DR. C. V. WILDER, ATLANTIC.
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Progressing through long years of faithful and serviceable labor to assured success and an elevated and firmly fixed position in the regard of the community, although in its earlier stages his progress was slow, toilful and painful because of the conditions surrounding him, Dr. C. V. Wilder, president of the City Hospital at Atlantic, and one of the best known physicians and surgeons in this part of the State, is worthy of the esteem in which he is held as a professional man and a citizen, whether viewed from the standpoint of his professional work and attainments, or his high character and clean life as a man. His life began on September 22, 1851, under the shadows of the Green Mountains of Vermont and near the international boundary line between this country and the Dominion of Canada. He was born at the village of Derbyline, in that part of Caledonia county that is now Orleans, in the State of Vermont, and is the son of Dr. Bela A. and Mary C. (Wood) Wilder, like himself natives of Vermont and belonging to families long resident in that section of the country. The father studied medicine in Massachusetts and until 1855 practiced it in his native State. In that year he had an unyielding attack of Western fever and moved his family to Wisconsin, where he remained in active practice until 1867, when he came to Iowa and took up his residence at Knoxville, marion county. The ensuing eight years were devoted by him to diligent practice in that section, then, in 1875, he came to Atlantic to live. Nine years later he made his final change, removing to Sibley, Osceola county, where he died in 1905. The mother passed away at Atlantic in 1902.
The only child of Dr. Bela A. Wilder and his wife, Mary C., was Dr. C. V. Wilder, the immediate subject of this brief memoir. Coming west with his parents when he was but four years old, he has passed nearly his entire life in the Mississippi valley, and is in all respects one of its representative men. Remaining in Wisconsin until he reached the age of sixteen, he obtained his scholastic instruction in that State, attending first its primitive public schools of half a century ago, and afterward passing two years at the Jefferson Liberal Institute located at the town of Jefferson, in the county of that name. He began the study of his profession under the tuition of his father in 1874, and five years later entered Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago, from which he was graduated in 1882. Thus his professional studies extended over a period of eight years, and they were correspondingly thorough and exhaustive.
A month or two after his graduation Dr. Wilder began his permanent career at Atlantic, although he had practiced before graduation with his father in that city; and he has been continually devoted to professional labors in and around Atlantic through all the subsequent years. He has long been an active and earnest member of the State Medical Society and the American Institute of Homeopathy, and a contributor to their interesting and instructive work and productions. He was one of the leading men in founding the City Hospital in 1903, and of this very useful and highly appreciated institution he has ever since been the president and controlling spirit. In business, he is a stockholder in the Iowa Trust and Savings Bank of Atlantic, and in his fraternal relations a member of the order of Odd Fellows and the Order of Elks.
Dr. Wilder was married in 1901 to Agnes Ross, a native of Saginaw, Mich. They have had one child, Carlton V., Jr., who died at the age of three years. In his management of the hospital the Doctor has been both progressive and careful. While laying under tribute to its work all the latest discoveries in science and practice for the benefit of his patients, he has, at the same time, been careful of the finances, so that the institution presents the gratifying spectacle of a wisely managed public benefit which lacks nothing necessary for its proper workings, but wastes nothing on experiment undertakings.
From "Compendium and History of Cass County, Iowa." Chicago: Henry and Taylor & Co., 1906, pp. 551-552.
