Background
Alonzo Garcelon was born on May 6, 1813, in Lewiston, Maine. He was the son of a local farmer, Col. William Garcelon, and Mary Davis.
Alonzo Garcelon was born on May 6, 1813, in Lewiston, Maine. He was the son of a local farmer, Col. William Garcelon, and Mary Davis.
As a boy, Garcelon worked on his father’s farm and was educated at several private schools. Bowdoin College gave him a degree in arts in 1836. He had paid his way by teaching while going through college and after graduation was principal of Alfred Academy and later of a school at Fryeburg, Maine.
At the latter town, he began to read medicine with Dr. Abiel Hale. Having saved money, he took a course of lectures at Dartmouth Medical College and attracted the attention of the professor in surgery, Reuben D. Muzzey, by the excellence of his dissections.
In 1838, Muzzey was called to fill the chair of surgery in the Medical College of Ohio, Cincinnati, whither Garcelon followed him, graduating from the latter institution in 1839.
After six months’ service as interne in a Cincinnati hospital, he returned to his native city to enter into a practice which lasted for sixty-seven years. He is said to have been the first in Maine to operate for mastoid disease and goiter.
In addition to his extensive practice, he found time to engage in many local enterprises.
Although a Bowdoin man, he seems to have been much more interested in the local Bates College and Maine State Seminary than in his alma mater. He was active in the formation of the Maine Medical Association and the local county society; he joined the American Medical Association in 1853 and missed but one meeting, that of 1905, held in Oregon.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was at once made surgeon-general of Maine. He served in the first battle of Bull Run, during the Peninsular campaign, and at Antietam. Invalided home for malaria, upon his recovery he rejoined his command and finished four years of service.
He was elected to the state House in 1853 and again in 1857, while in the interim he served as a state senator. The tactics of the Republicans during the Reconstruction period drove him once more into the Democratic fold, and in 1868, he ran unsuccessfully for election to Congress.
In 1871, he was elected mayor of Lewiston and in 1879, became the only Democratic governor in the history of Maine. There were three tickets in the field, and as there was no election by the people he was chosen by the legislature.
After his governorship he seems to have retired from public life; but, although he gave up some of his other activities, he remained in active medical practice to the last.
He was a trustee from 1882 to 1901 and in the latter year also served as vice-president.
Throughout his life, he had been exceptionally healthy, and his death in 1906 was due neither to old age nor to any ailment, but to accidental asphyxiation by illuminating gas while he was visiting his daughter at Medford, Massachusets.
Although he read numerous papers at society meetings - delivering one on preventive medicine shortly before his death - none of them was reprinted, and he wrote no major work.
Garcelon was a pioneer in road-making and in the construction of a central highway for the territory east of Lewiston; and with his brother-in-law, William H. Waldron, founded in 1847 the Lewiston Falls Journal. He retained his interest in agriculture and operated a farm; built the first cotton-mill in Lewiston; was instrumental in bringing railway connections to the city and was for a time president of the Androscoggin Railroad; took part in the formation of Androscoggin County; was a pioneer in road-making and in the construction of a central highway for the territory east of Lewiston; and with his brother-in-law, William H. Waldron, founded in 1847 the Lewiston Falls Journal, of which for some years he was editor. Garcelon Field at Bates College is named after Dr. Garcelon, as is the Alonzo Garcelon Society, which provides scholarships to Bates for local students. In 2008, the Garcelon family announced the donation of a large collection of Garcelon family manuscripts to the Bates College Special Collections Library.
Although greatly interested in politics, Garcelon refused to become an organization man. Originally a Whig, he went over to Jackson after his nullification pronouncement but his antislavery sympathies later made him a Free-Soiler and then a Republican.
Garcelon was elected to the state House in 1853 and again in 1857. He was a Member of the Maine Senate (1855–1856) and Member of the Maine House of Representatives in
1853–1854 and 1857–1858.
It is said of Garcelon that owing to his many years of constant attendance at the meetings of the American Medical Association he had a larger acquaintance among physicians than any other man in the country.
At the session at New Orleans in 1903, when ninety years of age, he was presented with a loving cup by one hundred members of the Association while at the same time the trustees gave him a gold-headed cane.
Garcelon was married twice: in 1841 to Ann Augusta Waldron of Dover, New Hampshire, who bore three sons and a daughter and died in 1857; and in 1859, to Olivia N. Spear, by whom he had one daughter.
1819 - 1857
1830 - 1 January 1889
27 July 1844 - 14 February 1848
16 December 1861 - 16 January 1930
15 June 1846 - 28 January 1848
14 November 1842 - 12 May 1935
