Old Fairfield Academy & Medical College

Herkimer County News 1896

The fact that there is an academy in Fairfield, and that many years ago it was one of the leading medical colleges in the state from which hundreds of physicians were graduated, is known to many of the people of Herkimer County, but we venture to say that not one in ten knows anything further about it. The following extract from an article published in the Syracuse University Forum was written by Dr. Mercer, one of the oldest professors of the Syracuse Medical College.

“Fairfield, an obscure, out-of-the-way village of two hundred or three hundred inhabitants, situated eight or ten miles north of Little Falls, in Herkimer County, just on the borderline of civilization and the wilderness of the Adirondacks, once famous as a seat of medical learning, was a strange place to think of locating a medical college. As early as 1803 a literary academy was established at Fairfield. This may have formed a nucleus for the future medical college. The first medical instruction given at Fairfield in 1809 would seem to have had some connection with this institution, as the medical school was first known as the Academy of Medicine of Fairfield. In 1812 the legislature of the State of NY granted a charter to the embryo medical school under the name and title of the “College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of the State of NY” known as Fairfield Medical College. This was the sixth medical school organized in the United States, and upon its benches many of the older physicians of this and other states obtained their medical education. Then a medical education was largely obtained by office reading, under the direction of a preceptor, in some country village-there were not many cities then.”

“Fairfield was a strange place to locate a medical college. Then there were no great highways of travel through the state, no canals, no railroads, not even a well-established through line of stages, and one place for convenience was about as good as another. There were no inland cities. New York itself scarcely equaled the present population of the city of Rochester.”

“Fairfield Medical College held sway as a popular and flourishing institution for about thirty years, and well served its purpose for its day and generation. But thirty years brought a new generation, with altogether different surroundings; lines of stagecoaches had appeared and disappeared, canals and railroads had changed and were changing the whole thought and business of the country, and Fairfield had to yield to the change of surrounding circumstances. The session of 1839 was its last session.”

“Fairfield did great and good work in the twenty-six years it was a chartered medical college from 1813 to 1839. During these years 3,018 students matriculated, and 555 of them received the degree of M.D. The first graduating class of the college, in 1816, consisted of two members, Sylvester Miller and Horatio Orvis. The 2,463 students, who did not graduate, no doubt mostly obtained license to practice by passing an examination before the Censors of the various county medical societies of the state.”