Beatty, John (19 December 1749–30 April 1826), physician, army officer, and government official, was born in Warwick, Pennsylvania, the son of Charles Clinton Beatty, a Presbyterian minister, and Anne Reading. John attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he was one of twenty graduates in the class of 1769. He received an A.M. there three years later. As an undergraduate, he was an original member of the school’s literary club, the American Whig Society. During the interval between his two degree awards, Beatty studied medicine under Dr. ...
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Beatty, John (1749-1826), physician, army officer, and government official
Sheldon S. Cohen
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Craik, James (1730-1814), physician and military surgeon
Mary C. Gillett
Craik, James (1730–06 February 1814), physician and military surgeon, was born on his father’s estate near Dumfries, Scotland, the son of Robert Craik, a member of the British Parliament; the name of his mother is unknown. Little information about his early life is available. Although his parents were apparently not married, he was acknowledged by his father, who assumed responsibility for his education. After studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he joined the British army as a surgeon. Shortly after being sent to the West Indies, he resigned his position and sailed for Virginia in 1751. After a short period in the Norfolk area, he moved to Winchester, Virginia....
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Craik, James (1730-1814)
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James Craik. Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine (B04995).
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Hand, Edward (1744-1802), medical doctor and revolutionary war soldier
Paul David Nelson
Hand, Edward (31 December 1744–03 September 1802), medical doctor and revolutionary war soldier, was born in Clyduff, King’s County, Province of Leinster, Ireland, the son of John Hand, occupation unknown, and Dorothy (maiden name unknown). In the 1760s he enrolled in Trinity College, Dublin, and completed medical studies in 1766 with a good academic record. Thereupon he entered the British army as a surgeon’s mate and came to Philadelphia in 1767 with the Eighteenth Royal Irish Regiment of Foot. He was ordered to Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania, and in 1772 he purchased an ensign’s commission with profits earned from land speculation. Two years later he sold his ensigncy, resigned from the army, and settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to practice medicine and surgery. In 1775 he married Catharine Ewing, with whom he had eight children over the next seventeen years. At the outbreak of the revolutionary war, Hand, an ardent Whig, joined his neighbors in resisting Britain. Offered a commission as a lieutenant colonel in the Continental army, he obeyed the “glorious summons” to arms and marched with Colonel William Thompson’s Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion to the siege of Boston. On 1 January 1776 he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the First Continental Infantry and two months later was chosen its colonel. With this regiment, he fought in the battle of Long Island and later, at Throg’s Neck delayed a British advance toward White Plains. He retreated with ...
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Hand, Edward (1744-1802)
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Edward Hand. Etching by H. B. Hall. Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine (B013942).
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Prescott, Oliver (1731-1804), physician and soldier
Eric Howard Christianson
Prescott, Oliver (27 April 1731–17 November 1804), physician and soldier, was born in Groton, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Prescott and Abigail Oliver. His mother became a widow when he was seven, and to later meet his college expenses, she had to petition the General Court to sell some unimproved land. At age fifteen he entered Harvard with the class of 1750, ranked fifth out of twenty-one students. Following graduation, he served an apprenticeship of undetermined duration with Dr. Ebenezer Robie of Sudbury. Returning to Groton, Prescott began a long and successful medical practice. He took his M.A. at Harvard in 1753, arguing in his thesis that the certainty of life after death could be deduced from nature. In 1756 he married Lydia Baldwin, a young woman he met while serving his apprenticeship. They had seven children, three of whom died in the diphtheria/scarlet fever epidemic of 1765–1766. For most of the next twenty years he was a busy general practitioner. He briefly held commissions under the king in the Massachusetts militia during the French and Indian War, when he attended Acadian exiles and wounded soldiers. During these early years Prescott ventured into politics. His leadership and growing anti-British views won long-term endorsement from Groton voters. He served as town clerk for thirteen years and selectman for thirty-one. In 1765 he was elected chairman of the town committee to protest the Stamp Act, and in 1774 clerk of the town’s Committee of Correspondence....
