Charles Jewett

Name

Charles Jewett

http://viaf.org/viaf/72887516

First Name

Charles

Last Name

Jewett

Born

1807

Died

1879

Profession

Doctor

Note

Mentioned in Letter from CMB to GSB August 30 1839 (HA1238, John Hay Collection at Brown University) re. The Rhode Island Temperance Herald, for which CMB was an agent. CMB visited him in August 1839 and liked him
Works closely with Lucien Burleigh in the CT Temperance Union in 1860s-1870s
Attends 1846 Connecticut State Temperance convention - Report in Charter Oak New Series 1 44 2 Nov 5 1846

Rights for Picture

Related Places

Rhode Island

Massachusetts - Boston and eastern Massachusetts

Associated Causes

Temperance

Abolition

comment

Comments on the Burleigh Family included in his book A forty years' fight with the drink demon, or A history of the temperance reform as I have seen it, and of my labor in connection therewith. By Charles Jewett, M.D. New York: National Temperance Society, 1872.

"One of the churches of Providence proposing to build a new house of worship, sold their old one. It was purchased by parties who had less regard for proprieties than for the gains of a ruinous business, and they converted the building to a brewery. I stated the facts by letter to a young friend of mine, George S. Burleigh, residing with his parents at his native place, Plainfield, Conn., and requested him to give fitting expression to the feelings which such a sacrilegious act would naturally create in the heart of any well constituted individual, not case-hardened by the worship of Mammon, or the practice of degrading vices. I received directly the following poem, which for justness of sentiment, power of thought, and true poetic expression, will bear comparison, I think, with any poem produced on this continent by a writer of equal age, seventeen. Equally with the older and more widely known members of that talented family, he has by example and precept, by tongue and pen, given steady and substantial support to every genuine reform of our time and country. God bless the Burleigh; family, and grant that their posterity through coming generations may never dishonor their ancestry of the nineteenth century." p. 56

"In my efforts to increase, if possible, the circulation of the Temperance Journal, a monthly paper, the official organ of the society, I promised its subscribers and the reading public, that each number through the year 1846, should contain an illustrated original poem, which should have reference to some phase of the temperance question, or to some feature of the wicked system with which we were at war. With the assistance of some excellent fellow-laborers, I redeemed my pledge, and this extra effort to give added interest to the paper, was rewarded by an increase of its circulation. Those twelve poems were, at the close of the year, published in a pamphlet, illustrated by the very expressive wood cuts which had served to give them added interest as they appeared in the Temperance Journal. Four of the twelve were from my own pen, and the other eight, far better, contributed by the pens of fellow-laborers . My readers who have kept themselves well posted in relation to our American literature for the last thirty years,will not be surprised that I speak of the other eight short poems referred to, as better than my own, or some of them at least, when I record that two of the number were furnished by the two brothers, William H. and George S. Burleigh, whose splendid intellects have been at the service of the temperance reform from their very boyhood. For one, I heartily thank God that some of the most distinguished poets of our age and country have never prostituted their powers by singing the praises of the filthy and obscene god, Bacchus. Every stanza and line of Pierpont, Whittier, and the Burleighs, have been consecrated to the dethronement and destruction of vice, the crowning and exaltation of freedom and virtue, and the purification, elevation, and advancement of our race, in all that renders men truly wise, good, great and happy." 174-175

"If by a blow from some powerful fiend, visible or otherwise, all opposition to the liquor system could be annihilated, and with it all the temperance men and women now living, with all the publications and instrumentalities of whatever sort, with which we have ever assailed that system, -saving only from the general wreck "Lyman Beecher's Six Sermons on Intemperance," "Sargent's Temperance Tales," and the poem of Wm. H. Burleigh, entitled the "The Rum Fiend," they alone, ought, among any civilized people who can read, to originate another temperance reform, and to give it a glorious forward impetus." p. 218

Link to Jewett book

George Shepard Burleigh

William Henry Burleigh