FRASER, WALTER, M. D.

FRASER, ANDERSON, SCOTT, LISCOMB

Posted By: Jean Kramer (email)
Date: 4/7/2004 at 10:20:10

Bioraphy reproduced from page 79 of Volume II of the History of Kossuth County written by Benjamin F. Reed and published in 1913:

Dr. Walter Fraser, successfully engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery, his equipment coming to him through careful training and hospital experience, was born on Wolfe Island, in the province of Ontario, Canada, April 10, 1870. His father, Alexander Fraser, was a carpenter by trade and in 1880 came to Iowa, settling in Kossuth county, whither he brought his family the following year. Here he purchased a farm and devoted the remainder of his life to general agricultural pursuits. He married Eleanor Anderson, who came with her children to join the husband and father in this county almost a third of a century ago.

Dr. Fraser was a lad of eleven years at that time and in the public schools of Kossuth county he pursued his early education. He determined to make the practice of medicine his life work and with that end in view he became a student in the medical department of the State University of Iowa, after which he entered Marion Sims College of Medicine, at St. Louis, Missouri, where he completed a full course and was graduated on the 23d of March, 1893, with the M. D. degree. He began practice in Luverne, where he remained for a year and a half, and then removed to Taylor county, Iowa, where he spent three and a half years. He next located at Corwith, Hancock county, Iowa, where he remained until 1906. Within this period or in 1900, he pursued a special course in the Chicago Polyclinic Medical College and Hospital, at Chicago, and in 1902 he traveled throughout the east for a period of six weeks visiting different hospitals. Being a close observer of special and general conditions, he was thus able to obtain wide information of great value concerning the methods of practice of some of the most eminent physicians and surgeons of the country. He has always read broadly along professional lines, keeps in touch with the most advanced medical literature and is quick to adopt any plan or measure that he believes will be of real benefit in his professional work. While upon his eastern trip he also visited his old boyhood home at Wolfe Island. In 1906 he removed to Algona, where he has since maintained his office, and here he has been accorded a liberal patronage that places him in a prominent position among the physicians of this section of Iowa.

On the 25th of December, 1894, Dr. Fraser was united in marriage to Miss Rosa Scott, a daughter of R. V. and Alma (Liscomb) Scott, of Luverne, both of whom were graduates of Baxter University of Music, at Friendship, New York, being accomplished on the violin and piano. Her father at the time of the daughter’s marriage was station agent for the Minneapolis & St. Paul Railroad at Luverne. Dr. and Mrs. Fraser have become parents of three children: Remsen Scott, born April 14, 1898; Eleanor, July 6, 1900; and Walter Alexander, July 9, 1910.

Aside from his profession Dr. Fraser is greatly interested in astronomy and has been doing some work in the line of astronomical observations. He has also made mathematical investigation of some of the phenomena of comets. Few men who do not devote their entire lives to the science have more intimate and accurate knowledge concerning it. Dr. Fraser is a man of genial disposition and unfeigned cordiality and his temperament and his social qualities are factors in his professional success when combined with his skill in the administration of remedial agencies.