Gee "woukl have been a dangerous man if he had not been a very lazy one." By occupation he was a boat-builder. It is related of him that he was once captured by Algerines, that he escaped from captivity by the agency of an Algerine woman, and that thereafter he celebrated the anniversaries of the event with a dinner, at which a turkey was served bound in links of sausage, as a reniinder of the chains he wore in Algiers.
Judge Sewall in his Diarj', under date January II, 1714-5, states that he dined at Mr. Gee's on that day in company with Drs. Increase and Cotton Mather, Mr. Thornton, Mr. Wadsworth, and others, and says: "It seems it was in remembrance of his landing this day at Boston after his Algerine captivity. Had a very good treat."
At an earlier date, October 31, 1688, he records: "Joshua Gee launches to-day, and his ship is called the Prince."
And 1692, Friday, September 30: "Go to Hog Island with Joshua Gee and sell him three white oaks for thirty shillings. I am to cart them to the water side."
The Gee tomb in Copp's Hill Burial Ground bears the family name and coat of arms.
Fatherless since the age of four years. Dr. Kirk is indebted to her mother almost exclusively for her moral and mental development throughout the period of her life preceding that of womanhood. Her elementary education was received in the public schools of Dorchester, while further instruction was given her at home by her mother personally. Of a keenly sympathetic nature from infancy, a tendency to relieve suffering became a marked characteristic of her girlhood.
When she was eleven years old, she announced to all whom it might concern that she intended to become a nurse. When of suitable age she entered the training-school for nurses at the Hartford (Conn.) Hospital; and after her grad- uation, in 1883, she spent the ensuing years in Hartford, employed in her chosen calling.
Later, desiring to attain the highest degree of her girlhood's ambition, she took the course in homoeopathy at the Medical School of Boston University, and received her degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1893. Dr. Kirk will be readily remembered by her classmates at the university by her successful advocacy of the adoption of the cap and gown, which they were the first to wear, or as being the writer of the class poem entitled "Cap and Gown," delivered at a class supper and afterward published in the Medical Student. After receiving her tliploma Dr. Kirk went to New York ami pursued a post-graduate course in the New York Post-graduate School of Medicine. Then she returned to Boston, and, establishing her residence in the Dorchester district, entered upon the duties of her new profession.
She has acquired a lucrative practice, covering a territory extending to Neponset and Marblehead on one side and to Cambridge and Maiden on the other. Her physical fitness for her work is testified by her excellent health.
For several years she was associated with Dr. Alonzo Boothby in the Boothby Hospital, Boston, wherein her duties included the delivery of lectures to nurses. Her income is far from being an adequate measure of her professional work. Following the best traditions of the profession, she frequently gives her services gratuitously to needy patients. She has been on the staff of the Homoeopathic Medical Dispensary of Boston since 1894, and by the request of school-teachers of Dorchester she has given hygienic talks to mothers in Dorchester.
Dr. Kirk is a member of the Massachusetts Homoœopathic Society, of the Boston Homœopathic Society, of the Massachusetts Surgical and Gynæcological Society, and of the Twentieth Century Medical Society. Her religious affiliations are with the Episcopal church. She is a patron of the Girls' Friendly Society. In 1897 she was admitted to membership in the patriotic society known as the Daughters of the Revolution.
FLORENCE GARRETTSON SPOONER, President of the Massachusetts Prison Reform League, has been a resident of Boston the past thirty-two years, her home being in a quiet corner where West End and Back Bay meet, at the lower end of Pinckney Street.
