American Medical Biographies/Green, John (1736–1799)
Green, John (1736–1799)
John Green was the son of the Rev. Thomas Green, Baptist elder and physician, one of the earliest settlers of Leicester (Greenville), Massachusetts, where John was born August 14, 1836.
Instructed in medicine by his father, he came to Worcester and built his house on the eminence now known as Green Hill, which although relatively nearer town at that time, when many persons lived north of Lincoln Square and there were but seven houses on Main Street between that point and the Old South Church on the common, seems yet to have been at a distance that might well make prospective patients hesitate before storming the steeps in the dead of night or in bad weather. Patients came, however; medical students also from Worcester and surrounding towns; Green Lane became a county road and, although during the latter part of his life, his office was in a little wooden affair on the present site of the Five Cents Savings Bank, the doctor always lived in the Green Hill house, and there he died forty-two years later (October 29, 1799), aged sixty-three.
An earnest patriot, he was, in 1733, a member (and the only medical member) of the American Political Society, which was formed on account of the grievous burdens of the times and did much to bring about that change of public sentiment which expelled the adherent of the crown. He took a prominent part in all the Revolutionary proceedings, and in 1777 was sent as representative to the General Court. In 1778 and 1779 he was town treasurer, and in 1780 one of the selectmen, the only physician who ever held that office.
His first wife, Mary Osgood, died in 1761. His second wife, daughter of Gen. Timothy Ruggles, of Hardwick, survived him, dying in 1814 at the age of eighty-four. A son, Dr. Elijah Dix Green, born July 4, 1769, A. B. (Brown), 1793, was a physician in Charleston, South Carolina.