Josiah Bartlett was born on November 21, 1729 at Amesbury, Massachusetts, the seventh and youngest child of Stephen and Hannah (Webster) Bartlett.  His great great grandfather, Richard Bartlett, came to America in 1635 and was one of the first settlers of Newbury, Massachusetts.  The Bartlett ancestry in England has been traced back to the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Josiah received some formal education from the Amesbury schoolmaster, and acquired a knowledge of Greek and Latin under the tutelage of a relative, Reverend Doctor John Webster.  When he was sixteen Bartlett began the study of medicine at Amesbury in the office of Dr. James Ordway, and used the libraries of Dr. Ordway and neighboring towns to supplement his medical knowledge.  In 1750, at the age of 21, he moved 10 miles north to Kingston, New Hampshire and began to practice medicine, where he built up a substantial practice as an all around country doctor.  Bartlett gained recognition locally by successfully treating diphtheria patients with a new procedure, Peruvian bark (quinine), and by the  application of cooling liquids to temper fever.  He became renowned for relying on observation and experimentation in the diagnosis and treatment of his patients.

Soon after arriving in Kingston, in 1754, Josiah married Mary Bartlett, his first cousin, and they had twelve children, eight of whom lived to adulthood.

Growing in stature and reputation, Bartlett was elected town selectman in 1757.  He became much interested in public affairs, and his fellow citizens, recognizing his intelligence and integrity, chose him to represent Kingston in the Provincial Assembly in 1765.  In this position he generally supported colonial interests, raised the Seventh Militia Regiment, and served as the liaison between the New Hampshire Provincial Assembly and Royal Governor Benning Wentworth during the Stamp Act controversy in 1765.  Hoping to enlist Bartlett’s support in the royalist cause, Royal Governor John Wentworth appointed him justice of the peace in 1767 and soon thereafter a lieutenant commander of the Seventh Regiment.

By 1774 Bartlett had become an active patriot and a supporter of the colonial cause, and was appointed to the Committee of Correspondence of the Provincial Assembly.  He was one of two delegates chosen to represent New Hampshire in the First Continental Congress, but was unable to accept when his home was burned down, an event blamed on loyalists who opposed his patriotic endeavors.  In May 1774 he became a member of the Committee of Safety, and in February 1775, Governor Benning Wentworth dismissed him from all of his appointed offices for his open resistance to the Crown.  Two months later, when hostilities broke out at Lexington and Concord, Governor Wentworth fled from New Hampshire, boarding a British warship.

In 1775 and 1776 Bartlett was again chosen as a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he was among the most active delegates, serving on committees dealing with secret correspondence, marine affairs, medicine, clothing, and the qualifications of army officers.  In November 1775 he wrote,” May the Supreme Disposer of all Events in Due time put an End to the troubles of america & Settle her Liberties on a Solid foundation.”  Before the Congress convened again in February 1776 he wrote, “The time is now at hand when we shall see whether America has virtue enough to be free or not.”  He was the first to vote in favor of adopting the Declaration of Independence and was the second to sign, after John Hancock, a month later.  In voting for independence, tradition has it that “He made the rafters shake with the loudness of his approval.”

In June 1776 Bartlett was appointed by the Congress to the drafting committee of the Articles of Confederation, the country’s first constitution, and was the first to vote for and sign it in 1778.  In June 1976 he wrote as follows about the Committee, “I have been for about a week on a Committee of one member from Each Colony to form a Confederation or Charter of firm & Everlasting Union of all the United Colonies.  It is a matter of the greatest Consequence & requires the greatest Care in forming it.  May God grant us wisdom to form a happy Constitution, as the happiness of america to all future Generations Depend on it.”  He was absent from Congress for a time in 1777 when he joined General Stark in Vermont to furnish New Hampshire troops and the wounded there with medical supplies and assistance after the American victory at the Battle of Bennington.

Leaving Philadelphia in 1778 due to ill health Bartlett began another career in New Hampshire as a jurist.  He served as judge of the common pleas from 1779 to 1782, becoming an associate justice of the Superior Court in 1782, and was named Chief Justice of the Court in 1788.

In 1788 Bartlett was a delegate to the New Hampshire State Convention, where he served as an effective advocate, using his influence and stature to help secure the State’s ratification of the U. S. Constitution in 1788 in a close vote. 

Elected to the new U.S. Senate from New Hampshire in 1789 Bartlett declined to serve, probably due to his age (60) and the weight of his legal duties.  But in 1790 he was elected chief executive of New Hampshire.  He served for four years, the first two as President, and then Governor, in 1792, when the title was redesignated.

In 1790 Dr. Bartlett received an honorary degree of doctor of medicine from Dartmouth College, and in 1791 he secured a charter from the legislature to establish the New Hampshire Medical Society.  He wrote the constitution and the by-laws and served as its first elected President.  Three of his children and seven of his grandchildren followed in his medical footsteps and became doctors.  He served as an Elector for New Hampshire in the national election of 1792.

Bartlett’s colleagues described him as tall, well built, with a fine figure and auburn hair.  His manner was dignified, kind and compassionate.  His mode of living was unpretentious.  Reared a Calvinist he turned later to the Universalist Church.  It was said of him that “He rose to office and was recommended by his fellow citizens, not less by the probity of his character, than the force of his genius.  But standing on his own merits, he passed through a succession of offices which he sustained with uncommon honor to himself, and the duties which he discharged not only to the satisfaction of his fellow citizens, but with the highest benefit to his country.”   The editor of his papers, Meyers, wrote: “Bartlett’s  love of family, friendship with neighbors, respect for colleagues, and faith in God are apparent in his letters.”

In 1794 Bartlett retired, sending this message to the Legislature: “I now find myself so far advanced in life that it will be expedient for me, at the close of the session, to retire from the cares and fatigues of public business to the repose of a private life, with the grateful sense of the repeated marks of trust and confidence that my fellow-citizens have reposed in me, and with my best wishes for the future peace and prosperity of the State.”

Josiah Bartlett died on May 19, 1795 and is buried in the Universalist Plains Church cemetery in Kingston.  There is a boulder and plaque in Amesbury marking the site of the house where Josiah was born in 1729.  A copy of Bartlett’s original oil portrait, painted by Jonathan Trumbull, hangs in the State House at Concord, New Hampshire.  An imposing bronze statue of Bartlett stands in a small park on the south road into Amesbury, Massachusetts, with a plaque listing many highlights of his life. His home, located opposite the green in the center of Kingston, and lived in for over two centuries by some of his descendants, is an historic landmark, with a large spreading oak tree growing in front which Bartlett brought back from Philadelphia in the 1770s.  Many of his artifacts and belongings, including his medical kit, were still in the house (in 1989).

Thornton Calef Lockwood

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