Biography of Dr. Josiah Crosby of Manchester NH ----------------------------- Information located at http://www.nh.searchroots.com/Manchester On a web site about GENEALOGY AND HISTORY OF MANCHESTER NEW HAMPSHIRE TRANSCRIBED BY JANICE BROWN Please see the web site for my email contact. ---------------------------------- The original source of this information is in the public domain, however use of this text file, other than for personal use, is restricted without written permission from the transcriber (who has edited, compiled and added new copyrighted text to same). ======================================================== SOURCE: History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co., 1885 ------------------- page 125 JOSIAH CROSBY, M.D. In April 1753, from Tewksbury, Mass, there came with Colonel Fitch a millwright who had purchased seventy-seven acres of land upon the Souhegan River, in Monson (as then called) and afterwards Amherst, now Milford, N.H., the grandfather of Josiah Crosby. These young people took possesion of the lot "to subdue the forest, build a house, and rear a family." They found their way to their wilderness lot on horseback, guided by "spotted trees," and there built a rude habitation. At this place was born, in 1765, Asa Crosby, who for about fifty years practiced medicine in this State, and to whom, in Sanwich, where he then resided, was born, in February 1794, Josiah Crosby, the subject of this sketch, also Judge Nathan Crosby, of Lowell, and Dixie, Thomas and Alpheus Crosby, professors at Dartmouth College. Josiah was handsome, genial and gentlemanly, quick to learn and early graceful in manners. He was started early for preparation for his father's profession. From the town school he was placed under the private instruction of Rev. Mr. Hidden, of Tamworth, and afterwards sent to Amherst Academy. He took lessons in Gilford's system in penmanship and became an elegant penman, kept school and taught private classes in penmanship, studied his profession with his father, attended lectures three terms at Dartmouth College and spent a year's term of pupilage and riding with the distinguished Dr. and Professor Nathan Smith, to learn his practice. He took his medical degree in 1816 and immediately commenced practice in Sandiwhc, but the next year he moved to Meredith Bridge [NH] and although he made very pleasant acquaintances and had some practice, he moved to Deerfield [NH] and in December 1819, he again changed his field to Epsom, where he remained until 1825, when he established himself in Concord [NH]. After three years of successful practice there, he was induced, upon solicitation of Mr. Batchelder, agent of mills in Lowell [MA] to remove there. Here, in 1829, he brought as his bride, Olive Light Avery, daughter of Daniel Avery, Esq. of Meredith Bridge (now Laconia, NH) who was a wealthy merchant and manufacturer, a prominent and leading citizen, unostentatious, but energetic and decisive in personal character and business habits. By this marriage were born three sons and two daughters, the only one now living being Dr. George A. Crosby, of Manchester. His letters make quite a history of the trials and disappointments of the young physician in those days, who was obliged to present youth and inexperience upon ground preoccupied and tenaciously held by those who could claim possession, if not much else, in the way of title; but increasing years and experience, accompanied with efforts and study, carried the young man to a leading member of the profession in Lowell, in fifteen years from his starting-point in Sandwich. He was honored with public offices in Lowell, and assisted in devising and organizing the various institutions of the town for its moral and intellectual prosperity. After about five years' successful practice in Lowell [MA], having apssed through the land speculations and becoming somewhat enamored with manufacturing, he left Lowell to take charge of the Avery cotton-mill at Meredith Bridge, Mr. Avery having deceased and the property of the family seeming to require his personal supervision. He enlarged the power of the works, and was just ready to reap his anticipated reward, when the mercantile and manufacturing disasters of 1836 and 1837 broke down his business and turned him back to his profession. In 1838 his brother Dixie, who had been in practice in Meredith Bridge several years, was appointed a professor in the medical college at Hanover and removed there, leaving his practice to Josiah, who now devoted himself to the profession again with his early love, zeal and labor. In Mach, 1844, he removed to Manchester [NH] which had then become an interesting manufacturing town. His professional life-work now assumed great usefulness, great skill and inventive progress. Here for thirty years he was the unrivaled head of the profession. Here he originated and introduced the method of making extensions of fractured limbs by the use of adhesive strips, which gave him a high reputation with surgeons in Europe as well as at home, and later he invented the "invalid bed," which has so tenderly held the patient without a strain or jar while the bed-clothes could be changed or wounds cared for, or, by dropping a belt or two, prevent painful local pressure and irritation. The skillful physician, the Christian gentleman and the sympathizing friend were combinations of character in him rare excelled. "His religious life," said Professor Tucker, of Andover [MA], "Was simple, real, true; with him there was no pretense; he had no beliefs except those which were thorough; no little questions vexed him; he loved God, trusted his Saviour and worked for the welfare of his fellow men. Such was his record from first to land. He looked with a calm, clear eye into the future, and, so far as we know, was troubled with no doubts." He was one of the founders of the Appleton Street Church in Lowell [MA] in 1830, and of the Franklin Street Church in Manchester [NH] in 1844. He held city offices, was several times in the Legislature and was a member of the convention for revision of the constitution. In early manhood, from cough and feebleness, he had not much promise of long life, but after a severe typhoid fever during his residence in Concord, he had great general good health to the last two years of his life, when paralytic tendencies appeared. On Saturday, the 2d day of January, 1875, after setting a broken arm in the morning, and after sitting in his own parlor for the finishing touches of the portrait-painter in his usual cheerfulness of spirits, in fifteen minutes after the artist had left him, at three o'clock P.M., he was striken with paralysis, from which he did not rally, but passed away on the 7th, at four o'clock in the morning, almost eighty-one years of age. ------------------------------------- SOURCE: Manchester, A Brief Record of its Past and A Picture of Its Present, including an account of is settlement and its growth as town and city; a history of its schools, churches, societies, banks, post-offices, newspapers and manufactures; a description of its government, police and fire department, public buildings, library, water-works, cemeteries, streets, streams, railways and bridges; a complete list of the selectmen, moderators and clerks of the town and members of the councils, marshals and engineers of the city, with the state of the cote for mayor at each election; the story of its part in the war of the rebellion with a complete list of its soldiers who went ot the war; and sketches of its representative citizens; Manchester N.H.; John B. Clark; 1875 ------------------- page 398 **** DR. JOSIAH CROSBY was born in Sandiwch NH February 1, 1794, and was the son of Dr. Asa and Betsy (Holt) Crosby, she being the daughter of Col. Nathan Hoit of Moultonborough, for many years judge of the court of common pleas. They had ten children. John the eldest, died in Sandwich in 1872; Asa, a merchant of New York, died in Hayti, W.I. in 1826; Betsy, widow of the late Samuel Beedy, died at Edinboro' PA; Josiah, the subject of this sketch was the next in order of birth; Sarah, the widow of the late Dr. GIlman M. Burleigh, formerly of Sandwich, resides at Dexter, ME; Mary, the widow of the late Daniel Stevens, lives in Edinboro' PA; Nathan has been judge of the police court at Lowell, Mass for the past thirty years; Dixi, who was many years professor in the medical school at Dartmouth College, died in 1873; Grace Reed married the late Dr. Enos Hoyt, formerly of Northfield NH, but subsequently of Framingham, Mass, where she now resides; one child, died in infancy. Dr. Asa subsequently married Miss Abigail Russell, daughter of Thomas Russell of Conway, by whom he had seven children, of whom five died young. Alpheus, first professor of Greek and Latin and then of Greek alone at Dartmouth College from 1833 to 1849, and subsequently principal of the state normal school at Salem, Mass., died at Salme in 1874; Thomas Russell, who once practiced medicine in this city and was afterwards professor at Norwich University at Norwich VT and in the scientific school at Dartmouth College, died in 1874. The subject of this sketch received his preliminary education at Fryeburg, Mass., and at Andover NH, studied medicine with his father and at Hanover with Dr. Nathan Smith, and graduated in 1816 from the medical school at Hanover, succeeding that year to his father's practice in Sanwich. Thence he removed to Deerfield, then to Epsom as a more central location, and then to Concord as a still larger place. He was afterwards induced to go to Lowell, Mass, by the influence of a prominent manufacturer of that town who was in search of a trustworthy physician. He soon acquired a large practice there, but was called by the death of his father-in-law to Meredith Bridge, now Laconia, where he took charge of the estate. Amon gthe property were some mills at Meredith Bridge and he formed a company under the name of the Belknap Mills, becoming its agent and remaining such till its failure in 1837. When his brother Dixi, then a physician in the same town, forsook his practice to become a professor in the medical school at Hanover, he succeeded to his business and practiced there until March 844, when he came to this city [Manchester NH] where he pursued his profession until his death, which occurred January 7, 1875, from the effects of a paralytic shock. Dr. Crosby married in 1829, Miss Olive L. Avery, who survives him, together with their two sons,--Stephen L., a civil engineer and now resident in Manchester, and George A., who has become heir to his father's practice. Dr. Crosby was a representative from Manchester to the state legislature for two years, was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1850 and was one of the school committee of this city in 1849, 1850 and 1851. He was a trustee of the Manchester Savings Bank from 1856 until his death. He became a member of the New Hampshire Medical Society in 1818 and 1850 was its president. In 1857 he was elected one of the vice-presidents of the American Medical Association and was an honorary member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Upon his coming to Manchester he at once took the lead of the profession in the city, acquired a very large practice and became widely known in the state and beyond it as a contributor to medical journals. He gained a high reputation by introducing into medical practice the application of adhesive plaster in making extensions of fracture limbs, a method highly commended at the time and now in use all over the world. He was also the invenstor of an invalid-bed for the use of patients with fractured limbs, which provided its utility by its general adoption. Dr. Crosby was a man of the highest rank in his profession, studious, careful and thorough; of perfect honor, purity and integrity. He was a gentleman of the old school, gentle-mannered and kindly, of fine personal appearance and held in the highest esteem by the residents of a city in which he scarcely had an enemy. He was the instructor of many young men in the course of his practice and was their frield and councellor as well. He was a man of very regular and methodical habits which prolonged his life to a hale old age. (end)