A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
History
A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
went to Halifax, N.S., and there married Frances Catherine Robertson,
daughter of Commissary Robertson, who was killed in the Colonial war
which commenced in 1775. Her grandfather was Colonel John Billop, who
owned a large part of Staten Island, near New York, and being a
Loyalist, his property was confiscated. He died in the city of St. John.
Dr. Robert Bayard practised his profession in Kentville, N.S., for
several years, and in 1824 removed to St. John, N.B., where he died in
June, 1868 at the advanced age of eighty-one years. He stood at the head
of his profession, and was a fluent speaker and an able writer. His son,
Dr. W. Bayard, when twelve years of age, was sent to a popular
educational institution, conducted by the Rev. William Powell, at
Fordham, near New York city, where he remained five years. He then
entered as a private student with Dr. Valentine Mott, the eminent
surgeon of New York, at the same time attending the medical lectures at
the College. While in Dr. Mott’s office he took high honours for
proficiency in anatomy. The next year he matriculated at the University
of Edinburgh, from which institution he received the degree of doctor in
medicine in 1837. He then walked the hospitals in Paris, and visited
many in Germany, and on returning to St. John, practised in company with
his father. He has since that time frequently visited the hospitals in
England, France and Germany. “His reputation for skill has,” says a
writer who has noted this gentleman’s career “almost from the start,
stood high, and of his profession he has made a brilliant success. He
has been greatly honoured, alike by the medical fraternity and his
fellow citizens generally, and it is safe to say, that no man in his
profession, in the Province, is held in higher esteem. There is not a
city or large town in the Province of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or
Prince Edward Island, to which he has not been called upon professional
business.” It may be said that the general public hospital in the city
of St. John owes its existence to the energy and perseverance of Dr.
Bayard. Prior to 1858 he brought the subject prominently before the
authorities, but no action was taken. He then endeavoured to obtain
money to build one by subscription, but finding that many of the most
wealthy men in the city refused to subscribe, he abandoned the idea, and
employed and paid a lawyer to draft an Act to assess the community for
the purpose. This bill he placed before the Legislature of the Province,
and with the assistance of Sir Leonard Tilley, Judge the Hon. John H.
Gray and other members of the House, got the bill passed granting power
to raise the funds required for the building, and the support of it. He
has been President of the Board of Commissioners since its establishment
in 1860. He is chairman of the Board of Health for the city and county
of St. John, having been appointed by the Government in 1855 to carry
out the Sanitary Act passed in that year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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