New Database: Brattleboro, VT: Wesselhoeft Water Cure, 1845-1848

Wesselhoeft Water Cure. Photograph 1869?-1890? by D. A. Henry. Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

 

Today we are making a new database available: Brattleboro, VT: Wesselhoeft Water Cure, 1845-1848. This database provides an indexed listing of the many people who came to Brattleboro Vermont to take advantage of the therapeutic benefits of a spa run by Dr. Wesselhoeft. Notable people included author and abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin), poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline); and American historian, Francis Parkman Jr, to name a few.

There are over 600 pages of information about the Wesselhoeft Water Cure, lists of patients, and the kinds of conditions that were treated there. The patients came from most every state east of the Mississippi and includes over 1,000 records.

This database comes as a result of our partnership with Jerry Carbone and Whetstone Brook Genealogy and the Brooks Memorial Library who provided access to the Green Mountain Spring. The Wesselhoeft Water Cure is also featured as part of the Brattleboro Words Trail, a project of the Peoples, Places, and Words in Brattleboro, funded in part by the National Endowment of Humanities. More information on the Trail may be found here.

The volumes in this database include:

  • The Description of the Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment – which is browseable, and provides a perspective on the institution
  • The Green Mountain Spring from 1845 through 1848 – a regular publication of the Water Cure that descibes treatments and include names and dates for patents who visited
  • The pages from The Second Report of the Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment which contain a full list of the patients who were treated there

This database can be searched with the following:

  • First and last name – in many records the first name only contains initials. For best results use just the last name.
  • Year
  • Location – this is the home residence of the patient who came to the Water Cure

Please note: This database is available to all NEHGS members.

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