Dr. John H. Kulp (For ancestral history of the Kulp family see sketch of Dr. W. 0. Kulp, whose portrait and biography appear elsewhere in this volume.) is the youngest of the original Kulp family and was born in Summit County, "Western Reserve" of Ohio, in the Village of Sherman, June 21, 1849. He was educated at the Mennonite Academy at Wadsworth, Ohio, and came to Iowa in 1869.
He determined on the practice of medicine as a vocation, and qualified himself under the tutelage of Professor Robertson of Muscatine, professor of theory and practice in the medical department of the State University at Iowa City, where Dr. Kulp attended lectures and graduated in the class of 1872. Before graduation he entered the State Hospital for the Insane as hospital clerk or apothecary, and after graduation was appointed second assistant physician, which position he held in this institution for the period of two years and a half, and was then promoted to first assistant.
He came to Davenport in January, 1874, and established himself in the practice of his profession, and for twenty years has been active here in the general practice of medicine and surgery.
He is a member of the Scott County Medical Society and of the Iowa State Medical Society, and was at one time president of the Scott County Society. He has been for fourteen years a trustee of the Mount Pleasant Hospital and still holds that position, and has recently been appointed as one of the consulting board of the new St. Luke's Hospital, which is just being established in Davenport. He is also alienist of the insane department of Mercy Hospital and local surgeon of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railroad. He is a member of Xenium Lodge a No. 207, Free and Accepted Masons, at Mount Pleasant, and of Lodge No. 50, Knights of Pythias, at Davenport. In politics he is a Republican, but takes no active part in campaign work, preferring to devote his entire attention to his chosen profession.
He was married September 24, 1873, to Miss Mary E. Cauffman, daughter of D. W. Cauffman of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. They have two sons: Oliver W. and Ray Ranney. The eldest son read medicine with his father and is attending lectures at the State University, and will graduate in the class of '96.
Dr. Kulp is a man of imposing presence, of massive build and a genial warmth of manner that at once wins confidence and friendship. He is calm , dignified and self-possessed, and belongs to that type of men who, had he chosen surgery as a specialty, and located in a large city, would doubtless have won honors and distinction. As it is he ranks as one of Davenport's best physicians and most respected citizens, and has a large circle of friends and clients. He has always avoided rather than courted public attention, otherwise he has the qualities that might easily have carried him to the foreground had he chosen a public or official career. In the prime of a splendid physical manhood he bids fair to continue one of Davenport's representative physicians for a generation yet to come.
BIOGRAPHIES