Dr. William Albert George d. 1899

GEORGE, MUNGER, SLINN

Posted By: Volunteer - Rich Lowe
Date: 10/1/2001 at 16:28:10

William Albert George.

Dr. W. A. George is dead. He peacefully passed away a few miles west of La Plata, Mo, at 12:25 Saturday morning, June 3, 1899, on board a Santa Fe train en route from San Diego, California, having started from there the previous Wednesday for Bonaparte, Iowa, the home of his aged mother, hoping to see her and his two brothers and other relatives. His early demise was inevitable. He died of nephritis—disease of the kidneys, superinduced by excessive mental labor and anxiety and business cares during a severe and protracted sickness of his wife. He saved her life, but the strain was too great and the deadly Bright’s disease of the kidneys fastened itself upon him and slowly sapped his life away. Upon medical advice from the eminent Dr. Janeway, of New York, he, last November, abandoned all business and went to San Diego, California, for a rest and change of scene. He was accompanied by his wife and sister, Mrs. Lulu George Slinn, and they remained with him continuously to the hour of his death. Dr. Grove, the physician who last attended to him, also accompanied him from San Diego. He was delighted when his face was turned eastward toward his boyhood home. He had pleaded to come before but the trip was forbidden by the physicians until finally when it was seen that he could not get well. He counted the days and frequently inquired where the train was, until east of Kansas City. A pathetic feature was his taking off within three or four hours ride of his home. When the train reached Ft. Madison, Iowa, the remains were embalmed and taken to Hannibal, Mo., the former home of his wife, for interment.

The funeral occurred Monday June 5th, at 2 P. M., the obsequies being conducted by the rector of the Protestant Episcopal church, of which he was a member. He was laid to rest in the beautiful cemetery on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, a spot he and his wife had in previous years agreed upon as their final resting place. Mrs. N. M. George, his mother, his sister, Mrs. Lulu George Slinn, and C. L. George and Byron George, his two brothers, attended the funeral.

Dr. W. A. George was the youngest son of Dr. Oliver George, deceased, and was born in Bonaparte, Iowa, January 6, 1853; was in his forty-seventh year at the time of his death. He mastered shorthand at home without a teacher and went alone to New York City when fifteen years of age, graduated at Graham’s Shorthand College and accepted a lucrative position there for several years. He was the best medical stenographer in the city. He would accurately report the most abstruse lectures. He was familiar with medical parlance at even that early age, having read his father’s medical works and often compounded his father’s prescriptions along with his older brothers who were druggists. It was his father’s desire that he should qualify himself for the profession of medicine and surgery. He took up the study and attended the fall courses of lectures and graduated in 1876, at the head of his class, of 165 members, at Bellevue Hospital Medical College of New York, then the best college in America. He received honorable mention by the faculty. Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, the eminent surgeon, was his preceptor. In the previous year he had phonographically reported Prof. Sayre’s lectures on Orthopedic surgery, corrected the proofs, put them in book form and received special mention in the preface of the work.

He had previously learned the art of printing, when a boy, in the office of the first newspaper published in Bonaparte, Geo. F. Smith of the “State Line Democrat” being one of its founders. He practiced medicine in New York a short time, having charge of Prof. Sayre’s practice one summer during his absence abroad. He returned to Bonaparte and practiced his profession here awhile, but it did not suit his tastes and he embarked in journalism, as editor of the “Bonaparte Journal.” In 1881 he was called to the editorial chair of the “Keokuk Constitution” and in 1883 became one of the proprietors and President of the Constitution Company and the Tri-State Printing Company and remained in Keokuk until 1888, when he went to New York, having lost every dollar he had in the world, not even trying to save his exemptions. He was for some time financial editor of the “New York World,” Manager of the National Rebate Company and newspaper broker. The writer has known him most intimately and a brighter intellect, a more generous nature he has never met in all his contact with men. He was always battling for temperance the amelioration of the oppressed and his labor was always unselfish—was for others.

Dr. George was married in 1886 to Miss Lucy A. Munger, of Hannibal, Mo., a lady of culture, and their married life has been a very happy one. His wife and sister were his constant attendants to the day of his death. He had saved both their lives only a few years previously when they had been given up to die, and their grief is great at their failure to restore him. His life was always devoted to Christian principles and the uplifting of humanity; and his pen and tongue were never silent when a cause of right needed an advocate no matter how unpopular or dangerous it might be to speak. The hope of immortality, the beautiful, rational promise that we again look into the faces of our loved ones is the only comfort in such a calamity.
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Source: Entler Scrapbook Collection, vol 4, Iowa Historical Library, Iowa City, IA