In the autumn following his graduation, in 1833, young Spalding went to
Lexington, Ky., hoping to obtain employment as a teacher. The effort to
establish a private classical school in Lexington, though widely
advertised, was not successful. The patronage did not answer to the
promises of the ambitious prospectus, and, after a trial of a few weeks,
the enterprise was abandoned as unremunerative. The West was not to be
the scene of Dr. Spalding's life, nor teaching his employment.
Mr. Spalding returned to New England in the spring of 1834, and
commenced the study of medicine in the office of his father at Amherst.
He attended three courses of lectures in the Harvard Medical School at
Boston, and was graduated at that institution in the summer of 1837.
Having spent a few months riding with his father, and observing his
treatment of the sick, he decided to enter on what seemed a promising
field for a physician at Nashua. Accepting an invitation from the elder
Dr. Eldredge, he became a partner with him in practice. After this
partnership was dissolved the business increased, and he gained for
himself an extensive and valuable patronage. He enjoyed the confidence
of a large circle of families, and his success as a physician had given
him an enviable reputation. In the meantime he had been called to assume
responsibilities of a fiduciary nature, involving such care and labor as
seriously to interfere with his professional engagements. The transition
to these new employments was the natural sequence of the excellent
judgment and rare capacity for business which he manifested. The
accuracy and promptitude with which his accounts were rendered to the
probate, and the just consideration for the feelings and interests of
all persons concerned in the settlement of the estates committed to his
trust, brought such a pressure of occupation that he was compelled to
relinquish his profession.
He had now been in practice twenty-five years, and satisfactory as his
services as a physician had been to the community, he was yet to perform
an imperative and valuable service by his judicious management of
important trusts and his earnest co-operation in the direction and
enlargement of new enterprises. In addition to his engagements in the
settlement of large estates, he became interested in banking,
manufacturing, and railroads, holding various offices of labor and
responsibility in these institutions and corporations. He was for
several years treasurer of the Nashua Savings Bank and subsequently its
president. He was one of the original projectors of the "Pennichuck
Water-Works," of which company he is president. A director in both of
the large cotton manufacturing companies which have contributed so much
to the prosperity of the city, he has also fulfilled similar duties in
other corporations elsewhere. For a time a director, he has become the
president, of the Indian Head National Bank.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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