Asa Horr

HORR, SHERMAN, WEBBER, LAPHAM, BIGELOW

Posted By: Sharyl Ferrall
Date: 3/2/2010 at 23:56:12

Horr, Asa (1817-1896)
Asa Horr, surgeon and scientist, was born in Worthington, Ohio, September 2, 1817; the family name was spelled Hoar originally. He received his M.D. at the Cleveland Medical College in 1846, and began to practice at Baltimore, Ohio, but in 1846 removed to Galena, Illinois, and in 1847 moved to Dubuque, Iowa, which was his home the remainder of his life.

He was intensely interested in botany, mineralogy, astronomy and meteorology, and with Professor Lapham of Milwaukee was the inventor of the present method of forecasting the weather for the United States weather reports. He established a private astronomical observatory at Dubuque in 1864 and "was the first to determine accurately the longitude of that city" (Appleton). He was a meteorological observer to the Smithsonian Institution for twenty years. Jointly with John M. Bigelow he published a "Catalogue of the Plants of Franklin County, Ohio."

During the Civil War he was examining surgeon to the U. S. recruiting service and in 1875 was made examining surgeon to the United States Pension Bureau.

He was president of the Dubuque County Medical Society; a founder of the Iowa Institute of Science and Arts (1868), and elected its president in 1869; president of the St. Paul, Minnesota, Academy of Natural Sciences, and of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences in 1871; of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1872; of the American Public Health Association in 1875. He was one of the hundred American and English shorthand writers chosen to make improvements in phonography.

In 1841, at Baltimore, Ohio, Dr. Horr married Eliza, daughter of Jonathan Sherman, of Worthington, Ohio; in 1868 he married Mrs. Emma F. Webber of Pittston, Maine.

He died at his home in Dubuque, June 2, 1896

~American Medical Biographies: A cyclopedia of American medical biography: comprising the lives of eminent deceased physicians and surgeons from 1610 to 1910; by Howard Atwood Kelly; W.B. Saunders co., 1920; pg 558

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