![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/10\/garcelon-alonzo-5584.jpg\")
<\/a>Alonzo Garcelon is perhaps most responsible for Bates College being in Lewiston. (Collections of Maine Historical Society, courtesy of MaineMemory.net, item 5584)<\/p><\/div>\n
As a member of the Maine Senate, Garcelon had supported founder Oren Cheney\u2019s work to secure a charter from the Legislature that winter. \u201cIn a sense [the seminary] was his child,\u201d according to Bates College and Its Background. <\/em>\u201cHe had voted for it; he knew all about it; he had set his heart on its coming to the city.\u201d<\/p>\n In Vienna, Garcelon pitched Lewiston as a city on the move, and he was right: Mills, railroads, and new citizens were arriving and thriving. The population would soar from 3,500 in 1850 to 19,000 by 1880.<\/p>\n An abolitionist prior to the Civil War, Garcelon switched from the Democratic to the Free Soil Party, which opposed slavery in new Western states. A Republican during the Civil War, he reverted to the Democratic Party after the war to protest Andrew Johnson\u2019s impeachment \u2014 aligning himself with Johnson, despite the president’s significant racist actions during Reconstruction<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Maine\u2019s surgeon general during the Civil War, Garcelon was adamant that qualified surgeons be assigned to each Maine regiment. War, he predicted, will bring \u201cshattered limbs and ghastly wounds\u201d to Maine soldiers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be a burning disgrace to have our soldiers called into battle,\u201d he wrote in a letter to then-Maine Gov. Israel Washburn in 1861, and have \u201cpreparations for their comfort\u201d be \u201cinefficient\u201d or \u201ctotally unprovided.\u201d<\/p>\n Garcelon stayed active well into old age, and newspapers delighted in sharing his age-defying exploits.<\/p>\n In 1889, when he was 76 and in his 50th year in medical practice, The New York Times <\/em>noted that Garcelon had traveled 360,000 miles to make house calls (equivalent to 14 times around the world).<\/p>\n In 1896, when he was 83, the Times <\/em>reported that Garcelon, en route home from a nighttime house call, got out of his shay to help his horse navigate a muddy section of road. He fell 8 feet into an abandoned cellar and, despite a back injury, managed to climb out.<\/p>\n With his daughter in the passenger seat, 92-year-old Alonzo Garcelon poses with his one-horse shay on East Avenue in October 1905. In the background is, likely, the family farm. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n In 1900, when he was 87, the Boston Daily Globe<\/em> wrote, \u201cAlways a lover of a good horse, he drives one every day that many a man a great many years younger than he would hesitate to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n At age 92, the Globe<\/em> noted that Garcelon had traveled to Troy, 72 miles away in eastern Maine, to consult on a leg-amputation case.<\/p>\n Given a sombrero while attending a medical conference in Mexico City at age 83, he wore it proudly around Lewiston.<\/p>\n He \u201ctowered in character as in stature over the generality of men,\u201d according to his obituary in The Boston Daily Globe<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cMingle with young people and cultivate their society,\u201d he once said. He added:<\/p>\n \u201cOld age is worth striving for if the striver has a purpose beyond the selfish end of slothful ease.\u201d<\/p>\n Other entities that carry the Garcelon name include, at Bates, the Alonzo Garcelon Society, which provides scholarships, funded by civic and business leaders, to local students from Androscoggin County.<\/p>\n Two years after the 1899 completion of Garcelon Field, Bates and Bowdoin square off in football in November 1901. Bates won, 11-0. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n In Lewiston, there\u2019s the Garcelon Bog Conservation Area (where Bates students study carbon storage<\/a>) as well as Garcelon Cemetery (near the old ferry site) and Garcelon Street.<\/p>\nParty Favor<\/h5>\n
Supporting the Troops<\/h5>\n
Old Stories<\/h5>\n
<\/a>Hats Off<\/h5>\n
Final Praise<\/h5>\n
Secret to Longevity<\/h5>\n
Good Society<\/h5>\n
<\/a>