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LANCASTER EXAMINER, AUGUST
24, 1892.
The whole community will
read with sorrow that Dr. Joshua M. Deaver, of Buck, East Drumore
Township, died Monday morning at 6 o'clock of a lingering illness of
several weeks' duration. Throughout the county the doctor, in a
professional, social, and business way, was so well known that no one will
be more sincerely and widely mourned. His illness began last February with
a slight attack of la grippe. The pressure of professional business
prevented needed rest and care, and his ailment developed into other
troubles of a more serious character, ending in Bright's disease and
death. For the last six weeks he has been confined to his bed, gradually
wasting away, till death made the final summons.
Dr. Deaver sprang from
strong Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock —the son of Richard Deaver, of
Harford County, Md., born April 19, 1822. His father, being a farmer of
independent means, concluded to give his son a sound education as a
heritage and then let farm paddle his own canoe. He accordingly attended
the neighboring cademies of Slate Ridge and Bel Air, and laid the
foundations of sound thinking and hard study. After completing his
academic course, he began the study of medicine, under the instruction of
Dr. Richard W. Hall, then professor of obstetrics, of Baltimore. This
preliminary study was exceptionally happy and useful not only from
personal association with the learned professor, but in the contact with
others to whom it introduced the young medical student. From the beginning
of his studies he combined the abstract and concrete, theory and practice,
lived, moved and had his being in a medical atmosphere, and in daily
communion with the best medical minds of the day. On March 7, 1843, he
graduated from the University of Maryland, and with such knowledge as he
brought from his Alma Mater, and not too abundant scrip from his father,
he began practice in Hopewell Township, York County, where he remained for
six months. Next he came to Buck, Drumore Township, now East Drumore, this
county, where he has remained ever since.
All his life he has been a
student of medical literature, and for the last quarter of a century has
stood at the head of his profession in this community. His knowledge of
medicine was wide and accurate, his observation keen, and experience vast
and varied. In diagnosing a case his judgment was unfailing, and his use
of remedies intelligent and successful.
Dr. Deaver married twice.
His first wife was Mary Ann Gardner, daughter of Philip Gardner. The
Gardners, by blood relationship and intermarriage, are connected with the
best families of the Lower End. By this marriage two sons were born—Prof.
Gardner Clinton Deaver, of Dayton College, Ohio, and Dr. Richard Wilmot
Deaver (so called in honor of his father's preceptor), one of the leading
and most successful physicians of Germantown, this state. The doctor's
present wife was Elizabeth Agnes Moore, of Cecil County, Md., by whom two
more sons wore born (and a daughter who died in infancy): Dr. John Blair
Deaver, the eminent surgeon, of Philadelphia, and Professor of Applied
Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Harry Clay Deaver,
Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy in the same institution. These four
sons, so eminent in their profession, have earned the sire the title of
"Father of Doctors." Possibly it was the thorough early training of these
boys, in whose preliminary studies in the classics the father took a hand,
and seeing them through their medical studies, which kept the doctor
himself so thoroughly in contact with the progress of the times.
As a citizen, the doctor
always took an active part in all the social and business affairs of his
neighborhood. In early life he was a Whig in politics, but after the
dissolution of that party he gave his allegiance to the Democratic
organization and has been a consistent member thereof since young manhood.
He had been a member of the Lancaster County Medical Society almost since
its organization, and once President of the same; also a member of the
Pennsylvania and Maryland Union Medical Society, and two years ago its
President. Like all successful physicians who have seen one generation
pass away and another grow up to manhood, he became in time the most
useful citizen in his neighborhood—the adviser of young and old, the
arbitrator in disputes, the business and legal counselor, and the
repository of family secrets. His strong convictions and individuality
made him the warmest of friends, and a good, but not unwise, hater. He was
generous to a fault, and ended a career of singular usefulness and honor.
In the fullness of time and in the plenitude of honor, he fell like a
strong man to receive the final plaudit of "well done, good and faithful
servant." |
