Crispell, Peter Jr. - M. D.

PETER CRISPELL, JR., M.D., was born in August, 1794, in the town of Hurley, Ulster Co., N.Y. His great-grandfather, Anthony Crispell, was a Huguenot from Artois, emigrated to this country in 1660, and was one of the original patentees of New Paltz, Ulster Co. His great-grandmother was Maria Blanshan, sister of Catherine, wife of Louis Du Bois, the leader of the New Paltz immigrants. His father was John Crispell, a farmer and surveyor, highly respected by all who knew him, and a justice of the peace continuously for thirty years. His mother was Jane Hasbrouck, of Shawangunk, of one of the most respected families in the county. He was the eldest of six children, and brother of G. Du Bois Crispell, M.D., of Kingston, N.Y.

In his boyhood he was noted for unusual vigor of both body and mind. He attended the common school in his native town, and graduated at the Kingston Academy, in which, for a time, he was a tutor, and afterwards a trustee. He studied medicine with John Nottingham, M.D., of Marbletown, attended medical lectures in New York City, and was licensed by the Ulster County Medical Society in 1816. He diligently followed his profession for a short time at Esopus, then at Marbletown, where he remained until 1837, when he removed to his farm on the Hurley low-lands, and continued the practice of medicine until his death, in December, 1878.

He ranked among the most skillful physicians in the county, was rapid and remarkably accurate in his diagnosis, direct and energetic in his treatment, and attentive and indeed devoted to his patients, some of whom were oftentimes twenty-five and thirty miles from his residence. For twenty-five years he was president of the Medical Society of the county. His influence as a physician as well as a citizen was from the first, and always, with the conservative temperance movements of his day. He frequently originated meetings, presided at them, addressed them, and counseled the younger practitioners to the disuse of alcoholic stimulants, and was unsparing in his denunciations of their use in mania-a-potu.

His activities and honors were not limited to his professional life. His strong mental powers, his admirable memory, his clearness and independence as a thinker, his moral courage and steadiness in following his convictions, and his acknowledged honesty and integrity gave him prominence outside of the physician’s sphere, and weight in the church when, in his sixty-fourth year, he confessed Christ before men. Quite an enthusiast in agriculture, his farm, at one time, took the prize as the best, at another as the second best, in the State. He also, by invitation, delivered addresses before the County Agricultural Society. In 1831 he was elected one of the board of directors of the Ulster County Bank, and in 1851 was made vice-president, and filled the position for twenty-six years. He was a laborious and faithful public servant as commissioner of schools, of loans, and as supervisor of his town. In 1849 he represented his district in the State Assembly with honor, and was afterwards nominated for Congress, but was not elected. He was a Presidential elector in 1828, and in 1860 a delegate to the National Convention at Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln.

He was also honored as a ruling elder in the Second Reformed Church of Kingston, of which he was a member, and as such at times took active and responsible parts in the Classis and Synods of the Reformed Church in America.

Dr. Crispell was twice married. His first wife was Catharine, daughter of Cornelius Eltinge, of Hurley, and the youngest sister of Wilhelmus Eltinge, D.D., of New Jersey.

Six children were the issue of this marriage,—one daughter, Jane Hasbrouck, who became the wife of Richard Lounsbery, brother of Hon. William Lounsbery, of Kingston, and five sons, three of whom are farmers and two professional men,—Abraham Crispell, M.D., a skillful and energetic physician at Rondout, and Cornelius Eltinge Crispell, D.D., at one time Professor of History in Rutgers College, New Jersey, afterwards Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy in Hope College, Michigan, and for ten years Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology of the Reformed Church in America at said college.

His second wife, who survives him, was Mary C. Oakley, of Marbletown. Four sons were the issue of this marriage, the first of whom died in infancy, and the three surviving ones have not yet chosen their occupations for life.