Jarvis

friends, Jarvis went to Louisville, Ky., where he
engaged in general practice until his return to
Dorchester, Mass.. in 1843. While in the South,
he frequently contributed to the Louisville Medi-
cal Journal, corrected medical abuses in the Ma-
rine Hospital, and aroused interest in the estab-
lishment of a historical library, Though his
financial success in Louisville was greater than
it had been in the North, his antipathy to slavery
and his fondness for New England people and
customs induced him to return to Dorchester.
There he opened his house for the treatment of
the insane and was so successful that he soon
began to devote his entire time to this branch of
medicine and was in demand by other physicians
for consultation purposes in the healing of men-
tal disease. His interest in anthropology and
vital statistics led him to an analysis of census
statistics. In studying the returns of the census
of 1840 he was astonished at the large amount
of insanity appearing among the free negroes.
He attributed this largely to carelessness in the
compilation since some towns which had no negro
population were reported as having- colored luna-
tics. Accurate by nature, he immediately pre-
sented the facts as he saw them to the American
Statistical Association which memorialized Con-
gress to amend the returns in this respect De-
spite the fact that Congress refused to correct
the enumeration, the incident served to bring
Jarvis' statistical ability to public notice. In

1849 the superintending clerk of the census of

1850 consulted him frequently about questions of
procedure. Jarvis wrote hundreds of pages in
answer to these inquiries. He was closely identi-
fied with the census of 1860 and prepared the
volume on vital statistics at Dorchester with a
clerical staff of high school girls. In 1869 he
was asked to report a plan for the ninth census
to the House committee on the census under Gen.
James A. Garfield. His suggestions were cour-
teously received and the greater part of them
incorporated in the committee's report to Con-
gress. For the last half of his life Jarvis devoted
himself very largely to the many public health
activities in which he was interested.

In 1854 Jarvis was appointed member of a
commission to inquire into the number and con-
dition of the insane and idiots in Massachusetts
and the necessity for a new1 insane asylum. He
made a thorough survey and prepared a six-
hundred-page report which resulted in an appro-
priation for a new hospital. Although his health
was seriously impaired by his arduous work on
the commission, he felt that it was the most suc-
cessful work of his life. He was a voluminous
and painstaking author and estimated his writ-

Jarvis

ings and correspondence at more than one hun-
dred thousand pages. He was the author of 175
printed speeches, articles, and pamphlets, two
books on physiology, Practical Physiology (1847 )
and Primary Physiology (1848), and two manu-
script histories of Concord. He prepared a man-
uscript autobiography of 348 pages which he
gave to the Harvard College library. He wrote
extensively for medical magazines and other pe-
riodicals on physiology, vital statistics, sanita-
tion, education, and insanity. Through corre-
spondence and exchange with other statisticians
in the United States and abroad he collected one
of the best statistical libraries in the country,
most of which he gave to the American Statis-
tical Association. He was a member of several
medical and statistical societies. He died of
paralysis in Dorchester on Oct. 31, 1884. His
wife died two days later and they were buried
in one grave in their native town of Concord.

[Jarvis' manuscript autobiography; Concord Social
Circle Memoirs, 2 ser. (1888); G. C. Whipple, State
Sanitation (1917), vol. I; Proc. Am. Antiquarian Soc.t
n.s. Ill (1885) ; Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci.f n.s.
XII (1885) ; R. W. Wood, Memorial of Edward Jarvis
(1885); A. P. Peabody, "A Memoir of Edward Jar-
vis,'' Netv-Eng. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July 1885 J
G. A. Jarvis and others, The Jarvis Family (1879) ;
Boston Transcript, Nov. i, 1884; Boston Postf Nov.
3» 1884.] W.R.L.

JARVIS, JOHN WESLEY (i;8i-Jan. 14,
*839), portrait painter, was born at South
Shields, England, the son of John and Ann
Jarvis. There is no record of the exact date of
his birth, but since he was baptised on July I,
1781, at St. Hilda's church, South Shields, it is
probable that he was born six weeks prior to that
date. His parents, emigrating to America soon
after his birth, left him in charge of his ma-
ternal relative (probably his great-uncle), John
Wesley, the founder of Methodism, until he
reached the age of five. He was then brought to
Philadelphia, where his father had found em-
ployment. The boy appears to have been left to
himself most of the time, and out of school hours
he fell in with Matthew Pratt, the portrait paint-
er, Clark, a miniaturist, and three others, un-
known to fame, who made a living by painting
signs, but who also occasionally essayed portrait
painting. Young Jarvis, delighted to be able to
make himself useful to these men, worked for
all of them from time to time in such wise as
he was able. In his own words, "such was my
introduction to the fine arts and their profes-
sors." He was an enterprising and self-con-
fident boy, and having been impressed by the
prints displayed in the Philadelphia shop win-
dows, he shortly informed his father that he
wished to become an engraver. Accordingly he

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