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II.
DR. GREEN'S PRIVATE LIFE AND CHARACTER
By Walter C. Green
My father, Dr. Ezra Green, was born in Maiden, Mass., June 17, 1746, and, after he was graduated at Harvard College in 1765, he commenced the study of medicine and surgery with Dr. Sprague, of Maiden, finishing his course with Dr. Fisher, of Newburyport. He then went to Dover, New-Hampshire, to reside, in 1767, where he was in successful practice up to his appointment as surgeon in the army. Dr. Green's five years service in the army and navy I need not describe, it having been already narrated by Commodore Preble.
About the same time that Dr. Green went to reside in Dover, his friend the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, from Boston, was by unanimous vote invited there and ordained minister of the Congregational Society on a salary of £150, payable semi-annually, and there he preached for eighteen years. This small pittance being inadequate for the support of himself, his wife, two sons and two daughters, he asked a dismissal, and returning to Boston, he was soon settled as minister over the Federal Street Society, and there remained until his greatly lamented death, June 20, 1798, at the early age of 55 years. Dr. Belknap was my father's next-door neighbor, and the close intimacy so early commenced between the two families, never abated during their lives.
When Dr. Green and the Rev. Mr. Belknap went to Dover, my dear mother was eight years of age, and being of a lively, pleasant disposition and quick apprehension, with an ardent fondness for books and study, she early enlisted their kind offices in the direction of her various studies; and to them she was largely indebted for her excellent education.
On the 13th of December, 1778, my father was married to my mother, Susannah Hayes, of Dover, by the Rev. Jeremy Belknap. This fortunate union remained unbroken, save for his absence during the remainder of his service in the navy, until it was severed by her death, – a period of fifty-seven years.
In a letter from on board the Ranger dated March 12, 1779, Dr. Green wrote to his then young married wife: "I never felt so uneasy on account of your absence. I pray we may not long be separated from each other, but as Providence seems to have pointed out this to me as a duty, I desire to pursue it cheerfully and with good courage, and I know you would not wish me to turn or look back; and I wish you all the happiness of this world and that to come." As soon as he had discharged the duty here mentioned, that is, on the termination of the revolutionary war, Dr. Green relinquished his medical practice to his friend and successor, Dr. Jacob Kittredge, to whom he gave his surgical instruments, books and medicines, and then commenced a mercantile business.
Early after this he was made post-master in Dover, which office he voluntarily resigned after several years of faithful duty.
Dr. Green was made deacon of the First Congregational Society in Dover, and was a most devout, unfailing attendant on all Sunday or week day religious services, despite the adverse weather of severest cold or snow of winter, or scorching heat of summer. My father's religious education gave to his early and middle life a degree of asceticism that controlled his thoughts and conduct; but from this in his later years, with a wider range of religious and theological information, and with greater experience and reflection, he happily emerged into broader views of the truths of Christianity. These gave him fresh vitality, and added a more gentle influence and sweetness to his character.
In the year 1827, Dr. Green, with many others of similar religious belief, withdrew from the First Congregational Church, and formed the First Unitarian or Second Congregational Society in Dover. In the affairs of the new society, though nearly 80 years of age, he took an active and prominent part, and especially in erecting, during the year 1828, a large commodious church, in which the Rev. Samuel Kirkland Lothrop soon after was called to preach as the first pastor of the society; presiding in that ministry with satisfactory zeal and fidelity for five years, until 1834, when he was called away to a wider field of usefulness, to the pastorship of the Brattle Square Church in Boston, where he happily officiates to this late day with no diminution of ardor and faith.
Dr. Green and family were fond of friendly social intercourse, and his doors were ever open and largely frequented by the refined and cultivated persons of both sexes, who appreciated their society and liberal hospitality.
In the various affairs of the town, he took a lively interest, and under his charge the first school-house was built; and for educational and religious purposes, the dissemination of the Scriptures at home and abroad, and support of the ministry, he was always a willing contributor.
From time to time he served as selectman, or as surveyor of the highways and by-ways, and now and then as moderator at the town-meetings, where the clashing parties of Federalists and Democrats met, with passionate party feelings, which at times raged with scarce controllable fury.
From active mercantile business in 1811, he sought that domestic quietude with his devoted wife and family he so fondly cherished, and there he largely indulged his taste in reading to their ever attentive ears. He was no hum-drum reader, but with a clear voice and superior elocutionary powers he rendered his various readings pleasingly attractive, and this was his fondest daily enjoyment, up to the very verge of his prolonged years.
My dear mother had but a feeble constitution, yet I never knew her depressed in spirits. Her well-stored, retentive memory made her society attractive to the old and young who frequented her house; and as a wife and mother, she was in all her duties watchfully diligent and greatly endeared by her family. Her life was that of a liberal Christian, and she awaited her exit from this world with patient resignation, and in the happy belief of an immediate entrance into a future life of endless duration and happiness; and thus she passed away, on the 3d of April, 1836, in the 77th year of her age.
During those early times it was the prevailing fashion, whatever the hour of a friendly call, to invite the guest to imbibe as he might prefer from the several potations before him. The custom was a pernicious one, and when the temperance societies sprung up, Dr. Green, though always a most temperate person, was the first to enter his name on the list of "total abstinents," not from the least necessary restrictive requirement on his part, but because he hoped it might prove an efficient example for many of his fellow-townsmen, who were more or less demoralized by this habitual indulgence.
He had no craving desire for official position or for public notoriety. He was, however, honored by several governors of the state with a commission as justice of the peace, and was also chosen one of the delegates at large, and chairman of the state convention for the adoption of the constitution of the United States. His vote gave a majority in its favor, an event of profound importance for New-Hampshire, to which the other assenting states were looking for this hoped for result, with no small doubt and distrust of feeling.
He had a fond taste for horticulture, and in his garden it was his daily enjoyment to spend a few hours in healthful exercise, where he gloried over his various fruits and delicacies. From his wife's farm of 150 acres, four miles from town, most of the staple necessaries of life were produced, so that at his table, where there was no needless waste, there was a sufficiency to satisfy the keenest appetite or most dainty palate. His garden at one time had more than thirty peach trees, most of which were killed by an untimely snow-storm in June, when they were in full blossom. The few which escaped during my boyhood I well remember for their luscious flavor.
He was no less fond of pomology, and during the fall season he took me behind him on his horse Whitey to the farm to assist in carrying the implements for ingrafting his young thrifty apple orchard, and with eager eyes I watched the sound selected branch from which with fine saw he lopped off the upper portion. Next with mallet and chisel midway the stalk was cleft for the wedge-cut scion's insertion where the two barks met to catch the up flowing sap in spring. Then with trowel the plastic clay was overlaid to hold firm the scions against the rude blasts of winter, and then the flaxen tow was wound around, and last of all a bandage deftly fastened, and all so artistically done, as in a few years well repaid him with its ample fruitage. Several trees were grafted with scions cut from an aged tree in Massachusetts, the bark nearly destroyed by the wood-peckers, and hence its name of "Pecker-Apple." It attained a large size, resembling the well-known Baldwin, though firmer and handsomer; and when ripe in mid-winter, it was with its crisp golden pulp and juicy flavor the most delicious apple I have ever eaten.
Dr. Green was an ardent patriot and Federalist, a brave and consistent champion of that independence he had helped to win, and a zealous advocate for that constitution he had aided to establish. From early life to the last he was an opponent of the institution of slavery, and predicted that sooner or later the free and slave states would be involved in a bitter controversy on that account. That he was spared the realization of his fears, was a mercy to his sensitive heart.
In his mode of life he aimed at no ostentatious show. Polite and affable in his deportment, he won the respect due to courteous manners.
In personal appearance and contour of face, he was not unlike Gen. Washington, for whom he was often taken while in the army. In stature he was six feet three inches tall and proportionately large in frame; and whether walking or sitting, he always maintained a very erect position. The woodcut engraving which accompanies this sketch represents Dr. Green at the age of fifty-five years, and is a very perfect outline likeness. The steel engraved portrait is taken from a rather indistinct daguerreotype likeness when he was one hundred years of age. He had a sound, vigorous constitution, strengthened and preserved by uniform temperate habits, daily physical exercise, early hours for retirement, and rising with the opening day. At the age of 82 years he fell and broke his thigh bone where it entered its socket; and little did he or his physician believe that at his advanced age it would ever unite, as it did after several months confinement to his bed; so that in the course of time, with the aid of crutch or cane, he was enabled to hobble about his house and garden, and occasionally to attend church.
Ten years more had nearly elapsed, when another more serious accident befel him. From an early morning stroll in front of his house, he came in doors, and standing by the window reading, was suddenly prostrated backward to the floor, seemingly, to him, by a violent blow on his cranium, and so wrenching his spinal column, as deprived him ever after of all power of locomotion. Happily this accident was unattended with pain, and there in his cosey easy chair, with books, papers, &c. around him, his days and years flew apace without weariness or complaint, and with that sweet serenity of mind and calm christian patience which won the most devotioned care and affectionate love of his two only surviving daughters.
From his personal friends, he had frequent social visits, and from strangers not a few, from far and near, attracted by his venerable age, or a desire to hear him recount his varied experience during our revolutionary war. Groups too of merry children, for whom he had a kindly fondness, came often with tasteful flowers to greet him. Such indeed was his uniform gentleness of disposition, and lively interest in all public and domestic affairs, that he left questionable evidence on the minds of not a few strangers, as to the extreme old age attributed to him.
Here, in conclusion, I will add that, on learning my dear father's indisposition, I hastened to see him, and found him suffering somewhat, as it seemed, from the effects of a cold and cough. To gratify me he took some homœopathic pellets I recommended, smilingly remarking that such an infinitesimal potion could neither kill nor cure. Finding himself the next morning much relieved, he exclaimed that that was not what he desired, "for it has been my daily prayer the last year to my Heavenly Father, to take me to himself, and I believe he has kept me here a year longer, for my ceaseless importunity." Whereat I asked, have you not enjoyed your usual good health and happy intercourse with your devoted daughters and friends? O yes! that I have, and every worldly comfort and enjoyment I desire, but now I long to depart. Like the late renowned Mrs. Mary Somerville, of England, he dreaded the possibility of his physical powers outliving his mental faculties; and then said, "what an incubus I should be to my loving daughters, who would then wish me in my grave."
Happily was it that he was exempt from all those fretful, fractious feelings to which aged people are occasionally subject. Such was his universal cheerful temperament and mental activity, that his death to his idolizing daughters was no less grievous than that of a darling child to a fond mother; and so it was, that this eminently good and venerable man's prayer was soon after my visit indulged, and on July 25, 1847, he expired at the very advanced age of 101 years and 28 days, retaining to his last hour a clear unclouded mind, and with the full faith and confiding hope of entering a future world of progressive improvement and happiness.
