“A lovable and strong man”: Dr. Charles T. Harper, Wilmington, North Carolina

A young Dr. Charles Thomas Harper (1872-1915) had his photograph taken at the studio of William Ashman, whose establishment was located at 17 W. Lexington Street ca. 1889-1904 (Kelbaugh, Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900).

Harper might  have made a present of his cabinet card portrait to a friend while studying medicine in Baltimore.

After a period of pre-med study at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, Harper earned his medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1894. He married Jessie Glenora Zimmerman in 1895,  and they remained in Baltimore for a number of years.

He was  “Demonstrator of Anatomy at the Woman’s Medical College in 1895, and also during that year Assistant Demonstrator of Histology at Baltimore Medical College. In 1896 he was Chief of Clinics of Surgery at Baltimore University, and in 1897 lecturer on Minor Surgery and Bandages at Baltimore University” (Henry E. Shepherd, History of Baltimore, Maryland, p. 91).

By 1900, Harper and his wife and daughter Jessie returned to Wilmington, North Carolina. Dr. Harper’s family was prominent and prosperous. His father, Capt. James Thomas Harper, ran a tugboat service, was a partner in the  Boney & Harper Milling Company and proprietor of the Wilmington Steam Laundry.

Capt. Harper built a home at 5 Church Street, today known as the Harper-Newbold house,  in 1905.  He also owned the Wessel-Harper house, 508 Front Street.

But it was at 1 Church Street, a sprawling 1828 house backing onto the Cape Fear River, that Charles Harper grew up.

Dr. Harper’s granddaughter, Anne Newbold Perkins, remembered the house, which remained in the family from 1882 to 1992,  as a center of activity for the neighborhood children,  “a big old house . . . a wonderful house, fourteen rooms- no central heat. So you were either freezing or burning up. And we just had a good time there” (2006 oral history of Anne Newbold Perkins, William Madison Randall  Library, University of North Carolina Wilmington).

Charles and his family moved back into the big Harper home with his parents and sisters, Mary and Anna.

Once settled back in Wilmington, Dr. Harper took a leading role in matters of municipal health as well as county and state medical affairs. He served as port physican and superintendent of health for the City of Wilmington and was a member of the North Carolina State Board of Medical Examiners.

In 1910 Harper founded a small sanitorium, in a Second Empire-style building at Front and Castle streets, where, ironically, he died of complications from an appendectomy in 1915.

After his death, the Association of Seaboard, Airline and Railway Surgeons published a memorial  to Dr. Harper in the  International Journal of Surgery:

“Dr. Harper was a lovable and strong man, and was always willing to bear the infirmities of the weak and lowly. His genial personality and bright disposition endeared him to all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance  . . . Among the profession he was universally popular” (International Journal of Surgery, v. 28, 1915).

Charles T. Harper and his wife Jessie are buried in Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, North Carolina, along with their daughter, Jessie Harper Newbold.

Ashman’s operator used the very popular vignette style, which burned out the background so that the figure seems to float. Curiously, Harper’s bow tie remains the most vivid thing in the photo–the tie seems so real you can almost imagine reaching in and touching its shiny folds.

View a portrait of an older Dr. Harper at the New Hanover County Public Library Digital Archives.

“The gospel of work”: Dr. Alexander Douglas McConachie

I’ve so far documented nine cabinet card photographs of dentists and physicians who studied and/or practiced in Baltimore.

Alexander Douglas McConachie (1864-1951)  number ten, is the only one not from the United States.

Born in Woodstock, Oxford, Ontario, Canada to Scots immigrants William and Elspeth (Shand) McConachie, Alexander came to Baltimore to study dental surgery and medicine in 1886.

He was part of the University of Maryland Department of Dental Surgery graduating class of 1888, along with Leonidas Wilson Davis and Frank Ryland Steel.

Dr. McConachie went on to study medicine at the University of Maryland and earned an MD there in 1890. He did post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins, and then pursued his medical studies in Europe.

During World War I, Dr. McConachie served in the Army Medical Corps in Orleans, France.

He was president of the Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland for 1923-1924, and a professor on the faculty of the Maryland Medical College.

McConachie settled in Baltimore and in 1898 married into an old Cecil County clan. His wife, Mollie Manly Thomas Drennen, through the Hylands traced her Elkton roots back the 18th century.

According to a Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Book, Mrs. McConachie was descended through her mother, Ann Elizabeth Worrall Manly, from a Lt. John Hyland, born in Kent County, Maryland, in 1746.

After his marriage, Dr, McConachie and his wife settled on Charles Street, in Baltimore, where they lived for the rest of their lives. McConachie, who specialized in disorders of the ear, nose and throat, had his practice at the same address for 50 years.

Dr. McConachie  took his Presbyterian Protestantism seriously. When asked for his definition of success, he told the authors of Men of Mark of Maryland:

“Being content and happy in doing my daily duty as it arises, I never feel the sting of failure, but if I have failed (according to the judgment of others), I should say that I have not succeeded in applying assiduously my gospel, which is a gospel of work, and more work, by which we work out our salvation here and hereafter.”

Fortunately, his gospel did not stop him from enjoying life. An avid sportsman, he loved the new pastime of “motoring” and “hoped to fly.” He liked movies and the theater, and read widely.

The portrait of the young doctor here was taken at the studio of William Ashman, probably as a graduation remembrance in the late 1880s. The National Library of Medicine’s later  portrait of Dr. McConachie shows a handsome man in his confident prime.

He and his wife are buried with his wife’s people in Elkton Cemetery, Cecil County.

Five Medical Sons of the Southland

This cabinet card photograph by Blessing & Co. (John P. Blessing and Henry Fenge)  is autographed by five young men who all turned out to be graduates of the Baltimore College of Physicians and Surgeons, class of 1888.

Perhaps they had their portrait taken as a parting remembrance of their time together.
All five are mentioned in a Baltimore Sun article of 16 March 1888 about the school’s commencement ceremonies at Ford’s Opera House in Baltimore: William Rish Lowman from South Carolina; Harris Miller Branham and Peyton H. Keaton from Georgia. George E. Weber and W. W. Brown are mentioned as special prize-winners in the “graded course,” but their state of origin isn’t given.

For graduating second in his graduating class, Harris Miller Branham (1862-1938) was awarded the Brown Memorial Prize and a year’s residency at Baltimore City Hospital (Peabody College Alumni Directory).

He had come to Baltimore to study medicine after graduating from Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee and teaching for several years.

His parents were Eatonton, Georgia natives Mary Helen Matthews and  Isham Harris Branham (1848-1906), a wealthy Georgia merchant and attorney who attended Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, and  served in the Confederate armed forces during the Civil War.

Young Harris Branham grew up in Fort Valley, Houston County, Georgia, but when he settled down to practice medicine, it was in Brunswick, in Glynn County, Georgia. He and his wife Daisy Tison Branham, are buried in Palmetto Cemetery, Glynn County.

Branham’s identification of the signs of a medical phenomenon called an  “arteriovenous fistula” earned him an entry in the German version of Wikipedia. His observation was dubbed “Branham’s Sign” in his honor;  the story of his medical “eponym” is recounted in a 1985 article in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery by Will C. Sealy.

Read a 1906 biographical sketch of Dr. Branham and family in Georgia: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Institutions and Persons.

William Rish Lowman was awarded the Erich Prize for finishing third  in his graduating medical class.

Born 3 December 1866 in Lexington County, South Carolina, to Dr. Jacob Walter Lowman (1837-1905) and Lodusky (Rish) Lowman (1839-1929), William was descended, through his mother’s kin, from Jacob Long, who served in Water’s Regiment of South Carolina during the American Revolution.

Like Branham’s father, Lowman’s father served the Confederacy in the war between the states, but whether as a doctor or as a soldier is not clear.

Dr. Jacob Lowman studied medicine at the University of Georgia. After the war, he returned to his country practice. A respected and influential citizen, he was elected to the South Carolina state legislature for Lexington County.

According to family and local history researcher Jim Dugan, William Rish Lowman was a pharmacist as well as a physician, and the proprietor of Lowman Drug Store in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

Dr. Lowman served as a board member and trustee of  Orangeburg’s South Carolina State University. A men’s dormitory, Lowman Hall, was named for him in 1917. The building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and part of the South Carolina State College Historic District, was completely rehabbed and reopened in 2010 as University administrative offices.

William, his wife Elvira (Izlar) Lowman, and his parents are buried in Sunnyside Cemetery, Orangeburg.

Dr. Peyton Howard Keaton (1863-1927) of Dougherty County, Georgia, was the son of wealthy plantation-owner Benjamin Washington Keaton (b. abt. 1825).

B. W. Keaton had inherited a large portion of land in what became Dougherty County from his father, B. O. Keaton, who died leaving something like 21,000 acres, including dwellings, farm equipment, farm animals, and probably hundreds of slaves. The land appears to have been divided among several sons, including Benjamin W. Keaton.

After the death of B. W. Keaton sometime between 1865 and 1870, Peyton’s mother, Laura Henington or Hemington  Keaton, married a prosperous merchant of Damascus, Early County, Georgia, and Peyton grew up in the house of his stepfather, Thomas Hightower.

Peyton and his friend W. R. Lowman continued their medical studies together at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, and Keaton named one of his sons, Lowman Keaton, after his friend.

Keaton died of an apparent accidental overdose of chloroform on 7 December 1927, possibly in Leon County, Florida; records of the location conflict. He is buried in Damascus Cemetery, Old Damascus, Early Co., Georgia.

By all accounts, Dr. Keaton died a wealthy man: Owner of 5,000 acres of land, part-owner of  dry goods store in Blakely, Georgia and a meat market in Damascus, and vice-president of a local bank.

W. W. Brown and George E. Weber present more difficult problems, as their states of origin are not given.

W. W. Brown could have been Dr. William Wiley Brown of Limestone County, Texas, born in Texas to Mississippi transplants Wiley Pickens Brown (1837-1918) and Mary “Molly” Z. (Stephens) Brown (1843-1913).

Cathy McCormick has documented the life of Wiley P. Brown’s family in Groesbeck, Limestone County, Texas, where William Wiley Brown married May Procter (1875-1938) and settled down to practice medicine. Dr. Brown died in an auto accident in 1932 and is buried in Faulkenberry Cemetery, Groesbeck, Limestone Co., Texas, along with William’s parents.

Dr. Brown’s brother, Frank F. Brown, DDS, studied dentisty at the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery.

According to A History of Texas and Texans, Volume Four, Wiley P. Brown was born in Tallahachie County, Mississippi and came to Limestone County in 1849 with his parents, whose roots were in South Carolina.

Dr. Brown shared with Keaton and Lowman the history of a father who served in the Confederate army. Capt. Wiley P. Brown rode with the 20th Texas Cavalry in Arkansas and Indian Territory during the Civil War.

G. E. Weber could have been George Ernest Peter Webber (1872-1930), a Kentucky-born physician who grew up in Missouri, and settled in Morland, Graham County, Kansas with his wife Cora Mather. They are buried in Morland City Cemetery, Graham County, Kansas.

Did they ever see each other again after they settled down? State medical associations routinely appointed delegates to attend the annual conferences of other state medical associations, so it is possible that they encountered each other at such gatherings.

However life separated them later, their group photograph captures a moment when these confident young southern doctors, graduating at the top of their class, formed an affectionate confederacy of five.