JAMES M. STILL, M. D.

JAMES M. STILL, M. D.  The remotest ancestor of the subject of this sketch of whom we have any account was Boaz Still, who was born in England about 1730, and was one of six brothers who migrated to America and settled in the Southern States.  Boaz Still was a farmer by occupation, and located in Buncombe County, North Carolina.  He married Mary Lyda, who was of German descent.  They were the parents of seventeen children, five of whom became medical practitioners.

Abraham Still, one of the sons, was born in 1795, in Buncombe County, North Carolina, and began the practice of medicine in Lee County, Virginia, about 1826, after having finished a course of reading in the office of Dr. Quinn, of that county.  He was also a Methodist preacher, and became a member of the Methodist Episcopal, or Northern, Church when the division on the question of slavery occurred.  He continued to practice medicine until 1868, and attended a patient only a week before his death.  In 1834 he moved with his family to Houston County, Tennessee, remaining there four years, and then passing to Macon County, Missouri.  In 1852 he went to Kansas as a missionary, having charge of the Shawnee Mission, on the Wakarusa River, near Blue Mound, where he ministered to the temporal and spiritual comfort of the Shawnee, Delaware and Kickapoo Indians.  He remained there six years, and spent the balance of his life in that section, dying in 1868, at the age of seventy-three years, having practiced medicine for over forty years.  His wife was Martha P. Moore, born in Tazewell County, Virginia, in 1800, and dying in 1889.  They were the parents of nine children, namely: Edward C.; James M.; Andrew T.; Barbara Jane, who married Fred P. Vaughn; Thomas C.; John; Mary, wife of Thomas Adams; Marova M., wife of Richard Clark; and Cassandra, who became the wife of a Mr. McCullom and settled in California.

James M. Still, the subject of this article, and the second son of Dr. Abraham Still, was born in Lee County, Virginia, February 5, 1826, and was a member of his father's family until the latter moved to Missouri, and in his office he prepared for the practice of medicine.  In 1856 he opened an office in Douglas County, Kansas, where he had settled two years previously.  In those days of turmoil and bloodshed, he saw much of the making of Kansas, which emerged from the free-soil struggle to assume its place among the sisterhood of states in 1860.  Living only a few miles from Lawrence, Dr. Still witnessed the raids upon that town and the massacre of many of its settlers by guerrillas, which horrified the Nation.  He was Surgeon of the Twenty-first Kansas Volunteers during the War of the Rebellion, and was present at the battle of the Big Blue.  Following that time he was connected with the forces organized for local defense.  In 1864 he took a course of lectures at Rush Medical College, Chicago, and from that institution received the degree of M. D.  In 1881, after nearly thirty years' residence in Kansas, he moved to Nodaway County, Missouri, where he remained until his settlement in Evanston, in 1895.  He became a partner with his brother, Dr. A. T. Still, in the practice of Osteopathy in 1893, and is now at the head of the medical institute lately established at this place.

In 1850 Dr. Still married Miss Rahab M. Saunders, a native of New Kent County, Virginia, daughter of James Saunders, who represented his county six years in the Legislature of that state.  The maiden name of Mrs. Still's mother was Elizabeth Carr.  Dr. and Mrs. Still were the parents of five children, of whom three are now living, namely: Summerfield S., a student of medicine; Mary F., wife of Anderson Craig; and James Abraham, a minister of the Methodist Church in Missouri.

                                -- Submitted by Sherri Hessick   ([email protected])