By WALTER C. GREEN.
My father, Dr. Ezra Green, was born in Maiden, Mass., June 17, 1746,
and, after he was graduated at Harvard College in 1765, he commenced
the study of medicine and surgery with Dr. Sprague, of Maiden,
finishing his course with Dr. Fisher, of Newburyport. He then went to
Dover, New-Hampshire, to reside, in 1767, where he was in successful
practice up to his appointment as surgeon in the army. Dr. Green's five
years service in the army and navy I need not describe, it having been
already narrated by Commodore Preble.
About the same time that Dr. Green went to reside in Dover, his friend
the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, from Boston, was by unanimous vote invited
there and ordained minister of the Congregational Society on a salary
of L150, payable semi-annually, and there he preached for eighteen
years. This small pittance being inadequate for the support of himself,
his wife, two sons and two daughters, he asked a dismissal, and
returning to Boston, he was soon settled as minister over the Federal
Street Society, and there remained until his greatly lamented death,
June 20, 1798, at the early age of 55 years. Dr. Belknap was my
father's next-door neighbor, and the close intimacy so early commenced
between the two families, never abated during their lives.
When Dr. Green and the Rev. Mr. Belknap went to Dover, my dear mother
was eight years of age, and being of a lively, pleasant disposition and
quick apprehension, with an ardent fondness for books and study, she
early enlisted their kind offices in the direction of her various
studies; and to them she was largely indebted for her excellent
education.
On the 13th of December, 1778, my father was married to my mother,
Susannah Hayes, of Dover, by the Rev. Jeremy Belknap. This fortunate
union remained unbroken, save for his absence during the remainder of
his service in the navy, until it was severed by her death,--a period
of fifty-seven years.
In a letter from on board the Ranger dated March 12, 1779, Dr. Green
wrote to his then young married wife: "I never felt so uneasy on
account of your absence. I pray we may not long be separated from each
other, but as Providence seems to have pointed out this to me as a
duty, I desire to pursue it cheerfully and with good courage, and I
know you would not wish me to turn or look back; and I wish you all the
happiness of this world and that to come." As soon as he had discharged
the duty here mentioned, that is, on the termination of the
revolutionary war, Dr. Green relinquished his medical practice to his
friend and successor, Dr. Jacob Kittredge, to whom he gave his surgical
instruments, books and medicines, and then commenced a mercantile
business.
Early after this he was made post-master in Dover, which office he
voluntarily resigned after several years of faithful duty.
Dr. Green was made deacon of the First Congregational Society in Dover,
and was a most devout, unfailing attendant on all Sunday or week day
religious services, despite the adverse weather of severest cold or
snow of winter, or scorching heat of summer. My father's religious
education gave to his early and middle life a degree of asceticism that
controlled his thoughts and conduct; but from this in his later years,
with a wider range of religious and theological information, and with
greater experience and reflection, he happily emerged into broader
views of the truths of Christianity. These gave him fresh vitality, and
added a more gentle influence and sweetness to his character.
In the year 1827, Dr. Green, with many others of similar religious
belief, withdrew from the First Congregational Church, and formed the
First Unitarian or Second Congregational Society in Dover. In the
affairs of the new society, though nearly 80 years of age, he took an
active and prominent part, and especially in erecting, during the year
1828, a large commodious church, in which the Rev. Samuel Kirkland
Lothrop soon after was called to preach as the first pastor of the
society; presiding in that ministry with satisfactory zeal and fidelity
for five years, until 1834, when he was called away to a wider field of
usefulness, to the pastorship of the Brattle Square Church in Boston,
where he happily officiates to this late day with no diminution of
ardor and faith.
Dr. Green and family were fond of friendly social intercourse, and his
doors were ever open and largely frequented by the refined and
cultivated persons of both sexes, who appreciated their society and
liberal hospitality.
In the various affairs of the town, he took a lively interest, and
under his charge the first school-house was built; and for educational
and religious purposes, the dissemination of the Scriptures at home and
abroad, and support of the ministry, he was always a willing
contributor.
From time to time he served as selectman, or as surveyor of the
highways and by-ways, and now and then as moderator at the
town-meetings, where the clashing parties of Federalists and Democrats
met, with passionate party feelings, which at times raged with scarce
controllable fury.
From active mercantile business in 1811, he sought that domestic
quietude with his devoted wife and family he so fondly cherished, and
there he largely indulged his taste in reading to their ever attentive
ears. He was no hum-drum reader, but with a clear voice and superior
elocutionary powers he rendered his various readings pleasingly
attractive, and this was his fondest daily enjoyment, up to the very
verge of his prolonged years.
My dear mother had but a feeble constitution, yet I never knew her
depressed in spirits. Her well-stored, retentive memory made her
society attractive to the old and young who frequented her house; and
as a wife and mother, she was in all her duties watchfully diligent and
greatly endeared by her family. Her life was that of a liberal
Christian, and she awaited her exit from this world with patient
resignation, and in the happy belief of an immediate entrance into a
future life of endless duration and happiness; and thus she passed
away, on the 3d of April, 1836, in the 77th year of her age.
During those early times it was the prevailing fashion, whatever the
hour of a friendly call, to invite the guest to imbibe as he might
prefer from the several potations before him. The custom was a
pernicious one, and when the temperance societies sprung up, Dr. Green,
though always a most temperate person, was the first to enter his name
on the list of "total abstinents," not from the least necessary
restrictive requirement on his part, but because he hoped it might
prove an efficient example for many of his fellow-townsmen, who were
more or less demoralized by this habitual indulgence.
He had no craving desire for official position or for public notoriety.
He was, however, honored by several governors of the state with a
commission as justice of the peace, and was also chosen one of the
delegates at large, and chairman of the state convention for the
adoption of the constitution of the United States. His vote gave a
majority in its favor, an event of profound importance for
New-Hampshire, to which the other assenting states were looking for
this hoped for result, with no small doubt and distrust of feeling.
He had a fond taste for horticulture, and in his garden it was his
daily enjoyment to spend a few hours in healthful exercise, where he
gloried over his various fruits and delicacies. From his wife's farm of
150 acres, four miles from town, most of the staple necessaries of life
were produced, so that at his table, where there was no needless waste,
there was a sufficiency to satisfy the keenest appetite or most dainty
palate. His garden at one time had more than thirty peach trees, most
of which were killed by an untimely snow-storm in June, when they were
in full blossom. The few which escaped during my boyhood I well
remember for their luscious flavor.
He was no less fond of pomology, and during the fall season he took me
behind him on his horse Whitey to the farm to assist in carrying the
implements for ingrafting his young thrifty apple orchard, and with
eager eyes I watched the sound selected branch from which with fine saw
he lopped off the upper portion. Next with mallet and chisel midway the
stalk was cleft for the wedge-cut scion's insertion where the two barks
met to catch the up flowing sap in spring. Then with trowel the plastic
clay was overlaid to hold firm the scions against the rude blasts of
winter, and then the flaxen tow was wound around, and last of all a
bandage deftly fastened, and all so artistically done, as in a few
years well repaid him with its ample fruitage. Several trees were
grafted with scions cut from an aged tree in Massachusetts, the bark
nearly destroyed by the wood-peckers, and hence its name of
"Pecker-Apple." It attained a large size, resembling the well-known
Baldwin, though firmer and handsomer; and when ripe in mid-winter, it
was with its crisp golden pulp and juicy flavor the most delicious
apple I have ever eaten.
Dr. Green was an ardent patriot and Federalist, a brave and consistent
champion of that independence he had helped to win, and a zealous
advocate for that constitution he had aided to establish. From early
life to the last he was an opponent of the institution of slavery, and
predicted that sooner or later the free and slave states would be
involved in a bitter controversy on that account. That he was spared
the realization of his fears, was a mercy to his sensitive heart.
In his mode of life he aimed at no ostentatious show. Polite and
affable in his deportment, he won the respect due to courteous manners.
In personal appearance and contour of face, he was not unlike Gen.
Washington, for whom he was often taken while in the army. In stature
he was six feet three inches tall and proportionately large in frame;
and whether walking or sitting, he always maintained a very erect
position. The woodcut engraving which accompanies this sketch
represents Dr. Green at the age of fifty-five years, and is a very
perfect outline likeness. The steel engraved portrait is taken from a
rather indistinct daguerreotype likeness when he was one hundred years
of age. He had a sound, vigorous constitution, strengthened and
preserved by uniform temperate habits, daily physical exercise, early
hours for retirement, and rising with the opening day. At the age of 82
years he fell and broke his thigh bone where it entered its socket; and
little did he or his physician believe that at his advanced age it
would ever unite, as it did after several months confinement to his
bed; so that in the course of time, with the aid of crutch or cane, he
was enabled to hobble about his house and garden, and occasionally to
attend church.
Ten years more had nearly elapsed, when another more serious accident
befel him. From an early morning stroll in front of his house, he came
in doors, and standing by the window reading, was suddenly prostrated
backward to the floor, seemingly, to him, by a violent blow on his
cranium, and so wrenching his spinal column, as deprived him ever after
of all power of locomotion. Happily this accident was unattended with
pain, and there in his cosey easy chair, with books, papers, &c. around
him, his days and years flew apace without weariness or complaint, and
with that sweet serenity of mind and calm christian patience which won
the most devotioned care and affectionate love of his two only
surviving daughters.
From his personal friends, he had frequent social visits, and from
strangers not a few, from far and near, attracted by his venerable age,
or a desire to hear him recount his varied experience during our
revolutionary war. Groups too of merry children, for whom he had a
kindly fondness, came often with tasteful flowers to greet him. Such
indeed was his uniform gentleness of disposition, and lively interest
in all public and domestic affairs, that he left questionable evidence
on the minds of not a few strangers, as to the extreme old age
attributed to him.
Here, in conclusion, I will add that, on learning my dear father's
indisposition, I hastened to see him, and found him suffering somewhat,
as it seemed, from the effects of a cold and cough. To gratify me he
took some homoeopathic pellets I recommended, smilingly remarking
that such an infinitesimal potion could neither kill nor cure. Finding
himself the next morning much relieved, he exclaimed that that was not
what he desired, "for it has been my daily prayer the last year to my
Heavenly Father, to take me to himself, and I believe he has kept me
here a year longer, for my ceaseless importunity." Whereat I asked,
have you not enjoyed your usual good health and happy intercourse with
your devoted daughters and friends? O yes! that I have, and every
worldly comfort and enjoyment I desire, but now I long to depart. Like
the late renowned Mrs. Mary Somerville, of England, he dreaded the
possibility of his physical powers outliving his mental faculties; and
then said, "what an incubus I should be to my loving daughters, who
would then wish me in my grave."
Happily was it that he was exempt from all those fretful, fractious
feelings to which aged people are occasionally subject. Such was his
universal cheerful temperament and mental activity, that his death to
his idolizing daughters was no less grievous than that of a darling
child to a fond mother; and so it was, that this eminently good and
venerable man's prayer was soon after my visit indulged, and on July
25, 1847, he expired at the very advanced age of 101 years and 28 days,
retaining to his last hour a clear unclouded mind, and with the full
faith and confiding hope of entering a future world of progressive
improvement and happiness.
On the one hundredth anniversary of Dr. Green's birth-day, the 28th of
June, 1846, his former friend and pastor, the Rev. Samuel K. Lothrop,
of Boston, preached in Dover a commemorative discourse[5] on this
event, and from its appendix I make the following extract:--
[5] THE CONSOLATIONS OF OLD AGE. | A | Sermon | Preached at the |
First Unitarian Church, in Dover, N. H | On the 28th of June,
1846, | Being the One Hundredth Birth-day | of | Ezra Green, M.D.
| The Oldest Living Graduate of Harvard College. | By S. K.
Lothrop, | Pastor of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston: |
1846. | Eastburn's Press. | [8vo. pp. 25.]
Dr. Green is still able to employ himself with books for several
hours every day. He reads the papers, and keeps himself well
informed upon all public affairs, and retains his interest in
them. As an evidence of the declaration that "the intellect and
the heart have been slightly touched by time," I am permitted to
publish the following extracts from a record, made in my journal,
of an interesting interview had with him after service on the
Sunday on which the sermon was preached. I had said that he was so
well and strong that perhaps his life would still be prolonged
some years; to which he replied--"I know not how long I may live.
Death was always a very solemn and affecting thing to me. When a
young man nothing affected or impressed me so much as a funeral.
It has been so through life and is so now. I contemplate death
with awe. It is a solemn thing to die, to exchange worlds, to
enter upon an untried, spiritual, eternal state of being, of which
we can form no adequate conceptions. To appear before an
omniscient God, to account for the deeds done in the body, _all_
of them, through a _long_ life, is a solemn thing; I feel it to be
so--I have always felt it. But I thank God that I am able to
contemplate him as my Father in Heaven. Through Jesus Christ, the
mediator, I have hope in his mercy, and a perfect trust in his
paternal goodness." * * * *
These observations, and others in a similar strain, were made
spontaneously, with pauses in which he seemed to be collecting his
thoughts, but with only a single question put to him on my part. I
publish them, not on account of the particular religious opinions
which they express, but for the evidence they afford of the
unabated vigor and activity of his intellect at the age of an
hundred years. I have given very nearly his exact words. He was
much affected during the utterance of these sentiments, and
evidently spoke from the bottom of an earnest and sincere heart.
The interview was exceedingly interesting, and left on those
present the impression that he was ripe for the Kingdom of Heaven,
and that an old age surrounded by so many comforts, with the
intellect and the heart so little impaired, was not so sad and
gloomy a period as we sometimes imagine.
In June, 1846, he received the following letter from Daniel Webster:
WASHINGTON, June 17, 1846.
MY DEAR SIR:--I hope you remember me at that period of my life,
when I was in the habit of attending the Courts at Dover, and when
I had the pleasure of enjoying your society and hospitality.
And I hope that in subsequent life I have made some efforts which
you have approved, for the maintenance of those political
principles to which, as a friend and follower of Washington, you
have ever been attached, and which I have heard you so often and so
intelligently defend. This is the day[6] on which you complete the
hundredth year of your age. Will you allow me, therefore, to greet
you, to-day, with a respectful and friendly letter, congratulating
you on the degree of strength, mental and bodily, which Providence
allows you to enjoy, so far beyond the lot of man, and tendering to
you my cordial and affectionate good wishes for your continued
health and happiness. I send you a copy of a speech lately made by
me in the senate, and remain, dear sir,
Your friend and obedient servant,
Dr. Ezra Green.