Social History

Showing 1 - 10 of 1788 Records

Letter Regarding the Death of U.S. Representative Jonathan Cilley

An undated letter discussing the death of United States Representative Jonathan Cilley from Thomaston. The author is unknown, but they may have been J.A. Chandler, the clerk of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Before his election to Congress, Cilley served as the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. He was the son-in-law of Hezekiah Prince, a merchant from Thomaston. Jonathan Cilley, an abolitionist, was challenged to a duel by James Watson Webb, a newspaper editor from New York, after Cilley accused him of corruption. William Graves, a legislator from Kentucky, served as Webb's stand-in and killed Cilley on February 24, 1838.

1 Objects

Maine Insane Hospital Autopsy Files, 1912-1913

These autopsy reports reflect the treatment practices and terminology of the time. Some of the language and treatments are not considered acceptable today and may be uncomfortable for some readers. Recognizing that historical medical terms do not always completely or directly map to contemporary terms, that historical terms can be offensive or inaccurately characterize a condition, and that the presence of both historical and contemporary terms may be useful for researcher discovery, MSA employs contemporary terms as they appear in the context of the collection in the description. As the autopsies and pathology notes were often completed at different dates later than the date of death, MSA employs the date of death as the record creation date for consistency.