Today, we honor the birthday of Dr. John Jeffries, born in Boston on Feb. 5, 1744 or 1745, (I have found both in my research and am leaning toward 1745).
Smart cookie: graduated from Harvard at 18 and received an MD from Aberdeen at age 24. Jeffries returned to America in 1769 to practice medicine and served as an assistant surgeon in Boston (1771). Throughout this time, he kept detailed weather records -- entries 3 times a day -- until March 1776.
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What happened then? Despite helping care for the wounded during the Boston Massacre, he remained loyal to Britain. He declined to be head of medical services for the colonies and left with British troops for Nova Scotia where his medical practice thrived. In 1780, he returned to America to support Britain, staying five months before moving to London. His name made the list of the Massachusetts Banishment Act of 1778. In London, he took his famous balloon rides to study the air, two to be certain.
He actually paid for these balloon excursions manned by French balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard and took on board a barometer, thermometer, hygrometer, electrometer, and mariner’s compass to take observations of the air above. He even took seven glass bottles to sample that air at different levels (I can’t imagine that led to much). The flights went up anywhere from 6,000 to 9,000 feet.
The first flight took place on Nov. 7, 1784, over Hyde Park, London where he dropped a number of postcards to those below and the second on Jan. 7, 1785, went from Dover across the English Channel to France, where the two were taken to Paris as heroes.
Jeffries was wined and dined, and met with John Adams and Ben Franklin to whom he delivered letters having been brought from England by “air mail.”
The Banishment Act was not acknowledged by the Congress and Jeffries went back to Boston to settle some family business in 1789, deciding to move back in 1790. He began recording daily weather again and would do so until 1816. He also began an obstetrics practice and brought more than 2,000 babies into the world in Boston.
Dr. John Jeffries died on Sept. 16, 1819, of a hernia and is buried near Paul Revere in Boston.
Thank you, sir, for inspiring the science of meteorology. Happy National Weatherperson’s Day!
Frank