Dr. Bodo Otto
To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we are featuring foreign-born patriots of the American cause. Today, we honor Dr. Bodo Otto, a senior surgeon during the Revolutionary War.
In 1711, Bodo Otto was born in what is now Hanover, Germany. His father was a forester on the noble estates of Baron Bodo von Oberg, the Count of Lauterburg, who was named the baby’s godfather.
He attended the University of Göttingen, where he studied surgery. In 1727, he apprenticed with a physician in the city of Hildesheim. Shortly after, he was a physician’s assistant in Hamburg, treating infectious diseases and he also served the Duke of Celle’s dragoons.
In 1739, Dr. Otto completed his formal training as a surgeon, and over the years, he served the region’s medical needs, including as Chief Surgeon at the fortresses of Scharzfels and Kalkberg.
In 1755, Otto moved his family to Philadelphia. As tensions against the British simmered, Dr. Otto spoke out, notably against the Stamp Act.
In 1773 he moved to Reading, Pennsylvania and became a leading citizen there, serving on the Berks County Committee of Public Safety and as a delegate representing the county in the Provincial Conference of 1776.
When war broke out, Dr. Otto, along with two of his sons, joined the medical service. In August 1776, Dr. Otto treated the military wounded in the Continental Army at the Battle of Long Island.
In 1777, he crossed the Delaware River with General Washington and treated both Continental soldiers and Hessians who fought for the British at the Battle of Trenton. Later that year, he treated the wounded of the Battle of Brandywine.
Aside from serving as a battlefield surgeon during his wartime service, he set up and led operations at several hospitals, including a smallpox hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, and another in Yellow Springs (now Chester Springs), Pennsylvania, where he treated the sick and wounded from the Valley Forge encampment. To fund the hospital, he often used is own funds. During this time, he held the rank of colonel in the New Jersey militia.
Otto retired from his service to the Continental Army when he was 70. After the war, he rebuilt his medical practice and ran apothecary shops in Reading and Baltimore, Maryland.
Dr. Bodo Otto died on June 13, 1787.
Here are other immigrant patriots:
- Tadeusz Kościuszko, military engineer, originally from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Pierre L’Enfant, a military engineer & architect, was largely responsible for the design of Washington, D.C., and was originally from France
- Casimir Pulaski, “Father of American Cavalry,” originally from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a major general originally from Prussia