Bancroft, Frederick Jones (1834–1903)
Frederick Jones Bancroft was born in Enfield, Connecticut, May 25, 1834, and died in San Diego, California, January 23, 1903.
He began to study medicine while teaching school in Connecticut and New York, graduating from the Medical Department of the University of Buffalo in 1861.
His ancestry dates from 1660—East Windsor, Connecticut, his father being a farmer of the old Puritan stock and his mother a Miss Wolcott of the Oliver Wolcott family. Frederick settled at Blakely, Penn., and soon after entered the Federal army, and spent the first six months in charge of a hospital at Harrisburg. In 1862 he was appointed surgeon to the 76th Pennsylvania Infantry. He also rendered medical service to the troops on Pinckney Island. He was afterwards surgeon-major to the 3rd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery. In 1863 he arranged a hospital for Confederate prisoners at Fort Delaware, and then rejoined the Pennsylvania Artillery at Camp Hamilton, Virginia. From June, 1863, to the close of the war he served as post surgeon at Fortress Munroe. While here he was required to render medical service to Jefferson Davis, then a prisoner, but when the latter learned that Bancroft was a New Englander, he declined his services and requested those of one more in sympathy with his cause.
After the close of the war he took a course of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, and then in 1866 came to Denver, where he spent the balance of his life. From 1872 to 1887 he was a railroad surgeon. He was the first president of the Colorado State Board of Health, 1876, president of the State Medical Society in 1881, and a founder of the medical department of the University of Denver, where for many years he filled with distinction the chair on fractures and dislocations. He was until a few years before his death on the staff of St. Luke's Hospital, of which he was one of the founders.
He came to Colorado in ill health. He was 6 feet 4 inches in height, and for the last fifteen or twenty years of his life weighed from 250 to 350 pounds. Being a sufferer from a heart affection, and being a man of wealth, he spent the last few years in retirement from active practice. He wrote some articles on the climate of Colorado and public health matters, but little or nothing on surgical subjects, yet was justly distinguished in the treatment of fractures and dislocations, and for many years was without a rival in this section, though he knew little of pathology and the later advances in general surgical technique.
He was endowed with a dry wit and a keen sense of humor, which gave zest to every company he graced.
In 1871 he married Mary Caroline, daughter of George A. Jarvis, of Brooklyn, N. Y. She died in 1899 in Denver, and three children survived, George J., Frederick I., and Mary J.; of these, Frederick I. became a doctor.
Bancroft, Jesse Parker (1815–1891)
Jesse Parker Bancroft, New Hampshire alienist, was born in Gardner, Massachusetts, April 17, 1815, the son of Jonathan and Betsey Parker Bancroft. Like many New England farmers' sons of that day, he felt a strong desire for a higher education, and not possessing the requisite means, was obliged to earn by teaching and other methods the necessary funds for a collegiate and professional education. The earnestness of purpose and character thus developed by his early struggle was reflected through his later life. He fitted for college at Andover. Mass., entered Dartmouth College in 1837, and graduated in 1841. He studied medicine with the late Professor E. R. Peaslee of New York, and graduated from the Dartmouth Medical School in 1844. Prior to his medical graduation he was demonstrator of anatomy in Brunswick Medical School. In 1845 he began the practice of medicine in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. He soon developed a large general and consultation practice, and during the twelve years he remained there acquired an extensive reputation as a practitioner and a high character in the community.
On July 15, 1857, after much reflection and against the importunities of his numerous friends and patients in St. Johnsbury, he gave up general practice and accepted the position offered him as superintendent and treasurer of the New Hampshire Asylum, at Concord.
Dr. Bancroft's subsequent life is identified with the history of the New Hampshire Asylum, with its early struggle and final success, and with better methods in the care and treatment of insanity in which he acquired not only local but national reputation, developing the individualized treatment in contradistinction to the mechanical method. During the last few years of his life Dr. Bancroft took great interest in state supervision of the insane. He labored strenuously to establish state supervision in his own state, and he lived long enough to see a state board of lunacy in
