RICHARDS, Walter Oscar, M.D. 1820-1898
RICHARDS, EAMES, BUNDY, WISWALL
Posted By: S. Bell
Date: 4/5/2012 at 00:21:47
Walter Oscar Richards, M. D was a prominent physician and surgeon of Waterloo, Iowa, where he was not only eminent in his profession, but was closely identified with the city's material development.
Dr. Richards was born November 20, 1820, in Monroe County, New York. He died in Waterloo on March 2, 1898. He was the son of William and Clarrissa A. (Eames) Richards.
In 1837 his parents removed to Geauga County, Ohio, where he enjoyed excellent educational advantages and in 1840 entered Oberlin College, where he was graduated with the class of 1845. Soon after, he located at Sturgis, Michigan, as a school teacher, employing his spare time in the study of medicine under Dr. James Tefft, then a noted physician. Later he taught school at Lima, Indiana, and took his first course of medical lectures in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He then resumed his association with Dr. Tefft, studying along the lines of his profession during the summer and teaching school again at Lima in the winter until he was prepared to return to Ann Arbor, where he was graduated in 1855.
Dr Richards began practice with Dr. A. D. Sergent, of Ontario, Indiana, but in the summer of 1855, had selected Waterloo, Iowa, as the scene of his professional work. Here he built up a large and lucrative practice, becoming widely known over this whole section and was always highly esteemed professionally and otherwise throughout Black Hawk County, which he served as its first coroner, after the county was fully organized.
He was a man of progressive ideas and business ability as was not slow to see the great commercial possibilities of this territory. In 1868 he was one of the organizers of the Union Milling Company of Waterloo, of which he continued a director until his death. He was a director in the Commercial National Bank from its reorganization and a director in the Waterloo Improvement Company, which controlled and improved the Logan House property. He aided also in the improvement of East Fourth Street by erecting the third part of the Richards, Garrabrant & Loomer Block. He was a member of the American Medical Association and was one of the organizers of the Cedar Valley Medical Association of which he was a delegate to New Orleans in 1985. For 23 years he was coroner of Black Hawk County and was an authority on all matters pertaining to sanitation and questions relative to the public health.
Dr. Richards married Julia A. Bundy who was born in Genesee County, New York and was a daughter of Pixley S. and Sabrina (Wiswall) Bundy, the former of whom was a native of Connecticut, and the latter of New York. Two children were born to Dr. and Mrs. Richards: Julian Walter and Effie Sabrina.
[Source: Hudson Library, History of Black Hawk County, Iowa and Representative Citizens 1837-1903]
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Burial: Fairview Cemetery, Waterloo, Iowa
Black Hawk Obituaries maintained by Karen De Groote.
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