Among the mates, Church retained Hunt, Thacher, and Whitwell, gave Gamage a definite berth, and reinforced the rating by the addition of several more Harvard men. Dr. Gad Hitchcock, Jr., of the class of 1768, he promoted from the rank of a surgeon’s mate in Bailey’s regiment. He was the son of the minister at Pembroke, and for many years the village doctor. He had originally been recommended for army work by General Thomas, himself a remarkably intelligent surgeon, and had been assigned without examination, so that there seems no doubt of his ability. He is remembered as “a courtly and dignified gentleman, expecting and commanding respect.” He was, moreover, a man of high character and much learning, and “one who exerted great influence for the intellectual and moral education of the young,” particularly as a long-time member of the first school committee of Pembroke. He left the Hospital Department in May, 1776, and was appointed chief surgeon of General Fellows’s brigade in the Jerseys, where he served until his enlistment expired in February, 1777. The next year he married Sagie Bailey, the daughter of his old colonel—doubtless the climax of a war romance. He was pensioned in 1818, and died in harness at the age of eighty-six, “worn down,” as he
Chief to the American Army, 1776 (Boston, 1777), passim; Toner, Medical Men of the Revolution, 27 and loc cit.; H. E. Brown, Medical Department of the U. S. Army. 42; Adams MSS. in New York Public Library.
