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As French and English forces struggled for control of the lands and
resources of the New World through the 17th and 18th
centuries, tales of war and sorrow dominated encounters between the
two. One happy exception
is the story of Francis LeBaron (1668-1704) who became one of
Plymouth’s earliest and most distinguished medical practitioners.
In 1832, physician and town historian James Thacher wrote
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1696.
- A French privateer, fitted out at Bourdeaux, cruising on the
American coast, was wrecked in Buzzard’s Bay.
The crew were carried prisoners to Boston; the [ship’s]
surgeon, Dr. Francis LeBaron, came to Plymouth, and having
performed a surgical operation, and the town being at the time
destitute of a physician, the selectmen petitioned the
executive, Lieut. Governor Stoughton, for his liberation, that
he might settle in this town.
This was granted, and he married Mary Wilder, and
practiced physic here during his life, but died in 1704, at the
early age of 36 years…
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LeBaron was a Frenchman, a prisoner of war, an enemy to England and to
New England - yet a single demonstration of his surgical skills
overrode his origins and gained him a place in the community.
Francis’ son, Lazarus, his grandsons, Joseph and Lazarus, and
members of succeeding generations of LeBarons followed in his
footsteps, serving as physicians in Plymouth.
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Francis
LeBaron's tombstone on
Plymouth's Burial Hill.
Photograph by Anthony I. Baker |
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In the late 19th century, the celebration of the nation’s
bicentennial helped to fan the already existing popular interest in
the founding of the country. The
market for written and visual imagery describing the people, places
and events of the nation’s colonial past blossomed.
Stories and novels based on a true character but embroidered
and enlarged to the point of fiction filled one market niche.
Often, the tales reflected late 19th century tastes
and values rather than those of the period in which they took place.
The young French surgeon’s mysterious origins and dramatic story
fueled the imagination of novelist Jane G. Austin.
In A Nameless Nobleman (1881), Austin wove a romantic tale of an
idealistic French youth who rejected his aristocratic family to study
medicine and travel the world on his own.
| Shipwrecked in the new world, Francis is saved by a brave young
woman, Mary Wilde, who hides him and cares for him until his fine
character and valuable surgical skills become apparent to the
community, and he is invited to stay.
Mary defends Francis’ right to keep his past a secret (even
from her), for in the new world respect is earned, not inherited.
Because he will not reveal his family name (intimating it would
be readily recognized - even by Americans!), Mary determines to call
him “the Baron.” Thus begins the fictionalized saga of the “Labaron”
family in America. Austin
continues the story in Dr. LeBaron and his Daughters: A Story of the
Old Colony (1890). New
York artist Frederick Dielman transferred Austin’s romantic vision
to paper. |
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Detail of The Marriage of
Francis LeBaron,
by Frederick Dielman (1847-1935),
New York, 1894,
etching.
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