American Medical Biographies/Bancroft, Frederick Jones
Bancroft, Frederick Jones (1834–1903)
Frederick Jones Bancroft was born in Enfield, Connecticut, May 25, 1834, and died in San Diego, California, January 23, 1903.
He began to study medicine while teaching school in Connecticut and New York, graduating from the Medical Department of the University of Buffalo in 1861.
His ancestry dates from 1660—East Windsor, Connecticut, his father being a farmer of the old Puritan stock and his mother a Miss Wolcott of the Oliver Wolcott family. Frederick settled at Blakely, Penn., and soon after entered the Federal army, and spent the first six months in charge of a hospital at Harrisburg. In 1862 he was appointed surgeon to the 76th Pennsylvania Infantry. He also rendered medical service to the troops on Pinckney Island. He was afterwards surgeon-major to the 3rd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery. In 1863 he arranged a hospital for Confederate prisoners at Fort Delaware, and then rejoined the Pennsylvania Artillery at Camp Hamilton, Virginia. From June, 1863, to the close of the war he served as post surgeon at Fortress Munroe. While here he was required to render medical service to Jefferson Davis, then a prisoner, but when the latter learned that Bancroft was a New Englander, he declined his services and requested those of one more in sympathy with his cause.
After the close of the war he took a course of lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, and then in 1866 came to Denver, where he spent the balance of his life. From 1872 to 1887 he was a railroad surgeon. He was the first president of the Colorado State Board of Health, 1876, president of the State Medical Society in 1881, and a founder of the medical department of the University of Denver, where for many years he filled with distinction the chair on fractures and dislocations. He was until a few years before his death on the staff of St. Luke's Hospital, of which he was one of the founders.
He came to Colorado in ill health. He was 6 feet 4 inches in height, and for the last fifteen or twenty years of his life weighed from 250 to 350 pounds. Being a sufferer from a heart affection, and being a man of wealth, he spent the last few years in retirement from active practice. He wrote some articles on the climate of Colorado and public health matters, but little or nothing on surgical subjects, yet was justly distinguished in the treatment of fractures and dislocations, and for many years was without a rival in this section, though he knew little of pathology and the later advances in general surgical technique.
He was endowed with a dry wit and a keen sense of humor, which gave zest to every company he graced.
In 1871 he married Mary Caroline, daughter of George A. Jarvis, of Brooklyn, N. Y. She died in 1899 in Denver, and three children survived, George J., Frederick I., and Mary J.; of these, Frederick I. became a doctor.