BELL, THOMAS E. (c1775-1820)

BELL, THOMAS E., doctor; b. c1775; d. 1820.

Thomas E. Bell was the surgeon on board HMS Abergavenny in 1795, when he was twenty years of age. He served on this ship until 1797 and then for a year on HMS Tourterelle. He was listed as a half-pay officer in the naval service in 1801. Later, he settled on the Miramichi as a physician. It was said that he travelled constantly on horseback and by canoe to visit his patients, as far north as Miscou and as far south as Fredericton.

Bell is thought to have been the only doctor on the river or in the north of the province until the arrival of Dr Alexander Key in Chatham in 1816. After he died in 1820, at age forty-five, a tombstone with a lengthy Latin inscription was erected in his memory in St Andrew's Cemetery in Chatham.