Cancer Curers in Boston in 1790

Today we think about cancer at a cellular level. In the eighteenth century, cancers were visible growths, usually breaking out of healthy skin.

I don’t know if doctors would consider all such growths as cancers today, but I have no doubt many cases of what we call cancer went undiagnosed back then.

It’s interesting to see that cancer medicine was already a specialty. Indeed, there were doctors who appear to have treated those growths and nothing else.

Osgood Carleton wasn’t even the only Bostonian offering both arithmetic lessons and a cancer cure in the 1790s. John Pope, a Quaker, had been advertising those services since 1779, and after he died in 1796 his wife Hannah took over on the cancer practice.

Toward the end of his career John used the title “Dr.” in his ads. Hannah listed herself as a “cancer doctor” in the 1800 town directory. The Popes’ sons also offered the family cancer cure in other New England towns, as I discussed back here.

To promote his cancer treatment, as quoted yesterday, Osgood Carleton shared testimonials from two women in Haverhill, where he had lived before settling in Boston. In his 1995 article on Carleton, David Bosse suggested that he might have learned this cancer treatment from John Pope, perhaps being the Haverhill agent for that cure.

I think that’s unlikely since Carleton declared that he offered “a Powder, of his own manufacturing,” and never mentioned the more established Pope as a mentor. Indeed, once Carleton moved to Boston, the men were in competition in two fields. I expect there wasn’t much love lost between them.

Unfortunately, cancer specialists like the Popes and Carleton kept their methods secret. That makes it hard to compare their cures, understand how these cures were supposed to work, and assess if they did.

However, the vital records of Haverhill do tell us more about the women who signed those certificates for Carleton in 1787. Elizabeth Lecount, daughter of James and Mary (Davis) Lecount, was born on 14 Sept 1729 and died 23 Mar 1829, or more than forty years after applying Carleton’s powder.

Eunice (Stuard) Cass, widow of William, died 18 Sept 1820. Her birth is not listed in those records, but she and William had children from 1758 to 1775, suggesting she was in her fifties in 1787 and in her eighties when she died. It’s possible the person who signed this certificate was that woman’s teen-aged daughter Eunice, born in 1770; she married Asaph Kendall in 1794 and lived to 1808. Either way, considering the awful symptoms the certificate described, that looks like a success.

TOMORROW: Cancer treatment in Salem in 1790.

Osgood Carleton’s Cancer Cure

Mathematics lessons, schoolbooks, almanacs, maps, and surveying and design services weren’t all that Osgood Carleton advertised to the good people of post-Revolutionary Boston.

For three weeks in early 1790, Carleton ran this ad in the Herald of Freedom newspaper:

CANCERS CURED.

MANY Persons have by Cancers, died a painful and lingering death; some of which might have been cured or cut out, but the operation being attended with some pain in cutting, and generally much more in curing without cutting out, has detered many from attempting to save their lives by either, But,

A more simple and easy cure than any formerly practiced is now discovered, as will appear by the following certificates.

Haverhill, June 30th 1787.
I, THE Subscriber certify, that I had a hard lump in the fleshy part of my leg, for more than a year, which was very painful, and was said by persons of skill to be a Cancer near breaking out; on applying a powder I had of Mr. Carleton, it was soon cured, without putting me to any pain, except a very trifling smart at first.
ELIZABETH LE COUNT.

Haverhill, June 30th, 1787.
I, THE Subscriber do certify, that I had a sore on my face, which the physicians called a Rose Cancer, and which for a long time baffled his skill in attempting to cure; it had so far affected my health, as to render me unfit for any kind of business, and greatly affected my eye sight, it emitted such a stench as rendered the room I was in disagreeable to others, and deprived me of my appetite, on applying Mr. Carleton’s powder, my appetite was soon restored, my health recovered, and in a little time the Cancer cured; this was done about a year since, I still remain in perfect health, without any signs of the Cancer breaking out again.
EUNICE CASE.

Many other cures have been effected by this powder, it is now using for a very bad Cancer with prospects of success. It may be had by applying to OSGOOD CARLETON, at Oliver’s Dock, Boston.

A few months earlier, Carleton had included in his almanac for the year 1790 (shown above) the news:

A Cure for CANCERS.—Apply to OSGOOD CARLETON, in Boston, who has a Powder, of his own manufacturing, which, if properly and seasonably applied to a Cancer, has never failed of succress, without putting the patient to any pain.

He promoted this offering again in 1800, adding to his usual text on schooling and surveys in the 12 December Massachusetts Mercury: “CANCERS cured by OSGOOD CARLETON, without cutting or putting the patient to pain.” This treatment wasn’t a major part of his work, but he kept at it for at least a decade.

TOMORROW: Assessing the cancer business.

Why Samuel Prescott and Lydia Mulliken Never Married

A couple of days ago, I quoted an 1824 Concord newspaper saying that on 18 Apr 1775 Dr. Samuel Prescott had been out on “a visit to the lady who afterwards became his wife.”

Folks who’ve read about Prescott no doubt perked up at that because it contradicts one of the few facts in the history books about him.

That fact first surfaced in a footnote in Lemuel Shattuck’s history of Concord:

Samuel was taken prisoner on board a privateer afterwards, and carried to Halifax, where he died in jail.

No other details or source notes came with this statement, alas.

Authors were therefore left with little to work with. Some dwelled on the sad story of Lydia Mulliken’s brother Nathaniel and Samuel Prescott’s brother Abel both dying on dysentery (camp fever) in the first year of the war, followed by Samuel dying a prisoner.

In November 1782, the Haverhill town records recorded that Joseph Burrill of that town and Lydia Mulliken of Lexington intended to marry. On 18 Mar 1783, the Lexington vital records say, that wedding took place. (This is listed only under Burrill’s name.)

Some have taken that timing to say Lydia held out hope that Samuel was still alive until near the end of the war and only then agreed to marry someone else. But of course we don’t know what she was thinking or when she and Joseph Burrill met.

Lydia died in 1789 after having two children who both died young. Joseph remarried to Susanna Mulliken, a cousin of his first wife. That couple had several more children and lived into the 1830s.

There are, however, a couple of other sources that might complicate or confirm the local lore of Dr. Samuel Prescott’s death in a Halifax jail.

TOMORROW: Marching west, sailing east?

How Massachusetts Militia Companies Trained for War

At Historical Nerdery, Alexander Cain shared some findings on the question of how often Massachusetts militiamen drilled in the charged months leading up to the outbreak of war.

Provincial law already required most men aged sixteen to sixty to drill with militia units four times a year. But with royal troops in Boston, Patriots saw a need to increase their preparedness—to demonstrate their determination to resist in order to make the government back down in the best case, to fight those redcoats in the worst.

Cain wrote:

Following the October 1774 orders of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, provincial towns scrambled to put themselves onto a wartime footing. As part of the effort, many militia and minute companies passed resolutions or entered into covenants clearly outlining the expectations of military service. . . .

Amesbury resolved that its minute men would engage in “exercising four hours in a fortnight.” Two weeks later, the town modified its order and instructed its minute men to “[exercise] four hours in a week.” The residents of Boxford voted on March 14, 1775, “that the minute-men shall train one-half day in a week, for four weeks after this week is ended.”

Note that towns didn’t follow uniform standards on how much their minute companies would train. Because the Provincial Congress was a creation of the towns, without strict constitutional authority, it could recommend that men devote more time to military training, but it didn’t have the authority to require that. 

Each town could choose whether to form a minute company, what training schedule its militia companies would follow, and how men would be paid for their time—or if they were to be paid at all. As I wrote back here, Westborough’s town meeting debated at least twice whether to pay the minute men more than other militiamen and decided not to. Furthermore, as volunteers the men themselves had a lot of say in how much time they put in.

In Haverhill, Cain has noted, the meeting first decided its minute men should “be duly disciplined in Squads three half days in a Week, three hours in each half day.” (Did the reference to “squads” mean only parts of the whole company?) That schedule was replaced a week later with one requiring a full day of training once a week.

Cain also shared the transcription of a document from Haverhill prepared by Sgt. Mitchel Whittier, listing the men who belonged to the minute company and how often each had come to drills in March and April 1775.

The number of days men attended ranged from six down to one—or, if a horizontal line didn’t mean “ditto,” none. Only one of four sergeants and one of three corporals (“Coprel”) came on six days. Neither Capt. James Sawyer nor his two lieutenants showed up for all six drills. (Or perhaps there were more than six drills, and nobody showed up for all of them.)

The fact that so few men attended every drill strongly suggests that the community didn’t expect perfect attendance. As neighbors, they understood that illness, family responsibilities, bad weather, the farming workload, or other factors might keep a man from every training day. Nonetheless, the prevailing goal in rural Massachusetts in the early months of 1775 was to get more prepared for war.

“Assertions that Salem, Marblehead and Newbury had departed”

On 31 July 1770, Faneuil Hall hosted another meeting of “The Trade and Inhabitants of the Town of Boston.” The group of people invited to participate had widened again to include not just businessmen but all “Inhabitants.”

Per the report in the 13 August Boston Gazette, the spur for this meeting appears to have been “some very positive Assertions that Salem, Marblehead and Newbury had departed from the Non-Importation Agreement.”

In his copy of that newspaper, Harbottle Dorr wrote that those assertions came from the merchant John Amory (1728-1803, shown here courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts).

Amory and his brother Jonathan (1726-1797) had a mercantile house together. They hovered in the political middle—not taking strong stands, signing the non-importation agreement but not following it strictly, protesting against too much protest. Eventually John would be a Loyalist exile while Jonathan remained in America.

At this juncture, it appears, John Amory was telling his colleagues in the Boston business community that other ports in the province would soon be bringing in goods, so they might as well drop their boycott.

The meeting responded by appointing a committee of William Molineux, William Phillips, William Cooper, William Greenleaf, and, for diversity, Ebenezer Storer ”to repair forthwith to the Towns above said and Haverhill” and find out what was going on.

In addition, the Body named a larger group of top Whig politicians—John Hancock, Phillips, Samuel Adams, Molineux, Greenleaf, Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. Thomas Young, John Adams, Josiah Quincy, Richard Dana, Henderson Inches, Thomas Cushing, and Jonathan Mason—“to consider what may be proper to be done toward strengthening a Union of the Colonies.”

On 7 August, the Molineux committee returned from Essex County and “reported that the Conduct of our Brethren in said Towns was honorable and sincere.” The Boston meeting that day “VOTED UNANIMOUSLY” to express their “utmost satisfaction” and “sincere Respect” for their colleagues to the north.

That gathering then appointed a similar committee—Molineux, Cooper, William Whitwell, Thomas Boylston, and Mason—to take the same message to “Providence and New Port in Rhode Island.”

Only after that 7 August meeting—two weeks after the initial 31 July response to Amory—did Edes and Gill report on these proceedings. The Boston Whigs had evidently been sitting on the story until they had good news to announce. It wouldn’t have helped the non-importation movement for other port to read any hint that some Massachusetts towns were dropping out.

TOMORROW: What really happened in Salem?

“I have many anxious hours for Charles”

In early 1789, as I’ve been chronicling, Charles Adams had a couple more run-ins with the authorities of Harvard College.

Even though those incidents didn’t appear on the official faculty minutes or Charles’s permanent record, word got back to his family. That prompted a new set of conversations and correspondence. Again, we have only hints of what they knew.

On 2 May 1789, John Quincy Adams’s diary says: “Wrote to my brother Charles.” That letter doesn’t survive, but on 27 May he told their cousin William Cranch:

[With respect?] to Charles the tender solicitude, which you feel in regard to his conduct is only an additional evidence of a disposition, which I have long known to be peculiarly yours. it adds to the number of obligations for which I feel myself indebted to you, but it cannot add any thing to the settled opinion which I have of the excellency of your heart.—

I wrote him a very serious Letter three weeks ago and conversed with him at Haverhill upon the subject in such a manner as must I think lead him to be more cautious. However I depend much more upon the alteration which is soon to take place in his situation, than upon any advice or counsel, that I can ever give him. I am well convinced that if any thing can keep him within the limits of regularity, it will be his knowlege of my fathers being [near him and the?] fear of being discovered by him.—

The “alteration” John Q. wrote about was Charles’s impending graduation that summer. The family had already planned for Charles to move to New York, where his father was serving as Vice President, and study the law there.

We might marvel at the idea that New York City would offer fewer temptations than Cambridge, but the Adams family consensus was clear—the problem wasn’t Charles so much as Charles’s companions at college.

Abigail Adams expressed her feelings to John Q. on 30 May:

I have many anxious hours for Charles, and not the fewer, for the new scene of life into which he is going, tho I think it will be of great service to have him with his Father, & more to take him intirely away from his acquaintance. I have written to him upon some late reports which have been circulated concerning him. I hope they are without foundation, but such is the company in which he is seen that he cannot fail to bear a part of the reproach even if he is innocent.

The letter that Abigail wrote to Charles doesn’t survive, either.

Abigail actually opened that topic by expressing concern for her youngest son, Thomas Boylston Adams. As I’ve written, his college disciplinary record was even cleaner than John Quincy’s—he hadn’t done anything! But still a mother worried:

I must request you in my absence to attend to your Brother Tom, to watch over his conduct & prevent by your advice & kind admonitions, his falling a prey to vicious Company. at present he seems desirious of persueing his studies preserving a character and avoiding dissipation, but no youth is secure whilst temptations surround him, and no age of Life but is influenced by habits & example, even when they think their Characters formed.

Even as Charles’s relatives wrote to him, however, he was getting in trouble again at the Blue Anchor Tavern.

TOMORROW: Naked in Harvard Yard.

Moving into a Harvard Dormitory in 1785

At this time of year young people are settling in at college, including my godson at Cambridge. So I’m looking at the process of entering college in 1785.

Fifteen-year-old Charles Adams started at Harvard College that year. His parents, Abigail and John, were across the Atlantic in London, so he was under the wing of relatives on his mother’s side.

Charles had been studying for the entrance exam with the Rev. John Shaw of Haverhill, an uncle by marriage. On 9 May Charles wrote to his cousin William Cranch: “we study in the bedroom as usual two young fellows from Bradford being added to our number, One of whom will be my chum if we get in and who I should be very glad to introduce to you.”

By “chum,” Charles meant a college roommate. That prospect was Samuel Walker (1768–1846). When Charles’s older brother John Quincy Adams visited that summer, he immediately assured their mother that Samuel was “a youth, whose thirst for knowledge is insatiable.”

Unfortunately, the dormitory wasn’t working out so smoothly. On 14 August, Abigail’s older sister, Mary Cranch, reported to her:

I have just heard that cousin Charles is not like to have the chamber he petition’d for, nor any other. Half his class will be oblig’d to Board out in the Town. Mr. Cranch and I are going tomorrow to see how it is, and to procure him a place if necessary. . . .

You cannot think how sorrowful your son looks about the loss of his chamber, but I hope to make him happy yet. I have got all the Furniture ready, (this is the part he is to find). The Bed and Linnin is found by his chum a very worthy pretty youth, who study’d with him at Mr. Shaws. Walker is his name, he is from Bradford.

Fortunately, the situation was soon resolved. On 17 August, Aunt Mary wrote:

Charles is happy he has got his chamber. I return’d last night. I found he had his petition’d granted. He is in the same college with Billy [Cranch,] has a Room upon the lower Floor [of Hollis Hall].

I have got him a pine Table made to stand under his looking glass. It doubles over like a card Table and is painted Marble colour and looks very well. He has the Square Tea Table to stand in his study. I got a few things for him in Boston as I came from Cambridge, and now I think he is equip’d and will go tomorrow with the best advice I can give him.

Charles Adams’s dorm room thus included a “Bed and Linnin” brought by his chum Samuel, a “looking glass,” a pine table painted like marble, and a “Square Tea Table,” among other things.

All four Harvard students I’ve mentioned went on to study the law. John Quincy Adams had a long and successful career while his brother Charles did not. William Cranch became a judge in Washington, D.C. Samuel Walker practiced in Rutland, Vermont, for a quarter-century.

Before then, however, Walker was rusticated for a year in 1787 for “stealing from his class mates.” And he seemed like such a studious boy.

Gov. Hancock’s Funeral Procession

At sunrise on Monday, 14 Oct 1793, all the church bells in Boston began to ring. They tolled for an hour in tribute to Gov. John Hancock, who had died the previous Tuesday and was being buried that day.

All the flags “in town, at the Castle, and on the masts of the shipping in the harbour, were half hoisted.” At one o’clock, all the shops closed.

All morning local militia units, both official and independent, were gathering in the town. Everyone knew that Hancock, colonel of the Cadets before the war, loved military pomp.

Newspapers and broadsides announced the order of the funeral procession, often with a coffin ornament in the middle of the column of text, as shown here. The most detailed listing of the participants that I’ve seen was printed in Haverhill’s Guardian of Freedom newspaper on 18 October. It listed those mourners as:

Company of horse (from Stoughton) under Capt. Crane,
Company of horse (from Braintree) under Capt. Thayer,
Company of horse (from Middlesex) under Capt. Fuller, who commanded the horse.

A detachment from the Boston artillery, under Capt. Bradlee——(With this detachment was the “Hancock” piece of artillery, reversed, with a pall of black velvet over it.)

That cannon is one of those at the center of my book, The Road to Concord. The same gun is now on display at the North Bridge Visitor Center of Minute Man National Historical Park, with no black velvet.

Artillery Musick.
(All the drums in the procession were muffled, and covered with crape. The field musick played the dead march, and the band a solemn dirge.)

The first battalion of infantry, Composed of the Boston Regiment, in complete uniform, commanded by Col. [William] Schollay; and led by Lt. Col. Wood.
Music of the 1st battalion.
The second battalion of infantry, Composed of the Medford light-infantry, under Capt. Hall,
The Braintree light-infantry, under Capt. Baxter,
The Concord light-infantry, under Capt. ——
The Westown light infantry, under Capt. ——
Boston independent fusiliers, under Capt. Laughton,
The Middlesex fusiliers, under Capt. Willington
Independent Cadets, under Major Elliot.
Musick.
(This battalion commanded by Lt. Col. Bradford.)
Brigadier General [William] Hull, Commanded the whole of the military parade.
Aids to Gen. Hull.

Col. [John Steele] Tyler, Marshal of the unarmed procession preceding the Corpse.
Platoon, and field-officers, of the third division of Militia.
Major Gen. [John] Brooks, of the third division.
Aids to Gen. Brooks.
Platoon and field officers of the second division.
Major Gen. [John] Fisk, and aids
Platoon and field-officers of the first division.
Major General [Henry] Jackson and aids.
(All the above officers were in uniform, with side arms.)

Justices of the Peace,
Judges of various courts,
Attorney General [James Sullivan] and Treasurer [Thomas Davis],
Members of the house of Representatives,
The speaker of the house [Edward Robbins],
Members of the Senate,
Judges of the Supreme Judicial Court,
Sheriff of Suffolk with his wand,
Quarter-Master-General, and Adjutant-General,
Secretary of the Commonwealth [John Avery],
COUNSELLORS;
His Honour the Lt. Governor [Samuel Adams].

Pall Supporters.
Hon. Mr. [James] Warren, Hon. Mr. [Oliver] Wendell,
Hon. Mr. [Eleazer?] Brooks, Hon. Mr. [Thomas] Durfee,
Hon. Mr. [Azor] Orne, Hon. Mr. [Moses] Gill.

Relations,
Col. [Josiah] Waters, marshal of the procession, following the corpse.
Vice-President of the U. States [John Adams].
Members of the Hon. Senate, and House of Representatives of the U. States.
Judges of the U. States Courts,
Secretary at War [Henry Knox],
Gentlemen heretofore Counsellors and Senators of Massachusetts,
The President, professors and other instructors of Harvard College,
Clergy of all Denominations,
Municipal Officers,
Members of the Ancient and honorable Artillery, in uniform, with their side arms,
Citizens four and four.
The Foot closed by Captains of vessels, and seamen, with flags furled.
Carriages.

As the procession moved through town, a cannon was fired every minute from Castle Island and a squad of the artillery militia stationed on Beacon Hill. After Hancock’s corpse was interred at the Granary Burying Ground, the troops under arms fired three times.

TOMORROW: Particular tributes.

John Quincy Adams Prepped for College

When John Quincy Adams prepared to enter Harvard College, he was not a typical college student.

At eighteen, he was older than most undergraduates in that period. He had already studied some subjects at the University of Leiden in Holland.

More important, the young man had worked and traveled in far higher circles than other teenagers, and than most Harvard professors. He’d been a diplomatic assistant to his father and then Francis Dana, the Congress’s minister to Russia. He’d seen several European capitals.

And, let’s face it, he was John Quincy Adams. His parents worried about his progress, but he was one of the smartest and more diligent young men around. Of course, there was still the formality of passing the college entrance exam.

As recorded in his diary (the diary he kept regularly until 1848), John Quincy arrived home in Massachusetts in the summer of 1785. Over the next several months, he visited various relatives, including his younger brother Charles, already at Harvard on the normal schedule.

As I quoted yesterday, John Adams had sent Prof. Benjamin Waterhouse a letter asking him to put in a good word for his eldest son. John Quincy finally connected with the man in Boston on 28 September, writing in his diary: “Upon Change I met Dr. Waterhouse; and found him the same man, he was four years, ago, when I was acquainted with him in Holland.” But to his sister Nabby he added:

I met on the exchange, Dr. Waterhouse, who has been at Providence these 6 weeks, delivering lectures upon natural Philosophy. He did not know me at first, and I was obliged to introduce myself to him. As soon as he found me out, he was as sociable as ever.

Waterhouse had lived with the Adams family in 1781, so clearly John Quincy had grown a great deal since he was fourteen.

The young man decided to enter the college at the end of April 1786, in time to take a couple of science classes. He would be ranked as a junior. That fall, John Quincy went out to Haverhill live with his aunt Elizabeth and her husband, the Rev. John Shaw, and refresh his knowledge before the entrance test.

And then the college sped up the schedule. In March John Quincy told his sister why he’d become too busy to write:

At the beginning of the year I was informed…I must come by the middle of March, in order to attend two courses of experimental philosophy. I might have waited till next commencement [in July], and then entered as senior;…but I should have missed one course of lectures. Besides, I had undertaken last fall, to be ready to enter before the class began upon natural philosophy.

When I found my time shortened, I determined to lay aside every thing else, and attend only to my present business. . . . And to enter here, it is not necessary to know any thing but what is found in a certain set of books, and I have heard it asserted, that some of the best scholars, after having taken their degrees, would not be received if they offered as freshmen, because they commonly forget those parts of learning which are required in a freshman. Since the first of January, I have not, upon an average, been four hours in a week (Sundays excepted) out of Mr. Shaw’s house.

So John Quincy had spent nearly the whole winter cramming.

TOMORROW: Entrance exam time at last.

Daniel George, Teen-Aged Almanac Maker

Daniel George was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on 16 Dec 1757, son of David and Anne (Cottle) George. He was the second boy named Daniel born to that couple, indicating that the first had died young. He had both older and younger siblings of both sexes.

From infancy Daniel was “a Cripple,” possibly having cerebral palsy. That made life as a farmer almost unthinkable. But the boy’s mind was sharp, and he took to mathematics and then astronomy. In 1775, Daniel prepared an almanac for the upcoming year, calculating the movements of the Sun and Moon and the tides for eastern Massachusetts.

On 26 August, Daniel George and his father visited the Rev. Samuel Williams (1743-1817) of Bradford. Williams was known for his scientific investigations, including two trips to observe the transit of Venus in the 1760s.

Williams talked with the teenager and wrote a recommendation of him to the printer Ezekiel Russell, then in Salem:

Mr. David George, of Haverhill, is now with me; he has brought his son Daniel, who appears to be a singular object of pity and compassion. But with all the disorders of body under which he labors, his mind does not seem to have been at all affected. He has composed an Almanack, which, as far as I have inspected it, seems to be equal to other compositions of that kind; and perhaps from the singular situation of the Author, bids fair to engage the popular attention. If it would be consistent with your business and interest to print it, it would be an act of kindness to the distressed, and a great encouragement to a rising Genius, in early years laboring under uncommon disadvantages, but yet bidding fair for very considerable improvements.—

I write this from motives of compassion to the unhappy Cripple, and because I really think his talents may be of use to mankind if encouraged. How far this will be consistent with your interest is not for me to say. But if you can favor the productions of a Cripple, in the seventeenth year of his age, it must not only give pleasure to him, but to the benevolent and humane who wish success to the ingenious, and comfort to the wretched.

Russell was open to new authors: he was the first printer to engage to issue Phillis Wheatley’s book, before she went to London, and he routinely published other female poets, such as Hannah Wheaton. In part that was because Russell was never a very successful printer, so he and his wife were often scrounging for business.

Russell engaged to print George’s Cambridge Almanack; or, the Essex Calendar. For the Year of our Redemption, 1776. Being Leap-Year, the Sixteenth of the Reign of George III. To make sure customers realized what a remarkable production it was, he credited it “By Daniel George, a Student in Astronomy at Haverhill, in the County of Essex, who is now in the Seventeenth [sic] Year of his Age, and has been a Cripple from his Infancy.” And he printed Williams’s letter at the front.

In his own introduction, dated September 1775, Daniel added:

This, however, my public-spirited Friends and Countrymen, you will be certain of, by becoming a Purchaser of my Almanack, you are helping one who is not able, or perhaps ever will have it in his power to help himself; which motive alone may be a sufficient incitement to a generous mind, even should your expectations with regard to my calculations, be in some measure disappointed.

But he then turned to the patriotic material he’d chosen to include, such as “A Narrative of the excursion and ravages of the King’s troops, under the command of Gen. [Thomas] Gage, on the 19th of April, 1775; . . . This concise and much admired narrative is said to be drawn up by the reverend and patriotic Mr. G——n, of the third parish in Roxbury.” (I believe that’s one of our earliest pieces of evidence that the Rev. William Gordon drafted that report for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.)

The calendar pages inside highlighted such anniversaries as:

• “Feb. 21 [actually 22]. Christopher Snyder, aged 14 [actually about eleven], cruelly massacred in Boston, by Ebenezer Richardson, the noted informer. He was the first Martyr to American Liberty.”
• “March 5. Boston massacre.”
• “April 19. Concord Fight, 1775, when began the bloody civil war in America, by the British Troops.”
• “June 17. Bloody battle of Charlestown, where were killed and wounded 324 provincials, 1,450 regulars; there were destroyed in Charlestown by the latter 1 meeting-house, 350 dwelling-houses, and 150 other buildings.”
• “Dec. 16. E. I. Tea destroyed in Boston, 1773.”

And all for only “6 cop.”

George’s Almanac sold well enough that Russell issued a second edition with added content: a “Narrative of the Bunker-Hill Fight” and “A Poem On The Late Gen. [Joseph] Warren.” But wait—there was more! The extra page also included “An Acrostic On Gen. Warren” (the same one I quoted here) and a woodcut portrait of the late doctor (shown above).

The next year Daniel, still a teenager, prepared an almanac for 1777 for new printers in Boston and Newburyport. Having established his name, he continued to publish almanacs into adulthood. Sometime in the mid-1780s he moved to what is now Portland, Maine, and eventually became a newspaper publisher.

In The History of the Press of Maine (1872), H. W. Richardson wrote:

George was a remarkable character. He is described as a man of genius, but so exceedingly deformed that he had to be moved from place to place in a small carriage, drawn by a servant. He came here in 1784 or ’5 from Newburyport, where he had published almanacs, as he afterwards did here. He was a printer, but kept school in Portland, and had also a small bookstore in Fish, now Exchange, street. In 1800 he became the sole owner of the Herald.

George “died suddenly at Portland” on 4 Feb 1804, age forty-six, having seen and accomplished much more than anyone expected back in 1758, the year when the George family probably realized that their new baby had a physical disability.