Dr. Absalom Bainbridge

Absalom Bainbridge, fourth son of Edmund and Abigail Bainbridge, was graduated from Princeton in 1762. After preparing to practice medicine he married Mary, daughter of John Taylor, Sheriff of Monmouth county. He practiced for six years in his native village, Maidenhead (now Lawrenceville). near Trenton, and then (about 1774) removed to Princeton. In 1777 or 1778, being a Loyalist, he removed to Flatbush, L. I, and thence to New York, where he practiced more than twenty years In 1778 he was Surgeon in the New Jersey Volunteers (Loyalists). He was President of the New Jersey Medical Society in 1778, and after his removal to New York was one of the earliest members of the New York Medical Society. He died in New York, June 23d, 1807, aged sixty-five, and was buried with his wife in one of the vaults of Trinity Church. His fifth child was Commodore William Bainbridge. of the U. S. Navy.- History of Medicine and Medical Men in New Jersey, by Stephen Wickes, M.D., Newark, 1859, p. 181. He was the maternal grandfather of the Rev. John Maclean, D.D, for many years President of Princeton College. — Princeton College During the Eighteenth Century, by Samuel Davies Alexander, New York, p. 76.— W. N.

Served as surgeon to a Loyalist regiment but also showed compassion for his Patriot neighbors

I was born in Maidenhead in 1742 and grew up in a household where we were used to protesting for our rights. I graduated from the college at Princeton in 1762 and then from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. I moved to neighboring Princeton where I was settled and happily pursuing my medical career when the American Revolution broke out. Although I came from a family that supported the Revolution, I did not believe in fighting a war for independence from England. I remained in Princeton during the first year of the war and tried to maintain good relations with my neighbors who disagreed with me. I demonstrated this in early December 1776 when the British army approached Princeton in pursuit of the American army that retreated through our town several days earlier. I warned one of my neighbors in the middle of the night to escape to Pennsylvania. After the British defeats at Trenton and Princeton, I had to flee my home and removed to Flatbush on Long Island. I was officially declared a Loyalist and was subject to the property confiscation law. My four hundred acre plantation in Maidenhead was put up for sale at public auction in March 1779. By April 1778, I had resigned as surgeon to a Loyalist regiment and moved to New York City where I continued to live under the British occupation and remained there after the British departed in 1783. When I died in 1807, I was buried at Trinity Church in New York City.

By Larry Kidder