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PIERCE, STEPHEN [or] SIMEON STODDARD. Vermont Physician's Account Book, 1796-1805, Narrow Tall Folio, 112 pp., in ink,, five separately sewn signatures. (Waitsfield, Vermont): 1796-1805. A few pages loose, some pages darkened or chipped at edges; some entries faint. $1,500.00

 

      Records each date of visit, the householder's name, the relationship of patient to householder, medicine prescribed and its price, and the cost of the doctor's visit.

     This account book is the record of the practice of either Stephen Pierce or Simeon Stoddard, practicing in Waitsfield, Vermont between 1795 and 1806.Most likely it is the record of Pierce, who is supposed to have settled in Waitsfield in 1795. The first physician in Waitsfield, Moses Heaton, remained there only between 1793 and 1796. Depending on the source, Pierce was the third physician to practice in Waitsfield and/or the first to practice in Moretown, a settlement to the northeast of Waitsfield. He farmed as well as doctored, and his farm lay mostly in Moretown, his buildings in Waitsfield. He was a respected and successful physician who served the community in other capacities: as selectman, representative, delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1814, and Assistant Judge of the County Court. One source claims that he succeeded Judge Kinne December 1, 1814, and served one year, and that he was a justice of the peace in Waitsfield. He died either in 1854 after living in Waterbury and Berlin, Vermont, or he died in Barnard in 1864.

Simeon Stoddard was born December 12, 1761 either in Saybrook, Connecticut or in Waitsfield. On August 19, 1784 he married Abiah Thompson who had been born in 1763 in Waitsfield. Some sources state that he moved to Waitsfield from Saybrook in 1794. He served the southwestern area of Waitsfield and died in 1841.

Whomever, the doctor treated thirty to forty patients each month and as many as fifty-six in December of 1801. He charged as little as 4 pence and as much as 42 shillings 10 pence for his services. As a comparison, the tax on an acre of land in Waitsfield was 2 pence an acre. The poll tax list of 1795 showed fifty voters, so the doctor seems to have treated the members of nearly every family. The diseases treated are not stated in the entries made, but he seems to have prescribed antimonium tartaricum and perhaps digitalis.

Waitsfield was founded by Col. Benjamin Wait (or Waite) and others who were granted a charter on February 25, 1782. Wait had served under Gen. Jeffery Amherst in the French and Indian Wars and had fought in the Revolutionary War. Both Waitsfield and Moretown are now somewhat renowned as the areas around Mad River, a popular ski resort. Mad River has been remarkable from the settling of the area as the source of numerous sudden, destructive, and deadly floods. The Green Mountains, the northern extent of the Appalachians rise just to the west of the town.

     The doctor records having treated members of the Wait family including Benjamin's wife (Martha, d. April 3, 1804), Ezra, Thomas, and Gilbert. The family names of the community are listed, making this a good source for early settlement history and genealogical research. Among the householders who required the doctor's services are Smolly, Skinner, Taylor, Spalding, Hitchcock, Parkhurst, Carpenter (the family had a tannery and potash works), Heaton, Burdick, Johnson, Rider, Fuller, Symonds, McNight, Chamberlain, Atherton, Lyon, Butterfield, Barnave, Osgood, Foster, Hobson, Robinson, Brun, Latimer, and Sherman. Many of the names appear often.

     Surviving physician's account books are quite rare in the eighteenth century,