Lemuel Shattuck was born on October 15, 1793 in Ashby, Massachusetts; he died on January 17, 1859 in Boston. He is remembered as a public health innovator, and for his work with vital statistics. Lemuel Shattuck was the son of John Shattuck, a farmer, and his wife Betsey. He married Clarissa Baxter in 1825; they had five children. Shattuck was almost entirely self-educated. From 1817 to 1822, he was a schoolteacher in Troy and Albany, New York, and in Detroit. From 1822 to 1833, he was a merchant in Concord, Massachusetts. He was a bookseller in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1834. From 1840 to 1850, he was a self-employed bookseller, publisher, public health writer, and statistician in Boston. Intermittently, he served as a legislator for Boston and the state of Massachusetts.

Shattuck was one of the prime-movers of public hygiene in the United States. With his report to the Massachusetts Sanitary Commission in 1850, he accomplished for New England what such men...