“Going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope”

Yesterday we left Mary Forbes, wife of the Rev. Eli Forbes of Gloucester, being treated in Boston by the cancer specialist John Pope for a tumor in her breast in the spring of 1775.

On 15 April, news came that the lump “came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney.”

It’s not clear whether the Forbeses were still in Boston when the war began four days later. If so, they still had access to Dr. Pope, but he might not have had the materials to make his medicines. And of course there were the dangers of attack and starvation.

The Forbeses may have left just before the war began or soon after, but in any case they were in the countryside by June. So was Dr. Pope. On 30 June Mary’s father, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, wrote in his diary:

My Daughter Forbes goes to Mendon in search of her Doctor, Pope: her Breast has Twinges, and she wants some of his [??] salve.

On 19 July, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, now relocated to Worcester, published this notice:

This is to inform the public, that John Pope who of late years hath been much noted for curing inveterate Cancers, and the most malignant Ulcers at Boston, hath by reason of the deplorable situation of that town removed to Mendon, where any who want his assistance may by enquiring at George Aldrich’s of said Mendon find the place of his Residence.

Aldrich (1715–1797) was a Quaker, son of a prominent Quaker preacher.

On 13 September, Parkman reported on a sermon, adding: “Mr. Forbes [and Mrs. Forbes?] (having been to Dr. at Mendon about her Breast) came.” 

Pope continued to have a reputation as a healer, and on 17 Feb 1776 the minister wrote: “Mr. Edwards Whipple here. He has a Cancer on his Lip—is going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope—and desires public prayers tomorrow for him.”

However, by that time Mary Forbes was dead. On 19 January her father wrote:

Billy comes from Concord—with The Heavy News, and Letter from my dear son Forbes! Of my most dear Child Mary’s Departure on the 16th at Eve, between 9 and 10 o’Clock! O Lord, Help!

Mary Forbes was fifty years old when she died.

The Rev. Eli Forbes married three more times, and his last wife was Mary’s younger sister Lucy, who by that time was widow of the military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin.

TOMORROW: John Pope’s travels.

(The picture above shows Gloucester’s first meetinghouse as depicted by Fitz Henry Lane.)

Francis Akley, Continental Ranger

When I started to focus on Joseph Akley, I also introduced his brothers: Francis, one year older, and Thomas, John, Samuel, and William, from three to seventeen years younger.

Samuel and William were so much younger, in fact, that Joseph never lived in the same household with them, being indentured out before he was born. (Joseph and William both grew up in Boston, so they might have known each other at least.)

The Boston Overseers of the Poor sent the other five brothers to new masters all over the province, as far west as Springfield and as far north as Topsham, Maine.

Those Akleys were young men and teenagers during the Revolutionary War. In 1775 only Joseph had married and started a family. Francis, Thomas, and John came of age before or during the war, meaning their apprenticeships ran out. They had no doubt built some personal ties in the communities where they grew up, but they didn’t have any relatives or property.

In sum, those Akley brothers were just the sort of young men the Continental Army was looking for. Just the sort of young men that towns were happy to grant a little bonus money and send off to fill draft quotas.

Indeed, all four of those Akley brothers joined the army, and, remarkably, all four survived long enough to apply for pensions in the early 1800s. By that time they had scattered across the northeastern U.S. of A. None of their applications described their family background or life in Boston before enlisting, but they stated their ages and the towns from which they enlisted, confirming that these are the right guys.

Francis Akley, Jr., baptized on 19 May 1751, was indentured to a cooper in Lancaster. After turning twenty-one in 1772 he moved to Guilford in what would be Vermont. In January 1777 he enlisted under Lt. David Goodnough in “an independant corpse of rangers mostly from New Hamps. at Tyconderoga commanded by Major [Benjamin] Whitcomb—and Capt. [George] Aldrich Company.”

Aldrich’s company fought in the Battle of Bennington on 16 Aug 1777. The only event Akley specifically recalled, however, was being “at the taking of Burgoyne” after Saratoga. He said he was discharged at Haverhill, New Hampshire, “I think in 1783.” Whitcomb’s Rangers actually disbanded at the start of 1781.

Francis Akley applied for a pension while living in Halifax, Vermont, in 1819. The following year he testified that he was seventy years old and his property consisted of “two Pigs—1 Jacknife & 1 old Pocketbook.” At that time, the law required veterans to show need before receiving any support.

The federal government granted Akley a pension. In 1829 he moved to Connecticut, and then in 1838 back to Vermont. Akley appeared on the U.S. government’s pension list in 1840, the year he turned eighty-nine.

The Vermont Mercury for 26 Mar 1841, published in Woodstock, carried a notice from the men commissioned to settle “Francis Akley’s Estate,” he being “represented insolvent.” They invited creditors to meet “at the dwelling-house of Lyman Akley in Plymouth,” most likely a descendant the veteran had been living with at the end of his long life.

TOMORROW: More Akley brothers’ service.

(The drawing above comes from the website of the reenacted Whitcomb’s Rangers and shows a soldier like Francis Akley.)