Description:
Medicine chest owned by Dr. Samuel Shaw (1790-1870) of Plainfield, Massachusetts, which is an early leather-covered, wooden box with a brass handle and studded brass tack decoration. The fitted interior contents, which appear to come from a later period than the box, include seven tin canisters, glass bottles with preparations (see list in data file), leather case marked "Chidsey & Partridge Boston" (in business 1887-1900) with a syringe and two needles, suture case, and a pocket book with handwritten treatments dated 1851 (see contents in data file). The typical New England physician of the period was on call day and night in all seasons, and travelled extensively throughout his community. They carried medicines and instruments in small kits, saddlebags, or portable medicine chests such as this example. Samuel Shaw studied medicine under Dr. Peter Bryant of Cummington, Massachusetts, from 1814-1818, and married his daughter Sarah Bryant in 1821. In 1824, Shaw retuned to Plainfield where his family had moved when he was 2 yrs. to practice medicine. Sarah also died in 1824; he married Elizabeth Owen Clarke (1799-1863) in 1830 and they had 6 children. Their daughter, Laura Agnes Shaw (b.1846), married Dr. Erasmus Darwin Hudson (1805-1880), an early anti-slavery campaigner. According to a history of Redding, Connecticut and its village of Georgetown: "The Baptist church was for many years the only meeting place the villagers had, and in it lectures on temperance and anti-slavery were given. At this period many in the north were in favor of slavery and the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions had many a debate. Georgetown was strongly anti-slavery and it is a historical fact that the first anti-slavery society in Connecticut was started in Georgetown in Oct. 1838. Dr. Erasmus Hudson and Rev. Nathaniel Colver were appointed by the Anti-Slavery Society of Connecticut to lecture on slavery. On Nov. 16, 1838, a call was issued for an anti-slavery convention to be held in the Baptist Church in Georgetown. On Nov. 26, 1838 Messrs. Colver and Hudson addressed the meeting. But the opposition was so strong the meeting was adjourned until Nov. 27th. That evening the enemies of the movement broke up the meeting, and on the 28th of November the Baptist Church was blown up with gunpowder. A keg of gunpowder was placed under the pulpit." Dr. Shaw's house, with many of his original furnishings, is currently owned by the Plainfield Historical Society, which was donated to the Society by Clara Hudson (1880-1963), the daughter of Agnes and Erasmus Hudson.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2007.8 |
