Dr. John Kittredge
1775 - 1822
Obituary of Dr. John Kittredge of Gloucester:
Died in Gloucester, on the 31st inst, universally lamented, John Kittredge, Esq. Collector of the
Customs, Aged 46.—It is with emotions of sympathetic grief that we attempt to portray the
character of the deceased. Dr. Kittredge was the son of the late Hon. Thomas Kittredge of
Andover. He was educated at Harvard University, and graduated in 1795. He embraced the
profession of a physician, and commenced practice in Newbury-port, where he continued to
give great celebrity in the line of his profession until 1805 when he was appointed to the office of
Collector of the Customs in Gloucester, which occasioned his immediate removal to this town,
much to the regret of his numerous Newburyport friends. In the office of Collector, he has given
universal satisfaction. Merchants and all others concerned in commercial business have given
the most unqualified attestations to the peculiarly strict accommodating manner in which the
affairs of the office have been conducted. While he strictly and cautiously adhered to his duty,
he never used that rigid and forbidding severity that ever created him one enemy. His address
was gentlemanly and commanding, and his intercourse on all occasions and with all classes of
his fellow citizens, was peculiarly familiar, and in the domestic circle he was affable and
engaging to all who came within the sphere of his acquaintance. In 1818 he was chosen
President of the Gloucester Bank, in which office as well as that of a Director, he gave the most
perfect satisfaction. In all the various duties of a public nature which he was called upon to
exercise, no one discharged them with more promptness and fidelity than did Dr. Kittredge. As a
citizen in the common walks of life, he sustained an exemplary character, nor was the cry of
distress made to him in vain, for he was ever ready to contribute to those who stood in need.
During his long and tedious sickness, he maintained a firm and manly fortitude, notwithstanding
the nature of his disease pointed directly to his dissolution, still he was patient and resigned,
although at times he suffered the most excruciating pain. To his bereaved partner and children,
the loss is peculiarly distressing—a husband endeared by all the tender ties of conjugal felicity,
a parent whose fond heart doted on the little objects of his love, while their growing years were
watched by a father’s anxious anticipation of seeing them grow up the pride and ornament of
their sex and age. But alas! the fond husband and parent is no more, all that was lovely and
amiable, and the joy and delight of friends and associates, is consigned to the silent tomb. May
the surviving relatives submit to the will of their heavenly parent, and learn resignation from the
dispensations of his providence.
The end.
There is another obituary which speaks of his having been surgeon of the Crescent frigate,
destined as a present to the Dey of Algiers, and that he made a voyage in this ship to the
Mediterranean.