USA > Pennsylvania > Prominent and progressive Pennsylvanians of the nineteenth century. Volume II > Part 30
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Millian Cappy
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WILLIAM PEPPER.
same institution in 1864, entering immediately upon the practice of medicine and rapidly taking front rank with the foremost phy- sicians of the country. He was lecturer on Morbid Anatomy in the University in 1868-70, and on Clinical Medicine in 1870-76, and professor of the latter branch from 1876 to 1887, when he was elected to the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, to succeed Dr. Alfred Stillé. In January, 1881, he was unanimously selected Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, the dignity and powers of the office being materially enlarged. This post he held until 1894, rapidly advancing the interests of the institution. In the latter year Dr. Pepper tendered his resignation as Provost, receiving unusual expressions of regret from trustees, alumni, students and friends of the University. The department of Archæ- ology, which was one of the important additions to the University created by Dr. Pepper during his term of office, has been the especial object of his care since his resignation. He has accepted the office of President of this department, and under his vigorous administration its free museum of science and art has rapidly risen to great importance and reputation. The collections are of high value, and explorations conducted under his guidance in various countries have been fruitful of results. With characteristic liber- ality Provost Pepper was conspicuous in aiding all movements tending to the extension of the University, and in a great degree is credited for the Wharton School of Finance and Economy ; the Department of Philosophy for undergraduates; the Department of Veterinary Medicine; the School of Biology; the Department of Physical Culture; the School of American History; the Depart- ment of Archaeology and Palæontology; the Department of Hygiene and the University Hospital. While Provost, Dr. Pepper had, as at present, one of the largest consulting practices in the country, and at the same time guided and moulded the general policy of the University and its numerous constituent schools. In addition to his duties at the University and his private prac- tice, Dr. Pepper has engaged largely in literary work. He founded the Medical Times, and was its editor in 1870-77. He was Medical Director of the Centennial Exposition in 1876, II .- 26
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and for his services in connection therewith was decorated by the King of Sweden Knight Commander of the Order of St. Olaf. Dr. Pepper was largely instrumental in founding the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts and is President of the Free Library of Philadelphia, of the Philadelphia Commercial Museums, the establishment and rapid development of which is largely due to his organizing and administrative ability ; the Foulke and Long Institute, and of numerous organizations connected with the University. He is a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and member and Vice-President of the American Philosophical Society and many other learned organizations, and was President of the Association of American Physicians in 1891, and of the American Climatological Society in 1886. He was President of the first Pan American Medical Congress in Washington, and, in 1881, Lafayette College conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. In 1888 Princeton conferred the same degree, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1894. Among the important literary works of Dr. Pepper was the editing of the "System of Medicine by American Authors," which met with immediate success, and is now recognized as an authority on medical questions. His "Text Book of the Practice of Medicine by American Teachers," followed. In connection with Dr. John F. Meigs he published several editions of a valuable work on "Diseases of Children." Besides these, his many contributions to medical and scientific literature have been very important.
In 1873 Dr. Pepper was married to Miss Frances Sergeant Perry, a granddaughter of Commodore Hazard Perry, and a lineal descendant of Benjamin Franklin. They have had four sons, of whom three survive.
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Rwalter Peterson
R. WALTER PETERSON.
LEANLINESS in our larger cities, and a close adherence to sanitary laws, the importance of which have scarcely been properly recognized until the past few years, have made a wonderful reduction in the average death rate in America's greatest municipalities. In bringing about this most happy state of affairs the Health and Highway bureaus have labored hand in hand, and, by entrusting the details of the work to reliable and conscientious contractors, have seen to it that no measures calculated to promote the healthfulness of urban life have been neglected. Not only in Pennsylvania's greatest city, but in several others of the most thriving centres of Eastern population, the name of R. Walter Peterson is a well known one, especially to those whose spheres of action have been such as to bring them in contact with sani- tary science. This prominence has arisen not alone from his labors for the highway departments, but as one of the most active promoters of Woolf's Electrozone and Meditrina, which are win- ning wide recognition as disinfectants and germicides of rare merit, and are in use by many municipalities and hospitals throughout the country.
R. WALTER PETERSON was born at Lewes, Sussex County, Delaware, on the 5th day of February, 1842. He was one of the seven children of William H. and Miriam (Battall) Peterson. His father's family were among the earliest settlers of the three lower counties on the Delaware, having come to this country from Sweden before the days of the Penn settlement. Mr. Peterson's maternal ancestors came from England in the early days of the colony, and founded a family which has occupied a conspicuous
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place in the history of the Diamond State. When R. Walter Peterson was eight years of age, his parents removed from Dela- ware, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, in the public schools of which city his early education was obtained. In these institu- tions he pursued his studies until he had reached the age of fourteen, when he entered into the commercial world, securing employment with a wholesale fruit house, where he remained for a short time. In 1856 he went to Philadelphia, and entered the employ of Stiltz & Boyer, proprietors of a fruit importing estab- lishment on Water Street. He remained with this firm for several years, but the business not proving congenial to his active nature, in 1860, he secured a situation with the passenger railroads. At the age of twenty-two he again made a change, this time going into business on his own account as a clothier, opening the estab- lishment on Market Street, below Thirteenth. About a year later, the field of contracting seeming to him an especially advantageous one, and appearing to offer special attractions to a man of energy, ability and integrity, in company with Henry E. Bickley, he began the business of street contracting. Later on he associated himself with E. S. McGlue in the same business. In 1870, on an individual basis, he began taking contracts for street cleaning, and was so successful and gave such thoroughly good service that he was soon able to secure contracts for paving in the cities of New York, Philadelphia and Washington. The past few years of his life have been devoted largely to taking charge of the dis- position of the garbage of large cities in the United States and Canada, and he has organized companies in New York, Philadel- phia and Boston for this purpose. He is a leading spirit in the managerial affairs of all of these, being President of the Boston company. His firm is now R. Walter Peterson & Company, Gen- eral Contractors. In this co-partnership he has as an associate Clarence B. Kugler. They have been very successful and are favorably known to the leading municipalities of the United States. Besides these interests, Mr. Peterson is also connected with the Union Metallic Packing Company, as one of its largest stockholders. He is a Director in Woolf's Electrozone and Medi-
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trina, the Gas Consumers' Company, the Union Metallic Rod Company, of Boston, and the Sanitary Product companies of Phil- adelphia, New York and Brooklyn. He is also interested in the Elevator Interlock Company, and a number of other well known corporations.
Mr. Peterson is a prominent member of the Masonic Order, having had the Thirty-second Degree conferred upon him. He is also a member of the Mystic Shrine, the Order of Sparta, the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias, besides a number of other charitable and fraternal associations. He has always taken a deep interest in political affairs, and is an active and influential member of the Republican party, while, at the same time, he has never consented to accept a public office.
In 1863 he was married to Miss Mary A. Beckenbach, whose father was the superintendent of the Philadelphia Gas Works for many years. They have one son, R. Walter Peterson, Jr.
GEORGE G. PIERIE.
HE road to public appreciation through the medium T of journalism is not an easy one to travel, yet not a few of our well known citizens and public officers have passed a portion of their lives at the editorial desk, and by earnest work and a steady adherence to what seemed to them to be the right, have won the generous approval of their fellow citizens. Among those who have thus been brought into prominence and public notice, few are more conspicuous than the subject of this biography.
GEORGE G. PIERIE was born in Philadelphia on the 4th day of November, 1838. He is the son of William Shippen Pierie and Elizabeth Gorgas. Both his parents and grandparents were born in Philadelphia, but his father's most remote ancestors were French Huguenots, who, by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had been driven from their native land, and, having in the mean- time taken refuge in Scotland, had finally sought homes in the Western World. His mother was the daughter of one of those old Quaker families, so many of whose descendants are now con- spicuous in the social, professional and commercial circles of the Commonwealth.
At the age of ten years, young Pierie entered the Hancock Public School, which was located on Fairmount Avenue above Twelfth Street, and of which Nicholas Maguire was principal. Of a naturally studious temperament, he devoted himself to his studies with commendable assiduity, and graduated at the age of sixteen years. Soon after leaving school, young Pierie entered the wholesale dry-goods warehouse of H. J. R. Campbell, where he remained for four years. Mercantile pursuits, however, did not
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prove particularly attractive to his active mind, and, having dis- played considerable ability as a writer, he was able, in 1857, to secure a position on the staff of the Philadelphia Press, which had then been started but a few days by its distinguished founder, Colonel Forney. He was immediately given the post of commer- cial editor, and rapidly acquired a reputation as a particularly well informed and discriminating writer on the doings of the mer- cantile and financial worlds. He had been at his desk for several years, when came President Lincoln's memorable call for seventy- five thousand volunteers to march to the defense of the nation. He read the appeal of the Chief Magistrate in the morning papers, and so genuine was his patriotism and so intense his fealty to the North, that, without even returning to his office, he sought the recruiting officers and offered his services, being one of the first to enlist to preserve the integrity of the nation. Mr. Pierie had had considerable military experience of a theoretical and semi- practical nature prior to this, having been, in 1860, a Lieutenant in the Curtin Guards, and this, now that actual warfare was at hand, stood him in good stead. He was promptly enrolled in Company A, of the Seventeenth Pennsylvania Regiment of Volun- teers, otherwise known as the Washington Grays, which, under the command of Colonel Frank Patterson, a son of General Robert Patterson, was the first fully equipped regiment to reach the National Capital at the outbreak of the war. He served with his command during the period for which he had been enlisted, and, on being honorably mustered out of the service, returned to his former post on the staff of the Press. Here he continued his editorial work until 1866, when, upon the death of his father, he succeeded the latter as commercial editor of the North American. Mr. Pierie had previously acted as Assistant Secretary, and, in 1866, was promoted to the post of Secretary of the Commercial Exchange of Philadelphia, which position gave him enlarged opportunities for acquiring information that was of inestimable value in his literary work: By this time he had acquired such a wide reputation as a writer upon financial topics that his articles were greatly in demand, and he had become a contributor to many publications.
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During Mr. Pierie's career as a newspaper writer he had naturally taken an active interest in political and municipal affairs, and his high standing and influence in his party, and his wide circle of acquaintance, led to his nomination and election, in November, 1884, to the post of Recorder of Deeds of Philadelphia for a term of three years. On his entrance into office, in 1885, Mr. Pierie severed his connection with both the North American and the Commercial Exchange, and devoted his entire time to the duties of his official position, and so satisfactorily did he admin- ister its affairs that, upon the completion of his first period of service, he was re-elected for a further term of three years, retiring from the office in 1890.
On the 29th of September, 1863, Mr. Pierie was married to Miss Virginia J. Hirst. They have four daughters: Helen H., now the wife of Walter C. McIntyre; Bertha, who married B. Frank Delaplaine, and Edith and Amy, who are now residing with their father.
Personally pleasant and genial, Mr. Pierie has gathered about him a wide circle of friends, and has long been known as a prom- inent club and society man. He is a member of Meade Post, No. I, G. A. R., the Union League, the Union Republican, Young Republican, Stylus and Clover clubs, and of St. Andrew's Society, in all of which he is held in high esteem by his fellow members, to whom his many high qualities of mind and heart have endeared him.
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WILLIAM G. PORTER.
HE Nineteenth Century has witnessed many won- derful changes in every line of human endeavor, and useful arts and sciences have made more progress in that comparatively brief period than in all the previous years of the Christian era. The whole horizon of the human intellect has been widened by the far-seeing eye of Science, which has penetrated to the utmost bounds of the Universe and searched out the deepest mysteries of time and space. New light has been thrown on every profession, and the healing art, in which conjecture once took the place of knowledge, has now become almost an exact science. In this development of one of the most useful of all branches of human knowledge, Pennsylvania's physicians have not lagged behind. Earnest and sincere to the utmost degree, many of her sons have devoted the energies of their lives to study and investigation. Nothing short of the solid bedrock of facts has satisfied them, and volumes might be filled in recounting what they have accom- plished. In this forward movement, in which the Keystone State has taken such a prominent part, few have been more actively identified than Doctor William G. Porter, the subject of this sketch. As a scholarly author he has won scarcely less distinction than as a physician, and medical literature embraces many of his treatises.
WILLIAM G. PORTER was born in the city of Philadelphia on the 25th day of April, 1846. His father, who likewise bore the name of William G., was a Philadelphian, but his active interests had always been in the South. He retired from business in Florida just before the first gun was fired on Sumter, in 1861, and the two sections of the Union thereby thrown into deadly
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conflict. Doctor Porter's mother had been Miss Catharine Benezet, of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and a descendant of Antony Benezet, who came from French Huguenot stock and had settled in America in the Sixteenth Century. Doctor Porter's early edu- cation was acquired in private schools, in which he proved him- self an apt scholar and diligent student, and made such rapid progress that it was deemed advisable to enter him in the University of Pennsylvania. Here he pursued a two years' classical course, studying at the same time in the Medical Department, from which he graduated in 1868. The excellent record which he had made while at the University led to his selection for the place of Assist- ant Resident Physician in the Philadelphia Dispensary, which post was offered to him soon after his graduation from his Alma Mater. He served in this responsible capacity for one year, and was then elected Resident Physician at the Philadelphia Hospital. This place he held for fifteen months, but, preferring to enter into the active practice of his profession, he resigned it and opened an office in Philadelphia. Since this time, although he has held many posi- tions in the public institutions of this city which do not demand the whole of his time, he has been actively engaged in his pri- vate practice. He held the post of Visiting Surgeon at the Phila- delphia Hospital for twenty-five years, and has filled a similar position in the Presbyterian Hospital ever since its foundation, in 1871. Doctor Porter is a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, the American Medical Association, and of the American Surgical Association, in all of which his abilities and personal charms of manner have gained for him many friends and a prominent position.
During the riots which occurred at the time of the celebrated railroad strike of 1877, Doctor Porter served as Surgeon, with the rank of Major, in the First Brigade, First Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, stationed at Pittsburg.
He was married on April 21, 1880, to Miss Susan M. Hobart, of Fairfield, Connecticut. His wife comes from one of the most
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WILLIAM G. PORTER.
famous families in the history of that section, and one that has figured largely in the progressive development of the Eastern States. The Vice-President of the United States, Garrett M. Hobart, comes from this same stock. They have five living children, all of whom are living at home with their parents. The prominent position which Doctor Porter has won and the recognition that is accorded him among his fellow workers in the field of medicine and surgery is strikingly illustrated by his selec- tion to deliver the annual oration before the Academy of Surgery in 1891. This discourse was handled in the Doctor's usual thor- ough and masterly style, and it gained for him even wider recog- nition than had before been accorded him. He has been a fre- quent contributor to the periodical literature of his profession, and has written a number of valuable treatises on many topics of vital interest, not only to members of his profession, but to the public at large.
JOSEPH PRICE.
URGERY, during the past quarter of a century, from a position where it was resorted to only when all other expedients had failed, has risen by slow and tedious steps to a point where it is almost an exact science, a fact established by many notable triumphs of the surgeon's skill. Operations that were formerly scarcely dreamed of have now become matters of every-day occur- rence and attract little or no attention, even in their immediate surroundings. Men and women who otherwise would long since have been in their graves or, if living, deformed and distorted, by its beneficent aid have been restored to health and usefulness. It has been a great boon, in fact, to all mankind, but the advance has not come without the noble self-sacrifice and ardent and enthu- siastic labor of many bold investigators. Constant study, never- ending experiment and ceaseless investigation have been necessary to bring this, one of the greatest and most benignant of sciences, to its present high standard. Entering the profession at the begin- ning of this period of development, one of the men most promi- nent, both as student and teacher, in bringing about the present knowledge of the delicate art, has been Dr. Joseph Price, of Philadelphia.
JOSEPH PRICE, the fourth son of Joshua and Phoebe Price, is a native of Rockingham County, Virginia, born on the Ist day of January, 1853. His early education was acquired at a school in Fort Edward, New York. It was perhaps from his beautiful and historic surroundings that the young student drew inspiration for the devotion which he manifested for his books, since he soon became known as an eager pupil and a good scholar, even thus
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early giving promise of the eminence to which his overmastering desire for inquiry and his love of his profession have since raised him. Completing the course of instruction at this institution, he made his entry into the higher range of study by matriculating at Union College, Schenectady, New York. Here, as at Fort Edward, he made rapid progress and soon acquired a good and substantial collegiate education.
The profession of medicine proving especially attractive to the young collegian, on the completion of his course at Schenectady, he decided to begin the study of the principles of the profession in which he has since made such an enviable record. Casting his eyes about, his choice fell upon the University of Pennsylvania as the institution best suited to his purpose and, accordingly, he enrolled himself among the students in its Medical Department. Here he rapidly improved his opportunities and made good use of the facilities afforded, graduating in due time with honorable dis- tinction. His first experience as a practitioner was gained as Resident Physician of the Philadelphia Dispensary, which position he accepted in 1877, soon after leaving the University. In this, his first post, he acquired such a notable reputation as a capable physician and surgeon, that he was later placed at the head of the Women's Department of the institution, a position which he still occupies. He has also filled the post of Resident Physician at the Preston Retreat, which he held for seven and one-half years.
Like many others of the most eminent disciples of the heal- ing art, early in his career he manifested an especial aptitude for anatomy and soon began to devote himself to the study of surgery, almost to the exclusion of active practice as a physician. Appre- ciating the trend of progress toward specialization, which was making itself felt in the medical profession as elsewhere, he began to pay especial attention to the abdominal and obstetrical branches of the healing art, devoting himself more particularly and with conspicuous success to the diseases peculiar to women. Attaining considerable eminence in this line, he soon attracted a large pri- vate practice, so large that to properly attend to it he deemed it advisable to found the Gynecean Hospital, of Philadelphia, and a
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private hospital for gynecological work. But along with his success in his private practice came many honors at the hands of his pro- fessional brethren, who recognized his worth and the high order of his abilities. In 1896 he was made President of the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, having previously been honored with the Presidency of the American Medical Asso- ciation and the American section of the Gynecological Association, serving besides as President of the Tri-State Medical Society, an organization composed of the physicians and surgeons of Pennsyl- vania, Delaware and Maryland.
Dr. Price's estimable wife was formerly Miss Louise T. Troth, and they have five children. Their home life is delightful, and Dr. Price takes a great interest in the development of his chil- dren's ambitions.
The Doctor is at present devoting his entire attention, aside from the social duties incident upon his extensive acquaintance, to his profession, giving especial consideration to the developments in his favorite lines of abdominal surgery and obstetrics. In these important branches of the physician's art he has attained an emi- nence which, in addition to his experience and natural talents, stamps him as an authority.
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ROBERT RALSTON.
0 NE of the most representative of the younger mem- bers of the Bar is Colonel Robert Ralston, who, although he is still in his "thirties," enjoys a reputation as a lawyer and a scholar which places him among the representative Pennsylvanians. In military circles his name is as familiar and as highly respected as in the legal field, and he has been the recipient, during his short but useful and active career, of many honors.
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