Frederick Winsor (surgeon)
Dr. Frederick Winsor was a Civil War surgeon, head of the Massachusetts State Hospital and longtime physician in Salem, Massachusetts.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 2, 1829, Winsor was the youngest of 12 children of Thomas Winsor and Welthea Sprague, one of 15 children of Seth Sprague of Duxbury, Massachusetts, a famous Methodist anti-slavery leader.
Winsor attended Boston Latin School, and graduated Harvard University in 1851. He was known as a great athlete at Harvard, despite serious eye problems that forced him to leave school in his senior year and have his lessons read to him in order to graduate. He then attended Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1855. That same year he began his long practice as a physician in Salem, Massachusetts. Winsor married Ann Bent Ware, daughter of Unitarian minister, professor, and abolitionist Henry Ware Jr. and Mary Lovell Pickard, on August 10, 1857 in Milton, Massachusetts.
In 1861, Massachusetts Governor John Albion Andrew appointed Winsor head of the State Hospital at Rainsford Island. A year later he left his post to enlist as a surgeon in the 49th Massachusetts regiment, serving from 1862 to 1863 through the disastrous Louisiana Campaign under the command of Colonel William Francis Bartlett. During a disastrous frontal assault on Port Hudson, Louisiana on May 27, 1863, Bartlett was shot twice—once in his remaining unamputated leg and once in his wrist, shattering it. Dr. Winsor worked through the night to remove the bullet from Col. Bartlett's wrist, saving his hand. He would write a gripping account of that night years later for Atlantic Monthly:
, Bermuda.
Although Winsor returned to private practice in Winchester, Massachusetts after his service, he continued to contribute to the State Board of Health, writing important state health reports such as "The Hygiene of School Houses", and "Water Supply, Drainage, and Sewerage from the Sanitary Point of View". He also founded the Unitarian Church of Winchester in 1865. Winsor died in Hamilton, Bermuda on February 25, 1889.
Frederick and Ann Winsor's children were: Robert Winsor, born 1858, leading partner of Kidder, Peabody & Co. from 1919 until his death in 1930; Mary P. Winsor, born 1860, founder and longtime director of the Winsor School for Girls; Paul Winsor, born 1863, engineer, inventor, and vice president of the Boston Elevated Railway, Annie W. Allen, born 1865, founder and director of Roger Ascham School in Scarsdale, New York, Jane L. Gale, born 1868, founder and manager of Boston's Toy Theater; Elizabeth W. Pearson, co-founder of the Nursery Training School ; and Frederick Winsor Jr., founder and longtime director of Middlesex School.
