Time Lapse: Garden tips from a Revolutionary doctor — who, where, what’s it … – The Providence Journal

This early 19th-century mansion sits in the woods in northwest R.I. Where is it, who built it, why is he famous? (The folks in the photo are his descendants.)

As always, clicking the photo will open a much larger version in a new tab or window.

Hazard a guess in comments, then come back Sunday for the answer and more stories about our herbalist, including a 1955 Sunday Journal Garden section that led with our doctor’s garden tips.

Updated Sunday:

Our lead photo captures Walter R. Drowne and his wife Esther in 1936 on the lawn of the mansion  his great-grandfather, Solomon Drown M.D.,  had built in Foster in 1808 and which he named Mount Hygeia after the Greek goddess of health.

While our commenters already know of Drown, and each brings information about him, I’d never heard of him, city kid that I was. After reading what earlier journalists have written about him in our archives, I love this man. I wish he were alive now — perhaps his time has finally come.

1915: An enthusiastic introduction to a Rhode Island visionary

“One by one the dreams that men have dreamed in this State have been realized — or forgotten. Of the latter, none, perhaps, has faded deeper in to the past than the dream of Dr. Solomon Drown, soldier of the Revolution, friend of Washington and Lafayette, and the first professor of botany in Brown University…”

So begins the 1915 story at right about a Rhode Islander who as a young man lived adventurously in Revolutionary times — as a surgeon — and who studied medicine in Europe but who, at the age of 48, brought his family to an estate “18 miles from Providence as the crow flies, but much longer by stagecoach,” as one author noted.

He bought land in 1801 adjoining that of his college roommate, Theodore Foster, after which the town was named. There, Dr. Solomon Drown built his mansion and became a gentleman farmer, with an unmatched botanical garden.

Named Professor of Botany in 1811, Dr. Drown started a botanical garden on the east side of the Brown campus. He was a founder of what would become the Rhode Island Medical Society.

The 1914 Providence Medical Journal, Volumes 15-16 wrote of him,

“In medical practice he appears to have tended to simplicity and to a greater trust in the powers of nature than was common in his time. By simplicity he meant an avoidance of officious interference, and in particular of uniting many remedies in one prescription. Butternut pills, decoction of mallow and pussy-willow tea were among his favorite medicines.”

1927: Inside the house

The Journal was intrigued by Mount Hygeia, revisiting it periodically. Each author teased out new details about Solomon Drown and life at the Foster botanical garden.

The 1927 story includes a photo of Thomas P. Drowne and his wife, parents of the man in our lead photo, and the woman who would leave the estate to all the heirs. This author wrote of Dr. Drown’s studies in France, where he became friends with Ben Franklin and Jefferson, saying that he brought his 3-year-old daughter to Mount Vernon in 1794 to meet President George Washington. He says Dr. Drown’s son Solomon H. built another house on the property, and sorts out who lived in the old and oldest houses. He notes that Dr. Drowne’s three daughters lived without stoves, using the original house’s eight fireplaces for all heating and cooking. (One lived to be 97.)

And he marvels at the “priceless relics” in the house, from Dr. Drown’s library to a 1700 Newport clock.

This author also describes the six types of Dr. Drown papers donated to Brown by Henry Drowne of New York,

 “a great-grandson and cousin of the one who lives at Mt. Hygeia. In presenting them Mr. Drowne calls attention to the fact that his great grandfather spelled his name with the final ‘e,’ but this he originated, for his father and those before him all spelled it “Drowne,” as shown by many letters, his will, and deeds.” 

I have followed this convention in this story — Dr. Drown and the other Drownes are spelled as they chose to spell their surname.

The ’40s and ’50s: Mt. Hygeia abandoned

Walter Drowne lived in the smaller house, and operated the mansion as a museum. But he died in 1939, and dozens of heirs — the numbers range from 30 to 100 in these stories — could not agree on what to do with it. They offered Mount Hygeia to Brown University, but the offer was refused, “because there was no endowment to go with the gift,” according to a source in the story at right, published June 19, 1951.

Untangling their interests and desires took decades, during which Mt. Hygeia fell into ruin.

When the reporter visited, “there was no lock upon the door, and several windows were broken.” It’s a sad but compelling story, readable by clicking on the headline.

1955: Garden tips

On March 18, 1955, the Sunday Journal published a special section on Gardening in Rhode Island, and the lead story was headlined, “An Old Garden and a Wise Man, ” accompanied by a portrait of Drown credited to the John Hay Library. (Note that the large photo accompanying the story is not Drown’s garden but that at Shakespeare’s Head in Providence, a nonprofit organization. The second floor of the building at 21 Meeting St. houses the headquarters of the Providence Preservation Society.)

After a mention of the Shakespeare’s Head Garden restoration, the story launches into a short bio of Dr. Drown by way of introducing excerpts from the 1824 “The Farmer’s Guide — a comprehensive and valuable work on husbandry and gardening,” written by his son William Drown, “with the aid and inspection of Solomon Drown M.D.” 

These excerpts may be enough for the casual reader, but if you want to read the whole book, the original title was” Compendium of Agriculture, or the Farmer’s Guide, in the most essential parts of husbandry and gardening,” and the book may be read in its entirety at that link.

1955: ‘A beauty lost that Rhode Island could ill spare.’

In a well-written two-part appreciation of Dr. Drown published on May 23 and June 20, 1955, perhaps intended to inspire someone to care for Mount Hygeia, columnist David Patten began with a bio of the doctor’s family:  He was a Tillinghast on his mother’s side, born in Cheapside, in that area between old Towne Street (North and South Main today) and the Cove on March 11, 1753. The story follows his years as a student at Rhode Island College, Class of 1773 (later renamed Brown University), battlefield surgeon, his 1780 voyage on a Rhode Island privateer, dealings with Indians and more.

But the lead was an anecdote about his instructions to the builders of Mount Hygeia: “Give me a house I can swing a cat in.”

Patten addresses the provenance of the portrait: “The portrait of Solomon Drowne was painted in England by the American artists James and Ralph Earle. The painting was sent to Providence in a trunk addressed to Moses Brown and handed over by him to Solomon’s wife (Elizabeth Russell Drowne, with whom Solomon had nine children).”

In 1863, Irish portrait painter Charles Cromwell Ingham copied the painting; his version is now in the John Hay Library at Brown.

In the second installment, Patten tried to show how special it had all been:

“Mount Hygeia cultivated self-containment. The spinning wheel spun the wool sheared from Solomon’s sheep and the linen and flax wheel was often busy. Many medicinally useful herbs and plants were grown n the gardens, such as mandrake, wild ginger, snakeroot and sassafras. the doctor worked over with his mortars and pestles and it has been written that he raised and compounded his own opium. Rare plants were brought from all over the continent and from Europe and the botanical gardens were so extensive that it said two men were kept busy tending them.”

1960s: A landmark is saved

Finally, William Leete of Trumbull, Conn., a descendant of Dr. Drown, settled 49 separate claims with the other heirs and, with his mother,  purchased Mount Hygeia in early 1963 as Solomon Drowne Farm Inc. 

Leete said at the time, “I have no immediate plans for the place except to look it over carefully and probaby shore up the open windows to protect the house from further deterioration.” But not long after, he began restoring it with the help of a Foster building firm. The Oct. 3, 1965 story at right documents that resurrection.

In April 1973 Solomon Drowne Farm Inc. sold the house and some of the land to Mr. & Mrs. James C. Baird of Center Barnstead, N.H. Mr. Baird remains the owner of record today.

In 1977, Mount Hygeia was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The extensive application for Mt. Hygeia’s  position on the National Register includes this interesting bit: “…according to local legend, the Rhode Island Greening apple was rescued from extinction by Drown’s knowledgeable ministrations to an ancient and dying tree.” The apple was designated the official state fruit of Rhode Island in 1991.

The application includes photos by James C. Baird Jr.  and a thorough  history of Dr. Drown and Mount Hygeia.

Drown’s gravestone essay:

Dr. Drown died Feb. 5, 1834. His gravestone, as seen at Find A Grave, is nearly illegible. Fortunately, his successor in Botany at Brown, Dr. William Bailey, transcribed it for a piece in the 1907 issue of The American Botanist — although the stone spells his name Drown, Bailey adds the ‘e.’

Notes:

— More of Dr. Drown’s medical views are collected by Albert Gorton Greene in his 1833-1834 Literary Journal, and Weekly Register of Science …, Volume 1, Issues 1-52. (Greene was a founder of both the Providence Athenaeum and the Rhode Island Historical Society.)

— Even the Gaspee Virtual Archives has something to say about Drown: Drown did not take part in the burning of the Gaspee but he knew who did and didn’t squeal, so he’s joined the Gaspee honor roll.

— Dr. Solomon Drown was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in November, 2000.

News: There is now a midweek version of Time Lapse, published on Wednesdays. It will feature interesting standalone pages from our archives that don’t lend themselves to historical investigation. In case you missed it, here was last Wednesday’s story: Easter brides, spring hats of 1914. They will all be on the Time Lapse story index at providencejournal.com/timelapse.

On Twitter: @sheilalennon