MS 1260.  This is not a literal transcription – since the original is a typed manuscript which shows editing marks, I have incorporated the edits for this copy. In some intances, it is difficult to distinguish the intent of the edits and I have done my best to stay true to the intent as I see it.  Italicized items are my own comments for clarification – TG.

Preface

This biography was undertaken at the suggestion of my good friend and well known Central New Jersey historian, the late Harry J. Podmore.  We had met through a mutual friend, the late Louis Josephson, Trenton’s distinguished City Counsel for twenty years.

            I had gone to see Harry Podmore for help on local labor history; when told why I had come to see him his immediate reaction was, “You’ve got to write up Dr. Skelton.”  What Dr. Skelton had to do with Trenton labor history was not at first apparent to me.  We had been vaguely familiar with the name of Skelton since it appeared as a bookplate on many of the books withdrawn or examined at the Trenton Public Library.  Harry’s brief word sketch of Dr. Skelton interested me.  He cultivated that interest.

            Researching a project of this nature was, to me, a new and satisfying experience.  Each bit of new material uncovered impelled me to dig further.  Nearly five years of searching, however, has failed to produce many of the items and source materials often available for a work of this type.  Admittedly pertinent details are lacking.  Obviously, then, this is not a definitive biography.

            Dr. Charles Skelton was one of New Jersey’s outstanding persons who has been overlooked in state history.  He was a compassionate human being who possessed a strong love of justice.  He understood well the promise of American democracy.  To him democracy ws a process, not a static condition.  He actively nurtured the sinews of democracy.  The Quaker influences became increasingly evident as he grew.  In a very practical way her strove to improve the educational, economic and political conditions of his day.  How well he succeeded is left to the reader to decide.

            He was the seventh child of a seventh child.  Early in life he experienced the meaning of hard physical labor.  In his teens he became an apprentice shoemaker who learned his trade well.  His insatiable thirst for knowledge led to a profession.  The scholarly physician had a consuming interest in the early struggles for “free public schools.”  He was compelled by the economic facts of life to give up his medical practice.  He became a businessman…..a successful businessman.

            The shoe merchant helped launch and then lead a “workingman’s” political reform group.  What motivated Dr. Skelton to enter the field of politics?  It may have been his experiences with child-labor.  It may have been his determined struggle to secure a medical education, or the sights he beheld while practicing medicine in Philadelphia.  It may have been his strong sense of justice.  Whatever the reasons, he certainly realized that there was a definite connection between “politics” or the art of government and the pace at which human progress advanced.  Most important, however, he proceeded to do something about it.  He was a man of affirmative action.

            Dr. Skelton was an uncommon man who championed the common man.  He was an insurgent who fearlessly prodded the Tory-minded.  Damned by the oppostion, he endeared himself to his supporters.  To his contemporaries he was either a saint or a sinner; revered or reviled.  Yet, “he had a kind word for everyone.” 

            Two living monuments to the “Good Doctor” endure.  It is hoped that this publication will help others better appreciate and understand the significance of those monuments.  Dr. Charles Skelton truly was a man before his time.

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            The only available or known portrait of Dr. Skelton is a painting by the noted Trenton artist-historian William E. Pedrick, who died in the alte 1930’s.  The painting, according to Howard L. Hughes, Director of the Trenton Free Public Library for over forty years, (1912-1956), was made from a photograph that was found in the early days of the Trenton Library.  The present whereabouts of that photograph is not known.  The Pedrick painting hangs in the office of the Director at the Main Library on Academy Street in Trenton.  There the “Good Doctor’s” kindly eyes silently survey all visitors and, one might hope,, have a salutary effect on the deliberations of the Library’s Board of Trustees.

Chapter I

            April 19^th is an historic date in the United States.  On that day in 1775, at Lexington, the American Revolution began..  On that day in 1783 General George Washington officially proclaimed that war successfully concluded.  On that day, in 1806, an unusual child was born to a Pennsylvania Quaker couple.  They named the child Charles.  He was destined to leave his imprint and continuing influence on New jersey and particularly on its capital city, Trenton.

            Charles was the seventh of ten children born to John and Leah Skelton.  His place of birth was the township of Buckingham in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  His father, John Skelton, supported the large family by cultivating a sixty-acre farm during the summer and teaching at a country school during the winter.  Little else is known about him.  More is known about his mother.

            Leah Doane Skelton was the seventh child or her Quaker parents, Israel and Rachel (Vickers) Doane.  The Doane’s were an early American family tracing their ancestry to Deacon John Doane of Eastham, Massachusetts.  In 1633 Deacon Doane, along with Miles Standish was a governor’s assistant in the Bay State.  During the American Revolution, Leah’s oldest brother, Abraham, became involved in the political troubles of the times.  He was one of the notorious “Doane Boys” or “Bucks County Cowboys.”  Although too young to share the views of her Tory brother, Leah certainly passed none of his views on to young Charles.  She had a strong influence on him.  She must have been responsible, at least in part, for his love of justice and respect for truth and kindness.

            Young Charles’ early education was confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Hard work on the farm and at the quarry occupied much of his early youth.  Christmas is not always a day of joy and merriment, it was a day of mourning in 1821, for the fifteen-year-old Charles.  His father had died three days earlier.  His father’s death threw the support of the family on his shoulders.  His mother and three younger children were now his responsibility.  The older children, as far as is known, had married.

            Shortly after the death of her husband, widow Skelton moved her family to the river village, now known as Morrisville.  Across the Delaware river lay Trenton, New Jersey.  Trenton in 1820 had a population of 3,962, six hundred of wich were colored persons, eighty-five of whom were slaves.  Young Charles was apprenticed to a Trenton shoemaker for the usual term of three years.  He spent his spare time reading.  It is believed that the Apprentice and Mechanics Library, opened in Trenton in 1821, was the main source of the books he read.  When he moved into New Jersey is not known.  In his late teens he visited Philadelphia to determine the costs and requisites of a medical education.  Although he had decided to become a physician, he was compelled to wait several years because he lacked the means.

            L’amour replaced young Skelton’s love for medicine in 1829.  At the age of twenty-three he married Elizabeth Hutchinson.  She was the daughter of Israel and Abigail (spelled Abagail in the manuscript) Hutchinson, a prominent Nottingham (now Hamilton) Township family.  The newlyweds moved into Bloomsbury, a river front village bordering Trenton to the south – then part of Nottingham Township.

            Membership in a volunteer fire company was (and is) a civic responsibility.  The Delaware Fire Company of Bloomsbury was an early fire fighting aggregation.  They selected their men with care.  On January 1, 1831 Charles Skelton, the shoemaker, was elected as a member.  Before long he was named engineer and later elected Captain, a post he held for two years.  The Delaware Fire Company which had been in existence at least as early as April 1821 was incorporated, in 1833, at the behest of Skelton.  He was one of the six incorporators.  He remained an active volunteer until 1835 when he moved to the City of Brotherly Love along with his wife and mother, to attend a Philadelphia medical college.

Chapter II

            Why and how does one decide upon medicine as a profession?  In the 1820’s a young Trenton shoemaker reached his decision by a process of elimination.  In those days the choice of a profession, for all practical purposes, was limited to the classic three, the ministry, law and medicine.

            Charles Skelton first examined the religions known to him.  The training requirements, his doubts, and the desire for unfettered expression ruled out the ministry as his life’s work.  Should he become a lawyer?  Believing that a lawyer would be obligated to defend a client right or wrong settled that choice.  His allegiance to truth, instilled in him by his parents, ruled out any profession which, he though, required the sacrifice of truth for success.

            He sought a noble cause.  Relieving suffering humanity from disease and pain appealed to him.  Medicine, he felt, would be his way of satisfying honestly and usefully his need to be of service to his fellow man.

            To raise the necessary money he worked even harder at his trade of shoemaker.  Not only must he earn money for his tuition, but he must also get more education in order to be admitted as a medical student.  To this end Skelton enrolled at the Trenton Academy where he studied the required Latin.  The long hours he must work at his trade left little time or inclination for comtemplation of the classics.  Even Latin could not deter the determined young man from the goal he had set for himself.  An article written by Dr. Benjamin Rush, the Revolutionary War Physician, denying that Lating was essential to success in the practice of medicine fortified and encouraged him.

            Six years of frugal living produced savings of two-thousand dollars.  In October of 1835, at the age of twenty-nine, Charles Skelton enrolled at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical College.  By the end of the first year his savings were exhausted.  Supporting a wife and tending to the needs of an invalid mother in an inflationary economy had taken its toll.  Should he quit?  He was too determined to do that.  He decided to continue as a studen and support his dependents by working at his shoemaking trade, wherever or whenever time permitted.  Suffer from ill-health and poorer finances, Dr. Charles Skelton graduated in March 1837.  He had selected a little known subject at the time, “Electricity,” for his thesis.  The country in 1837 was in the throes of a severe financial depression, the graduating class that year faced a bleak future.

            Why Dr. Skelton decided to open his medical practice in Philadelphia is not known.  It may have been the condition of his health.  It may have been his lack of finances.  It might have been the failing condition of his mother, she died a year later, in 1838.

            Dr. Skelton’s love for the common people brought him many patients from among Philadelphia’s laboring classes…..but little money.  It is said that in eighteen months of practice the “Good Doctor” received twenty-five cents and a pair of boots in payment for services rendered.  Recalling this depression period some years later, he said, “…I have myself gone for three months around the streets of Philadelphia, when not a dollar’s worth of work could be obtained.”  Again, his shoemaking trade came to their rescue.  To support himselft he made shoe in between patients’ visits.

            His medical experiences in Philadelphia were to move him, some years later (While in Congress – see Chapter III) to render an impassioned plea for support of a bill which was an early version of the Homestead Act.

            “In my professional avocation in the city of Philadelphia,” he said, “I have attened             many such cases where the person was physically and intellectually prostrated by

            extreme application and want of air and sunshine.  I have sen them prostrated on

            the bed of death, surrounded by half a dozen children and a helpless wife.

            “I recollect some time since visiting one of these cases.  He had a package of

            medicine by his side.  I said to him, “Do not touch it.  What you need is air and

            sunshine.  This will restore you.”  “But, sir” said he, “my family must be fed and

            clothed.  I cannot work out of doors, because my health is so much impaired.  I

            can work at my light avocation…..that of making shoes.”  “But,” said I, “if you

            continue to do so, you will go down a martyr to the grave.”  Said he, “I have no

            other remedy.”

            “Now sir, we talk about human sacrifices; we talk of an unfeeling mother

            throwing her child into the Ganges.  Now, which is worse, to take a child as soon

            as it is born, and throw it into a river, and thus put an end to its misery at once,

            or for a series of years to make it a human sacrifice on the altar of mammon?”

            Four years of hardship and heartache in Philadelphia caused the “Good Doctor” to reexaming his chosen field of endeavor.  Having failed at the business end of medicine, he returned to New Jersey.  It occurred to him that a prospering shoemaker was more respectable than that of a struggling physician.  In 1841 he opened a ladies’ shoe store in Trenton at 23 Greene Street (now Broad).  He decided to sell drugs as a side line.  Again, moved by the hardships of the poor, especially those who were ill, he felt compelled to give medical service to those who needed it most.  However, before long, the “economic facts of life” forced him to give up his medical practice as well as to discontinue the sale of drugs.  He decided to concentrate solely on his shoe business.

            Dr. Skelton, the businessman, was politically occupied with “reform” at the time that the District Medical Society of Mercer County was being organized.  The Medical Society was founded on May 23, 1848.  Except for attending one meeting of the Society in July, 1853, (while a Congressman) political reform and his shoe store, not medicine, were to occupy the crusading politico-physician for the ensuing years.

            At a meeting of the Medical Society held on April 17, 1855, Dr. Skelton was elected a member.  At that same meeting, he was elected President, appointed a delegate to the New Jersey Mecical Society convention, and named alternate delegate to the American Medical Association national convention.

            Accunts of the Society’s monthly meetings were reported regularly in the local press.  Among the activities conducted by the small society were the reading of selected essays by members at monthly meetings.  A perusal of the organization’s minutes reveals the following essays contributed by Dr. Skelton:

1.  “Imponderable forces and their action upon organic and inorganic matter.”           January 1858

2.  “How do mercury and its preparations exert curative powers?”                               October 1857

3.  “The influence of sunlight upon the vital powers of the human organism.”         January 1859

4.  “The advancement of medical science and the utility and necessity of establishing a museum and library as auxiliary tenents, as well as a dispensary for the destitute.”    August 1867

5.  “The cancellation of force, in which he endeavored to show that hypothesis had not been sustained.”                                                                                                                 May 1868

6.  “A paper on heat and force.”                                                                                      March 1870

7.  “The treatment of consumption.”                                                                               May 1871

8.  “”The imperfection of our present practice of sewerage and ventilation.”                August 1872

9.  “…..the efficacy of the vital forces in the cure of disease.”                                    February 1873

            During Dr. Skelton’s tenure as President of the Society, a Dr. Charles Bonsall was elected a member.  He was to prove to be a controversial figure in the affairs of the medical association.  At the January 1858 meeting of the organization he proposed a friend for membership.  The Society decided to “table” the application…..”to determine the proper qualifications” of the applicant.  Dr. Bonsall bitterly resented this action, and, under a pseudonym, wrote a letter to the Trenton Daily True American wherein he attacked the newspaper report of the January meeting’s action.  In his letter, Dr. Bonsall charged that his friend (Dr. Patrick McCaffrey) was refused admittance because he was a “Catholic and an Irishman.”  Dr. Bonsall went on to label the Society a “Know Nothing Lodge.”  At a subsequent meetig the association voted to expell Dr. Bonsall for having written the letter.  The only dissenting vote in the organization’s hasty action was that of Dr. Skelton.

            Dr. Bonsall threatened a law suit over the “illegal” action.  He was reinstated.  Again he moved for the acceptance of his friend.  Once more the motion was “tabled.”  At a later date, the Medical Society placed Dr. Bonsall on trial “legally.”  A hearing was held and he was expelled by majority vote.  Dr. Skelton was joined by his friend, Dr. John H. Phillips, in voting against the expulsion

            When the Medical Society voted to uphold the decision of the Jefferson Medical College excluding women students, Dr. Skelton and one other dissented from the conservative action.  Over a hundred years were to pass before Jefferson Medical College was to rescind the regulation barring female medical students.  This action came in 1961.

            For the first ten years of its existence the Mercer Medical Society required a three-fourths vote for amending its Constitution.  In 1858 Dr. Skelton, a parliamentarian in his own right, proposed that the amending procedure be reduced to a two-thirds vote.  His amendment was adopted.  Today, 105 years later, his two-thirds amendment proposal is still in force.

            On at least two occasions he represented the local Society to the national conventions of the American Medical Association.

            The “Good Doctor” was in attendance when the Mercer Medical Society (Nov. 1, 1970) adopted Dr. David Warman’s resolution approving the “…..movement of the German Catholics” to build Trenton’s first hospital, St. Francis.  Other than voting for the resolution, the role played, if any, by Dr. Skelton in support of establishing the hospital is not known.  The sixty-four year old humanitarian was highly respected by the Trenton German community.  His views on establishing dispensaries and hospitals were made know several years earlier at a Society meeting.

            Dr. Skelton was a popular speaker.  On February 24, 1856 he addressed a meeting of the Trenton Literary and Philosophical Society wherein he “…..advanced his theory that animal heat is caused by the conversion of gases and fluids into solids.”  His theory became the subject of much debate. 

            Howard L. Hughes, who served as Director of the Trenton Public Library system for over forty years and an earlier Skelton biographer, has written that Dr. Skelton “…..remained a life-long student, as is shown by his “Essay on Heat, Light, Electricity and Magnetism,” published in 1875, and his pamphlet on “The Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, Sustained by Modern Scientific Discoveries,” published in 1877.  The latter essay, according to the “Transactions of the Medical Society of New Jersey, “  1879 was “…..sought by thinking men throughout the country.”

            Although Dr. Skelton chose medicine over law and the ministry, it was in the area of education and political reform that he was to leave a lasting imprint.  It was in this area that his contributions were to give him his greatest satisfaction.  It is in this area, that he should be better appreciated.

Inserted here is a page from what is presumed to be the NJ Council and General Assembly’s issue:

AN ACT to provide for the establishment of Public Schools in the township of Nottingham, in the county of Mercer.

                                   

Whereas the inhabitants of the township of Nottingham, in the county of Mercer, have petitioned for a law to authorize them to raise by taxation a certain sum of money for the purpose of supporting public schools, therefore,  (written in right hand margin) Preamble

                       

Sec. 1.  Be it enacted by the Council and General Assembly of this state, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That the taxable inhabitants of the township of Nottingham, in the county of Mercer, be and they hereby are authorized to raise at their annual town mettings, any sum of money not exceeding six hundred dollars for the support of common schools in the said township, which money ordered to be raised as aforesa’d shall be assessed, levied and collected, as other state, county and township taxes are assessed, levied and collected.

(written in right hand margin) Township authorised to raise money for support of schools

Sec. 2.  And be it enacted, That the said inhabitants of the said township of Nottinham, shall at their annual town meetings, elect five persons inhabitants of said township, as trustees of common schools, for the said township, who shall hold and exercise their office for one year, from and after their election; and the said trustees, shall have the entire charge and control of the public schools, within the said township, shall have full power to receive from the township collector, and other township officer and officers, all moneys collected for common school purposes or belonging  to the school fund or securities therefor, and shall appoint one of their number as treasurer who shall give satisfactory security to his co-trustees for the faithful performance of all his duties as such treasurer and who shall hold and exercise the said office of treasurer, subject to such rules and regulations as shall be made by said trustees; and the said trustees, shall exhibit to the said inhabitants of said township at their annual town meetings a full and correct statement of the sums of money by them received and from whom, and how the same has been expended, the number of schools under their charge, and the number of scholars taught therein, and of all other acts and duties appertaininng to the trustees for common schools in this state

Sec. 3.  And be it enacted, That in the event of the sum of money, appropriated by the state to the said township for support of the public schools, therein, and the sum of money raised therefor by the inhabitants of the said township as aforesaid, being together insufficient for the support of the said schools, then the trustees elected as aforesaid, may assess upon each scholar, such sum of money not exceeding one dollar per quarter as may be found necessary; Provided, that the said trustees may remit the whole or any part of said assessment upon such scholar or scholars, as circumstances may in their opinion require.

(written in right hand margin)  Assessment may be made in case deficiency.

Sec. 4.  And be it enacted, That all acts and parts of acts coming within the purview of this act, and being repugnant thereto, be, and the same are hereby repealed, so far as they relate to, or concern the said township of Nottingham. 

Passed March 15, 1844.

(written in right hand margin) Parts of former acts repealed.

Chapter III

            Massachusett’s Horace Mann is called the “father of the American Public school system.”  Thaddeus Stevens is acclaimed as “Pennsylvania’s fearless champion of free public education.”  New Jersey’s “Father of the First Free Public School” is the little-known Dr. Charles Skelton of Trenton.  By coincidence, Horace Mann, Thaddeus Stevens and Dr. Skelton were to sit together as Congressmen in the Thirty-second Congress (1851-53).

            The fight to establish free public schools in New Jersey was a long and, at times, a frustrating struggle.  Opponents resorted to political strategems, legalism and chicancery (chicanery) to prevent the establishment of “free schools,” i.e. fully financed by public funds.

            Perhaps the earliest move toward establishing a free public school system in New Jersey occurred in 1813, when “friends of education” sought $40,000 from the Legislature for a school fund.  Sitting in the State Assembly at the time was one James Parker of Perth Amboy.  Assemblyman Parker, an early advocate of “free common schools,” was a “hopeless minority” in the Legislature.  Four years later, however, his persistence was rewarded when in 1817 his bill establishing a permanent State School Fund was enacted.  The Fund began with an appropriation of $15,000.  Over the ensuing twelve years the State School Fund was progressively increased.  In 1828 the State allotted taxes from banks and insurance companies for education.  That same year, a convention of welfare associations, meeting in Trenton, named a committee to publicize the need for better school.  Nearly 12,000 children were reported without education and one-fifth of the voters illiterate.  By 1829 the State School Fund had grown to $245,000.

            In 1838, Bishop George Washington Doane, of the New Jersey Episcopal Diocese, addressed a convention of the “friends of education” in Trenton.  Bishop Doane declared, “We utterly repudiate as unworthy, the narrow notion that there is to be an education for the poor as such.  Had God provided for the poor a coarser earth,” he cried, “a thinner air, a paler sky?  Does not the glorious sun pour down his golden flood as cheerily upon the poor man’s hovel, as upon the rich man’s palace?…”

            Later that year