Logan, David McClure MAGA © 2000-2007
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HISTORICAL SKETCHES

Virginia, Ill.

By: J. N. Gridley

Printed by the Enquirer
1907

DR. DAVID MCCLURE LOGAN.
By Dr. J. F. Snyder
_____

The pioneer doctors of American birth in the western states and territories fifty seventy years ago, were, with few exceptions, self-made men, and the self-reliant architects of their own fortunes. As a class they possessed those sterling qualities of mind and character that distinguish Americans as an advanced people, and which have placed us in the front ranks of civilized nations. By innate talents, pluck and energy they, in many instances, raised themselves from poverty and obscurity to the social status of eminent respectability and wroth. Collegiate education and its concomitant culture are undoubtedly, in this age, of very considerable help to young men commencing the serious duties and obligations of life in any vocation, but are not, even now, indispensable elements of success. They were still less essential in the early settlement of the West, as was fully demonstrated by the life history of many of the ablest and most successful citizens of those times.

Dr. Logan, however, though self-dependent from his boyhood, was well educated in the elementary branches of learning, to which he had added by his studious habits a wide range of promiscuous knowledge. He was born in Belmont county, Ohio, on January 4th, 1821, the fourth in order in a family of eleven children. His father was a farmer of such limited means and business capacity that he could not have raised his numerous family in idleness and luxury had he been disposed to do so. His children all had to work from an early age; but their attendance at school was not neglected, and was curtailed only by need of their services on the farm. The father of that family of eleven children, James Logan, was of Irish descent, born in Huntingdon county, Pennsylvania, and his wife, Emma (Collins) Logan, was a native of Rhode Island. their life in Belmont county, Ohio, was a repetition of the often-told story of many pioneers who came from the older states to the new country in the west to find homes and make their fortunes with no other capital than youth, health and industry. They began with building a log cabin, the clearing away of timber and brush, and putting a patch of land in cultivation, and continued their arduous labors attended by constant contention with privations, hardships and more or less sickness. Their accumulation of property was retarded by various reverses and difficulties, the struggle becoming more intensified with advancing age, the rapid increase of their family, and the crowding of denser population around them.

In middle life, seeing the prospects for much financial improvement diminishing where he was, and again allured by the reported splendor of another new country farther west, and the advantages it presented for the future welfare of his children, Mr. Logan concluded to follow the great tide of emigration then moving onward to the Sangamon county in central Illinois. Leaving Ohio in the early spring of 1836, with his wife and the young Logans, having for means of transportation a couple of wagons, several horses, and some loose stock, he passed through Indiana as expeditiously as possible for fear of the prevailing milksickness and ague there, then crossing the Wabash continued his course toward the setting sun. In due course of time he halted his teams on the Sangamon bottom, near the foot of the bluffs on the bank of Job's creek about twelve miles of Beardstown. Looking around awhile for an opening, he rented, near by, a cabin and eight acres of land from Jeremiah Bowen, one of the early settlers of Hickory precinct, and he set all his available force at work.

In 1836, when the Logan family arrived in the Sangamon bottom and commenced the irrepressible conflict with mosquitoes and green-headed flies, the state of Illinois had sixty organized counties and a population of over 270,000. Its total revenues from all sources that year amounted to $97,923, and its expenses for maintaining the state government for the same period were $78,606. Its public debt was a little over $700,000, of which about $200,000 had been borrowed from its own school fund, and has not yet been repaid. The young state was in sound financial condition, with the development of its natural resources progressing rapidly, and satisfactory annual increase of population and wealth, as well as encouraging extension of commerce and productive industries. The general prosperity of the people, however, reacted to their detriment. Their slow but sure advancement was suddenly discovered to be too slow, and altogether insufficient to keep pace with the spirit of the times. When they saw that several of the older states had engaged in building railroads and digging canals they became restless and discontented. They too wanted improved means of transportation by railroads and removal of obstructions to the navigation of their rivers. And in August of that year they elected a legislature pledged to provide the desired means. Accordingly the famous Internal Improvement Acts were passed for constructing a vast system of railroads, and clearing from several of the interior rivers their snags, sand bars, and accumulations of driftwood; all to be paid for with money borrowed by the state.

The state's credit was No. 1, and for awhile its bonds sold rapidly. No time was lost in commencing the public works at different points. by the beginning of 1837 there was an abundance of money in circulation, times were flush, and all kinds of business booming, with prosperity based altogether on credit, and, of course, fictitious. Among the evils it engendered was a craze for speculation, especially in building, or platting, new towns, which became epidemic among all classes. Genl. Jackson's second Presidential term closed on the 4th of March, 1837, when he was succeeded by Martin Van Buren. A noted official act of President Jackson near the close of his first term was so far-reaching in its effects as to burst the bubble of golden prospects in Illinois five years later. In July, 1832, he vetoed the bill passed by Congress for renewing the charter of the National Bank, and the next year removed the government funds from its vaults. That death blow to the Bank forced it to suspend specie payment, and into final liquidation. The result of that disaster was radiated to the utmost limits of the country. It reached Illinois in the summer of 1837 when all the banks in the state suspended specie payment causing the memorable panic of that year involving general business failures, and great financial distress, followed two years later by total collapse of the wild Internal Improvement scheme by which the state, with a debt of over $14,000,000, was reduced to the verge of bankruptcy, producing the hardest times yet known in its history.

Upon his arrival in the Sangamon bottom in the spring of 1836 David M. Logan was fifteen years of age, a tall, straight, well-knit youth of industrious habits and bright intellect. He had learned to plow and swing the axe; and also to read, write and cipher as far as the rule of three. He there grew up to manhood in stature at work in the fields during the farming seasons and attending the country schools during the winters. He was fond of study and quick in acquiring knowledge. With advancing years and wider range of learning his aspirations soared beyond the plodding labor of tilling the soil. There were other pursuits in life, requiring more active exercise of the intellect and less slavish muscular toil, that he thought he would prefer, and was better fitted for, than that of breaking sod with three or four yoke of oxen, or plowing corn with a wooden mold-board plow drawn by a single horse. His first venture for independent self-support, after he was old enough to vote, was school teaching. In the fall and winter seasons he taught several subscription schools and worked in the harvest fields during the summers. His reputation as a competent instructor was so favorable that the School Directors of Beardstown employed him, in 1842, to teach in the schools of that place. His work there, though highly satisfactory to the patrons of the school, and to the Directors, convinced him that he required more thorough education himself to make his teaching come up to his standard of efficiency.

By practicing rigid economy, and saving the money he earned he was enabled to enter Illinois college, at Jacksonville, and pay for his tuition, and defray all incidental expenses, for the full two sessions of 1846-7 and 1847-8. Exhaustion of his means forced him to retire without completing the full collegiate course. He ignored the Mexican war, preferring to acquire an education rather than military glory as one of Col. Hardin's volunteers. He was a student at Illinois college when it still had a medical department for the instruction of embryo physicians, and occasionally listened with profound interest to the lectures of Dr. David Prince on anatomy and surgery, and to those of Dr. Henry Jones on the theory and practice of medicine. It may be that they influenced him to choose, some years later, the profession of medicine as a life vocation. In fact that was the ambition stirring him at the time he left college, and he determined to attain that object if possible to overcome the obstacles in his way. Returning to the Sangamon bottom in the spring of 1848 without a dollar, he found employment among the farmers there until close of the harvest.

His parents, with their younger children and unmarried daughters, had left Cass county several years before and rented the Foster farm over in Sangamon county; and there James Logan, his father, died in 1845. His body was brought back to Cass county and buried in the Carr graveyard on a high point of the Sangamon bluffs. Mrs. Logan survived him several years, dying in Mason county in 1865. As the fall approached Dave Logan went to Beardstown to look up something to do besides school teaching which he concluded to abandon. The only job that was presented was a clerkship in a store belonging to a man named Fraley. That he accepted, and there passed the winter.

In 1849 Dr. Samuel Christy left Farmingdale, in Sangamon county, where he had been located for nine years, that he might obtain relief from the rigors and hardships of country practice, and moved to Beardstown to enjoy the ease and comfort of professional life in that metropolis. To escape as far as practicable a renewal of country medical practice, among the sloughs and swamps of the Illinois river bottom and Schuyler county hills, he entered into partnership, in the spring of 1850, with a man named Thiele to run a retail drug store in Beardstown. Thiele was not a druggist, and no one could possible have been less adapted for the retail drug trade than was Dr. Christy. He was too generous and open-handed to make any small transactions, or a "picayune" business successful. They needed a "clerk" to assist in selling drugs, paints, oils and patent medicines. Logan fancied that pharmacy would suit him better than selling calico, or teaching, and applied for the clerkship. He was at once employed, and proved to be a very active and efficient apprentice.

Dr. Christy and Dave Logan possessed several identical traits of character, manhood and mental activity, that tended to attract them to each other. There was almost exact accordance in their extremely liberal religious beliefs, and in all their views and opinions with the exception of politics. They belonged to opposite parties to which each gave firm, stubborn, allegiance; each defending on all occasions his political principles with voluble ability. Notwithstanding that difference, however, they there formed a cordial mutual friendship that continued without interruption to the close of their lives. Dr. Christy was not long in discovering Logan's genuine worth and intellectual sprightliness, and interested in his welfare, earnestly advised him to waste no further time in temporary and unprofitable employment, but to set in at once to the systematic study of medicine, and to fit himself as soon as possible for the active work of the profession. Tho unprepared, as he thought, to fully adopt that course, Logan made good use of his leisure time while in the drug store by studying materia medica, and reading some of the Doctor's text books. But having no other revenue than the wages he earned, the length of time, and the very considerable expenses required to complete his medical education almost deterred him from making further efforts in that direction.

Before the expiration of a year's partnership Mr. Thiele, impressed with the fact that a village drug store was not a sure means for the acquisition of great wealth, sold his interest in it to Dr. Charles Sprague, and retired. Scarcely a year later Dr. Christy, realizing the same fact, and the additional fact that he was no better fitted for the drug business than he was to occupy a Methodist pulpit, also sold his interest to Dr. Sprague, and retired from it hardly as well off as he was before embarking in it. Then purchasing a hundred acre farm in the prairie on the main road to Springfield, half a mile east of the little village in that era known as Lancaster, no Philadelphia, he left Beardstown in the early spring of 1852 to try once more a country life. By transfer of the drug store to another proprietor, Dave Logan's occupation was gone; but his competency in business having become so well known he did not have long to wait for other employment.

One Benjamin E. Roney, a very slippery Jew, had a store on the corner of the northeast half of lot 4, in block 1, Beardstown, where he sold ready-made clothing, jewelry, notions, etc. Needing a popular, wide-awake salesman he offered the position to Logan at a salary considerably in advance of that he had received from Christy and Thiele. Accepting it he immediately entered upon the discharge of his new duties, and rendered his Israelite employer very satisfactory service for about a year. He would very probably have remained in that place longer had not the store, one night, in a mysterious manner, caught on fire, and went up in smoke. The building it occupied belonged to Jas. Stevenson and Wm. Campbell, and an adjoining building, destroyed by the same fire, was the property of Sylvester Paddock. Roney's goods were insured by the Delaware Mutual Insurance Company, which, owing to the peculiar circumstances of the fire, suspended payment of the policy until the matter could be fully investigated. Roney then sued the company, making oath that his losses amounted to $6850. Very shortly after the fire he left Beardstown and opened out another store in one of the upper Illinois river towns. There Dave Logan visited him, either to satisfy his own curiosity in view of suspicions entertained by the public generally; or he was sent there to aid in the investigation conducted by the Insurance company. Looking over Roney's stock of goods Logan recognized - perhaps without much surprise - many suits of clothing, and other articles, he had been quite familiar with in the Beardstown store, upon several of which were still the cost and selling prices he himself had marked on them. Roney was indicted by the grand jury for burning his own store, was arrested, and on the 10th of February 1853, was convicted of arson - largely by Logan's testimony - sent to the penitentiary. On the 17th of the same month he was indicted for perjury having sworn falsely respecting his claim against the Insurance company.

Still pursuing his medical studies in a desultory way wile selling shoddy clothing and pinchbeck jewelry for Roney, Logan saved all he could of his salary, which by careful management paid his way at St. Louis in the winter of 1853-54 while attending a course of lectures at the St. Louis Medical college there. While there his health failed, and he returned home in the spring of 1854 with a troublesome bronchial cough that closely imitated incipient consumption. Again adrift with nothing to do, and without money, he anxiously scanned the horizon for something to turn up to his advantage, in the meantime trying to devise some means to travel in another climate for the benefit of his health.

That was the age when the patent medicine industry was in full flower. As in the early days of California gold mining large fortunes were made with only a butcher knife and tin pan, so, about the same time, other fortunes were rapidly accumulated in selling patent medicines with but little capital besides printer's ink. For sometime before and after 1854 in almost every newspaper throughout the west and south was displayed in attractive type the standing advertisement of "Dr. S. G. Farrell's Celebrated Arabian Liniment," a sovereign remedy for well nigh every ailment of man or beast. Its principal ingredient was coal tar, then a waste product of the Peoria, (Ills.) gas factory situated near the laboratory and residence of Dr. Farrell in that city. It vied in popular favor with Dr. A. G. Bragg's "Celebrated Mexican Mustang Liniment" - also made of coal tar formerly poured out into the sewers from the St. Louis gas works, and both were very extensively sold all over the country for several years. Dr. Farrell employed many agents in his business, and still wanted more.

That offered Logan the much desired opportunity to try milder climatic conditions for his health and incidentally to see more of this great country, particularly that portion of it south of Mason and Dixon's line from whence had emanated the revolting accounts of African slavery he had heard from his childhood. Applying to Dr. Farrell for a traveling agency in the south, he was entrusted by that eminent scientist with a responsible roving commission obligating him to visit all the stations where the celebrated Arabian Liniment was sold in a district of the south extending from North Carolina to Texas, collecting from each the quarterly, or semiannual, proceeds of sales, and establishing new stations and agencies where he thought they were needed. He received a generous salary besides having all his expenses paid. For nearly two years he was on the southern roads, sometimes traveling on horseback, at times in a two-wheel sulky, but generally in a light spring wagon drawn by two horses... In after life he often recounted many of the interesting events and adventures, hairbreadth escapes from danger, and amusing incidents, he had experienced in that period.

At length popular demand for Arabian Liniment was gradually exhausted, - in other words, it "played out", as all patent nostrums sooner or later do - and Logan returned ti Illinois in sound health, and better financial condition than he ever before had been, and fully confirmed in his early abhorrence of the institution of slavery and the Democratic party.

In the cordial welcome and genial environments he found in the offices of his Democratic friends, Dr. Sprague and Dr. Parker, of Beardstown, he commenced anew the study of medicine, and persevered with earnestness and diligence until he completed the prescribed course. At Dr. Pope's "St. Louis Medical College" he was awarded the coveted parchment which testified, in passable Latin, that he was "learned in medicine"; and gave him authority to go forth and heal the infirmities of mankind. Graduating there in March, 1857, he went back to Beardstown prepared to enter upon the duties and responsibilities of his newly-acquired profession, but not in that town, for it had then, as now, more Doctors than it needed. Not being in financial condition to wait until some of them died, or starved out, he anxiously looked around for some other place where he could begin right away to exchange his skill and learning - with the aid of some calomel and other Allopathic physic - for needed revenue. By advice of Dr. Christy he settled down in the northeastern part of Cass county in Richmond precinct, at the little village known by its post office name of Hagley, which was changed to Newmanville, in 1859, when a town was platted there by Rev. Wingate Newman, a local Methodist preacher, who conferred upon it the dignity and honor of his ow3n name.

As a rule, physicians regard a location without competition as not worth having. The mutual envy and jealousy of competing Doctors - as in many other callings - are wholesome stimulants to sharpen their faculties and energies; and the assistance they are sometimes compelled to render each other tends to soften some of the asperities of their doleful existence. For a long time Dr. Logan was professionally a monarch of all he surveyed at Newmanville. Dr. Christy, eight miles distant, being his nearest competitor. At the age of thirty-six he commenced the practice of medicine, and was successful from the start, not only in having all the work he wanted to do, but also in his treatment of the sick and the lame who gave him their confidence and patronage, and - with occasional exceptions - paid him for his services. Nature had fitted him with the intuitive knack for the practice of medicine, to which he should have applied himself fifteen years earlier. He had also too long neglected a matter imperatively necessary for the better success and requisite social standing of every Doctor, particularly every country Doctor. He was still a bachelor, and without a home of his own. In many ways and often, he was reminded of those important deficiencies of his professional equipment, and, though a little late, resolved to supply them as soon as practicable. And he did; first by securing a house and lot in the little prairie village, and then, on the 20th of January, 1858, being united in marriage to Miss Rebecca W. Hamilton, of the Ashland precinct, who was born in Loudoun county, Virginia, on the 30th of June, 1830.

Dr. Logan was very nearly six feet in height, rather raw-boned, erect and faultless in figure, and usually weighted about 160 pounds. In facial features he was by no means a beauty, having a somewhat rugged cast of countenance, dark complexion, black eyes and eyebrows surmounted by glossy black hair above a broad and high forehead. by his straight, well knit form, black eyes and hair, and swarthy color, he could well have passed as a lineal descendant of Logan the famous and eloquent Cayugas chief. But he had, apart from his external appearance, very few Indian characteristics. In manners and deportment, with no affection of refinement, he was a genuine gentleman. His personal habits were irreproachable with the exception of free use of tobacco, and, for a long time, of profane expletives he employed to give force to his language. In all things he was strictly temperate, and a total abstainer from the use of liquors of every description - necessarily so, he said, for his natural desire for intoxicants was so strong that he could keep it in subjection only by firmly refusing to indulge it at all. He was an honest man; correct and reliable in all his dealings, kind, benevolent and charitable, and with that inborn reverence for truth, honor and morality that he instinctively shrank from wrong-doing in any guise. Such a man deserved - and Dr. Logan had and retained - the respect, confidence and highest esteem of all who knew him well.

The daily life of all country Doctors is very much the same. The professional experience of one is similar to that of another, varying in some particulars each day, but having about the same average in the course of a year. He is called upon in the middle of the night, it may be to only extract a tooth; or to lance a soul twisting felon for the caller; but more often to ride out several miles to face a howling storm. His services are usually required the most urgently in the worst weather, and when the roads are the roughest or muddiest. He is the servant of the public, with no hour in the day or night exempt from its demands. Reaching his home in the morning, after a night of sleepless anxiety and exertion over a patient in some dilapidated cabin, with hopeful anticipation of rest and quietude the balance of the day, he is dismayed by arrival at his house of a whole family who have come to have the baby's gums sacrificed or to find out if the breaking out it has is the chicken pox. He examines the little darling, and for hours has to listen to the history and symptoms of all the ailments that have afflicted all the rest of them, including the uncles, aunts and grandparents, since they were born; and then look pleasant and get off some of his stereotyped jokes while he entertains them all at dinner.

Then again, he has a patient several miles out in the country seriously sick - a friend and patron whom he esteems highly, and member of an influential family. The symptoms are grave and prognosis unfavorable; but on leaving him at bed time he thought he detected a decided change for the better. Getting home late at night, tho very tired, he sits up among his books and journals for two or three hours longer racking his brain while looking up authorities with the hope of finding something that will shed new light upon the case to aid his treatment. After a few hours of restless sleep he awakes with first anxious thoughts about the patient. Taking an early and hasty breakfast he is about to harness his gorse to go and see if any further change has taken place since he was last there, when a message from the family of the sick man arrives and tells him he need not go out there again, as during the night they concluded to send for Dr. Pillarlick, and have placed the case in his hands. the man recovers, and the neighborhood resounds with praises of the town Doctor who at the eleventh hour snatched him from the jaws of death. In this hypothetical instance the country Doctor treated the disease as well and correctly as any physician could have done, and conquered it; but was set aside just as victory was in his grasp, and the credit was given another who had given the matter no study or thought. Such are samples of a country Doctor's daily and yearly trials. If there is a ray of pleasure or enjoyment in his professional life the writer of this sketch, himself a country Doctor for fifty-three years, has not yet discovered it. What marvel it is ten that many physicians become so weary and disgusted with the "noble science" that they would gladly exchange it for some other calling - if they could?

Dr. Logan reached that stage by the time he had had a dozen years of experience in the healing art. In those years he held sway over a wide circuit of prairies, hills and hollows without immediate competition, Dr. Christy, eight miles away, being his nearest professional neighbor. Hagley, his location, was twelve miles distant from a county seat, and eight and a half miles from any railroad or telegraph station. His isolation, however, had many advantages as well as drawbacks. He was free from the annoyance of tramps, and measurably free from the ever-increasing multitude of human vampires - the worthless, dishonest, loafers and dead beats - that all towns prey upon the Doctor's substance. He was in the midst of a splendid country populated in the main by intelligent, progressive, and prosperous farmers who promptly paid him for his services. Then too, being alone in his conflict, with diseases, he was thrown entirely upon his own resources, which had the effect of sharpening his faculties and strengthening his judgement and self-reliance, thereby increasing his ability and usefulness. He was deservedly a popular physician and quite successful. In his treatment of the sick there was no blind, unreasoning following of medical authorities; no haphazard guessing or random prescribing; but he thoroughly studied each symptom, tracing it to its ultimate cause, and to that cause applied the remedy indicated.

It is human to err, and, no doubt, he was sometimes mistaken; but even then he could give a lucid reason for the course he pursued. Slow to adopt new remedies and new-fangled modes of treatment, he retained such as had in his hands stood the test of experience by proving reliable and successful. He never administered to anyone a particle of acetanilid, cocaine or chloral hydrate. In treating pneumonia he depended almost entirely upon veratrum, calomel and quinine, rarely failing to conquer it in a short time. He was not much of a surgeon, but as an obstetrician had few, if any, superiors in the county, and never in his life employed forceps or other mechanical interference. He regarded appendicitis as very seldom a surgical disease, and under his treatment ninety per cent of those cases recovered without use of the knife.

About 1869, Dr. Charles Houghton, a young physician came to Newmanville with the purpose of engaging in the practice of medicine there. Dr. Logan, whose health was then somewhat impaired, and who was very tired of the everlasting daily grind of the practice, saw, or though he saw, in this professional accession a favorable opportunity of escaping it by changing his occupation to that of farming. To accomplish that object he purchased of James Carr, on the 8th of August, 1870, one hundred and twenty acres of land in the "barrens" five miles west of Newmanville, described as the N� of Sec. 26, and the NE � of the NE � of Sec. 27 of T. 18 in R. 9. then selling his village residence, business and good will to Dr. Houghton he moved to his farm in the spring of 1871, where as soon as practicable, he began raking stalks, sowing oats and breaking corn ground. That bucolic pastime contrasted pleasantly with his years of trudging night and day to the beck and call of the public, and he congratulated himself upon his emancipation - but only for a short time. His old friends and patrons followed him to his pastoral retreat when medical services were needed, and he could not resist their appeals to go to their assistance. And thus, before long, his time and attention were divided between his efforts to manage his farm, and visiting the sick for miles around. For three years he tried faithfully to perform his dual obligations - to the soil and to the people - but finally was convinced that it was as difficult to successfully conduct two occupations having no affinity for each other, as it is for an ordinary mortal to serve any two masters satisfactorily. The attempts he made to do it proved a failure, as he was compelled to neglect either his farming industry or his medical practice, and often both. Neither returned adequate profits, and both deteriorated. Instead of the freedom he had expected to enjoy on the farm he was more than ever enslaved, and his family deprived of many social and educational advantages.

Disappointed and disgusted he sold hi farm, on the 4th of March, 1874, to Thomas Middleton, and going back to Newmanville repurchased his former home of Dr. Houghton, and resumed the old business at the old stand, but not with the professional snap and enthusiasm of bygone days.

When a young man at Beardstown Dr. Logan joined the Odd Fellows order; but lost interest in it with the passing of time, and in late life was not an active member of the organization. His chief and highest interest was in the welfare of his family, and next to that in his profession as the means of assuring that welfare. He was quite a politician of the radical Republican brand; but his activity in politics was more a diversion than a selfish or designing interest. Having no inclination whatever for public life, he never held an office of any kind, and would never consent to be a candidate for any public position. Tho not gifted with oratory, he was a ready and forcible talker, a clear and logical reasoner, and naturally fond of controversy and disputation - qualities that would have rendered him famous as a Campbellite preacher had he been brought into the fold early in life. His favorite pastime was the discussion fo political questions with his Democratic friends about the stores and blacksmith shops, and at stated meetings in the country school houses. A characteristic of his conversation, as well as his public discourses, was a peculiar positive manner of expression - even to bluntness at times - , but in the hottest argument he never lost his temper, or betrayed the least ill-nature or discourtesy.

Not a profound scholar, yet , a persistent reader and student, his mind was the repository of a great fund of knowledge in almost eery field of learning. Without talent for music, or any pretense of abnormal wit or humor, he was a jovial, entertaining companion, with keen appreciation of the ludicrous as well as of the sublime, and partial to anecdotes and jokes if not too deeply tainted with vulgarity. As to the religious sentiment, Dr. Logan practiced in daily life the virtues of justice, charity, benevolence, honesty, and all the essential elements of true religion. Until late in life his rational discrimination between creeds and genuine religion eliminated his faith in the dogmas of the church. He was an Agnostic with the most liberal tendencies, subscribing with candid earnestness to the philosophy of Herbert Spencer and the theories of Huxley and Haeckel. He often remarked that he never could understand why belief of the impossible and supernatural should be an imperative condition for salvation. However, he never spoke, in terms of disrespect of the church, and contributed to its support because of its civilizing influences.

Back again at his old home in Newmanville, he at once began work in the same old professional ruts that had wearied both his soul and body almost past endurance when he sought respite in farming. Not in robust health, the physical labor of his practice severely taxed his strength, and the piercing northwest winds had no mercy upon him when riding across the prairies in midwinter. The same problem of how to mitigate the rigors of his situation by providing revenue from some other source was presented and added force. A plausible solution of it suggested to his mind was to try merchandising again, and avail himself of the knowledge of that business he had acquired when a salesman for Roney in Beardstown. The more he thought of that scheme the more feasible it appeared until he finally concluded to go into it. With George McGee - generally known as "Bub" McGee - as a partner, a store room in Newmanville was secured and fitted up, a stock of goods purchased, and the firm of Logan and McGee entered the arena for public favor.

The store did well enough, but it proved for the Doctor only a repetition of his farming enterprise. His medical practice continuing as before monopolized his time to the extent that he could give to the selling of goods very little of his personal attention. McGee got tired of the business and retired, selling his interest in the store to the Doctor, who employed Rufus Cowen to manage it for him. The Doctor's health failing early in 1877 compelled him to abandon both his profession and store, selling the latter to Wm. Waring. For nearly a year he was an invalid, or semi-invalid, disabled from transacting business of any kind requiring much mental or physical exertion One feature - probably the main cause - of is malady, was a rare and very painful disease of one ear, originating in, or resulting from, necrosis of the bony canal and chain of small included bones. Recovery was very slow, perhaps never complete; but in course of time he as enabled to resume his old routine professional work.

For the next dozen years Dr. Logan remained a fixture at Newmanville, making no further effort to digress from the sphere of a plain country Doctor. With the passing of time streaks of silver gray appeared in his raven hair, and the elastic step, and buoyancy of youth changed to the constrained sedateness of advancing age. His old friend, Dr. Christy, had long since left Cass county to seek rest and independence, as an agriculturist in Iowa, but his place, and numerous other places, were taken by new Doctors crowding in on all sides. Dr. Logan then had closer competition; but known so long and so well by the entire community for miles around, and possessing so fully the respect, esteem and confidence of the people, he maintained his professional standing and patronage until overwhelmed by a crushing domestic affliction in 1888. No man ever entertained more ardent affection for his family than did Dr. Logan. The hope and pride of his life were centered in his children, upon whom he lavished his tenderest care, and devoted his means with unstinted liberality. Of the six born to Mrs. Logan and himself, two - Charles C. and Agnes - died when quite young. Emma, the third in order of birth, grew to be a beautiful girl of charming disposition and sparkling intellect. Well educated, and accomplished she was the favorite of all her social circle. When just blooming into young womanhood she was attacked with measles of a virulent type, and, despite the most unremitting care, and the skill and learning of sympathetic physicians who came to Dr. Logan's aid, she died on the 16th of April, 1888.

Her death was a depressing shock to the Doctor. Dejected and discouraged, his usual cheerfulness was changed to pensive meditation and serious reflection, denoting that he was broken in spirit and disheartened. He accompanied his wife to church regularly, and, yielding to her persuasion, and other influences that were brought to bear upon him, consented to become a member of her church.

Dr. Logan was not a conservator of wealth. The money he earned was not hoarded or invested, but dispensed with free hand for the comfort and welfare of his family, the education of his children, and in promiscuous generosity and hospitality. Verging upon his allotted three score and ten years of life, and sensible of the decrepitude they wrought, he retired permanently from the country practice of medicine, in 1899, and moved from Newmanville to Ashland. A short time after he was settled there he was formally baptized by immersion and initiated into the Church of Christ founded in 1815 by Alexander Campbell.

In changing his residence to Ashland it was not Dr. Logan's intention to abandon his profession; but to escape its awful road and night work, and do an exclusively office business, for which he prepared himself. He tried it for awhile, but it did not come up to his expectations. The competition of younger Doctors was too strong for one of his advanced years. Apart from that, the business was too sedentary, and entirely unsuited to his settled habits of life. He was, in fact, tired of servile dependence upon the capricious public for his subsistence; and particularly weary of the daily visits to his office of the same chronic dead beats, that infest every town, taxing his time and patience with the same doleful complaints, and he quit the experiment in disgust. In the town of Boone, in Boone county, Iowa, resided Carlton Collins Logan, an elder brother of the Doctor's; a wealthy old bachelor who owned extensive coal mines there, and had many coal miners in his employ. Upon the earnest solicitation of that brother Dr. Logan left his family well situated in Ashland and went to Boone in February, 1891. There he entered into an agreement to assume professional charge of a specified number of the miners and their families at a stipulated monthly salary.

That arrangement proved highly satisfactory to all parties interested. It enabled the Doctor to confine his duties to regular hours, to escape exposure and country traveling, and above all, and better than all those advantages, it placed him independent of the public for employment and pay. It afforded him leisure for rest, study and recreation while fully discharging his obligations to the miners, who, justly regarded him as a very superior medical adviser and attendant. His salary was liberal and certain, relieving him entirely from financial bother and suspense. His new situation also relieved, in some measure, the gloom and despondency that had recently so seriously depressed him; and thereby very much improved his health. He remained there, in that work, occasionally visiting his family and friends in Cass county, Illinois, passably contented, and holding his own against the insidious aggressions of time, until the spring of 1900, when his health again began to fail. He paid but little attention to it at first thinking the disorder that troubled him was simply nephritis, and would soon pass away. but it grew worse, with more aggravated and serious symptoms, and rapidly undermined his strength. It was evident then that his disease was acute diabetes. His neighbor physicians of the town promptly responded to his call; and his daughter, Stella, hastened from Illinois to his bedside, proving a faithful and efficient nurse. the other members of his family were soon there also, and everything possible was done to arrest the ravages of the remorseless malady, and mitigate his distress. But he had reached the age limit that marks exhaustion of the recuperative powers, and steadily declined until expended vitality could offer no further resistance, and he quietly breathed his last on the 14th day of July, 1900, at the age of 79 years, 6 months and 10 days.

His body was brought back to Cass county, where funeral services were held in Ashland, then it was taken to Newmanville and laid in the village cemetery beside the remains of his children who had preceded him. He was survived by Mrs. Logan, his son Edwin M., and two daughters, Misses Sally and Stella.

The vagaries of public opinion render it impossible for anyone to enjoy universal approbation and popularity. there are invariably some in every community ready to asperse the character of its best and purest members, - in some instances because of fancied wrongs inflicted; but oftener for no other reason than that the persons assailed are far above and superior to themselves. In reference to Dr. Logan, however, the tongue of detraction was well nigh silent. Perhaps no man in Cass county occupying the social and professional station of Dr. Logan enjoyed more largely and unreservedly the esteem, respect, and sincere friendship of its people than he did. There were many who disagreed with him on political, religious and other questions, and a few were at times disposed to censure him for professional mistakes; but none bore him personal enmity, and all were in accord in their high estimates of his spotless character, his integrity, and conscientious honesty.


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