COUSIN SAMUEL HILDRETH OF MARIETTA, OHIO

He gathered what money he had, some $120, and after paying his bills, still had $50, which along with his horse and all the clothes he could jam into his pormanteau, he said goodby to his mother and father, sisters and brother, and on September 9, 1806, at age twenty-three, headed off on his own. ~ David McCullough

Most of the information I obtained for our cousin Samuel Prescott Hildreth (4C6X) comes from David McCullough's book The Pioneers and Samuel's own memoir. All of the following quotations in this post are from his book or from Samuel's account of his boyhood.

Samuel's early life

Samuel was born in Methuen, MA in 1783. He was the son of a physician and would later take up that profession himself. His father, Samuel Hildreth, Sr. (3C7X), was a physician, a profession that Samuel, Jr. would also embrace. In his book Genealogical and Biographical Sketches of the Hildreth Family, Samuel, Jr. describes his own birth:

At the time of my birth I was of a feeble, weakly constitution, in part occasioned by a large abscess. . .near the top of the head. It was thought to have been occasioned by a fall which my mother had down the cellar stairs a few weeks before her confinement.

My father made a free incision into the abscess a day or two after my birth, which discharged considerable matter and so large a quantity of blood as nearly occasioned my death: and leaving me for many months a poor, pale, sickly child, whom no one thought would arrived to manhood. A scar three inches long and nearly an inch wide remains to this day. . .

Below is a picture of Samuel's childhood home as shown in the memoir:

Samuel's abcess at birth wasn't the end of his childhood woes. He tells of an accident when he was only a year old. The woman taking care of him left him alone in a chair by the fire.

. . .she had barely left me when I tumbled from the chair into a large bed of coals on the hearth. . .my face and hands were burnt in a desperate manner, the scars of which remained for many years and left a premature wrinkle of the skin, giving me when a young man the aspect of one several years older than I really was.

Luckily, Samuel suffered no further mishaps and grew up hale and hearty with his five sisters and one younger brother. In a story about a trip to Concord with his father, Samuel mentions crossing the bridge at Pawtucket Falls in Lowell, MA.

We crossed the Merrimac at "Pawtucket falls," on the new bridge which had been recently built under the direction of a Mr. Blodget, and was the first bridge ever built across that stream.

That "Mr. Blodget" was, no doubt, our cousin Samuel Blodgett (2C7X) who we wrote about in our "Of Canals and the Men who Built Them Part II" post.

When he was about 15, Samuel began attending the Phillips Academy in Andover. He wrote that "[t]he academy was six miles from our house, but such was the elevation of the ground that it was in plain view from my father's door." Samuel and a cousin would walk the six miles to Andover on Mondays, spend the week in Andover and walk back to Metheun on Saturdays.

On his first summer at the Academy, Samuel boarded with the Thomas Manning (5C7X) family. Thomas descended from William French (10U) the brother of our grandfather Thomas French (10GGF) who settled in Ipswich in the early 1830s. Thomas' wife was our cousin Mehitable Kidder (3C6X). And, it just so happend that the Manning's house had originally been built by our uncle, Hezekiah Ballard (6U). Of the Mannings, Thomas wrote:

They were very simple, kind hearted people; and the old lady treated me with the tenderness of a mother. There were four other boys boarding with them, making six

in all.

The house, known as the Manning House has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Below are pictures of the front of the house and recent additions to the back:

It appears that, at a young age, Samuel became interested in many different facets of life:

In addition to his concentration on Latin and English grammar, he "paid considerable attention to drawing and painting in water colors" and became quite accomplished at both.

Thanks to an uncle who had an extensive private library, he also became "extravagantly fond of reading" and in the course of four or five years read nearly all the books the library contained.

He was also, as he would later say, "passionately fond" of amusement and "indulged himself at every opportunity. He loved parties, loved to dance. He was never to forget the three black musicians who lived nearby and provided "very fine music," one on the bassoon, another the clarinet, the third on the violin. "All combined, they animated our youthful hearts with such life and spirit as mde even the heaviest feet light."

While at the Academy, Samuel became good friends with Joseph Kittredge (4C6X) who was the son of our cousin, the famed Dr. Thomas Kittredge (3C7X) of Andover. We wrote about Thomas in our "Military Doctors" post. Joseph was for many years one of Samuel's "dearest and most intimate friends."

When Samuel's school term ended in 1801, his father moved from Metheun to Haverhill.

While on summer break, he found a teaching position in New Salem, just across the New Hampshire border from Haverhill.

My school consisted of about 40 scholars of all sizes, ages and sexes. . .There were several young men older than myself, we however got along very quietly and without any difficulty. My patrons were much pleased with the master and the master satisfied with them.

My wages amounted to $48.00, which my father applied towards my expense at the academy in the past year. So I was well satisfied if I could aid him in paying for my education.

When school began again in the fall:

. .I now passed the whole of my time in Andover. . .This gave us many leisure hours which were spent most delightfully, in waling parties or excursions with the girls. . .gathering wild flowers, grapes, etc., or in fishing and sailing on the pond. Sometimes we danced by moonlight, under the trees on "Wier's hill", sang or romped, just as pleased our fancy. . .Even to this period of my life I occasionally have visions of those Elysian hours in my sleep, and see the same bright faces, that then smiled upon me in all the freshness of youth and beauty. . .

During his summers at home , Samuel made many friends, some of which lived in Bradford, a mere hop, skip and a jump from his father's house in Haverhill. Among those friends, he mentioned our cousin Eliphalet Kimball (4C7X). Samuel said of Eliphalet that he was "a modest, worthy young man, with two interesting sisters." Eliphalet became a businessman in Boston and married his (and our) cousin Lydia Kimball (5C6X).

Samuel also wrote about our cousin, missionary Ann Haseltine Judson (3C7X), though he couldn't really remember her name:

Elizabeth Hosteline, afterwards Mrs. Judson, was a very interesting girl and became a remarkable woman by her trials as a missionary in India. Perhaps no American female ever endured more hardship or displayed a more Christian and heroic desposition than this woman during her captivity amongst the Burmese. About this period there was a female academy erected in Bradford and became quite famous for the number of missionary young women educated there.

We wrote about Ann in our two "Ann Haseltine Judson" posts. We wrote about the Bradford Academy, where Ann's sister Abigail was principal, in our three "Bradford Academy" posts.

Samuel begins his medical career

Samuel, with his father's encouragement, began his study of medicine at age 18. He studied, like so many other young men, with our cousin, the famed Dr. Thomas Kittredge (3C7X) of Andover. We wrote about Thomas in our "Military Doctors" post.

Samuel wrote about Thomas in his memoir:

Dr. Kittredge was a very popular physician and much celebrated as a surgeon. Traveling over a wide range of country in performing operations. . .He was also famous for curing insanity and had numerous patients of this class boarding at certain house, whose owners were well fitted for managing people with this disease. The Doctor was now about 55 or 60 years old, but smart and active. . .He was a perfect model in dress and manners of a New England gentleman of that day.

Samuel says of his education with Thomas that he "generally read about ten hours of every day." The final year of his "pupilage" he and the other students "were allowed to ride with the doctor in his practice. . .our journeys extending into all the neighboring towns. . ."

The winter of 1803-4 "was passed in teaching a school in Bradford." That was the year that the Bradford Academy opened." It's very likely that Samuel was one of the first teachers at the Academy. He had 120 students there and he considered instructing them "a severe task." He did remark, however, that "my school was noted for its quiet and good order and for the improvement of the scholars." While teaching he also "kept up with his medical studies," rising at four in the morning to read by candlelight. The double duty of teaching and studying affected Samuel so much that he began to have physical complaints:

This severe application reduced my flesh and strength very much and I became quite nervous before the school closed, with twitching in the muscles of my limbs and a lack of sleep at night for which I had to take opium and asafoetida.

In 1804 Samuel took a medical course at Harvard and, in 1805, he received his diploma "to practice Physic and Surgery." He spent the following winter living with Dr. Kittredge's family. But what he was to do next was "a most distressing thought."

The following spring I was to leave dear Andover where I had spent so many years of pleasure and happiness, and to cast my lot amongst strangers I knew not where.

But New England at that time had a definite "oversupply" of doctors and Samuel spent some time deciding where "to cast my lot."

He was in fine health, of medium height, physically strong, noticeably handsome, and of cheerful disposition, clearly a young man of promise, and he was ready to move on. A local pastor named Wardsworth, whose advice he greatly valued, told him to go west, and that as the country grew, he would grow with it.

The decision as to where to cast his lot came to Samuel while he was attempting to start a small practice in Hamstead, New Hampshire. John True, the man he boarded with, helped to push Samuel in the westward direction when he told him about his brother, also a doctor, who had moved to Marietta, Ohio. A while later, "Dr. True invited Samuel to come west, promising to help him get started." Samuel needed no more prompting. He had been hearing about Marietta all his life. Shortly after he was born, his father had purchased two shares of Ohio Company land, a scheme thought up by the Reverend Manasseh Cutler of Ipswich, MA. Samuel wrote, "Ever since I was a boy. . .I had felt a desire to see that rich land so much extolled by travellers and geographers."

the Northwest Territory

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783 with the signing of the peace treaty in Paris, the newly formed United States of America acquired from Britain over 265 square miles of "unbroken wilderness." The Northwest Territory, as it came to be called, included what would become five states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Three years after the Paris treaty, the Reverend Cutler and ten others decided to take advantage of the cheap land being offered in the far west. In 1786, there was "not as yet one permanent legal settlement" in the Northwest Territory. Manasseh Cutler would write to a neighbor that "[t]he spirit of immigration never ran higher with us than at this time." When Cutler's project, the Ohio Company, first got started, Samuel Hildreth, Sr. was smart enough to buy a few shares.

Cutler had been instrumental in getting the ordinance passed in Congress that allowed settlement in this new territory. He had been vehement on one point in particular.

. . .it was Article VI that set forth a tenet such as never before stated in any American constitution. "There shall be neither slavery nor involvuntary servitude in the said territory." And, as was well understood, this had been agreed to when slavery existed in every one of the thirteen states. It was almost unimaginable that throughout a new territory as large as all the thirteen states, there would be no slavery. . .The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 would prove to be one of the most far-reaching acts of Congress in the history of the country.

. . .Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard University, would write, "Never was there a more ingenious, systematic and successful piece of lobbying that that of the Reverend Manasseh Cutler" and the great Northwest Ordinance of 1787 stands alongside the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence as a bold assertion of the rights of the individual.

As people from all over the country moved into the newly founded state of Ohio, Article VI alone wasn't enough to sway people's prejudice. From the Shelby County Historical Society:

Although officially a non-slave state, Ohioans were divided on slavery and racist attitudes were not uncommon, as shown by the Ohio legislature of 1804 in the passage of laws that prohibited blacks from serving on juries and testifying against whites in court cases. It also mandated that no Negro or mulatto will be allowed to settle in the state without a certificate of freedom, and that blacks already living here must register and pay a registration fee of 12 1/2 cents. Whites were forbidden to employ a Negro unless he had a certificate of freedom.

Further evidence of racial prejudice came in 1807, when the state, choosing economic interests with neighboring slave states to be more important than humanitarian considerations, passed a law requiring all Negroes coming into Ohio to post a $500 bond, severely limiting black migration to the new state, although very few attempts were made to enforce it.

setting off and settling

Marietta had the distinction of being the first settlement founded in the Northwest Territory.

By the time Samuel P. Hildreth set off for the west, however, he had the good fortune to be headed for a town that was both booming and prosperous.

He gathered what money he had, some $120, and after paying his bills, still had $50, which along with his horse and all the clothes he could jam into his pormanteau, he said goodby to his mother and father, sisters and brother, and on September 9, 1806, at age twenty-three, headed off on his own. In Boston, he stopped brieefly to purchase a brace of pistols for $9.50, thinking he might need them on the road.

On September 16, Samuel reached the town of Fishkill, New York and heard his first katydid call.

At my lodging place last night heard for the first time the notes of the "Kata-did." Music seemed very strange and monotonous. In after life I became more familiar with this lively, industrious insect and learned better to appreciate its solitary music.

After a few days of wandering lost on the roads of Pennsylvania, Samuel finally reached the town of Bethlehem, where our cousin Cornelius Baldwin (5C6X) had established a hospital during the Revolutionary War. Cornelius was much impressed by those of the Morovian faith there that he came into contact with. We wrote about him in our "Revolutionary Stories Part IV" post.

Samuel's experience with the Morovians was mixed. He noted that the new Morovian Church was "the handomest I have ever seen." He also related being "deceived by an old fellow who keeps the bridge across the river Lehigh." The old fellow, in order to extract a toll from Samuel, sent him on "a road which nobody travels, and is not only three miles further, but the worst I ever saw."

Samuel's trip took twenty-five days with a few other bumps along the way. In his memoir, he described getting lost several times, enduring a violent rainstorm, sleeping in a bed "well-stocked with bugs" and spending the night in the dirtiest house he had ever seen, "the beds most wretched and sheets very black."

On the 2nd of October, Samuel woke up to find his horse's back "swollen and tender." He walked 16 miles before coming across a family driving their horses to Marietta. Samuel was able to ride one of their horses for the two days remaining in his journey.

Samuel reached Marietta at 3 p.m. on October 4th.

(1) Metheun, MA (2) Marietta, OH

Though Samuel knew no one in town, "the welcome he received from Dr. Jabez True that evening was all he could have hoped for." Dr. True introduced him to all the "principal inhabitants of the town." Samuel began his medical practice in Marietta "worth nothing but my horse and a scanty supply of clothing. . ." That was to soon change.

Because there was no doctor in the town of Belpre, 12 miles southeast of Marietta, Samuel received "several invitations" to settle there. When he finally decided to take the plunge, he was able to find lodging at Mrs. Cook's boardinghouse. This turned out to be a lucky happenstance as he met and fell in love with Mrs. Cook's daughter Rhoda. The couple would marry ten months later in August of 1807.

Samuel's life in Marietta will continue in our next post.