Tully Family Papers

William Tully was born on November 18, 1785, the son of Colonel William and Eunice Tully of Saybrook, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College in 1806. In the spring of 1807, Tully began studying medicine with Mason F. Cogswell of Hartford and in the fall of that year traveled to New Hampshire to study medicine with Nathan Smith at Dartmouth College. Upon his return to Connecticut in 1810, Tully studied under Samuel Carter and entered the office of Eli Ives, later professor of materia medica at Yale. Tully was licensed to practice by the Connecticut Medical Society in 1810 and opened an office in Enfield, Connecticut in 1811. In 1813, he married Mary Potter of Enfield. Tully lived and practiced for several years in Middletown, Connecticut, where he co-authored with Dr. Thomas Miner a book, Essays on Fevers, and Other Medical Subjects (1823). From 1824 to 1830 he was president and professor of medical practice and jurisprudence at the Vermont Academy of Medicine, in Castleton, Vermont. While at Castleton he was appointed professor of materia medica and therapeutics at the Medical Institution of Yale College and moved to New Haven; however he remained on the staff of the Vermont Academy until 1838. Tully resigned his chair at Yale in 1842 and eventually moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he lived with his two unmarried daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth. He continued his practice and taught at the Berkshire Medical Institution in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Late in his career, he published Materia Medica, or Pharmacology and Therapeutics (1857-58). He died in Springfield in on February 28, 1859, predeceased by his wife and survived by only three of their eleven children, Sarah, William, and Elizabeth. Sarah and Elizabeth continued to live together in Springfield after their father's death.

The Tully family came to New England from England in the 1640s. Tully's grandfather, William Tully of Saybrook married Elizabeth Lay and had three daughters and a son, Col. William Tully (1758-1811). Col. Tully married his cousin Eunice Tully (1758-1815) and had only one child, William Tully (1785-1859) who became a physician. Dr. William Tully's wife, Mary Potter (1791-1853), was the daughter of the Rev. Elam Potter (1742-1794) of Enfield and Sibyl Pease Potter (1754-1822). Some time after 1799, Sybil Potter was married again to the Rev. Nehemiah Prudden of Enfield, then a widower.