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Dr. Moses French Colby, M.D.
1835
Stanstead, Québec

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The first Colby to come to Stanstead was Dr. Moses French Colby, M.D. Of New England stock, he was born 2 July 1795 in Thornton, New Hampshire. His parents Samuel Colby and Ruth French moved their family to the pioneer settlement of Derby, Vermont in 1798. Moses Colby studied medical practice with a local practitioner in Derby, Dr. Luther Newcomb, for several years before leaving to attend medical lectures at Yale in 1817. He carried on his medical studies at Dartmouth College,
graduating in 1821. After several years of practice in Derby he attended the School of Practical Anatomy at Harvard in 1828.
By this time he had married Lemira Strong (1826) and had one son Charles Carroll (1827). It is interesting to note that two of his sisters were married to doctors: one of whom. Dr. S. Kendall, had studied under Moses Colby.

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Lemira Strong Colby
1830
Stanstead, Québec

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With ten years of practice behind him Moses Colby moved 'across the line' to Stanstead Lower Canada in December 1831: his family followed in the spring of 1832. An esteemed local practitioner was ill and died in 1832 and Colby filled his place, after successfully passing the official examinations that gave him license to practice in Lower Canada. At that time Dr. Colby and a Dr. Weston of Hatley were the only physicians in the District who had attended formal medical lectures. He had a busy practice
and an excellent professional reputation both in the Stanstead area and in northern Vermont. It was not an easy life nor a particularly well-remunerated one. Charles Carroll Colby in some biographical notes on his father writes that it was only with considerable family sacrifice that he was able to attend Dartmouth College in the 1840s. In addition to his demanding practice,
over the years Dr. Colby contributed notes and articles to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal and published An Abstract of the New Physiological and Pathological views as set forth in "New views of the Functions of the Digestive Tube" in 1860. He received an honorary M.A. degree from Dartmouth in 1837.

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A conservative candidate for Stanstead County
1855
Stanstead, Québec

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Moses French Colby's standing in the community led to his nomination as a conservative candidate for Stanstead County in the by-election for the Legislative Assembly in January 1837. He won the seat and served in the Assembly until March 1838 when the Assembly was replaced by the Special Council. He did not support the rebellion and in consequence was the victim of a bizarre, costly and trying experience that affected his life and reputation for a number of years. In 1839 Dr. Robert Nelson, then among the refugee patriots in Derby Vermont, encouraged a local man, William Nelson, to sue Dr. Colby for malpractice in the case of his wife whom Colby had treated for a broken leg five years previously. Politics inflamed the issue to the extent that Dr. Colby wrote that at one time he hardly dared cross into Vermont. Scientific evidence eventually prevailed over emotion and Dr. Colby was exonerated. It was generally accepted that Dr. Nelson had taken his revenge for Colby's lack of support during the rebellion. In the first election after the Act of Union in1841, Dr. Colby stood for election again, but was defeated by Marcus
Child, a reform candidate. Partisans of Dr. Colby attributed his loss to disunity among loyalist supporters and the expenses of
the malpractice suit.

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Marcus Child (1793-1859)
1850
Stanstead, Québec

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Marcus Child came to Stanstead from Massachusetts in 1808, employed as a clerk by Levi Bigelow. In 1812, he became a partner in a business of drugs and medicine, eventually buying out the concern.
He represented Stanstead County in the Provincial Parliament from 1829 to 1831 and from 1834 to 1837.
He was appointed Postmaster and Magistrate but, at the outbreak of the Rebellion in 1837, he was identified with the Reform cause and was then deprived of his offices, proscribed and forced to leave the country and return to the United States.
After the Rebellion, he came back to Canada and was re-elected, defeating Moses French Colby in 1840.
Marcus Child is remembered as one of the founders of the Stanstead Seminary, having obtained a grant from the Legislature for
the building of this school in 1829.
In 1845, he was appointed School Inspector for the District of St. Francis. He removed his family to Coaticook in 1855 where he died in 1859.

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Stanstead Seminary
1840
Stanstead, Québec

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"The first Colby ancestor came from England in the 1630's and settled in Amesbury, Massachusetts. In 1832, Moses French
Colby brought his family to Stanstead from Derby, Vermont, becoming a Canadian citizen and serving as local representative to the parliament of Canada East. His son, the Hon. Charles Carroll Colby, attended Stanstead Seminary."
The Stanstead College Story by Joan MacDonald.

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An active medical practice
1860
Stanstead, Québec

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The 1830s and 1840s were the busiest years of practice for Doctor Colby. He had a long association with Dr. C.W. Cowles that ended in 1854 when Dr. Colby, because of weak health, chose to practice in a more limited way. Over the years several medical students worked with him, among them Drs. Webber, Shirtleff, Rutherford, Jameson and Pinkham. One woman
student, Susanna Kilborn, studied and worked with Dr. Colby from 1857-1861: she went on to practice medicine in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
In 1848 Dr. Colby was called upon by his medical confreres in the region to act as leader of their opposition to parts of the recently passed Act which governed medical practice in Lower Canada. His lengthy, impassioned address on the topic was printed in the Stanstead Journal and other major newspapers. New criteria for entering medical practice were hardships for any but the most affluent students outside Montreal and Quebec City. Some doctors, qualified under the old law, had to pass a review before the new College Board, which, Colby felt, had acted in an 'aristocratic and illiberal' manner in certain cases.

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Moses French Colby (1795-1863)
1860
Stanstead, Québec

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In addition to his professional and medical life Dr. Colby was interested in agriculture: he bred cattle, grew hops and wrote enthusiastically about the benefits a railway would bring to all community activities and interests.
Charles Carroll Colby writing about his father notes "His voluminous manuscripts - Under what
circumstances of physical suffering written - ill arranged, tautological, perhaps in some respects visionary, yet rich in the experience of years and in the reasonings and speculations of an acute reflective, never-resting mind".
According to his son's biographical notes. Dr. Colby was a devout and committed Christian - a Methodist - reading the Bible along with his medical readings, and like many of those times struggling with the broad issues of science and religion, mind and body. Moses Colby died 4 May 1863 after years of declining health.