more eminent Dr. Elijah Dix, of
Worcester, later of Boston, Mass. Dr. Dix was born in Watertown,
Mass., in 1747. At the age of seventeen, he became the office boy of
Dr. John Green, an eminent physician in Worcester, Mass., and later, a
student of medicine. After five years, in 1770, he began to practice
as physician and surgeon in Worcester where he formed a partnership
with Dr. Sylvester Gardner. It must have been a favorable time for
young doctors since in 1771, a year after he began to practice, he
married Dorothy Lynde, of Charlestown, Mass., for whom her little
granddaughter was named. Mrs. Dix seems to have been a woman of great
decision of character, and no less precision of thought and action,
two traits which reappeared conspicuously in our great philanthropist.

Certain qualities of Dr. Dix are also said to have reappeared in his
granddaughter. He was self-reliant, aggressive, uncompromising,
public-spirited, and sturdily honest. To his enterprise, Worcester
owed its first shade trees, planted by him, when shade trees were
considered great folly, and also the Boston and Worcester turnpike,
when mud roads were thought to be divinely appointed thoroughfares.
His integrity is shown by an incident which also throws light upon
the conditions of a troubled period. His partner, Dr. Gardner, made
the grave mistake of taking the royal side in the controversies that
preceded the Revolution, and Worcester became as hot for him as
Richmond or Charleston was for a Union man in 1861. Dr. Gardner
disappeared, leaving his effects behind him. After the war, Dr. Dix
made a voyage to England and honorably settled accounts with his
former partner.

It was like the enterprising Dr. Dix that he turned this creditable
act to his financial advantage. On his return to America he brought
with him a stock of medical books, surgical instruments, and chemical
apparatus, and became a dealer in physician's supplies, while
continuing the practice of his profession. His business prospering, in
1795 he removed to Boston for a larger field, where he opened a drug
store near Faneuil Hall and established chemical works in South
Boston. Successful as physician, druggist and manufacturer, he soon
had money to invest. Maine, with its timber lands, was the Eldorado of
that era, and Dr. Dix bought thousands of acres in its wilderness,
where Dixfield in the west, and Dixmont in the east, townships once
owned by him, preserve his name and memory.