History of Madison County Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions, Part 52

Author: Chester E. Bryan
Publication date: 1915
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1207

USA > Ohio > Madison County > History of Madison County Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions > Part 52

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Dr. Israel Bigelow, father of the preceding, was born August 21, 1774, in' Dum- merston, Windham county, Vermont. His father was Rev. Isaac Bigelow, a Revolu- tionary soldier, and his grandfather was Isaac Bigelow, of the province of Maine. At the age of about eighteen, or in 1792, he became a pupil of Doctor White, of Schenec- tady, state of New York, and practiced at Balston Spa, New York, until 1812, when he moved to Center county, Pennsylvania. In 1823, he moved to New Philadelphia, Ohio, and in 1828 to Pleasant Valley, this county, where he remained the rest of his life. He was very justly eminent in his profession, both as a physician and as a sur- geon. As a surgeon, he was many years in advance of any other surgeon of the county. He operated in this county for vesical calculi by the lateral operation; re- moved the tibia by resection (on Brainard Hager) ; removed the entire breast for cancer (Mrs. Zenas Hutchison, Dublin) ; and performed many other important opera- tions. He married, first, Eunice Kathron, daughter of Daniel Kathron, of Balston Spa, New York, born on August 23, 1774. He married, secondly, Miss Clippiner; and third, Mary Brown, the mother of Diana, Hosea B. and Chamberlain B. Bigelow. He died of vesical calculi, at his home in Pleasant Valley, May 28, 1838, aged sixty-four.

Dr. Daniel K. Bigelow, son of Dr. Israel Bigelow, born in Balston, Spa, New York, March 22, 1801, studied medicine with his father, and commenced practice with his brother, Dr. Lebbens Bigelow, at Morris Crossroads, Fayette county, Pennsylvania. In 1823, he moved to Adamsburg, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, where he re- mained until 1831, when he came to Ohio and settled on the farm near Pleasant Valley, this county, where he afterward died. He never was idle and though his professional charges were ridiculously low, he accumulated a fair estate, continuing in active prac- tice up to the time of his death. He married, February 7, 1822, Lydia Custer, of Georges township, Fayette county, Pennsylvania, who was born on April 24, 1826. daughter of George and Catherine (Leatherman) Custer, and died at her home, near Pleasant Valley, November 14, 1854, of strangulated hernia. He died at his home, near Pleasant Valley, on the 10th of November, 1850, of diabetes, aged fifty years.

Dr. William F. King, raised out on the Darby plains, a brother of Joseph, Benja- min and Sarah King, studied medicine with Dr. Israel Bigelow, of Pleasant Valley. Tradition preserves a recollection of him as having been a particularly handsome, graceful and courtly gentleman. He practiced in conjunction with Dr. Israel Bigelow, he attending mostly to the visiting of patients, while the old doctor looked after the office business. He married Diana, daughter of Dr. Israel and Polly (Brown) Bige- low, and died not many years afterward, at Pleasant Valley.

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Doctor Fitch, a large, handsome, elegant-looking gentleman, was located at Plain City about 1842. It is possible, however, that he was not as elegant as he appeared. He compounded a nostrum that met with a large and ready sale as an ague specific, that he called "the devil's toenail." Dr. James Sidney Skinner was located at Plain City about 1842. Dr. Willis Hix Twiford, son of Rev. Clement Twiford, born and raised in Ross county, Ohio, studied with Dr. J. S. Skinner, commenced practice in Pleasant Valley about 1842, and moved to Union City, Indiana, about 1853. He was a surgeon of an Indiana regiment during the war and directly after the war moved to Minnesota. He married Nancy Dominy, daughter of Jeremiah Dominy, of Darby township, this county, about the time he entered upon his professional career.

Dr. Jeremiah Converse was born in Darby township, this county, in the year 1822; studied medicine with Dr. Marshall P. Converse and commenced practice at Liverpool in 1846. He was graduated from Starling Medical College in 1848. He located on the old homestead in Darby township, of which he became the owner, three miles from Plain City, in 1847, and married Sarah, daughter of Farmery Hemenway. Dr. James L. McCampbell, who located in Pleasant Valley about the year 1846, was a brother to Andrew and Samuel McCampbell, well known in their day in and about New California. He was well qualified for the profession and was active and diligent in business. He would have been a tall man, but rickets in his childhood had made him very short in the body. He had an immense practice in 1848 and 1849, and led the profession in the north part of the county. He died of typhoid fever, unmarried, about 1850.

Dr. Joel N. Converse, son of Lothrop, was born and raised in Darby township. His widowed mother married, secondly, a Mr. Wheeler, who lived and died on the south end of what long was known as the Solomon Cary farm. He studied medicine for awhile in the East and after his marriage settled at Beachtown, in Union county, this state. About the year 1851 he located at Pleasant Valley and about 1853 moved to Union City, Indiana, where for years he was identified with railroad men and with railroad enterprises but later moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. He married Ann Eliza Phillips, daughter of Seth Phillips, of Darby township, this county.

NATIVE AND TO THE MANNER BORN.

Dr. John E. McCune, "native and to the manner born," was born and raised near the village of Plain City. He left the farm and was for a time clerk for George A. Hill & Company but left that calling to commence the study of medicine with Dr. James L. McCampbell. He fitted himself very thoroughly for the profession, and then, like any other sensible young man when entering upon the profession, he married a sensible young woman and then put out his sign. His history, as a boy, a clerk, a medical student, practitioner, druggist and citizen, is a part of the history of West- minster, of Pleasant Valley, and of Plain City. Dr. Charles McCloud for a time was located at Pleasant Valley, but his memory as a physician is more definitely associ- ated with the period of his long continued practice at Amity.

Dr. William Inskeep Ballinger, eldest son of Joshua and Delilah (Inskeep) Bal- linger, was born in Logan county, Ohio, October, 1828, and was for three years, from 1848, a student at the old Marysville Academy in Union county, Ohio, under the su- perintendency of Reverend Sterritt, Rev. Joseph B. Smith and Hon. James W. Robin- son. In September, 1860, he entered the Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, for three years, and, in the fall of 1853, entered as a pupil the office of Dr. David W. Henderson, Marysville, Ohio. He took one course of lectures at Starling Medical College, session of 1854-55, and one, session of 1855-56, at Cleveland Medical College. Cleveland, Ohio, where he was graduated on April 9, 1856. He settled in Pleasant

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Valley the same year, and formed a partnership with Dr. John N. Beach, and for years was engaged in his profession. In conjunction with Richard Woodruff he built the flour-mill in 1873. He married, February 18, 1857, Matilda, daughter of John and Eliza (Mark) Taylor, of Darby township. Dr. Thomas Jefferson Haynes, son of J. B. W. Haynes, of Richwood, Union county, Ohio, was a graduate in medicine and practiced for a few years in New California, Union county, this state, near which place he was married to a daughter of Jesse Mitchell. He moved to Pleasant Valley about the year 1860, and was captain of Company G, Seventeenth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, three-months' men. He died at Pleasant Valley in 1863, of ery- sipelas of the throat. He was regarded as a man of much more than ordinary ability. Dr. Salathiel Ewing, a son of James M. and a grandson of James Ewing, the first white settler of, what is now Union county, Ohio, for years . was counted among the best practitioners of this county. He and Dr. M. J. Jenkins were the prime movers in the organization of the Madison County Medical Association, of which Doctor Ewing became the first president. He also was a member of the Ohio State Medical Society. Dr. A. Sells, another Pleasant Valley practitioner, was raised near Dublin, in Franklin county. He married Angalla Halm, of Columbus, Ohio, who long survived him. Dr. A. Haner was a practitioner in Plain City for years. He also was an active business man, and stood well in the profession. Dr. A. Carpenter was for a few years located at Amity. He married Lucy Jane, daughter of Asa and Thankful Con- verse.

Dr. M. J. Jenkins, second son of Rev. Thomas and Anne Jenkins, was born in Aleramman, South Wales, November 15, 1853, at which place and neighboring towns the first ten years of his life were spent. In 1864, he came to America with his fa- ther, on temporary business, but his father, becoming infatuated with the country, left his son in charge of friends at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, while he returned to Europe for the balance of his family. Returning to America, his father became the pastor for seven years of the Welsh Congregational church at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, removing thence to Radnor, Delaware county, Ohio, where he became pastor of the church of the same denomination, retaining that connection for ten years, at the end of which time he removed to Sharon, Pennsylvania, and thence, in May, 1881, to Waterville, Oneida county, New York. In 1873 M. J. Jenkins entered Ohio Wesleyan University, where he remained for three years, having previously prepared himself for college in the high schools of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Radnor, Ohio. He was graduated from Miami Medical College at Cincinnati on March 1, 1878, and located at Plain City on May 1 of the same year. Doctor Jenkins was active in organizing the Madison County Medical Society, and was the first permanent secretary of the same. He was married, December 24, 1879, to May Beem, of Richwood, Ohio, a cultured lady and eldest daughter of Owen and Ellen Beem.

Dr. F. M. Mattoon was born on June 21, 1842, in Genoa, Delaware county, Ohio, and was educated at Central College. He commenced the study of medicine in July, 1869, under Doctor Andrus, of Westerville, Ohio, and attended a course of lectures at Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery in 1870, but remained a pupil under Doctor Andrus until the spring of 1872, when he entered the office of Dr. Davis W. Halder- man, Columbus, Ohio, where he remained until he was graduated at Starling Medical College on February 23, 1873. He located in Belle Centre, Logan county, this state, in April, 1873, remaining there three years, at the end of which time he removed to Piqua. Ohio, and thence, in 1877, to the Darby plains, stopping at Unionville Center for three years, at the end of which time, in April, 1880, he located at Plain City. He married, July 29, 1875, Miriam R. Lecky, of Millersburg. Ohio, who was graduated, with the class of 1857. from the Ohio Wesleyan Female College at Delaware, Ohio.

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JEFFERSON.

Dr. David Wilson, who was born in Washington county, Pennsylvania, April 20. 1789, did not study medicine until past middle life, at which period he became a pupil of Dr. Robert Houston, of South Charleston, Ohio. He commenced practice at West Jefferson, this county, December 1, 1831, and continued in active practice about twen- ty-five years. He died of apoplexy at his home in Jefferson, July 15, 1877. in the eighty-eighth year of his age.

Dr. Jeunett Stutson, born in Scituate, Massachusetts, September 7, 1807, was a pupil of Dr. John A. Turner, of Zanesville, Ohio. In the winter of 1836-37, he attended one course of lectures at Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, and came directly from the college to Madison county. locating at Jefferson, where he resided until his death. September 23, 1861, aged fifty-eight years.

Dr. Ezra Bliss had practiced in Vershire, Vermont, for several years before coming to Madison county. He was twice married, having had twelve children by his first wife and four by his second, of whom Webb Bliss was the youngest. Doctor Bliss located at Jefferson about 1846 and dled there about 1852.

Dr. John McCullough, who was born on January 10, 1805, in Washington county, Pennsylvania, studied medicine in eastern Ohio, and afterward practiced medicine for several years in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. He moved to Jefferson, this county, in 1848, where he continued to practice until about 1872, when age and failing health com- pelled him to desist. He was married in 1827 to Abba Brower and died on December 26,. 1880, in Springfield, Ohio.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin Crabb, son of Rev. Henderson and Jemimah (Downing) Crabb, was born in Amity, this county, and studied with Dr. Jennett Stutson of Jeffer- son. He was graduated from Starling Medical College and practiced a few years after 1850 in Jefferson, removing thence to South Charleston, Ohio, and afterward to Wash- ington, Iowa. He was a colonel in the Union army, and was taken prisoner in his first battle, that of Bellmont, Missouri. His last days were spent in Lincoln. Nebraska.

Doctor Johnson, from about 1851 to 1854, was a popular physician, who died in Jefferson in the last named year.

Dr. D. W. Seal, Doctor Archer and Doctor Davis, all eclectics, practiced at Jeffer- son for a short time from about 1852. Doctor Seal created the impression of being a man of ability and general intelligence. He was tall, with an intellectual countenance, high forehead, and a cultured gentleman. He had a wife and several children and died about 1857 of consumption.

Dr. Thomas W. Forshee practiced at Jefferson about 1854 to 1857. He was a graduate In medicine, and moved to Amity, from which place he went into the army as an officer in the Fourth Ohio Cavalry. He resigned during the war and became an assistant surgeon to some regiment, later moving to Illinois.

Dr. John Colliver was born in Kentucky on December 6, 1811. and came to Ohio as early as 1840. In 1842 he lived over in the Darby plains, on one of James Wilson's farms. It is said of him that he neglected to try to save his large crop of hemp that he had sown, but that he would sit down on the hearth in his log cabin, with his back to the jamb, and alternate until the "wee sma' hours" of night between his book and an effort to keep the faggots burning bright enough to see to read. He subse- quently studied medicine with Dr. Daniel Bell, of Somerford township, this county, and located at Mechanicsburg, where he practiced for several years. He moved to Amity about 1852. and was there in 1856, when the smallpox got hold of his family. One daughter died and the entire family became victims to the disease. In 1857 he moved to Lafayette. this county. and in 1858 located at Jefferson. He was long remem- bered as a genial old gentleman, and honorable as a colleague in the profession, being

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regarded as one of the most eminent eclectic physicians who ever resided in this county. He died of pneumonia at his home in Jefferson on June 10, 1865. He mar- ried, February 5, 1832, in Kentucky, Matilda Robinson.

Dr. John Noble Beach, born at Amity, this county, January 29, 1829, was the pupil of Dr. Charles McCloud, and was graduated from Starling Medical College on Febru- ary 25, 1850. After a few years of practice at Unionville Center and Plain City, he removed to Jefferson, August 8, 1858. He spent three years in the army. He was married on June 1, 1858, to Eliza J. Snyder, of Champaign county, this state.

Dr. Homer Summerfield Quinn, son of Rev. Isaac and Cynthia (Witten) Quinn. born on February 28, 1849, was a pupil of Dr. John H. Quinn, of Clinton county, this . state, and was graduated from the Medical College of Ohio, with the class of 1862. and, located at Jefferson in the same year. He was elected by the Democratic party to. the state Legislature in the fall of 1877. He married Betty Putnam, of Jefferson, in 1870.

Dr. Jefferson T. Colliver, born in Kentucky on January 19, 1841, son of Dr. John and Matilda (Robinson) Colliver, was graduated from the Eclectic Medical Institute at Cincinnati on June 1, 1864. He located in Jefferson, and after the death of his father, in the year following, succeeded to the latter's large and lucrative prac- tice. He married, in November, 1869, Frances Adams, of Clinton, Illinois.

Dr. Charles Snyder, born in Champaign county, Ohio, March 12, 1848, was a pupil of Dr. J. N. Beach, and was graduated from the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, March 4, 1870. He was appointed resident physician to the Ohio penitentiary after his graduation, which position he presently resigned, and in 1872 located in Jefferson, where he long enjoyed a flourishing practice. Dr. Horatio Seymour Downs, born in Urbana, Ohio, November 6, 1854, grandson of Dr. John Colliver, was graduated from the Eclectic Medical Institute at Cincinnati on June 3, 1879, and commenced practice in Jefferson in June, 1880. He married, May 4, 1880, Lizzie Bowen.

MT. STERLING.

Dr. Jehial Gregory was the first resident physician in Mt. Sterling, this county. Doctor Seeds, the second, was an Englishman. He claimed to have been a graduate at Oxford, England, and was, at least, a scholarly man. There is a tradition that he was at Mt. Sterling as early as 1833. He married, while there, a daughter of Robert Abernathy, of Jamestown, Greene county, and moved to Wooster, Wayne county, and shortly afterward left that city.

Dr. William McClintick, who located in Mt. Sterling in 1840, practiced there about twenty years, after which he moved to Danville. His brother, Dr. Samuel McClintick, born February 1, 1821, in Pickaway county, Oblo, son of Joseph and Lizzie McClintick, the former, a native of Ireland, and the latter of Pennsylvania, commenced the study of medicine in 1841, under his brother William and J. F. Wilson, of New Holland, Pickaway county. He attended a course of lectures at Ohio Medical College, during the session of 1844-45, and located in Mt. Sterling in April, 1845, where he was in active practice many years. He married, May 20, 1846, Louisa C. Kauffelt.

Dr. Elam Bodman was in Mt. Sterling for several years and was one of the lead- ing physicians. About 1850 he bought a farm up in the Rea settlement and retired from the profession.

.Dr. David E. McMillen, who located at Midway in 1847, was a physician of exten- sive acquaintance and was long identified with the interests of the county.

Dr. John H. Holton was an educated physician and a good practitioner. . His wife's maiden name was Stimmel. . He located at Mt. Sterling about 1860 and moved to London, the county seat, about 1865, where he died of pneumonia.

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Dr. E. B. Pratt, who was located at Mt. Sterling for years, was a member of the Madison County Medical Association, and had served as its president. He also was a member of the Ohio State Medical Society. Dr. W. H. Emory, of Mt. Sterling, also was a member of the Madison County Medical Association, as well as of the Ohio State Medical Society.

AMITY.

Dr. Lorenzo Beach, son of Abel and Elizabeth (Kilbourne) . Beach, was born at New Haven, Vermont, November 7, 1798. He came to Ohio in the fall of 1813 and joined his brother Uri who had preceded him one year, at Worthington. He availed himself of such opportunities as Worthington afforded for improving his education, and about 1816 or 1817 commenced the study of medicine at Worthington and after- ward. went to Urbana, Ohio, where he took a course of instruction in the office of Doctor Carter, being one of a class of ten students under Carter, who, upon the com- pletion of the course, gave them' a "certificate" of the fact. James Comstock, who was afterward his colleague and partner in business, and also Doctor Mosgrove, of Urbana, were of this "class." He located where Amity now stands about 1820, being then in his twenty-second year. The amount of professional business transacted in those days, when physicians were scarce, was only limited by their capacity to labor; they traveled over, on horseback, a territory extending often to fifteen or twenty miles in all directions.

For some years after about 1833, Doctor Beach was the leading merchant in the north part of the county, and subsequently began to place his capital in real estate. For several years he was the largest landholder and the heaviest trader in live stock, and the heaviest capitalist that Darby township had ever had. In 1853, when lands in the north part of the county were worth from thirty to forty dollars an acre, he began to sell out, and going to Illinois invested his money in land warrants that were then abundant in the market at eighty cents an acre, and located several thou- sand acres of land in McLean, Ford, Kankakee and Livingston counties. He married Edith Bull, of Franklin county, Ohio, near Worthington, about the time he commenced the practice of medicine. After her death he married a widow living in Fairbury, Illinois, and died at his home in that place in August, 1878, aged eighty.

Dr. James Comstock located at Amity about the same time that Dr. Lorenzo Beach did and was long well spoken of. He was a brother to Buckley Comstock, for many years a leading business man of Columbus, Ohio, and an uncle to the Comstock, who for years was the proprietor of Comstock's Opera House. He later became a resident of Jamestown, Greene county, where his last days were spent.

Dr. Charles McCloud, probably the third physician at Amity, was born in Ver- mont on February 2, 1808, and moved with his father in his youth to Delaware county, this state. He studied medicine with Dr. Alpheus Bigelow, of Galena, Delaware county, and settled in Amity about 1833. For a few years he also taught winter schools in Amity, but as soon as the people began to understand him, his practice be- gan to increase, and for many years he was a very hard-working man in his profes- sion, ever enjoying the most implicit trust and faith and respect of his patients. In 1850 he was a Whig member from Madison county in the Ohio Legislature and was elected a member of the Ohio constitutional convention in 1850. He married Jane Carpenter, and died at Plain City, this county, of obstruction of the bowels, April 1, 1861, aged fifty-three.

Dr. James Sidney Skinner was an Eastern man, probably from the state of New York, who settled in Amity about 1840. He was a dapper, dilettante sort of a man, and while a student at Buffalo, New York, he so fascinated a daughter of one Judge Clarke that an elopement and clandestine marriage was the result. His wife was a

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very accomplished lady. Their history was known at Amity, and it was thought she began to regret the folly of her conduct. She was much admired by all classes of people there, and her influence had much to do in refining the society by which she was surrounded. It was a hard struggle with her husband to make a respectable living, as he did not succeed in becoming a popular practitioner. She sickened and died and her body was started for Buffalo, by the way of Cleveland, in a two-horse wagon. Two days after it had left, her father, Judge Clark, came to Amity to see her, having been notified of her illness, having passed the body of his unfortunate child on the road. The doctor afterward practiced at Plain City, this county, Columbus and Cincinnati, and then went to California.

Dr. Ashbaw, a bright little man from over about Dublin, was the next. He was badly marked with smallpox. He did not remain long.

Dr. Davis, who was probably the next, also came from over about Dublin, and stayed only a short time, later moving to Cheney's Grove, McClean county, Illinois, where he improved a farm and practiced medicine also.

Dr. Abel W. Field, a New York state man, came to Madison county about 1835, and settled over on the Darby plains, where he lived for several years, at the end of which time he moved to Amity, about 1842, probably as early or earlier than the time of Ashbaw or Davis. He had a fair practice, and was very popular. He was killed while returning from a professional call, by being thrown from his sulky, on the 9th of August, 1851. He was the father of Dr. Archelaus Field, later a wealthy and prom- inent physician of Ft. Des Moines, Iowa; of Dr. Orestes G. Field, of South Solon, this county, and of Capt. James Field, of Marysville, Ohio.

Dr. James F. Boal, born and reared on Big Darby creek, in the Mitchell settle- ment, near Milford, was a graduate of Starling Medical College and had practiced at Canal Winchester, Ohio, before locating at Amity about 1848. He was a creditable practitioner, and active in business. In 1853 he bought up a drove of horses and moved to Illinois.

Dr. Lucius Burr Carpenter, a native of Delaware county, Ohio, from about Ga- lena, a nephew of Mrs. Dr. Charles McCloud, lived at Amity for several years as a clerk in McCloud's store and as a general student. He taught school and studied medicine with his uncle, and had fairly entered upon a promising future when he fell a victim of Asiatic cholera, during the epidemic of 1850. He was attending the Stanton family over in the plains, who had cholera, and returning late, went to bed not very well; grew worse and died before morning. He married Hester Mann, and left one child, Medora.

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History of Madison County Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions, Part 52

Author: Chester E. Bryan Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1207

Author: Chester E. Bryan
Publication date: 1915
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1207