USA > New Jersey > Morris County > A history of Morris County, New Jersey : embracing upwards of two centuries, 1710-1913, Volume I > Part 18
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Officers-Rt. Rev. John J. O'Connor, D.D., president; Very Rev. George F. Brown, V.F., vice-president; Eugene S. Burke, secretary and treasurer.
Board of Directors-Rt. Rev. John J. O'Connor, D.D., Bishop of Newark; Rt. Rev. John A. Sheppard, V.G., Very Rev. George F. Brown, V.F., Eugene S. Burke, Francis Kluxen, Robert D. Foote, Edward Kelly, Coleman Randolph.
Hospital Staff : Consulting Physician-Walter B. James, D.M. Consulting Sur-
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geon-Parker Syms. M.D. Visiting Staff-H. A. Henriques, M.D., Medical Di- rector; Clifford Mills, secretary. Surgical Division : H. A. Henriques, M.D., J. B. Griswold, M.D., Clifford Mills, M.D., F. H. Glazebrook, M.D. Medical Division : Samuel C. Haven, M.D., Geo. H. Lathrope, M.D. Assistant-W. G. McCormack. Gynaecologists-Edward J. Ill, M.D., Charles L. Ill, M.D. Assistant-J. B. Griswold, M.D. Eye and Ear-E. Blair Sutphen, M.D. Assistant-Harry Vaughan, M.D. Neurologist-B. D. Evans, M.D. Pathologist-H. A. Cossitt, M.D. Etherizer- M. E. Scott, M.D. Dental Surgeon-Ray Welsh, D.D.S. Auxiliary Staff-G. S. DeGroote, M.D., A. W. Condict, M.D., A. E. Carpenter, M.D., J. Meigh, M.D., E. P. Cooper, M.D., A. B. Coultas, M.D., Fred H. Seward, M.D., J. W. Farrow, M.D., FI. W. Kice, M.D., F. W. Flagge, M.D., George H. Foster, M.D.
Dover Hospital-The Dover Hospital project, of which Rev. Dr. Hal- loway, of Hoagland Memorial Church, may be said to be the originator, was first brought before the people of Dover in September, 1907, through the efforts of the Nos Ipsae Club, an organization composed entirely of women. Great interest was at first manifested by the people and the organi- zation was soon perfected. A certificate of incorporation was presented for adoption and incorporators of Dover's most influential and representa- tive men appointed. Dover General Hospital was the name the people adopted for the institution under consideration.
It was at this period of growth that the hospital movement received its most deadly blow. Opposition, heretofore undreamed of, was presented in most damaging form; most of the men named as incorporators declined to act as such; the most enthusiastic and influential men of the organization withdrew their support, and suggested that the ladies of Nos Ipsae Club form the desired incorporation. Discouraged but not daunted by his lack of co-operation, the ladies did form the incorporation, the following acting as the board of trustees for the first year : President, Mrs. M. M. Searing ; first vice-president, Mrs. R. L. Cook; second vice-president, Mrs. Mary Waer, secretary, Mrs. J. H. Hulsart; treasurer, Mrs. A. P. McDavit; advisory board, Rev. Dr. Halloway, Wm. Baker, George Pierson, J. H. Hulsart.
This certificate was recorded by the Secretary of State January 2, 1909. A hospital auxiliary was at once organized and a fund started. Through the influence of the association a lot 85x100 feet was donated by Colonel Mase for a hospital site, November, 1909. While a hospital building has as yet not been realized, through the untiring efforts of the association the fund has slowly grown until to date there is over $4000 in the treasury toward such a building in the future.
Sanitarium-The St. Francis Health Resort, established 1895, known also as the Kneipp Water Cure, is located at Denville, Morris county, about thirty miles west of New York City, on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad. It is an ideal place for rest. It is under the direction and management of Rev. Joseph Joch. The resident physician is Dr. M. Schmitz. The consulting physician is Dr. F. W. Flagge. It is here one can get the healing balm which nature so abundantly furnishes, and which the medical profession so wisely recommends.
This place of rest is 700 feet above sea level, abounding in pure air, pure water and sandy soil, which insures perfect drainage. Every incentive for outdoor exercise; a special feature of the institution is the application of the principles or hydrotherapy to the guests desiring this treatment. The gymnasium part consists of two separate rooms, one for men and one for women. The bathroom is equipped with a modern hydrotherapeutic appara- tus by means of which a rain bath, needle or circular bath, a douche, or com- binations of douches can be given with absolute precision, as to duration,
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pressure and temperature. A hot air and electric light cabinet in an adjoin- ing room are used in conjunction with the regular hydrotherapy. Massage, application and dressing rooms are conveniently located near the douche department.
The aim of those in charge is to educate its patients to a simple and natural method of living, as many affections are directly traceable to unnatural methods of life and tyrannous customs imposed upon our day and generation.
HOSPITALS AT MORRIS PLAINS
In this vicinity are located three institutions, two of which are county and one State. The county institutions are the Almshouse for the poor of Morris County, and the County Tuberculosis Hospital. The former was removed from Parsippany a few years ago. A farm was purchased on the hill west of Morris Plains, and a commodious brick building erected, where nearly a hundred men and women find comfortable homes. The Almshouse is superintended by Mr. Lewis Dufford, of German Valley.
County Tuberculosis Hospital-On a high elevation about eighty degrees above the village of Morris Plains, is located this modern building for the care of tuberculosis cases in the county. The building is nearing com- pletion and will probably be ready for occupancy by the time this sketch is in print. The institution joins the Almshouse farm. It faces south by east, commanding pleasant mountain and valley views in all directions. The soil is gravelly, percolation is very rapid, and there is no ground water in the vicinity. There is a ridge at the northwest which acts as a windbreak. The plans for the building were developed by Architect J. J. Vreeland, Jr., of Dover, New Jersey.
There are sanitarium accommodations for ten acute and fourteen con- valescent or incipient cases in the administration building and jean-to. The acute cases will be taken care of in the individual rooms, which are located on the first and second floors. Each patient has a dircct access to a porch by means of a combination of door and double-hung windows through which a bed may be wheeled. All patients' rooms have southern exposure and by the above arrangements will receive sunlight during some portion of the day. The light, ventilation, plumbing, heating (steam), baths are all that could be desired in an institution of this kind. The interior walls are plaster with King Asbestos mortar in hard white finish. The exterior walls are laid with dark red brick. The lean-tos, located at either end of the administration building, are designed to give sleeping accommodations for seven persons in each. The hospital is a credit to Morris county. It was the outcome of wise legislation that the counties must care for their own tuberculosis patients. The freeholdcis have shown wisdom in the selection of the site, also in executing the plans provided by Architect Vreeland.
The Morris County Medical Society, however, deserves to be consid- ered as the prime mover in bringing about a sentiment that led up to this institution, by action taken at a meeting held in Dover, when a resolution prevailed as the census of the society, urging the freeholders of Morris county to take the necessary steps for such provision.
State Hospital for the Insane at Morris Plains-This institution is located at Greystone Park, just west of the village of Morris Plains. The necessary data were not obtainable that would enable us to give a descrip- tion of one of the finest and best-equipped hospitals in the State. However,
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as the asylum is so well known throughout the State and country, it will not need a detailed account. When the institution was first opened it could accommodate 900 inmates; the building has been enlarged to a capacity of 2400. At present the place is overcrowded, and efforts are being made to have the State provide more room for her insane. The medical depart- ment is under the direction of Britton D. Evans, M. D. The warden is M. D. Bowden.
PROMINENT PRACTITIONERS
Isaiah Winds Condict, son of Hiram and Abigail (Beers) Condict, was born at Succasunna Plains, on the farm known as Arbor Vitae Lodge, October 6, 1817. On his mother's side he was related to General Wm. Winds, of Morris county. His early education was acquired in the district school at Succasunna. Because of his father's straightened circumstances he left home at fourteen years of age, and became clerk in a country store. Determined to secure an education, he studied at night and at odd times, and prepared himself for teaching, which he followed for ten years, begin- ning in the district school at Stillwater, Sussex county, and teaching also in other places in Warren county, and Orange county, New York. During the last years of his teaching he studied medicine with the late Dr. Canfield, of Succasunna. He entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, and was graduated from there in 1847. In the spring of that year he saw performed in New York the first operation with the use of anaesthetics.
He began his medical career as a general practitioner at Blairstown1, New Jersey, in the fall of 1847. While there he was interested in providing better educational advantages for the village, and became one of the leaders in the movement that resulted in founding Blair Presbyterial Academy, now a large boarding and day school. Dr. Condict, with several others, was on the building committee. When this building was completed the doctor was urged to become principal of the school, and reluctantly con- sented upon condition that he be allowed to practice his profession, and his successor be found, so he was principal of the school for the year 1848-49, teaching during the day, and practicing his profession at night. From 1849-1851 he was house surgeon in Bellevue Hospital, New York. There he contracted typhoid fever and suffered a long, serious illness. In1 1851 he returned to Succasunna and practiced there several years, when he removed to Burlington, New Jersey, remaining only a short time. (Malaria and mosquitoes drove him away.) In 1856 he removed to Dover, New Jersey, where he continued in active practice until a few years before his death, July 4, 1911. In 1851 he married Mary Trimble Carroll, of New York City. They had ten children, four of whom still survive-Daniel Trimble, a physician, of Goshen, New York; Edward Carroll, a dentist, of Trenton; Arthur Winds, a physician of Dover; and a daughter, Mrs. George Singleton, of Dover.
Dr. Condict was a Republican in politics, greatly interested in all public affairs, although he never held a political office. He was a man of strong convictions, and followed the course he considered right, caring nothing for adverse criticism. He was kind-hearted and benevolent; a friend of all needing his services, never refusing to answer a call, working day and night through the years of his active professional life. He was closely iden- tified with religious and educational affairs. He was a consistent member of the Presbyterian church more than sixty years. He was an elder in the church at Dover many years, a member of the board of trustees twenty-five
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years, and an active worker in the Sunday school until a few years before liis death. He was instrumental in securing good private schools in Dover, and was an active member of the Public School Board of Education for thirty years.
Dr. I. W. Condict was a man possessing a wide range of knowledge, always able to discuss very intelligently any of the current events. The writer recalls distinctly calling on the doctor one evening, and found him studying astronomy, at the age of ninety. He hungered and thirsted for knowledge, and no physician in the county was more up to date than he, his patients getting the advantage of every new invention or any modern treatment. Dr. Condict signed the constitution, becoming a member of the Morris District Medical Society in 1873. He was, therefore, one of the reorganizers of the society which was defunct from 1857 to 1873. Few if any in the society did more to keep alive its interests than he. He continued to be an active member of the society until he had reached the age of eighty- eight years. His hearing no longer acute, annoyed somewhat by other mat- ters incident to his age, he feit he could no longer derive any benefit from the meetings, so he presented his resignation as a member of the Morris District Medical Society. It was with regret accepted, and the secretary instructed to inform the doctor of the high esteem in which he was held, and that he was released as an active member, but as a mark of apprecia- tion the society would make him an honorary member, which relationship he held until he joined the great majority at the age of ninety-three years, nine months and five days. A man may often be known better by the books he reads than the company he keeps, and Carlyle says a poem will often tell us of the man, and so we let Dr. Condict's reply to the secretary be a part of this history :
My dear Dr. Kice :
Dover, N. J., January 16th, 1906.
I wish to thank you for yours of the Ist inst., which should have been answered promptly. The very kind spirit it brings both from yourself, as well as from the members of the Morris Co. Medical Society, appeals very touchingly to my personal sense. During the entire period of my association with the gentlemen of the So- ciety, nothing of an unpleasant character occurred. The notice from you of the funeral of Dr. Miller was the first and only intelligence I have of his illness and death. My children here protest against my attendance; not that I am sick, or out of health, but I have an infirmity incident to my age which is imperious, and will not wait. Dr. Reed, of Madison, Farrow, (son of Levi) Waters, Cummins, Miller, with many others from our Society and vicinity, remind us we too are mortal. I can say with Dr. Mitchell :
"I know the night is near at hand, The mist lies low on hill and bay ; The autumnal sheaves are dewless dry, But I have had, have had the day.
Yes, I have had the day, Dear Lord, When at thy call, I have the night, Brief be the twilight, as I pass From light to dark, from dark to light." Fraternally yours,
I. W. CONDICT.
Phanett C. Barker, M. D., was born 1835, in Oneida county, New York, a son of G. W. Barker, a merchant, who married a Miss Coe. He received a thorough academical education, and in 1856 began the study of medicine with an eminent surgeon, Dr. S. G. Wolcott, of Utica. He was a student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, from which institution he received his degree of Doctor in Medicine, March, 1860. He subsequently became an assistant physician at Bellevue Hos-
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pital, New York, where he passed a year. In 1861 he commenced the prac- tice of medicine in association with Dr. F. D. Lente, of Cold Spring, New York.
In 1868 he removed to Morristown and opened an office on the site of the New National Iron Bank, South street, opposite DeHart. He secured an extensive and influential medical and surgical practice, and was regarded as a very leading practitioner of Morristown and Morris county. He filled the offices of vice-president and president of the county and State medical societies, the latter an honor much sought and keenly prized. In the last fifteen years of his life he received from the University of Princeton the honorary degree of Master of Arts, and his mind conceived and his energy carried to completion the Morristown Memorial Hospital Annex for Con- tagious Diseases, which has been of inestimable value to Morris county citizens. Of this hospital he was physician-in-chief from the time of its opening until he retired from active practice, when he was appointed its medical superintendent.
Dr. Barker was several times alderman and once recorder of Morris- town. He also polled a fine complimentary vote for mayor. He wrote ably for the medical magazines of the day, was the medical adviser and close friend in many of the prominent families of Morristown and vicinity, and was a man of unblemished character and attributes. He died August 21, 1903, aged sixty-eight years and three months.
Henry Hulshizer, M. D .- We do not know the names of the five brothers who left Bendorf on the Rhine and sailed for America, but one of this number had a son Andrew, who was father of Henry, the subject of this sketch, who died March 8, 1885, at his residence in Port Oram, Morris county, New Jersey, of epithelioma of the larynx. He was borni in the vicinity of Stewartsville, Warren county, March 28, 1827, and was the second of five brothers. His father's family consisted of five sons and five daughters. His early life was occupied in assisting his father on the farm. He acquired the elements of a substantial common school educa- tion in his native district.
In the office of Dr. P. F. Hulshizer, a cousin of Henry, he prosecuted his medical studies and graduated at the Philadelphia Medical College in March, 1856. The same season he opened an office in the village of Stan- hope, Sussex county, New Jersey, and remained there until 1858, when he located in Marksboro, Warren county, and in 1861 he removed to the neighboring village of Hope, in the same county, where he remained prac- ticing his profession until 1871, when he removed to Port Oram, Morris county. Here he soon built up an extensive practice among the mining population, in whose midst he resided. Being intelligent and of a social disposition he formed a large circle of acquaintances and attached many farm friends to himself.
Always alive to public interests, he was an earnest politician. In early life he was a Whig, next a Republican, and finally he became a member of the Greenback division of politicians. Being thoroughly honest and without guile, he could always be found acting in the line of his convic- tions, with but little regard to what is known as policy.
In his professional life he was a close observer of his cases, conserva- tive in his treatment; being gifted with a retentive memory he relied more on his own experience and observation than on the teachings of medical writers. In severe and critical cases he often sought the counsel of his professional brethren, not so much from a want of confidence in himself as
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from a desire to share the responsibility with another. While practicing in Sussex and Warren counties he sustained membership with each county medical society, and at the reorganizing of the Morris District Medical Society in 1873, shortly after he became a resident of the county, he becaine a member and attended all its stated meetings. He was strictly honorable in all his dealings with his medical brethren.
In 1861 he married Miss Adelaide Wildrick, daughter of William Wildrick. Miss Adelaide was also a niece of Hon. Isaac Wildrick, of Warren county. By this union the doctor had two sons-Alfred, of New- ark, and Wildrick, at Franklyn, with whom the widow lives; and two daughters-Mrs. Wm. H. Tonking and Mrs. J. L. Kice, both of Dover, New Jersey.
Much of his professional work was among the laboring classes, par- ticularly the workers in the iron mines, whose wages since the beginning of the "panic times" have been low, and consequently his percentage of loss on the work done has been very heavy. So strong was his sympathy for the suffering and afflicted that no worthy person ever applied for his help in vain. The doctor was an active member of the Morris District Medical Society. He was one of the number who reorganized the society in 1873, and was made president in 1880.
Dr. Stephen Pierson was born in Morristown, November 8, 1844, and died there August 10, 1911 .* Whether direct descent from sturdy and stalwart colonial settlers in New England accounts in any way for the dis- tinction achieved by him, we will not attempt to say. It is, however, of interest to note that in Branford, Connecticut, are still found its early colonial archives, that these show that on November 27, 1662, Rev. Abraham Pierson joined in marriage Thomas Pierson and Maria Harrison, and that from these two descended in the seventh generation our Dr. Pierson, son of Edward, son of Stephen, son of Samuel, son of Timothy, son of Thomas Pierson Jr., son of Thomas and Maria ( Harrison) Pierson aforesaid. This senior Thomas Pierson removed in 1666 with Rev. Abraham Pierson and others to New Jersey, and there went to work to erect a church and some dwellings which were the embryotic Newark, with its now 400,000 inhabi .. tants. The grandson of the first Thomas, Timothy Pierson, born in 1710, removed from Newark or its vicinity, and purchased on "Whatnong Plains," above the State Hospital, property later known as Piersontown. The prospect from his dwelling was and is grandiose. He subjugated the rock-indented virgin soil with the family vigor and established the original sawmill.
The earlier Piersons, unlike their neighbors and friends the Pitneys, did not until the seventh generation turn aside from agriculture to either the bar, the bench, the field or the forum. But their descendant, the sub- ject of this sketch, filled many and worthy positions. And who will doubt that, had he so desired, he could have represented his State or his country in legislative assembles as ably as he fearlessly and brilliantly represented them on the field of battle? Or that, had he lived until '86 instead of being called home at '66, he might have successively aspired to diplomatic or other civic honors.
His playmate, Hon. Francis Woodruff, tells us that Dr. Pierson at the ages of six to ten was gentle, modest, docile, and well liked by his little playfellows at the "Dame School" in Morristown, taught by a Mrs. Morrow.
*The compiler acknowledges his indebtedness to Dr. Frederick Wooster Owen, M.D., Morristown.
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Later these two men, who each cut a "swath" for himself, one in America, the other in faraway China, attended together for several years the old "Morris Academy," which was under the tutelage of Messrs. Paul, J. Henry Johnson and others. Here discipline was rigid, and Stephen Pierson, who (emulous of self-support) afterwards taught in the same academy, sus- tained an enviable reputation as a close student and a brainy, energetic comrade. Mr. Francis Woodruff relates that, a fire breaking out in the old academy building, all turned to Stephen Pierson for initiative, and that he organized a "bucket brigade" which controlled the fire before the arrival of the firemen. Thus early did the boy prove the father of the undaunted and resourceful man.
Having gotten something ahead (which the father would have willingly provided), and being cut out for college, to college the young man went, and had shown his mettle, through his freshman year at Yale, when war for and against "The Union" made the gales of the north and the breezes of the south martially resonant with "John Brown's Body" and "'Way Down South in Dixie." What time the streets and highways on both sides of "Mason and Dixon's Line" trembled with the tread of hundreds of regiments of enthusiastic volunteers. One of these was the 27th New Jersey Volunteers (nine months' regiment), commanded by Col. George W. Mindil, late assistant adjutant general on the brigade staff of Gen. David Birney. This regiment marched to the front in September, 1862, and with it, abandoning college for the time, went the young private soldier of whom we treat. When it is considered that a colonel's mouthpiece and representative, such as is the regimental adjutant, is selected from officers both intelligent and forceful, it is a fair inference that Mindil chose Stephen Pierson to be adjutant of the 27th because he was such a man. It is not strange that when Col. Mindil had received the command of the new 33d New Jersey Volunteers, Pierson should have re-enlisted with him and have been promoted first to seargeant-major and then to adjutant as soon as the gallant Lambert was made captain. Dr. Pierson's record of honor in the two commands cannot be more than noticed in a brief study of his whole life, its motives and its accomplishments. A commissioned officer in the field and a medal of honor man, he fought in Virginia under Burnside and Meade, in Georgia (where he was wounded at Pine Knob) under Thomas and Sherman. He was found "marching through Georgia," and he was of that column of Western Giants in the "Grand Review" by President John- son, and all that was distinguished at the Capitol, which closed the successful but bloody struggle for the Union.
Foster's "History of the New Jersey Regiments in the Civil War" states that the 27th Regiment was under fire on various occasions, that it mani- fested sterling bravery, and that when its term of service expired it offered to serve the government in the Gettysburg campaign, actually doing so for an etxra month, when, it not being longer required, it was mustered out with this additional act of patriotism to its credit. As to the 33d New Jersey, Foster writes: "The 33d N. J. Volunteers fired the last shots of the war (fighting with the rebel cavalry). This regiment in a little less than two years traversed a distance of 2500 miles, over 1700 of which were accom- plished by marching. It fought in eight battles and engaged in over a dozen skirmishes. Although but two years in service, the losses of battle and campaign were such that the regiment was twice filled."
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