Green, John Orne (1799–1885)
In the old parsonage at Lowell, Massachusetts, where his ancestors had lived since the early settlement of this country, John Orne first saw the light on May 14, 1799. His father, Aaron Green, was minister there and his mother, Eunice Orne, the daughter of John and Bridget Parker Orne, came from England probably in the fleet with Winthrop.
As a child John attended the district school of his native town and in September, 1813, received his "admittatur" to Harvard and joined the class of 1817 with which he graduated with honor.
Immediately after he accepted the position of teacher in a private Latin school in Castine, Maine, where he remained a year, and in September, 1818, he began to study medicine with Dr. Ephraim Buck of Malden and attended lectures in the Harvard Medical School, but in October, 1821, went to Boston to pass the remainder of his pupilage with Dr. Edward Reynolds (q. v.), at that time city physician and in charge of the alms house on Leverett Street where he found abundant opportunity for clinical study and practice, in February, 1822, receiving his M. D. from Harvard.
Learning that mills were about to be erected at East Chelmsford (now Lowell) and thinking the future estimated population of one thousand might afford a field for a young physician, he moved to that place in April, 1822, and began a practice which continued with scarcely any interruption for sixty-four years. He saw the field of his labors grow from a village of a few hundred to a city of more than seventy thousand and it may truly be said he grew with it. In 1868 he was senior physician to St. John's Hospital.
He married Jane, daughter of Dr. Calvin Thomas, of Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, who died June 28, 1828; then Minerva Bucklin, daughter of John Slater, of Smithfield, Rhode Island, who died December 31, 1834; and afterwards Jane, daughter of William McBurney, of Newtownards. Ireland. Two sons only survived birth and these were of the last marriage, John Orne, clinical professor of otology in Harvard University, and George Thomas.
He died at Lowell on December 23, 1885, after a short illness, probably from a maligant disease of the chest. Two excellent portraits by Lawson and an admirable bust are extant; one portrait in the Green School in Lowell, the other portrait and the bust in the possession of the writer, his son.
Among his writings were: "History of the Small-pox in Lowell," 1837; Annual Discourse before the Massachusetts Medical Society: "The Factory System in its Hygienic Relations," 1846.