Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/226

 dilection for deserted loyalist property—the magnificent mansion of ex-Governor Francis Bernard on the southern shore of Jamaica Pond, and the elegant residences of ex-Collector Benjamin Hallowell and ex-Councillor Joshua Loring near by. A “pest-house” in a retired position on the edge of Fresh Pond was opened for the increasing number of smallpox cases. After the first panic had passed, the main hospital was moved back to Cambridge and enlarged by the addition of several more of the stately old Tory seats, including that of Judge Joseph Lee of the class of 1729 (now number 159 Brattle Street), and that of Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Oliver of 1753, better known to-day as “Elmwood,” the home of James Russell Lowell of 1838. A staff of surgeons and “surgeon’s mates” was duly appointed after examination by a committee of the Congress—an innovation that seems to have caused no little embarrassment and hesitation among the candidates. Like everything else in this intensely “home-made” organization, they were simply local doctors, of proved patriotism; but it is worthy of record that almost to a man they were graduates of Harvard College.

Dr. William Aspinwall, of the class of 1764, was put in charge of the Jamaica Plain hospitals. His patronymic was coeval with the settlement of Boston: he was a patrician in the finest sense of the term. Even in