Gardiner, Silvester

Gardiner, Silvester or Sylvester, 1708–86, American colonial physician and landowner, b. South Kingstown, R.I. He studied medicine in London and Paris, built up a large practice in Boston, and established a chain of apothecary shops. Gardiner was the chief promoter of the Kennebec Company, which obtained (1753) a large strip of land on either side of the Kennebec River in Maine. He built the towns of Pittston and Gardiner in the development of this holding. Because he was an ardent Loyalist, his land was confiscated at the beginning of the American Revolution, and he fled to Halifax and later (1778) to England. He returned to the United States in 1785 and recovered part of his land in Maine, but his Boston property had been destroyed.