Dorchester Illustration 2692 Charles Ellery Stedman
Today’s illustration highlights Charles Ellery Stedman and an illustration that he drew during the Civil War titled, “The Blockade.” The illustration depicts a man in uniform surrounded by fashionably dressed young women. The two pictures of Stedman show him at different stages of life.
Charles Ellery Stedman was born in 1831, in Chelsea, where his father was the surgeon at the U.S. Marine Hospital. Stedman attended Boston Latin School and entered Harvard College in 1848, graduating in 1852. He graduated from Harvard Medical College in 1855. In 1854, he was appointed Surgical House Pupil to the Massachusetts General Hospital. Stedman then worked at Rainsford Island Hospital and later the United States Marine Hospital.
Stedman married Edith Ellen Parker, and they moved to Dorchester in 1858. He served as a navy surgeon during the Civil War.
The following is from Project Muse https://muse.jhu.edu/article/419526/pdf
“The artist whose life and work are this book’s subject was a Massachusetts physician turned naval surgeon. He did sea duty from 1862 to 1865 on a steam corvette and on a monitor, blockading and supporting invasions of the South’s Atlantic coast. Finally he was on a supply ship which plied both Atlantic and Gulf waters. An amateur artist who had already published a volume of lithographs satirizing yachting, Stedman sketched during the war and subsequently drew a set of finished illustrations for the library of the Bay State’s Military Order of the Loyal Legion.”
Dr. Charles Ellery Stedman was a visiting physician at Boston City Hospital from 1872 to 1886. In the 1870s, he lived on Downer Court, and during the 1880s and 1890s, he lived at 6 Monadnock Street. He died in 1909 at his home in Brookline.