Dr Joseph Brown LADD

  General Notes:

Submitted By: Misty Flannigan June 24, 1998:
The Danbury Reporter and The Cyclopadia of American literature: Duyckinck, Evert A. (Evert Augustus), 1816-1878:

JOSEPH BROWN LADD, the son of William and Sarah Ladd, was born at Newport, R. I., in 1764. He received the rudiments of an English education, and at the early age of ten produced a few verses not without merit. In 1775 his father removed to a farm at Little Compton, which he cultivated with the assistance of his sons. This mode of life was distasteful to the young poet and would-be student, who was wont to hide himself away with his books, and on one occasion constructed a retreat in a thicket of alder bushes, to which he resorted, with his silent companions, daily for many months without detection. At the end of three years his father consented to a change, and placed him in a store; but this was still more repugnant to his taste than the farm. A printing office was next tried, where it was supposed his interest in books would be satisfied. While he was employed in learning his new trade, a gentleman who had noticed his literary readiness, suggested to him to write ballads on certain quack doctors in town. The success which followed the production of these satires so elated him, that he shot at higher game in the person of the celebrated divine, Dr. Hopkins, minister at Newport. The doctor did not relish the proceedings, complained to the father of his assailant, and the incident let to his withdrawal from the printing office. In the next change he was allowed to follow the bent of his inclination, which was to become a physician, and was placed in the charge of Dr. Isaac Senter. This gentleman sympathized with the literary taste of his pupil, and rendered him good service by lending him books, and directing his classical as well as medical studies. During the four years thus passed, most of his poems were written. Many of them were addressed, under the signature of Arouet, to Amanda, a name by which he designated a young lady to whom he was attached. She was a young orphan heiress, and her guardians are charged, by the writer of the poet's biography prefixed to the collection of his works in 1832, with throwing obstacles in the way of the union for the purpose of keeping the management of her estate in their own hands, as the trust was stipulated to terminate with the marriage of their ward. The lady favored him if the guardians did not, and they were privately engaged. In 1783, General Greene, the revolutionary hero, returned to Newport, and becoming acquainted with Ladd, who had just completed his medical education, recommended him to try his fortune at the south. In pursuance of the advice, he removed to Charleston, with letters of introduction from his distinguished friend. and was soon engaged in extensive practice. Here he also became a contributor to the public press, and published, among other articles, a criticism on Dr. Johnson, in which he exposes many of the doctor's weak points, a daring literary venture at that period. In 1785 he was appointed, by Governor Moultrie, fourth of July orator at the second celebration of the day in Charleston, the first there, or in any part. it is said, of the country, having been observed in 1778 by an address by Dr. Ramsay. In November, 1786, a political controversy in the newspapers in which he was engaged, led to a challenge from his opponent, which he felt forced, by the false public sentiment prevalent in the community, to accept. He threw away his fire, but received a wound from his antagonist which put an end to his life at the age of twenty-two. The duel took place in Philladelphia Alley, Charleston, SC. His literary remains were collected by his sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Haskins, of Rhode Island, and published, with a sketch of the authors life, by W. B. Chitterden, in 1832, forty-six years after his death. They consist of the poems to Amanda of which we have spoken, and a number of verses on patriotic and occasional topics.

"A Haunting Tale" By: Susan Hill Smith, October, 25, 1998: The brown book, published in 1832, has tender pages and a broken cover tied together with a red ribbon by the staff at the Charleston Library Society. Once the ribbon is undone, the volume falls open to a poem by Joseph Brown Ladd, a promising doctor forced to leave his beloved Amanda in Rhode Island until he could establish himself in Charleston after the Revolutionary War.

The ghost of a popular Charleston doctor may be searching for his lost love. Legend has it that the spirit of Dr. Joseph Brown Ladd haunts 59 Church St., also known as the Thomas Rose House for the man who built it in 1735. A marker outside the house refers to the ghost story, although it mixes up the doctor's middle and last names. Details of Dr. Joseph Brown Ladd's short, tragic life are found at the beginning of The Literary Remains of Joseph Brown Ladd, M.D., which his sister published years after his death. While Cathy Forrester says she's quite the skeptic when it comes to the supernatural, she does admit to possibly catching a glimpse
of an apparition on the staircase one evening.

The poem, "Absence," is one of several pieces addressed to Amanda, and while it rings with sadness, the author promises he will return to her one day.

"And blest in meeting, both shall live,'' the last line reads.

In real life, Ladd never saw Amanda again. He died in November 1786 at the age of 22, killed after a duel with a friend who resented Ladd's growing popularity in Charleston. As the story goes, Ladd spent his final days in a bedroom at 59 Church St., delirious with pain, calling for Amanda.

Two centuries later, some say Ladd's spirit still climbs the staircase of the house where he died. The legend of the lovesick poet has persisted for years as one of the Lowcountry's favorite ghost stories. The golden yellow house with green shutters at 59 Church St. certainly doesn't look haunted, though a marker that explains the history of the 263-year-old home alludes to the ghost story.

Cathy Forrester opens the door to the piazza on a breezy Saturday morning and leads the way to a back room that used to be part of a carriage house. She explains that her grandparents bought the house in 1941, and after they both died, she moved in with her family in 1988.

Forrester says she's a ghost skeptic. Yet, after being pressed several times, she admits that she may have caught a glimpse of an apparition not long after her family moved in, when her teen-age children were much younger.

Her husband was out of town that night, and she was trying to put the children to bed on the third floor. She walked back and forth from her son's room to her daughter's room several times, trying to settle them.

"I sort of, out of the corner of my eye, thought I saw a figure on the landing ...," she says. "My image was of a man, and not dressed in contemporary clothes. But it was just a split-second thing, and I didn't feel scared or threatened or anything like that."

There have been other incidents through the years, including several described to Forrester by her grandmother, Juliette Staats.

Visitors staying in the second-floor guest room where the doctor likely died would occasionally arrive at breakfast and ask who was walking up and down the stairs during the night.

One family friend told Mrs. Staats that he woke up suddenly, grabbed a sheet of paper and jotted down the letters "JBL." When he asked if the letters meant anything to her, she recognized them as Ladd's initials.

Mrs. Staats enjoyed telling such stories and admitted hearing noises herself during the years she and her husband used the guest bedroom as their own. But she also remained something of a skeptic. "If I believed in ghosts," she told the "Today" show in 1986, "I would believe he was a very good friend of the house and sort of protects the house and everyone that's in it."

Most Charlestonians are more familiar with Ladd's story as told by Margaret Rhett Martin in her classic 1963 book, "Charleston Ghosts." Ladd met a man named Ralph Isaacs the moment he stepped off the stagecoach in Charleston, according to Martin's story. Isaacs saved the doctor from some unsavory characters, and the two became fast friends.

Ladd was good-looking, charming and intelligent. He rented a room at 59 Church St., much to the delight of the two old sisters who lived there, Fannie and Dellie Rose. When he was not home writing love poetry to Amanda, he was in high demand on the Charleston social scene.

Isaacs wanted to spend more time with Ladd and grew resentful of the doctor's standing. The two friends argued one night over the performance of an actress in a play, and the disagreement escalated to the point that they traded insults in the Gazette of Charleston. Isaacs called Ladd "as blasted a scoundrel as ever disgraced humanity," according to Martin's account. Fearing his reputation might be damaged, Ladd took the advice of friends and challenged Isaacs to a duel which occurred in Philladelphia Alley. Yet, when the two confronted each other, Ladd could not follow through. He took his gun and fired in the air. Isaacs, consumed by envy, shot Ladd in both legs below the knees, intending to cripple him. Ladd's friends rushed him to 59 Church St., where the Rose sisters
nursed him and watched him grow weaker until he finally died.

Martin tells us that the sisters wrote to Amanda urging her to come to Charleston, but her guardian refused to let her come. "He had her watched by day and locked in her room at night," the story says.

Notes from Warren Ladd: Was a poet and a physician at Little Compton, RI; removed to Charleston, SC, In 1784 was appointed Fourth of July orator at the second celebration of the day in Charleston.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation. Physician, Poet

Joseph married.