Name/Title
SaddlebagsEntry/Object ID
1958.23.58Description
Doctor Ebenezer Roby’s saddlebags dated 1775.
Dr. Ebenezer R. Roby was born in Sudbury on June 15, 1732, the son of Ebenezer and Sarah (Swift) Roby. As a young man, he served in the French & Indian Wars. In 1757 he appeared on the rolls of Capt. Thomas Damon’s alarm list in the Sudbury militia, and in August of that year he marched to Springfield for two weeks as his unit responded to the Fort William Henry alarm. In 1758 he served as a military surgeon at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. A copy of his diary during the stay at Crown Point is on file at the Wayland Public Library. His account book records the patients he treated including enslaved people listed only by first name, their care billed to the men who owned them.
Dr. Roby married Abigail Moffat on Sept. 15, 1763. They were the parents of eight children born between 1764 and 1780. He was a practicing physician and lived near the center of town on Concord Road, just north of the intersection with Old Sudbury Road. His recorded service during the Revolution was as a member of Capt. Nathaniel Maynard’s militia company, for which he was paid 50 pounds by the town in 1778. On July 18, 1786, he passed away at the relatively young age of 54.
Roby enslaved a man named Boston. In his will, Roby bequeathed Boston to his daughter Mary for "the use of my Negro man Boston to take care of the garden... cut her wood & bringing it to the House." A human being, passed down like the saddlebags themselves.
These saddlebags carried a country doctor's tools across miles of roads to farmhouses, taverns, bedsides. What did these saddlebags hold? Who might have touched them? How do we hold the healer and the enslaver in the same frame?Acquisition
Accession
1958.23Source or Donor
First Parish ChurchAcquisition Method
LoanRelationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Roby, Ebenezer