Aaron Bard. He was born in Jaffrey, N. H., about the year 1770. He
obtained his medical education in part at least, at Troy, N. Y., from
which place he fled to avoid arrest upon the charge of robbing graves.
His parents were rigid believers in the old faith, and in that faith
they had trained the son. Against that faith the son rebelled, dropped
the second "a" in his baptismal name, and rejected the Scriptures as
not containing divine truth. As the mass of the people believed
implicitly in the divine origin and plenary inspiration of the Bible, a
disbeliever was denounced as an infidel and punished by social outlawry.
Bard was not a quiet doubter. He attacked the Bible, ridiculed much of
the Old Testament, accepted controversies with the clergy, although he
attended their families without charge. His reputation as a physician
was considerable, and although his enemies, who were many, made
repeated efforts to secure a competitor, the wary declined their
invitations, and the credulous were soon driven away by poverty, or the
fear of it. Bard was a bachelor, lived economically, never presented a
bill, and when he died, about the year 1850, his books were free of
charges. Before the repeal of the Third Article in the Bill of Rights,
Bard organized a society which by some art of logic was so far
recognized as a religious body as to exempt its members from taxation
in the old parish.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44