256 Percy Wells Bidwell 



lawyers.^ While waiting for political preferment, or in the inter- 

 vals between terms of ofl&ce, the country lawyer would have had 

 a hard time to make a living if he had relied on his legal work alone. 

 Consequently, he sometimes took up a trade such as that of car- 

 penter or shoemaker,^ but most often made up the deficiencies in 

 his income by farming.^ 



This partial reliance upon agriculture was equally true of the 

 medical profession. They were, in many cases, men with a smatter- 

 ing of knowledge concerning the effect of certain drugs and herbs 

 on the most common diseases, — primarily farmers, who, as Miss 

 Lamed says of the doctors in Canterbury, practiced medicine when 

 they had nothing more important to do.^ The inventory of the 

 estate of a physician of that region shows to what extent he had 

 combined the two occupations. Besides a stock of drugs, medi- 

 cines and vials, he had one pair of oxen, 13 cows, 15 head of young 

 cattle, 20 sheep, a number of swine, farming tools, hay, etc. It 

 was probably the fact that much of the medical service of the time 

 was being done by poorly educated men who were farmers as well, 

 which caused so much complaint to be made of the inefiiciency of 

 the profession at that time.^ 



The Business Men. 



Besides these professional men, there were in the rural villages 

 a small group of men who represented in a way the prototype of 

 what we now call the class of business men. There was the taverner 

 or innkeeper, the country trader, the proprietors of the saw-mills, 



1 Taking a list of 64 prominent men at this time, including governors, United 

 States Senators and state officials and legislators, whose previous occupation can 

 be ascertained, we find that 36 of these had been lawyers, 13 were merchants, 

 10 had come into prominence during the Revolution, 3 were physicians, and 2 

 were craftsmen. Examples of men of prominence who were originally lawyers 

 in country towns are furnished by Uriah Tracy, United States Senator from 

 Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull, the elder. Governor of Connecticut, and Caleb 

 Strong, Governor of Massachusetts. 



2 See Neilsen, Peter. Recollections of a Six Years Residence in the United 

 States of America. Glasgow. 1830. p. 182. 



' Advertisements in the country newspapers such as that in the Massachu- 

 setts Spy, published in the town of Worcester, issue of July 1, 1807, are good 

 evidence on this point. This advertisement recommends a farm of 23 acres 

 which is offered for sale as a suitable purchase for a lawyer. 



* Lamed, Ellen Douglas. History of Windham County, Conn., 2 vols. 

 Worcester (Mass.). 1874-1880. II. 423. 



^ See La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels, I. 448, and NeUson, Recollec- 

 tions, pp. 188-189. 



