The Dorchester County Historical Society (DCHS) would like to tell you about some very important primary resources we have here in our Todd Research Library! Medical ledgers belonging to Dr. Alexander Hamilton Bayly, a prominent local doctor in 19th century Dorchester County in the years leading up to the Civil War, are available to read and are now more accessible than ever before. Two of his original ledgers reside within our walls and have never been transcribed or examined in depth. However, we were fortunate to have them digitized by the Maryland State Archives last year, so the scans are now available for close inspection on our research computer, and printed copies can be perused on our library shelves.
These ledgers share common medical practices, as well as treatment methods and medicines, of the 1800s. It has been noted that members of the Brodess and Thompson families and people enslaved by those families appear as patients of Dr. Bayly. The documented relationship between the Bayly family and these infamous slaveholding families could indicate that Harriet Tubman was also a patient of his at one point or another. A pro-slavery anti-secession member of the community, Dr. Bayly frequently treated not only white people but also free and enslaved black people. He became a surgeon for the Union at the outbreak of the Civil War and headed the local military hospital.
Dr. Bayly’s son, Alexander Hamilton Bayly Jr., would inherit the practice after the Civil War. “Ham,” as his son was called, once lived in the Meredith House here at LaGrange Plantation, the home of DCHS. Interestingly, Ham had served in the Confederacy during the war on opposite side of his father.
Dr. Bayly’s father, Josiah Bayly, was Attorney General for Maryland. He represented Patty Cannon, the slave abductor, dealer, and murderer who helped operate what has been likened to a reverse Underground Railroad on Delmarva. Josiah also served as an advising attorney for Betsy Patterson in her divorce from Jerome Bonaparte, brother to Emperor Napoleon.
Josiah lived on High Street in what is known today as the Bayly House. This is where his son, Dr. Bayly Sr., took up residence as well. Josiah’s law office still stands on High Street next to Christ Episcopal Church. Enslaved people did work at the Bayly family properties, including a man named Ben Jenifer, who helped establish Waugh Chapel and Jenifer Institute, which served the African American community of Dorchester. He became an influential man. Jenifer was among the first to travel to the colony of Liberia when it was being formed as a nation, but he returned to America. Later, Stephen Allen Benson, another African American man of Cambridge, would go on to become the second President of Liberia.
Josiah, Alexander, and Ham each have their own intriguing story, and their family’s history is quite complex. They carried close ties to the Muse family, another prominent lineage that moved to Dorchester in the 1800s. Dr. William H. Muse lived in the Meredith House prior to Ham, and it was Dr. Muse and his family who dubbed the DCHS property “LaGrange Plantation,” which can be seen as a fancy term for gentleman’s farm. Dr. Muse’s entire family were reportedly musicians.
The reason Dr. Bayly’s ledgers are so important to us today is because they provide us with a wide variety of detailed information about what life was like for people of all backgrounds back then. Dr. Bayly’s high prices are meticulously documented page after page. Births, tooth extractions, and vaccinations litter nearly every column. Fun fact: Dr. Bayly was the first known person to remove a piece of metal from someone’s eye using a magnet. All sorts of information is waiting to be gleaned from his records, and to have this sort of documentation here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland is quite remarkable. He made note of both rich and poor, governors and servants.
Perhaps most noteworthy is the fact that there is a third ledger within the DCHS library from Dr. Bayly, but this one has already been transcribed and has significant contextual information provided, all thanks to Dr. Ray Thompson and his work alongside the Edward H. Nabb Research Center in Salisbury, where even more records of the Bayly family can be found.
If you are interested in using the DCHS library, we have a $10 research fee that covers a day of browsing our resources to your heart’s content. We are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. You can take photos of anything you find interesting, and if you would like copies made, they are $0.25 each.
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