The Papers include personal correspondence, mainly between Dr. and Mrs. Jane Blackwood, describing journeys to California and Nevada, the uprising of Negroes (June 16, 1827), and a cholera epidemic (from Jane Blackwood, 1849). There is a diary of Mrs. Blackwood, and her notes on mathematical calculation, kept while living in Ovid (New York), 1827. Dr. Thomas Blackwood is also documented by a medical notes book, 1827-1832, including the diagnosis and treatment of his patients, receipts, payments, and births, August 1832-September 1833; his certificate of entrance to the Washtenaw Medical Society, June 1832; and his travel journal, 1850, while aboard the Loo Choo. Lastly, there is a copy of his first letter published in the Washtenaw Whig, September 12, 1849.
Biography:
Dr. Thomas Blackwood (circa 1800- ) was a physician in Ann Arbor and later, Ypsilanti, Michigan. Until 1845 he practiced traditional medicine. In 1845 he began practicing homeopathic medicine. Blackwood was quite successful at it and in 1847 added a partner, Dr. Isaac N. Eldridge.
In 1849 Blackwood was hit with Gold Fever. He purchased passage on the Loo Choo, a sailing vessel, and left New York City on March 8, 1849. After an arduous voyage, he arrived in San Francisco on September 15, 1849. Blackwood began prospecting on the Tulumne River. With others, he worked on building an expensive dam by which they hoped to find a lot of gold. However, the rainy season came early and destroyed the dam in December, ruining his chances for success and his finances. He then left for San Francisco where he met friends from the Loo Choo. With loans from these friends, Blackwood returned to the Tulumne River. There he apparently was unsuccessful because he returned to Ann Arbor and his practice by the autumn of 1850. At some time afterwards, Blackwood left for California via the overland route with his wife, Jane Osburn Blackwood, two sons, and two daughters. He then set up practice in Sacramento, dying shortly afterwards of malignant fever. His family then returned home to Ann Arbor.
Some of Blackwood’s letters to his wife about his travels to and experiences in California were published in the Washtenaw Whig in 1849 and 1850, as was part of his journal from his voyage on the Loo Choo.
(This information from Letters home: the story of Ann Arbor’s Forty-niners by Russell F. Bidlack in the Clarke Historical Library. Photocopies of relevant information in this book have been added to the Family History folder in the collection.)
