John billings grammy

John Billings (1729-1780) was a South Carolina militiaman during the American Revolutionary War.

Biography[]

John Billings was born in South Carolina in 1729, and he befriended Benjamin Martin while serving in the colonial militia during the French and Indian War. The two became close, and Martin was very pleased when Billings enlisted in his militia in 1780 during the American Revolutionary War. Billings was one of the 18 captured at the Battle of King's Highway, and he was freed in a ruse of war engineered by Martin, in which the American prisoners were traded for straw dummies posing as British officers. Billings helped Martin save his family from the Selton plantation on the Santee River, only to find that his own home had been attacked by the British Army. When he saw that his wife and son had been murdered by William Tavington's Green Dragoons, he shot himself in the head with a pistol in front of all of his comrades.

Librarian, building designer and surgeon

For the editor of Life magazine, see John Shaw Billings (editor).

John Shaw Billings (April 12, 1838 – March 11, 1913) was an American librarian, building designer, and surgeon^[1] who modernized the Library of the Surgeon General's Office in the United States Army. His work with Andrew Carnegie led to the development and his service as the first director of the New York Public Library. Billings oversaw the building of the Surgeon General's Library, which was the nation's first comprehensive library for medicine.

Because of his approach to improving public health and hospitals, Billings was asked to head the U.S. Census Bureau's Vital Statistics division, where he oversaw statistical compilation of censuses. With Robert Fletcher, Billings developed Index Medicus, a monthly guide to contemporary medicine that was published for sixteen months until Billings' retirement from the Medical Museum and Library.^[2]

Billings aided the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in adjusting the organization

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