Josiah Bartlett ( – May 19, 1795) was an American Founding Father, physician, statesman, a delegate to the Continental Congress for New Hampshire, and a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation. He was a member of the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States in 1787. He served as the fourth governor of New Hampshire and chief justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court of Judicature, now the New Hampshire Supreme Court. All three of his sons and seven of his grandsons would follow his dream as physicians.

Bartlett was a freemason and encouraged his son Josiah to join. Bartlett and Mary remained married until her death on July 14, 1789.

Career

Medicine

175px|thumb|Coat of Arms of Josiah Bartlett

In 1750, he moved to Kingston, New Hampshire, in Rockingham County, and opened his medical practice.

Kingston at that time was a frontier settlement.

Bartlett actively practiced medicine for 40 years. During that time, he tested both traditional and new treatments for optimal efficacy.

Farming and real estate

While in Kingston, Bartlett grew crops on his twelve-acre farm beginning in 1751. As a young adult, he also made money dealing in lumber and buying and selling real estate. After he was married, the Bartletts planted and harvested crops, like corn and beans, with the help of slaves.

Politics

Bartlett became active in the political affairs of Kingston, and in 1765, he was elected to the Provincial Assembly. Bartlett conducted discussions with Colonial Governor Benning Wentworth (1741–1766) and the Provincial Assembly to mediate dissension caused by the Stamp Act of 1765 (enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain). He opposed the Townshend Acts of 1767 and 1768 and aligned politically with the patriots, or Whigs. Bartlett was member of the colonial legislature until 1775.

He was named an "accessory after the fact" for the Capture of Fort William and Mary (December 14, 1774) in New Castle, New Hampshire. Governor Wentworth dismissed him from his positions as a justice of the peace and militia colonel in February 1775.

Founding Father and military leader

Bartlett was a member of the Continental Congress in 1775, 1776 and 1778.

When the question of declaring independence from Great Britain was officially brought up in 1776, as a representative of the northernmost colony Bartlett was the first to be asked, and he answered in the affirmative. the Articles of Confederation and he signed the instrument.

Bartlett and Mary wrote letters to one another that provide insight into their lives during the revolution. Pauline Maier in The old revolutionaries : political lives in the age of Samuel Adams states: "In the midst of change, some revolutionaries cultivated continuity. For Josiah and Mary Bartlett, the permanent alterations the Revolution brought to them and their provincial world were grafted upon a larger field of stability. Josiah might help design a national government that would determine the happiness of all future generations, but the seasons would come as always, the drought and worms at most a little earlier, a little later; and even the failure of the Revolution would have been, it seemed, but another of the troubles that marked men's existence and for which Providence would again somehow provide."

Later career

thumb|Painted by [[Edwin Tryon Billings, mezzotint, after a portrait by John Trumbull. The original by Trumbull hangs in the State House in Concord, New Hampshire]]

He became chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1778.

Bartlett was governor of New Hampshire from 1790, initially called chief executive or president. When the amended state constitution of 1792 took effect in 1793, his title became governor. He resigned on January 29, 1794, because of declining health. Seven-inch medallions located at Bartlett and his wife's graves were awarded by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution.

A bronze statue of Bartlett stands in the town square of Amesbury, Massachusetts. His portrait hangs in the State House in Concord, New Hampshire, drawn from an original by John Trumbull. Bartlett, New Hampshire, is named in his honor, along with the Josiah Bartlett Elementary School. Bartlett is featured on a New Hampshire historical marker (number 46) along New Hampshire Route 111 in Kingston. The Bartlett School in Amesbury, which operated from 1870 until 1968, operates since then as the Bartlett Museum, Inc., a nonprofit museum.

The 1888 poem "One of the Signers" was written by John Greenleaf Whittier to honor Bartlett.

The main character in the 1999 to 2006 NBC drama series The West Wing, President Josiah Bartlet, is a fictional character depicted as a descendant of the Declaration of Independence signatory.

See also

  • Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Society of Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence
  • The Papers of Josiah Bartlett at Dartmouth College Library