all lying-in cases and at the bedside of chronic invalids no matter whether attended by her husband or not. She read to the sick, made delicate dishes for them and was, as one might say, traveling trained nurse for the entire region round about so far as the care of her three or four surviving children gave her opportunity.

Once upon a time the Fourth of July fell on a Saturday and when Mrs. Ayer heard that "Mr.(as she always called him in her diary) Ayer" was to attend a naval banquet that evening in honor of the festal day by officers of the "Ossipee" then in the harbor, she remonstrated with him as one might say in her diary; "for attending such an affair on Saturday night as it was a trivial and sinful preparation for the Sunday so near at hand."

We all know what a country doctor has to do and such was the life of Dr. Ayer. He also attended the official duties of the Port of Passamaquoddy Bay, keeping an eye on smugglers, looking after the government duties to see that they were faithfully collected and that the United States suffered no loss from the breaking of the custom house laws. Monthly accounts also had to be made out and sent to Washington and foreigners crossing into the United States had to be examined and disposed of easily. But from all that we have found out concerning Dr. Ayer's medical duties we are sure that politics and his office were a side issue, for his medical practice occupied most of his time and many hours were often needed for him in which to reach his distant patients. His office work and his medical practice formed his busy daily routine and so the active man in these two sorts of life got along hand in hand with his sweet Sarah of former Dartmouth days.

Coming home from a consultation along the coast in the Spring of 1832 Dr. Ayer scraped the tibia of his left leg as he climbed a ladder tied to the wharf at low tide. This bruise became infected from dye in his woolen trousers or stockings, blood poisoning set in and was followed by various tubercular symptoms. In spite of all that friendly physicians and a devoted wife could do, he departed after long sufferings from the scenes of his labors on the 23d of September in that year.

Dr. Ayer was honored with a military funeral forty-six minute guns were fired during the morning (one for each year of his life), and as the funeral procession moved along the road the firing of the artillery continued. A squad of marines from a.naval vessel in the harbor fired the usual volley of musketry as his body was lowered into the grave. He had done good work all of his life and had been a good example to all from the time when he left Dartmouth. He was a helpful man to all who came in contact with him.

We do not know what were the thoughts of sweet Sarah Connell, when as a widow with children she left Eastport and made her way home again to Concord. But we can imagine her looking now and then into her diaries of the past, and thinking with many a mournful smile of the famous Commencement of 1809, when she first learned to be fond of Tutor Ayer.

It has been a pleasure to put this romance into shape, and it is plain that the career of Dr. Ayer of Dartmouth, Portland and Eastport has been well worth recording. It is also well worth remembering, and recalling to mind, by those who like to know of the adventures of men of medicine and of a death under fire, as one may say, which comes to so many of them even in times of peace.

And last of all let us all thank Sarah Connell Ayer for handing down to posterity her genial record of two lives so well and so honorably, spent, and for her bright glimpses into an early Commencement at Dartmouth; and for a living picture of the days enjoyed on her outing of 1809.

A familiar Carnival scene