Dr. John de Sequeyra

A Biographical Sketch of Dr. John de Sequeyra

by Emma L. Powers

Dr. John de Sequeyra (1712- February 1795) local medical professional, first Visiting Physician at the Public Hospital, and the only Jewish resident of eighteenth-century Williamsburg.

Born in 1712 in London to a family of Portuguese Jewish descent, John de Sequeyra became a highly qualified medical practitioner. He received his degree in 1739 from the University of Leiden in Holland, where he probably studied with renowned scientist Hermann Boerhaave. Dr. de Sequeyra emigrated to Virginia in 1745 and immediately began practicing medicine in Williamsburg. His manuscript about the “Diseases in Virginia” and their usual treatments was compiled between 1745 and 1781. ¹ In February 1747/8 he attended most townspeople during a smallpox epidemic and kept notes about 85 households.²

A bachelor, Dr. de Sequeyra lived in at least two different lodgings in town: until October 1771 he rented from William Carter;³ the next year the doctor occupied the eastern part of the building now known as Shields Tavern, which he had leased from William Goodson for seven years. ⁴ Apparently de Sequeyra renewed that lease since he was still paying rent to Goodson’s estate in 1786⁵ and to widow Mary Goodson in April 1790.⁶ Sequeyra owned at least one slave, a man named Cain, whom Sequeyra bequeathed to Sally Green.⁷

The papers Dr. de Sequeyra left deal only with medical matters, so we know nothing about his religious beliefs or practices. Certainly there was no temple or synagogue in town—the closest sizable Jewish populations were in Richmond and Norfolk and they came into being only after the Revolution.⁸ Other than his appointment as Visiting Physician at the Public Hospital, for which his extensive medical training certainly qualified him, de Sequeyra never served in any official capacity.⁹ The local newspaper announced the death of Williamsburg’s “eminent famous physician” in early 1795.¹⁰ Where he was buried is not known. A portrait of Dr. de Sequeyra is on display at the Winterthur Museum.¹¹

Endnotes

¹Manuscript on microfilm M-1120, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; see also Harold B. Gill, Jr., ed., “Dr. De Sequeyra’s ‘Diseases in Virginia,’” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 86 (1978), pp. 295-298.

²Original in Library or Congress, Manuscripts Division, Virginia Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Box 1 (1606-1772); see also William Quentin Maxwell, ed., “A True State of the Smallpox in Williamsburg, February 22, 1748,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 63 (1955), pp. 269-274. In fact, these notes are so comprehensive as to form a kind of mid-eighteenth-century census for the town; see Cathy Hellier and Kevin Kelly, “A Population Profile of Williamsburg in 1748,” unpublished research report, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Library, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

³Virginia Gazette, ed. Purdie and Dixon, 17 October 1771. When he began living there is not known.

⁴Deeds 8: 236-238, dated 18 June 1772 and recorded 20 July 1772.

⁵Goodson’s estate settlement, Wills and Inventories 23: 114-115, dated 16 May 1786.

⁶Humphrey Harwood Ledger C, folio 31, under the date 8 April 1790.

⁷Deeds 7: 150, dated 29 April 1795 and recorded 20 July 1795.

⁸A few other Jews lived in eighteenth-century York County, e.g., the merchant Enoch Lyon of Yorktown whose will (dated 2 December 1788 and recorded 20 June 1803) mentions the synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, which had supported his mother; Will and Inventories 23: 621.

⁹Many county and colony offices required officers to swear they were Anglicans in good standing, an oath de Sequeyra might have wanted to avoid taking. In any case, few other local medical professionals held county offices.

¹⁰Virginia Gazette, Richmond, 18 March 1795; the obituary says he died at the end of February or on 30 January.

¹¹The portrait is reproduced in Shomer S. Zwelling, Quest for a Cure (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1985), p. 11.

Emma L. Powers is a historian in the Department of Historical Research. This paper was published in the “Freeing Religion Resource Book,” in Becoming Americans: Our Struggle to be Both Free and Equal. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1998.