Dr. E.H. HARRIS

HARRIS, HAMLIN

Posted By: Volunteer - Lisa Johnson
Date: 1/12/2002 at 05:33:41

HARRIS, Dr. E.H.—Grinnell Twp—pg 901-2. Physician and surgeon. This gentleman is the oldest resident physician now in practice in this city. He was born in Harrisville, Butler county, Pennsylvania, July 30, 1827. He was there raised and educated. He lived on a farm until he was eighteen years of age; he then clerked in a store of general merchandise for two years and the year following he attended the Allegheny College, teaching alternately to pay his tuition. When about twenty-three years of age he commenced to read medicine with Dr. Henderson, of Harrisville, afterward with Dr. Swan, of Clintonville, Pennsylvania. After the usual length of study he commenced the practice of his profession in Pennsylvania, where he continued one year. He then came to Iowa and practiced one year in Farmington, Van Buren county. He came to Grinnell in March, 1855, and the following spring he went to New York and graduated from the New York Medical College, which is now called Bellevue Hospital. After graduating he returned here, and with the exception of one and one-half years in Newton and while in the army, has been in continuous practice here ever since. The Doctor was in the Government employ from 1862 to 1867. In 1862 he went to Keokuk, where he remained one year, when he was commissioned assistant surgeon of the Twenty-first Iowa, but the regiment not being full he was placed in charge of the Ninety-ninth Illinois, where he continued for some time, when he was transferred to the hospital boat and afterward to the hospital in New Orleans, remaining there until the close of the war, at which time he took charge of the Freedman’s Hospital in 1865. During the riot of 1866 the wounded were all placed under his charge. The Doctor was married in Warren, Lee county, Iowa, on the 17th day of February, 1854, to Miss Rachel Hamlin, who was born in Washington, Pennsylvania. She is also a practicing physician, who attended lectures at the New York Hygienic and Hyclopathic institute in the years 1855 and 1856. She is also a graduate of the Hahnemann Homeopathic College of Chicago; graduated during the winter of 1869-70. In 1877 she had an honorary degree passed upon her by the Chicago Homeopathic Medical College of Chicago. They have raised a family of four sons, the eldest, Luther C., is now a student of the Iowa College; W.H., the second, is a promising medical student and is now taking a course of lectures at the Bennet Medical College of Chicago; Arthur C., the third son, is in the preparatory department of the Iowa College; Clinton, the youngest, five years of age. This in brief is the history of one of Grinnell’s most enterprising men.

The History of Poweshiek County, Iowa
Des Moines: Union Hist. Co., 1880.