Boston Sunday-school Superintendents' Union, Massachusetts Sunday-school Association, New England Sunday-school Union, International Sunday-school Union, Bicknell Family Association, Interstate Commission on Education, Chautauqua Teachers' Reading Union, and the New England Publishing Company.
He was a member of the General Court of 1889, chairman of House committee on education, serving as a member also of the committee on woman suffrage.
Mr. Bicknell was married in Rehoboth, September 5, 1860, to Amelia Davie, daughter of Christopher and Chloe (Carpenter) Blanding. Of this union was one child: Martha E. Bicknell. His residence is Boston, where he is engaged in important financial interests.
Mr. Bicknell has been actively identified with the Republican party since its formation in 1856. He has been engaged in educational work in all its departments as a teacher, school officer, editor, writer and lecturer, since 1854, and has advocated and been a leader in most of the advanced educational movements of the day.
In church and Sunday-school work he has been equally prominent and influential, taking advanced grounds in the liberal Congregational movements of the last ten years. His advocacy of temperance, woman suffrage, and other reforms has been vigorous, intelligent and sincere.
Bidwell, Marshall S., son of Barnabas and Betsey (Curtis) Bidwell, was born August 24, 1824, at South Tyringham, now Monterey, Berkshire county.
After a common school education he continued his studies at the Lenox Academy, and began mercantile life in 1846, since which time his attention has been divided between farming and various mercantile pursuits.
On the 23d of November, 1845, at Monterey, Mr. Bidwell was married to Anna A., daughter of Samuel and Amelia (Bigelow) Tibballs, who died November 4, 1856. Their children were: Hattie A., Amelia A., and Sarah Louisa Bidwell. On the 5th of January, 1858, Mr. Bidwell was again married to Sophia P., daughter of John D. and Luna S. (Welch) Bidwell. Their children are: William S., and Orlando C. Bidwell. The last four are still living, Hattie A. dying in 1866, aged twenty years.
For many years Mr. Bidwell has held various town offices in his native place, Monterey, where he still resides, and is at present chairman of the board of selectmen. He also represented his district in the General Court in the year 1881, and has been an ardent laborer with the Y. M. C. A., and an earnest supporter of religious and philanthropic institutions.
He is a descendant of the Rev. Adonijah Bidwell, first pastor of the church at Monterey. He is the heaviest tax-payer in his town, his property being largely invested in real estate.
Bigelow, Henry Jacob, son of the late Jacob Bigelow, M. D., of Boston, and Mary (Scollay) Bigelow, was born in Boston, March 11, 1818.
He received his early training at the Boston Latin school, and having completed his preparatory course, entered Harvard College, from which he graduated with the class of 1837. Under his father's direction he began the study of medicine, attending also the regular medical course at Harvard University. At the expiration of three years, his health becoming injured by close application to study, he visited Europe, but returned in 1841 to receive the degree of M. D. He went back to Europe after receiving his diploma, and remained three years, spending the greater part of the time in Paris. He visited other important centres of medical instruction on the continent and in Great Britain, and made a trip to the East.
Returning to Boston in 1844, he was appointed the following year a teacher in surgery in the Tremont Street medical school, succeeding to the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr. Reynolds. This position he held until the school was united with the medical school of Harvard University. In 1846 he was appointed surgeon to the Massachusetts General Hospital, and after forty years of service, resigned his position in 1886. In 1849 he was appointed professor of surgery and clinical surgery in Harvard University, filling the chairs for nearly twenty years without an assistant, and remained as professor of surgery until 1884.
Dr. Bigelow's attainments in medical science have won for him membership in many leading American and European societies. As a writer, Professor Bigelow's influence has been far-reaching and effective. He made the original announcement of the discovery of modern anaesthesia, in 1846, and was always an advocate of the claims of Dr. Morton, deciding the question "What constitutes Dr. Morton's discovery?" by a reference to scientific precedent. Dr. Bigelow was the author of various mechanical appliances which have been
