Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/243

 Revolutionary record in detail, is a prominent object in the Granary Burying Ground.

The second of Church’s surgeons was Dr. Richard Perkins, of the class of 1748; being now forty-five, he was the patriarch of the department. He had represented the town of Bridgewater in the Provincial Congress, where he was a member of numerous and important committees. Besides, he had married the sister of John Hancock, so that, though his professional skill is doubtful, the reasons for his selection are not. Possibly he did not feel altogether at home among a group of earnest and able young internes whose average age was about half his own; at all events, nothing more is heard of him until 1792, when he is mentioned as a doctor at Framingham; thence he “moved to the Mohawk,” and in the obscurity of that misty bourne he crossed the Styx in 1813.

The third surgeon nominated by Church was a Princeton graduate of 1771, Dr. Charles McKnight. He came from the old fighting Irish stock; his great-grandfather lost an arm at the Battle of the Boyne. He rapidly rose in the service, until in 1780 he became chief hospital sur-