Dr. Samuel Gelston on Trial

Since March I’ve been meaning to finish the story of Dr. Samuel Gelston, the Nantucket physician whom the Patriots jailed in January 1776, and then had to recapture the next month when he escaped.

In the summer of 1776, Gelston was still in custody, guarded by Berachiah Basset on Naushon Island, the biggest of the Elizabeth Islands off Cape Cod. Perhaps the authorities had sent him to such a remote place to prevent a second escape. At the time, Patriot leader and future governor James Bowdoin was Naushon’s absentee owner. (The thumbnail image here shows Naushon in winter; for a print of this or other aerial views, visit Joseph R. Melanson’s Skypic.com.)

On 5 July 1776, the Massachusetts House resolved:

That the said Berachiah Basset, Esq., be, and he hereby is, directed to send the said Dr. Samuel Gelston, under a proper Guard, to the five Justices in the County of Suffolk, appointed a Court to inquire into the conduct of persons suspected to be enemies to the liberties of this Colony...

In a petition published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1874, Gelston basically threw himself on the mercy of this special court:

your petitioner by the special Order of the Honorable Court has been brought before your Honors, to answer to several Complaints brought against him, one of which was that of supplying Capt. [James] Ayscough [of the Royal Navy] with provisions, the particulars of which has been given in with Truth and Candour, & he apprehends has been Laid before your Honors.

The other is for several speaches made in conversations & Threatening to spread the small Pox all of which he absolutely Denys, & presumes no positive evidence can be produced to support such a charge neither has he at any time held any Correspondence with, nor supply’d the army or navy of Britain except in the present Instance nor has he been regardless of his duty to his Creator, his Country & posterity—

Your petitioner would further beg Leave to set forth to your Honors That he has a Wife & Family consisting of Eight children, who must be Greatly distressed by his absence & confinement as well as his property Distroyed.

Therefore most Humbly Request your Honors to consider his situation with kindness and attention & if possible to suffer him to Return to his family.—He is willing with Humble Contrition to Confess his Faults & in future to behave himself with calmness and moderation in every action that may tend to promote the Good of his Country & its cause which shall be advised on every Occasion.

Once more your petitioner would beg leave to add That he is Heartily sorry that he has been so unwise as to attempt to make his Escape before he was Acquitted by your Honors, one thing was, he did not consider himself under parole & was foolishly Lead by the advice of Others.

The justices were apparently in a forgiving mood, perhaps because the war looked quite different in July 1776 from how it had five months earlier. Massachusetts was no longer the center of the fighting, and the British navy no longer so close. (People had no idea that the British military had returned to Staten Island early that month, and that the worst of the war lay ahead.)

Dr. Gelston seemed contrite about the actions he admitted to: helping Capt. Ayscough and trying to escape. Apparently no one came to testify about what he denied doing, such as spreading smallpox. (Even before the war, he’d had to deal with public fears about how he treated that disease.) So the justices sent Gelston back to Nantucket.

In 1779, as I wrote back here, Gelston was again caught up in a dispute over local Loyalists aiding a British warship that visited Nantucket—except this time he was a witness against other men. So he seems to have discarded his Loyalist sentiments and accepted the independence of Massachusetts. Dr. Gelston died in July 1782, aged fifty-seven.

Dr. Samuel Gelston in and out of Custody

I’m finally getting back to Dr. Samuel Gelston from Nantucket, and how he went from being a respected smallpox inoculator before the war to a prisoner under the Massachusetts General Court.

According to Fred B. Rogers’s article in the 1972 Journal of History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, quoted on David Kew’s Cape Cod History, the friction started in Nov 1775 when H.M.S. Swan anchored off Nantucket. Its captain, James Ayscough, had a good reputation in Rhode Island before the war. He, his wife, and his crew were welcomed by at least some Nantucketers, who didn’t share the mainlanders’ enthusiasm for rebellion. On the 16th, Shubael Lovell (1740-1805) of Barnstable sent the captain a letter saying: “Pray, sir, be pleased to accept a few vegetables, to be delivered to you by Doctor Gelston, a bold and staunch friend to Government...” That letter seems to have been intercepted by Patriots.

On 12 December, after the Swan had left the Nantucket harbor, N. Freeman wrote to Gen. George Washington:

This Shubael, though he appears an ignorant fellow, hath considerable influence among the Barnstable Tories, hath practised coasting [i.e., sailing along the coast] to Nantucket the summer past, and I have no doubt hath communicated every thing of intelligence to the navy, if not frequently supplied them with provisions.

Doctor Gelston, to whom he alludes in his letter, we have taken a number of depositions of his having supplied them considerably from Nantucket. He swears he will do it in defiance of the people, and threatens communicating the small-pox to any one who resists him. I wish he was taken, but cannot get any one, as yet, to join me in sending on for him.

Maj. Joseph Dimmick, commander of Falmouth’s minuteman company, took on that task. He sailed to Nantucket on 30 December, arrested Dr. Gelston, and brought him back to the jail at Plymouth. Shubael Lovell was already there.

The legislature then had to decide what to do with the physician. On 16 Jan 1776, a committee composed of members of both the House and the Council concluded that he had “supplied the enemies of American liberties with sundry articles of provision“ and was “a dangerous person.” It recommended that the General Court make the doctor post a bond of £1,000 and promise not to “assist or correspond with any of the enemies of this country.”

However, the lower house considered that too lenient. Instead, the representatives voted:

whereas, the greatest danger must necessarily result from permitting such persons to go at large and continue their traitorous practices of opposing the measures adopted for our defence, of spreading false and discouraging rumours, and of communicating in formation of all our operations to our unnatural enemies:

And it is, therefore, Resolved, That the honourable Board be, and they hereby are desired to cause the said Samuel Gelston to be forthwith confined in some Jail in this Colony, until it shall appear to the General Court, or other proper authority of this Government, that he can with safety to the United Colonies be again set at liberty.

Two days later, Joseph Palmer of Braintree brought Dr. Gelston from Falmouth to Watertown, where the General Court was meeting. On 22 January, the Council offered another solution, according to Samuel Abbott Green’s Groton During the Revolution: Dr. Gelston should pay the bond of £1,000 and not leave the town of Groton. If he refused, then he would be put in jail in Newburyport. Once again, the House voted against this idea.

The provincial authorities finally sent Dr. Gelston back to the Plymouth County jail. It looks like he may never have reached there. On 3 February the Council acknowledged that he “did make his escape from the Messenger of the honourable House of Representatives, who had him in his keeping.”

The Library of Congress’s American Memory project offers a look at the broadside that the legislature issued on 26 Jan 1776. The text reads:

RAN AWAY from the custody of the Messenger of the General Court, a certain Dr. Samuel Gelston, belonging to Nantucket, a short well set man; had on when he went away a reddish Sheepskin coat, dress’d with the wool inside, and a scarlet waistcoat; he was apprehended as an enemy to this country, ’tis suppos’d he will attempt escaping to the enemy, by the way of Nantucket, Rhode-Island, or New York,—

Whoever will take up said Gelston and deliver him to the messenger of the House of Representatives, shall be well rewarded for his time and expence.

(Thanks to Tom Macy for that lead.)

Dr. Gelston got as far as Rhode Island before being recaptured by 3 February. He must have made contact with some Loyalist or Crown official since Timothy Newell heard news from the doctor in Boston on 29 January.

A man named John Brown [why can’t everyone have uncommon, easily tracked names?] was found to have helped the doctor escape; according to the Boston Gazette, he had agreed to do so for £50. When the authorities arrested Brown, they discovered that he had the audacity to be carrying ten pounds of tea. The Council ordered Gelston and Brown to jail and had the tea publicly burned. So there.

COMING UP: Dr. Gelston goes to trial.

Dr. Samuel Gelston Fights the Smallpox

A few days ago I wrote about a “Dr. Gilson,” who escaped from the Plymouth jail in late February 1776 and informed people in Boston of an upcoming Continental Army offensive. I identified him as Dr. Samuel Gilston of Nantucket, and tentatively shared what information I could find.

Then Boston 1775 reader Tom Macy alerted me to a broadside that spelled the man’s name as “Gelston,” and that opened a big ol’ door. Dr. Samuel Gelston turns out to be much better documented than Dr. Samuel Gilston or Gilson.

Let’s start with his genealogical information: Samuel Gelston was born in 1727, died in 1782. He married a woman named Anne Cotton, and they had eight children, including the boy Roland (who I’d correctly guessed was the doctor’s son and successor as a physician on Nantucket). According to this article from Gelston.org, Samuel Gelston was the son of Hugh and Mary Gelston of Southampton, New York.

Fred B. Rogers’s 1972 article about the two doctors in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (shared on this page of Cape Cod medical history) states that in 1763 Dr. Samuel Gelston offered to inoculate people against the smallpox in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard. Inoculation then meant deliberate infection with (what one hoped was) a weak strain of the smallpox virus. Patients developed the disease, became contagious for a while, sometimes died, but more often survived with lifelong immunity.

Dr. Gelston’s inoculations were successful enough that he went to the Massachusetts capital when it suffered an outbreak the following year. The Boston Post-Boy for 5 Mar 1764 carried this advertisement:

Dr. SAMUEL GELSTON
Gives this Publick Notice to his Patients in Boston and the adjacent Towns that he has prepared (by Permission of his Excellency the Governor) all comfortable Accommodations for them at the Barracks at Castle-William, in order to their being inoculated for the Small-Pox under his immediate Care.

N. B. His Rooms are in that Part of the Barrack where the Patients of Dr. Nathaniel Perkins, Dr. [Miles] Whitworth and Dr. [James] Lloyd are received.

Dr. Gelston and Dr. [Joseph] Warren reside at Castle-William Day and Night.

All Persons inclined to go to the Barracks at Castle-William to be inoculated where Dr. Gelston resides, may apply to Dr. Lloyd at his House near the King’s Chapel, who will provide them a Passage to the Castle.

In 1771, Dr. Gelston set up another smallpox inoculation hospital on Gravelly Island off Nantucket. Obed Macy’s 1835 History of Nantucket says:

Houses were accordingly built, and the business commenced. But it was not long before the people began to murmur, and express their dissatisfaction with the measure; for some who had been there to be inoculated, were so careless as to put the inhabitants in
danger of taking the disease on their return.

The locals asked the Massachusetts General Court to order Gelston to stop the inoculations, bought his property the next year, and tore down the buildings.

Dr. Gelston applied to open hospitals in Edgartown in 1771 and in Buzzards Bay in 1772, and was turned down both times. Then came the war.

COMING UP: Dr. Gelston as a “dangerous person.”

“Alarming Apprehensions” and the Mysterious Dr. Gilson

Boston selectman Timothy Newell must have been nervous when he started his last diary entry for February 1776 with “Thursday 25th.” As the person who transcribed this document for the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Collections series noted, the 25th was a Sunday. Context indicates that Newell probably wrote this entry on Thursday the 29th:

From the accounts of Dr. Gilson, and some others Deserters from the Continental army, great preparations were making to attack the Town,—caused very alarming apprehensions and distress of the Inhabitants.

Newell had stayed in Boston not because he supported the Crown but because he felt a responsibility to guard the town from the damages of war. Now the Continental artillery was preparing to bombard Boston, as Gen. George Washington had described days before.

After reading this diary entry, I wondered who “Dr. Gilson” was. Newell called him a deserter, and deserters are always interesting. But it took a lot of digging to find even a little about the man. His name doesn’t appear on the list of colonial Boston’s physicians published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, for example. Fortunately, we now have Google.

On 19 Apr 1764, while Boston was under threat from a smallpox epidemic, the selectmen summoned every physician in the area to discuss how they were treating patients and inoculating people safely. “Dr. Samuel Gilston” was one of the doctors who did not attend that meeting.

Jacob Rader Marcus’s compilation of documents from the eighteenth century on the topic of American Jewry offers a very good clue about the man. (Only Google Books allowed me to find this.) In 1770 Aaron Isaacs of East Hampton, Long Island, wrote to a Newport businessman that “Docter Gilston” owed him money. He added, “He is a docter and neavel offesur at Nantucket.” Gilson might therefore have been working as a ship’s doctor for the Royal Navy.

Isaacs (1724-1798) was born in Hamburg, moved to Long Island, and eventually converted from Judaism to Presbyterianism. His daughter Sarah married a Cape Cod man named William Payne, and their son John Howard Payne wrote “Home, Sweet Home.” But I digress.

Then the war broke out. If Dr. Gilston had ties to the navy and to Nantucket, which was known for its Loyalism, the Whig authorities in Massachusetts might well have seen him as an enemy. So they locked him up. William Pynchon of Salem wrote in his diary on 29 Feb 1776, the same day Newell heard the upsetting rumors:

News came that Dr. Gilson and others broke out of Plymouth jail and got into Boston; and by advices from Dr. Eliot and Mr. Payson that the Regulars at B[oston]. are preparing to quit the town; and from others that the Provincials are busy in preparing to bombard the town, and to erect works for that end on the hill at Dorchester, near the Neck.

Dr. Eliot was probably the Rev. Dr. Andrew Eliot, one of the Congregationalist ministers who had stayed in occupied Boston. Mr. Payson was probably the Rev. Phillips Payson of Chelsea.

Dr. Gilston was not on the list of civilians evacuated from Boston in 1776, nor was he listed as an absentee by the state in 1778. Instead of leaving, he appears to have returned to Nantucket and become part of that community’s struggle to stay out of the fighting that followed.

I found two more glimpses of the doctor during the war. In 1779, a Nantucket man named Thomas Jenkins complained to the Massachusetts Council about five islanders trying to aid the British military and summoning their “predatory fleet” to the island. Jenkins wrote, “Dr. Samuel Gilston will prove this confession.” Gilston signed this complaint as a witness.

In addition, Dr. James Thacher’s Military Journal recorded some gossip about the British general Richard Prescott, who had been captured and exchanged:

After the general was exchanged, and he resumed his command on the island, the inhabitants of Nantucket deputed Dr. Gilston to negotiate some concerns with General Prescott, in behalf of the town. Prescott treated the Doctor very cavalierly, and gave as the cause, that the Doctor looked so like that d—d landlord, who horsewhipped him in Connecticut, that he could not treat him with civility.

The islanders might have chosen Dr. Gilston to be their liaison with Gen. Prescott because he had old ties with the British military.

I’ve also found indications that a boy named “Gilson” entered Boston’s South Latin School in July 1773, as noted by assistant teacher James Lovell, and that Roland Gilson was later a physician on Nantucket. Was this Dr. Samuel Gilston’s son, sent to Boston for a classical education and then taking over his father’s practice?

(Thumbnail map of Nantucket above, actually drawn in the 1940s, courtesy of Rev. A. K. M. Adam’s blog.)

ADDENDUM: Thanks to reader Tom Macy, I’ve found much more about this doctor. It turns out he preferred to spell his last name “Gelston.”