The Biographical Dictionary of America/Bartlett, Josiah

​BARTLETT, Josiah, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born at Amesbury, Mass., Nov. 21, 1729. He received an academic education and a thorough course in medicine, and in 1750 began practice in Kingston, N.H. His methods of medical treatment were original, and largely acquired while doctoring himself through a protracted fever. His experience being in direct opposition to the usages of the profession, he departed from the "old school," and his success won him a large practice. He introduced Peruvian bark into use in 1754. In 1765 he became a member of the colonial legislature of New Hampshire and held the office by annual re-election until the revolution. While in the legislature he opposed the royalists, and the governor made an unsuccessful attempt to win him over to his support by appointing him a magistrate and commissioned him a lieutenant-colonel of militia. His zeal in the cause of the colonies was not abated, however, and in 1775 he was deposed from both offices. He was a member of the committee of safety which conducted the affairs of government after the departure of Governor Wentworth from the colony in 1775, and he was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1775 and 1776, being the first to cast a vote for the Declaration of Independence and the second to sign it. He resigned as delegate to Congress shortly after he was appointed general naval agent, and later accompanied General Stark to Bennington, having been charged with the medical supplies of the New Hampshire troops. In 1778-'79 he was again a delegate to Congress, and in November, 1779, resigned his seat to accept the office of chief justice of the court of common pleas of New Hampshire. He became muster-master in 1780; justice of the superior court of the state in 1782; chief justice in 1788, and in the latter year served as a delegate to the convention called to ratify the federal constitution. Though declining an election to the first United States Congress as senator in 1789 on the plea of age, he accepted the presidency of the state when it was offered him by the legislature in 1790, and after serving for three years, being re-elected by popular vote each year, he became in 1793 the first governor of the state under its new constitution. He received the honorary degree of A.M. and M.D. from Dartmouth college, and was for many years the president of the New Hampshire medical society. He died at Kingston, N.H., May 19, 1795.