A Life of Service

About the Book

The fascinating, multi-faceted life of William Augustus Newell (1817-1901) has been a well-kept secret. The titles physician/surgeon, politician/statesman, inventor, government official, churchman, humanitarian, historian, and writer indicate something of his long and highly useful service to humankind. His accomplishments include: governorships of what are now two states on opposite coasts; the founding of the United States Life Saving Service, now the Coast Guard; service as a three-time congressman from New Jersey; White House physician for friend and former congressional colleague Abraham Lincoln, during which he saved the life of Tad Lincoln from typhoid; medical care for all on both coasts, whether the patients could pay or not; the first congressional proposal for a federal bureau of agriculture; service on horseback in the Northwest in his late sixties as one of the five United States Indian Inspectors; support for the vote for women and for male blacks, and for full rights of male native Americans in Washington Territory. He practiced medicine until a month before his death in his eighty-fourth year. Truly, A Life of Service.