By Diana Bennett for General de Lafayette Chapter, DAR
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Dr. Jewett became a much-respected citizen of wealth, a prominent physician, surgeon, and outspoken abolitionist. He felt all people should be free and worked tirelessly to help those in need. His home at 52 S. Third Street also served as his medical office and a well-known stop on the Underground Railroad of which he was one of the area's most effective conductors. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 records show that in January, 1864, Governor Morton made Dr. Jewett a Recruiting Officer to recruit "colored troops" to serve in the Corps d'Afrique, which later became part of the Union Army, known as the Indiana 28th Regiment. It is said that he took on the task of recruiting with the same great energy he applied to his work with the Underground Railroad. He did not spare time or money to see that Lafayette was well-represented.
Dr. Jewett remained a widower until his death on May 13, 1872. His obituary and notification of his death was repeatedly published in Indiana, Ohio, and Vermont where his family and the name of Jewett were well-known for their work in the medical profession and abolitionist work. His final resting place is in Greenbush Cemetery marked by a tombstone shared with his wife, Mary.
Photo: "Dr. Jewett" (Courtesy of TCHA)
Sources:
Findagrave.com
Jewett Family History (Seventh Generation), pages 315, 316
The Indiana Historian, February 1994, page 2
Newspapers.com
Democratic Standard (Georgetown, OH) 9 Feb 1841. Page 1
Evansville Daily Journal (Evansville, IN) 25 April 1868. Page 4
Biographical Publishing Company, 1882.
At Lafayette, Dr. Luther Jewett was a prominent Railroad worker. Jewett, himself a persecuted Huguenot, hated oppression "in all its multiples." An acquaintance wrote in Jewett's obituary that "It was his pride in the early days of our slaveholding barbarism, when abolition was a stigma, to run the 'underground railroad.' " As the man remembered, "Many a poor slave fleeing from his cruel master, found succor under his hospital roof."
Jewett obituary, clipping from Lafayette Courier, May 21, 1872, in William M. Reser Collection, Indiana Division, Indiana State Library.) SOURCE: IHB Resources Underground Railroad "Bury Me in a Free Land: The Abolitionist Movement in Indiana", by Gwen Crenshaw, accessed 3 Aug 2011 at http://www.in.gov/history/3119.htm.
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Dr. Luther JEWETT was a native of New England and came to Trenton in 1834, when he was about twenty-seven years of age. On his first arrival he went into partnership with Dr. LITTELL; but after a while he engaged in business on his own account. Trenton and its neighborhood was then almost wholly German, as the Mennonites and other persons from the father-land were on all sides of it, and the Americans were, therefore, driven more closely together than they were elsewhere. Dr. JEWETT formed the life of this society. He was eminently successful as a physician; but he also displayed great ability in the management of his pecuniary affairs, a point in which the medical profession are often remiss. Where other physicians lost from one-third to one-half of their accounts, he only lost a trifling percentage. He had a genius for dunning, and
did not, remarkable as it may seem, drive away his
patients by it. He remained in that town until about 1840, when he removed to Lafayette, Indiana, a place then on the outskirts of civilization.
Dr. JEWETT succeeded in that city as well as he had in Trenton, and soon had money to his credit. His fame was coexistent with that part of the State. After becoming thoroughly settled, he went back to Vermont, married a wife, and brought her on. But the variation of the climate and the way of living soon developed a hidden disease, and she died after only six weeks of married life. Dr. JEWETT remained in town till his death, which was about 1865 or 1870, leaving a large property, valued at over $100,000, behind him. He was a man of very peculiar ideas. Among others which might be specified, he was an Abolitionist, He denied the right of one man to hold another in bondage, under any circumstances, and he enforced his view with earnestness and ability. It needed some nerve to be an Abolitionist in 1836 or 1840, much more than it did
20 years after. He was an excellent story-teller, and did not grieve when he himself was made the point of some witty story. He was the brother of Dr. JEWETT, of Dayton, the president of the board of directors of the insane asylum of that place. In personal appearance he was tall and striking.
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