History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 87

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 87

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

The curiosity hunter would find in his rooms objects of interest from every land and sea ; the bibliophile, books that would make him wild with envy ; and the man of method, a seeming chaos of current literature that it would be ex- hausting to order aright. Bidding fair soon by reason of strength to attain four-score years, it is his delight to keep fully informed of every step made in science and literature. The early and lifelong friend of the elder Harper & Brothers of New York, the younger members of that firm still keep up the practice of its founders of sending personally a copy of each work they publish to Dr. Bell, in graceful acknowledgment of what he has done in the West for the cause of literature and the humanities.

For nearly a score of years he has lived alone, unattended by a single servant, preparing his own meals and jealous of any other idea of or- der but his own ; but it is not as a misanthropical recluse he lives, but as a wise and genial Chris- tian, a keen and alert scholar, and withal a tender- hearted and indulgent grandfather. In summer time his windows overflow with blossoming plants and luxuriant vines, and his buggy with chil- dren. In the whole city there is no one more generally known, more universally revered, and more heartily loved.

CHARLES WILKINS SHORT, M. D.

Ample materials for a biographical notice of this distinguished physician and scientist, one of the most notable men who have ever illustrated the annals of Louisville, are furnished by the sketch of his life and character read to the American Philosophical society of Philadelphia, November 17, 1865, by his friend and former colleague, Dr. S. D. Gross, also in the obituary notices written by Professors Asa Gray, of Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, and Henry Miller, of Louisville, and published with the former sketch in a neat volume in 1865. Dr. Short shared the blood of two of the most renowned families in the Ohio valley, the Shorts and the Symmeses. He was the son of Peyton and Mary (Symmes) Short. His mother was daughter of Judge John Cleves Symmes, who made the celebrated Miami Purchase, upon which Cincinnati stands. Her sister Anna was wife of General William Henry Harrison. His paternal grandmother was Eliza- beth Skipwith, daughter of Sir William Skipwith, of England, Baronet. The late Judge John Cleves Short, of Cincinnati, was his brother, and his sister became wife of the famous Kentucky surgeon, Dr. Benjamin W. Dudley.

Dr. Short was born at Greenfield, Woodford county, Kentucky, October 6, 1794, upon the splendid farm owned by his father, in one of the most romantic and beautiful regions of the State. His elementary training was in the renowned school of Joshua Fry, long the only seminary of note for boys in Kentucky; and his higher stud- ies were pursued at Transylvania University, from which he was graduated with honor in 1810, when only sixteen years old. He began the

446

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

study of medicine with his uncle, Dr. Frederick Ridgely, but in 1813 became the private pupil and office student of Dr. Caspar Wistar, of Phil- adelphia, professor of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania. He also listened to the med- ical lectures in the University, from which he received the degree of M. D. in the spring of 1815, before he was twenty-one years old. He had already made much research in botany, for which he afterwards became celebrated; and his graduating thesis was on the medicinal qualities of Juniperus Sabina. Dr. Wistar was greatly attached to his young and promising pupil, to whom he presented upon leave-taking, from his own collection, a case of instruments for treat- ment of the eye. In November of the same year Dr. Short was wedded to Miss Mary Henry, only child of Armistead and Jane (Henry) Churchill. It Is an interesting fact that the mother-in-law here named, after the death of Mrs. Peyton Short, had become the stepmother of Dr. Short, as the second wife of his father. He returned to Kentucky with his young bride, traveling the entire route in a spring-wagon, but with great pleasure and satisfaction from the superb scenery and their own happy hopes. He settled for practice in Lexington; but success was slow to come in the professional competition there, and he presently removed to Hopkinsville, formed a partnership with Dr. Webber, and soon commanded a large and lucrative practice, at the same time improving the rare opportunities there presented for botanical investigation.

In a few years (1825) he was very fitly called to the chair of Materia Medica and Medical Botany in his alma mater, Transylvania Univer- sity, and aided his associates of an uncommonly able and brilliant Faculty to lift the new depart- ment here to a high pitch of prosperity. With one of these, the noted Dr. John Esten Cooke, he founded in 1828 one of the pioneer medical journals of the West, the Transylvania Journal of Medicine and the Associate Sciences, and re- mained its co-editor and publisher during four volumes of publication. Upon the break-up of the Faculty in 1837, Dr. Short, although reap- pointed to his former chair, accompanied those of his colleagues who went to found the Medical Department of the University of Louisville. His lectures were here continued with great suc- cess, and much of his spare time was absorbed

in botanical researches and literary studies. In about twelve years, however-nearly twenty-five years from the beginning of his profession-he wearied of the drudgery and tedium of instruc- tion, closed his connection with the University, and retired permanently to his beautiful country seat in the midst of enchanting scenery, about five miles from Louisville, which bore the sug- gestive name of Hayfield. He had previously spent much time during his summers in the im- provement of an eligible site on the banks of the Ohio, a few miles below Cincinnati, which he called Fern Bank, from the abundance of the plant there. The name has been retained for a pretty suburb which has since been laid out on the spot, where two brothers of Judge Short's family have built a noble row of spacious and costly residences. He had accumulated a hand- some competency by his own exertions; but to this a considerable addition was made in 1849 by an inheritance from his uncle, the Hon. William Short, of Philadelphia, a distinguished citizen who had the unique honor of being, under Pres- ident Washington, the first appointee to public office under the Constitution. He was secretary to Thomas Jefferson, when the latter was Minis- ter to France, was afterwards Minister to the Hague, and was charged with special embassies to Spain and other courts, being in all some thirty years in the diplomatic service.

Dr. Short had now abundant leisure and means for his botanical researches, and for the large cor- respondence which these enabled him to main- tain with the most eminent scientists of that day, as Sir William Hooker, Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew; Nuttall and Wilson, also of England; the great De Candolle, of France; Joachim Steets, of Hamburg; Uzrelli, of Italy, and others. He had also numerous American correspondents of high eminence; such as Gray, Torrey, and Agassiz, of Cambridge, Audubon, Carey, Curtis, Lapham, and many more. He was further made a member of numerous scientific societies, both in this country and abroad; but his modesty never allowed him to flourish the diplomas he received in the face of the world. When he retired from the University, he received the honorary appointment of Emeritus Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany, and the additional compliment of a most kind and flat- tering letter of farewell from his fellow-professors.

447

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

After retirement he devoted himself to flori- culture and horticulture, to his library-which contained about three thousand volumes, one- fourth of them rare and costly botanical works --- and his herbarium, which became by far the largest, most varied and valuable in the Western country. It was bequeathed by him to the Smithsonian Institution, but upon conditions which could not then be met; and it passed to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where it now is. In these happy pursuits he spent about fourteen years, and then, March 7, 1863, at his winter home in Louisville, he passed tran- quilly away, of typhoid pneumonia, aged sixty- eight years, ñve months, and one day. He left a surviving wife, and children as follow: Mary C., now Mrs. W. Allen Richardson, of Louis- ville; William Short, a farmer of Hardin county, Kentucky, who died in March, 1870, his mother preceding him to the grave by a little more than a month; Jane S., wife of Dr. J. Russell Butler, of Louisville; Sarah, wife of Dr. T. G. Richard- son, Professor of Surgery in the University of Louisiana, who (Mrs. Richardson) died in Feb- ruary, 1866; Lucy R., who married J. B. Kin- kead, Esq., Louisville, and died April 8, 1868; and Miss Alice Short, of Louisville.

Dr. Short was a Presbyterian in his religious faith, a member of sincere but unostentatious piety. He was author of many articles, chiefly botanical, contributed to the Transylvania Jour- nal of Medicine and the Associate Sciences, and to Dr. Drake's Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery. He was not, however, a prolific writer, notwithstanding his overflowing abun- dance of materials ; and all that he published, it is said, would scarcely make a duodecimo vol- ume of three hundred pages. One genus and four species of plants, one of them, the Solidago Shortii of Torrey and Gray, discovered at the Falls of the Ohio, have been named from him by distinguished botanists, and aid to perpetuate his memory.

We close this notice with the following extract from the character sketch made by his former colleague, Dr. Henry Miller, of the University of Louisville :

As a lecturer, Dr. Short's style was chaste, concise, and classical, and his manner always grave and dignified. His lectures were always carefully and fully written, and read in the lecture-room with a good voice and correct emphasis. He never made the least attempt at display, nor set a clap-

trap in all his life. As a man, Dr. Short was remarkable for his, we had almost said fastidious modesty, diffidence, and retiring disposition. This last trait was so strongly marked that a stranger might have deemed him to be an ascetic; but never did a kinder heart beat in human bosom. His heart was indeed always in the right place, and alive to the noblest and most generous impulses. As to his probity, it was as nearly perfect as is possible to fallen humanity. There was never a stain upon his honor, and the breath of calumny never tarnished his name.

PROFESSOR JAMES MORRISON BO- DINE, M. D.,

son of Alfred and Fanny Maria Bodine, was born in Fairfield, Nelson county, Kentucky, on the 2d day of October, 1831. His paternal ances- tors were Huguenots who emigrated to this coun- try in 1625 and settled in New York City, his grandfather coming to Kentucky soon after the State was admitted into the Union. His ma- ternal great-grandfather was Peter Brown, of Loudon county, Virginia, a captain on General Washington's staff, who came to Kentucky at an early period and settled on land near Bardstown, granted him by the State of Virginia, in consider- ation of military services.

Having received a common school education, he spent two sessions in St. Joseph's college, Bardstown, following which he continued his studies at Hanover college, Indiana, quitting the latter institution on account of ill-health at the opening of his senior year. He rested a few months and then began the study of medicine in the office of the late Professor H. M. Bullitt, M. D., of Louisville. He attended the sessions of 1852-53 and 1853-54, at the Kentucky School of Medicine, and was graduated there March 1, 1854. He removed in the following May to Austin, Texas, and began the practice of his profession.

Responsive to the importunities of his parents, he made what was proposed to be only a visit to Kentucky, in the fall of 1855. He was married on the 25th day of December, that year, to Mary E. Crow, daughter of Edward Crow, who was for many years a prominent merchant and repre- sentative citizen of Louisville. His marriage prevented a return to Austin and determined a settlement in Louisville. He was immediately called to the Demonstratorship of Anatomy in the Kentucky School of Medicine, his alma

448

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

mater, and discharged the duties of that office during the session of 1856-57.

Pursuant to the result of a consultation of pro- fessional friends, he moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, in the hope of benefiting his wife's health, in May, 1857.

On Easter Sunday preceding his departure he was confirmed in the Grace Episcopal Church, his only child, Elizabeth Crow, being baptized at the same time.

He early acquired a large practice in Leaven- worth, and took an active part in all that con- cerned the Episcopal Church. He is believed to be the first communicant to receive the holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the Episcopal Church of Kansas. He was appointed by Bishop Kemper the first secretary of the first standing committee of the diocese, and held this position so long as he remained in Kansas. He was annually elected a warden of his church, and was a delegate to all the diocesan conventions held during his residence in Leavenworth. At the only opportunity during that time, he was chosen to represent the diocese of Kansas in the General Council of the American Church.

He was the first president of the first medical society organized in the State. He was elected, notwithstanding his publicly expressed wishes, a member of the Leavenworth City Council, be- cause of the conviction among party leaders that no other Democrat could carry the ward in which he lived.

While a member of the Council he succeeded in having established the first hospital in Kansas; and it was placed under his charge. He re- signed his place as councilman before the expira- tion of his term, because of the pressure of pro- fessional duties and his repugnance to politics.

The condition of things brought about by the war necessitated his return to Kentucky in May, 1862. While on the old homestead adjoining Fairfield, in care of his widowed mother, and during the latter part of 1863, he yielded to the wishes of many friends of his alma mater, and accepted the Professorship of Anatomy in the Kentucky School of Medicine, beginning his first course of lectures February 1, 1864. He removed his residence to Louisville in the fall of 1864, and continued his position in the school throughout the sessions of 1864-65 and 1865- 66.

He delivered the Faculty valedictory address to the class of 1865-66.

He was called in the summer of r866 to the chair of Anatomy in the Medical Department of the University of Louisville. Near the close of his first session in the University he was elected Dean of the Faculty, and since then has been annually re-elected by unanimous vote of his colleagues, holding the office at this time.

He delivered the public address for the faculty, introductory to the course of lectures of the ses- sion 1872-73, and the Faculty valedictory to the class of 1877-78.

These public and published addresses, es- pecially the last, entitled, What Am I? attracted wide attention, and elicited high encomiums from the medical press and distinguished teachers in both Europe and America.

He served as a member of the Louisville Board of Health for the years 1868 and 1869, and at this time is a member of that body. He has served on the Louisville city hospital staff. He has held the office of physician to the Orphan- age of the Good Shepherd since its establish- ment in 1869, and is a permanent member of the following medical societies : The Louisville College of Physicians and Surgeons ; the Louis- ville Academy of Medicine ; the Kentucky State Medical Society ; and the American Medical Association. In the last-named body he has by annual appointment, excepting perhaps one or two years, represented the Kentucky State Med- ical Society since 1867.

To his pen and energy must be allowed the credit of making the first successful efforts toward forwarding the American Medical College Asso- ciation; and he is now the President of that body, to which place he was elected, as the suc- cessor of Dr. Gross, at the sixth session of the association, held in Richmond, Virginia, in June, 1881. Dr. Bodine resumed his connection with Grace church after his return to Louisville, in which he continues an active member and of- ficer.

While laboriously engaged in college duties, Dr. Bodine has been unremitting in the active work of his profession, and enjoys a large prac- tice, which has grown with the general esteem in which he is held.

Dr. Lunsford P. Yandell, Or.

449

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

DR. L. P. YANDELL, SR.

Lunsford Pitts Yandell was born near Harts- ville, Sumner county, Tennessee, on the 4th day of July, 1805. His father, Wilson Yandell, was a native of North Carolina, and a physician of large practice and exceptional standing in mid- dle Tennessee; Elizabeth Pitts Yandell, his mother, a native of Virginia.

His elementary education was received in the common schools of Sumner county, and these gave way, in his thirteenth year, to the Bradley Academy at Murfreesboro, his parents having removed to Rutherford county in the vicinity of that city. This academy afforded opportunity for instruction in the classics, the natural sciences, and mathematics, to the limit usually set in schools of the class, and that these were fully improved by the student is attested by the traditions of the family,-more still by the prac- tical foundation of solid acquirement upon which he later reared so liberal and symmetrical a superstructure.

In 1822, when but seventeen years of age, the young man began the systematic study of medi- cine in the office of his father. During the winter of the same year he attended a course of medical lectures at the Medical Department of Transyl- vania University, at Lexington, Kentucky, then the principal medical school of the State-as, in- deed, west of the mountains. From Transyl- vania he went, for a second course, to the Medical Department of the Maryland University, situated at Baltimore, from which latter institu- tion he was graduated with the class of 1825, when in his twentieth year. From that time until 1831 he practiced his profession at Mur- freesboro and Nashville, Tennessee, then ac- cepted the chair of chemistry in Transylvania University as successor of Dr. Blythe, his old instructor.

After filling this place with distinguished suc- cess until 1837, Dr. Yandell became convinced that the proposed medical school at Louisville promised a wider field of usefulness and greater possibilities of development than that at Lexing- ton, and resigning his chair, removed to Louis- ville, and with Cooke, Caldwell and others, or- ganized the Louisville Medical Institute, accept- ing at the same time its professorship of chem- istry. He also lectured in various other medical

branches. From this time for twenty-two years his relations with the school were maintained, his labors in its behalf being unremitting and in- spired by an enthusiasm that compelled success and left its mark upon the minds and methods of thousands of physicians scattered throughout the land, whose heads have now grown gray in the labors of their profession. In 1846 the Medical Institute, by consolidation with the Louisville College of Medicine, became the medical department of the University of Louis- ville, and, during the same year, Dr. Yandell ex- changed his professorship of chemistry for that of physiology and pathological anatomy.

In 1858 he severed his connection with the University, removed to Memphis that he might join his son, L. P. Yandell, Jr., then residing there, and assumed the professorship of theory and practice of medicine in the medical college of that city. This be retained until the outbreak of the civil war compelled the closing of the school, when he turned his attention for the time to service in the military hospitals established in Memphis.

From his youth Dr. Yandell was a deeply religious man, and he determined in the year 1862, to devote himself to the Christian ministry. He was at once licensed to preach by the Pres- bytery of Memphis, and was, in 1864, ordained pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Dancyville, Tennessee. In 1867 he resigned his pastorate, and resumed the practice of his profession at Louisville, where his position and connection were at once regained.

In 1872 he became president of the Louisville College of Physicians and Surgeons, and was, in April, 1877, elected president of the Kentucky State Medical Society. The latter post he was destined never to fill, as he died on February 4, 1878, in the seventy-third year of his age.

This is a brief and formal statement of the more obvious facts of Dr. Yandell's life, yet it gives no adequate idea of what he did, and of what he was. He was a man many-sided in mind and character; versatile in ability; deep and broad in knowledge; practical in attain- ment ; prolific in production. Some ' one has divided men commonly called scientific into two classes-hod-carriers and formulators of science -the idea being that one class must collect, sometimes with no great enlightenment, the

450

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

crude facts, which are the materials from which others, by generalizing, classifying, and arrang- ing, erect solid walls of truth. This distinction · is false and unjust in the case of Dr. Yandell. Both in the field of original research and as a closet student he was untiring, and accom- plished grand results in the sciences of medicine, chemistry, geology and palæontology. His scal- pel, test tube, and hammer were the purveyors of a hungry mind, and the servants of a busy pen. In the field, laboratory, and dissecting room, with all his close investigation, he brought nothing to light that he did not assimilate and cause to con- tribute to the fund of the world's knowledge. He was an independent and successful prac- titioner, and during his earlier years of practice performed most of the capital surgical opera- tions. His practice was not, however, so much a pleasure as a duty incident to the pursuit of science; he sometimes felt the necessity of attending a case to be almost an intrusion upon his studious occupations, yet his patients were many and his reputation as a practitioner of the highest.

As a lecturer he was unsurpassed in that ability which makes a successful teacher one of the rarest of men. At his hands the most difficult sub- ject became almost easy; the driest, interesting. He inspired his students with a share of his own enthusiasm, and, as has been said, sent every one into the world bearing the impress of his master-mind. One of Dr. Yandell's biographers has well said that he may be viewed as a practi- tioner, a teacher, and a writer, in an ascending scale. In the latter aspect he stands, by virtue of his work, at the head of Kentucky's list of scientinc men and in the van of American in- vestigation and thought. Before he left his pro- fessorship at Transylvania, and even as early as 1832, he had earned consideration and respect by his work as editor of the Transylvania Jour- nal ; in Louisville he founded the Western Jour- nal of Medicine, which lived until 1857 ; he was actively interested in the American Practitioner, and wrote much for the Louisville Medical News. Up to 1874 he had contributed one hun- dred and seventy formal articles to the medical literature of the United States, written a much larger amount in fragmentary form, and had, be- sides, prepared lectures for many generations of medical students.

Perhaps Dr. Yandell's reputation was more widely extended by his writings upon geology and palæontology than by those upon medical or even chemical topics. Commencing so early as 1849 with a little volume entitled Contribu- tions to the Geology of Kentucky, prepared conjointly with Dr. Shumard, he continued, to the day of his death, to make valuable contribu- tions to the literature of the youngest science. Among his principal writings upon the subject are: A note to M. de Verneuil, Concerning the Discovery of Calcareous Arms in Pentremites Florealis, published in the Bulletin of the Geo logical Society of France; on the Distribution of Crinoidea in the Western States; a Descrip- tion of a New Genus of Crinoidea, named Acro- crinus Shumardi.

In the course of his investigations in this field Dr. Yandell accumulated and classified one of the finest cabinets of geology and palæontology in the United States, which is now in the posses- sion of his son, Dr. L. P. Yandell, of Louisville, and his labors are effectually commemorated by the affixing of his name to a number of fossils first discovered and classified during his life-time.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 87

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 814

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814