This collection (16 items) contains correspondence received by New York City physician John W. Francis (4 letters); his wife, Maria Eliza Cutler (6 letters); and his mother-in-law, Sarah Cutler (4 letters), as well as 2 financial records. As well as sharing family and social news, the Francis and Cutler families discussed medical issues such as the treatment of cholera and public health in Savannah, Georgia.
Two of John W. Francis's incoming letters relate to his medical career, and include a report about a recently opened asylum in Columbia, South Carolina (July 22, 1823), and a letter from the botanist Henry Ravenel of Pineville, South Carolina, who anticipated a cholera outbreak and requested Francis's advice on the disease and its treatment (September 3, 1832). He also received a letter about a New York state lottery (January 1, 1823) and a letter from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, mentioning the Seneca orator Red Jacket, whom Schoolcraft called "our best Indian thinker" (December 27, 1854).
Ten letters concern Francis's wife, Maria Eliza Cutler Francis, and her family, including letters from her mother and sister about their social lives in Savannah, Georgia. Her sister Louisa wrote 3 letters to their mother about the city's public health and climate. Her brother, Reverend Benjamin Clarke Cutler, also wrote 1 letter to his mother, concerning a friend's financial difficulties (January 17, 1826).
The collection contains 2 financial records: a partially printed financial note between Alfred Terry and Gideon Wells (February 11, 1830), and a hospital bill forwarded to the selectmen of Abington, Massachusetts, from Foxborough, Massachusetts (December 10, 1844).
John Wakefield Francis was born in New York City on November 17, 1789, the son of a German father and a Swiss mother. Francis graduated from Columbia College (now Columbia University) with a bachelor's degree in 1809 and became was the first graduate of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons (later absorbed by Columbia), from which he received a medical degree in 1811 or 1812. He formed a partnership with Dr. David Hosack, who had been his mentor throughout his medical studies, and in 1813 he became a lecturer at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Francis continued to teach until around 1826, when he joined Hosack and other physicians in founding a medical school at Rutgers University, where he lectured until the school's dissolution in 1831.
Francis served as the editor of several publications, including the American Medical and Philosophical Register, which he founded while a medical student, and the New York Medical and Surgical Journal; he also helped establish several hospitals and intellectual societies. On November 16, 1829, he married Maria Eliza Cutler of Boston, Massachusetts. Among her siblings were Reverend Benjamin Clarke Cutler of Quincy, Massachusetts, and Louisa Cutler, who later moved to Savannah, Georgia. John and Eliza Francis had at least one son, Samuel Ward Francis (1835-1886), who also became a physician. John Wakefield Francis died on February 8, 1861.