Bayard, William (1814–1907)
William Bayard was born in Kentville, Nova Scotia, on August 21, 1814, being of Huguenot ancestry, and directly connected with the family represented by the famous knight sans peur et sans reproche, whose coat of arms is carried by them to this day. His father, Robert Bayard, M. D., a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and professor of obstetrics in the University of the City of New York, stood at the head of his profession in Nova Scotia and was a fluent speaker and an able writer. His mother was Frances Catherine Robertson, daughter of Commissary Robertson who was killed in the Colonial war which began in 1775.
William Bayard, when twelve years of age, was sent to a popular educational institution, conducted by the Rev. William Powell, at Fordham, near New York City, where he remained five years. He then entered as a private student with Dr. Valentine Mott, the eminent New York surgeon, at the same time attending the medical lectures at the college. While in Dr. Mott's office he took high honors for proficiency in anatomy. The next year he matriculated at the University of Edinburgh, and received his M. D. there in 1837. He then walked the hospitals in Paris and visited many in Germany, and on returning to St. John, New Brunswick, practised in company with his father. There was not a city or large town in the Province of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island to which he had not been called upon professional business. The general public hospital in the city of St. John owed its existence to the energy of Dr. Bayard, who placed before the legislature an act to assess the community for the funds necessary to build it, and secured the passage of the bill by his personal endeavors.
He was a man of intense energy and great decision of character, and occupied all the prominent positions of his profession. He was chairman of the hospital board for a long period, chairman for many years of the board of health, coroner, president of the New Brunswick Medical Society for four years in succession, president of the Medical Council of New Brunswick, of the St. John Medical Society, Maritime Medical Association and of the Canadian Medical Association.
He was a writer and contributor for various medical journals; editor for New Brunswick at one time of the Montreal Medical and Surgical Journal, in which many articles from his pen may be found.
Dr. Bayard married early in life Susan Maria Wilson (1844), and his wife died in 1876, leaving no children. She was a woman of ability and fine social qualities, giving much time to caring for the poor and unfortunate.
On August 1, 1907, his seventieth anniversary of graduation at Edinburgh, Dr. Bayard received from his Alma Mater, through professor Cunningham, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, an address, in which it was mentioned that the aged physician was, as far as was known, the oldest living graduate of that seat of learning, and the combined Faculty conferred on him the honorary degree of LL. D. in absentia.
Dr. Bayard died on December 17, 1907, at the great age of ninety-four.