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Re: Civil war doctor--Harvey Green Johnston

The Doctor Johnston Father and Son

This is the story of two men, father and son, whose lives intermingled for a brief period of time. Although the father died when his son was only seven, the parallels in their lives are arresting. Both were physicians, both were twice married, both lived in a lovely old brick house in Pearisburg built by Andrew Johnston. Both served in the military, the father as a contract surgeon during the Civil War and the son during WWI. Both conducted their practice from the small doctor’s office on the Johnston property and both shared the same name, Harvey Green Johnston.

Harvey Green Johnston I, third son of Andrew and Jane Johnston, was born in 1831 in Pearisburg. He was a year old when his family moved into the Johnston House, which would be his home for the rest of his life. He received and excellent classical education at private schools in the area before attending Emory and Henry College, the University of Virginia and the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He returned to Pearisburg and began his practice in 1853. In 1855, at age 24, he married 15-year –old Anna Marie Snidow, familiarly called Anna or Carrie. Anne died in 1867 just weeks after their 12th wedding anniversary leaving her 36 year old husband to care for their 4 children, William Andrew, Carrie, Jennie, and Ada. William Andrew became a prominent doctor in Roanoke.

In 1869, The widower remarried. His bride was Mary Priscilla Fowler Halsey, a well-educated 27-year-old lady from Tennessee and widow of Captain Alexander Halsey of Lynchburg. Mary Polly, as she was called, had lost her only child in 1864 at the age of 7 months. IN the next twelve years, she and Dr. Johnston added a wooden addition to the house to accommodate eight children, their parents and family servants. The same year, he also built the one room building near the house for his office, and, no doubt, a place to escape the commotion of family life.

Dr. Johnston was a meticulous record keeper. His ledger and a collection of notes and bills draw a picture of a man whose responsibilities included not only his practice but the upkeep of his property, the care of his slaves and the costs of supporting his large family. He ran accounts with merchants in Giles County, Lynchburg, Baltimore and Philadelphia. He was careful with his funds as witnessed by entries on his account with shoemaker Jacob Peters. Between February 1858 and July 1860, the Johnston family purchased three pairs of shoes and had 24 mended. The entire shoemaker’s bill was $ 16.36, a small sum to us , but considering the charge for a patient visit ranged from $ 1.00 to $ 1.50, it is a relatively substantial amount.

Dr. Johnston was a country doctor. His practice stretched from Wolf Creek to Stony Creek. In the 1800”s, the doctor went to the patient, regardless of weather, traveling by buggy, wagon of horseback all over the county. Many of the bills relate to the upkeep of his horses, buggy and tack. Most of the medicine he prescribed was carried in his medical bag. He also carried a 6” x 3 ½” Leather bound copy of the Pocket Cyclopedia of Medicine & Surgery which listed, in alphabetical order, all of the known ailments and conditions and their treatment. Some pages in his ledger show patients visits on consecutive days, each one involving travel, and each one billed at $ 1.00.

Contacting the doctor was a challenge in itself. There is a note in the Doctor’s papers that reads, “Mr. Doctor Johnston, I want you to come up to John Webster and see my sister. She has the flux and I want you to tend on her and I will pay you for your visits … John C. Lafon … June the 22 1871”. No doubt, the Doctor went. The method of payment could have taken several forms, the least likely being cash payment in full.

There was not a lot of ready cash in the local economy before the Civil War. After the War, the South was economically devastated for years, with cash almost non-existent. Bills were paid by barter and IOUs. People didn’t have credit cards, but they did have promissory notes and they used them. Dr Johnston kept notes given for his services in a long strip of linen lined with small sewn pockets. The notes were written on scraps of paper, folded to fit into a pocket, then the linen strip was rolled up, tied and stored. Generally, the notes were written out by the Doctor in legal language binding the signer and his heirs to pay and waiving his homestead exemption. In 1875, he began to use printed notes where he could just fill in the blanks.

The note was signed if the person could write, otherwise he made his mark (X) and a witness signed his name. The notes were usually for small sums - $ 3.00 to $ 20.00, and repayment was not necessarily in cash. In 1865, the ledger shows he treated the wife and son of William Bane. In 1866, the entries on the payment side of Bane’s page in the ledger record, “paid by 2 hogs, 10.00; butter and cheese, 2.00; 15 lbs. Flour, 2.27; cash greenback, 10.00; cash greenback, 4.00; sundries, 8.00; “and, finally, “cash, 16.23”. Other accounts record, “paid 1 doz. Chickens” and “acct. settled w/corn”.

The finances become more intricate when patients paid the Doctor by giving him notes owed them from third parties. The Doctor obviously collected on the notes because the signer’s name has been carefully torn from the note and probably given to the person to insure the note was considered paid Often, people to whom Dr. Johnston owed money would request that he pay another party what he owed them. One scrap of paper reads “Dr. Johnston … You will please to pay Charles Hale the sum of two ($2.00) dollars and oblige C.F. Brown.

The Doctor kept a running tab with the Snidow and Brown Ferry. There is a $6.93 receipt for “ferriage from 1/1/1866 to 3/23/1866”. On June 29, 1871, James Brown sent a note requesting, “Dr. Johnston to pay Wm. Adare $5.00 against his ferriage bill”. The Doctor also used the system when needed. In 1868, Jacob Douthat paid his $27.75 bill “by making back bands, belly bands, feeding buckets, repairing buggy collar, covering saddle for Geo. Mullins, paid $15.00 to James Rutledge”.

The financial arrangements worked as long as the debtors kept their word. On the occasions when they didn’t, Dr. Johnston took the notes to the Justice of the Peace who wrote out a summons on the back of the scrap of paper the note was written on. The summons was served by the Sheriff, who charged 75 cents for his services.

The ledger mirrors American history. Entries before 1861 list treatment for “Negro boy” under the name of his owner. The Doctor held slaves himself as evidenced by a note which reads “On or before the 1st day of January 1855 I promise for myself and heirs to Harvey G. Johnston the sum of ninety dollars, being for the hire of his Negro man Ben for year 1854. I am to feed, clothe etc. As witness my hand & seal this 7th day of February 1854…R.G. Watts”.

After the Civil War, former slaves are listed in the ledger under their own names, but with “(Negro)” written beside the name. One page, headed “Floyd Johnston 1867 (Negro) (Meadows)” has written in the payment column “See account between myself & Floyd Meadows prior to this year 1st January 1871 are settled in full, both his a/c’s against me & my own against him. Settled by verbal agreement between ourselves.”

The ledger also contains reminders to himself. One page has in parentheses next to the name “(son-in-law of Stephen McClanahan)”, another “(Dan’s widow)”.

Dr. Johnston was a gentleman of his time. During the Civil War he served in the Confederate Army, probably as a contract surgeon stationed in Kentucky. He was respected member of the Giles community, an elder in the Presbyterian Church located on the hillside across the road from his home, and, as one biographer took pains to point out, a Democrat. His papers included a receipt dated May 2, 1877 for payment for a bell for the Presbyterian Church. He hosted card games for his circle of friends in his small office near the house, complete with whiskey and tobacco that gentlemen of that era enjoyed.

The Doctor’s papers contain letters from merchants with whom he carried accounts. Many are written in elegant Spenserian script. The letterhead from one manufacturing chemist (drug company) proclaims on it’s invoice, “the only centennial award indicative of superior merit for sugar-coated pills”. A good number of the bills are addressed to Mary Polly who obviously directed the household purchasing. The tone of the letter indicates long term, cordial relationships between the Johnstons and the merchants. Relationships so close that one letter reads …”We send the rice as ordered. As sweet girls as you have raised are always in demand. The trouble lies in finding men who are worthy of them.”

Dr. Johnston ministered to the people of Giles County from the time of his graduation from medical school in 1853 until his death from heart failure in 1881 at age 50. Mary Polly found herself, after twelve years of marriage, a widow once again with at least six of the children in her care. William Andrew had probably finished his medical training and Carrie may have been married at the time of their father’s death.

How Mary Polly managed to support her family after losing her husband is difficult to decern since the paper trail ends. We do know that more sadness visited her life when Andrew Fowler, her second son, died at age 12. Mary Polly lived in the Johnston House until her death in 1910. We also know she was much opposed to Harvey Green II becoming a doctor. She felt medicine offered only hard work and little financial reward. Fortunately for the residents of Giles County, she did not prevail.

Harvey Green Johnston II was born November 18, 1874 in Pearisburg. He attended the local public schools, the Tennessee Military Institute and graduated from the University of Medicine in Richmond, Virginia in 1899. He interned at St. Luke’s Hospital in Bluefield, West Virginia, then moved on to Elkhorn, West Virginia where he practiced for five years. In 1905, he returned to live with his mother at the family home in Pearisburg and opened his practice in the small doctor’s office used by his father.

The similarity to his father’s life continued when he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps during World War I. In 1915, at age 41, he married 21-year-old Myra Oakley Woolwine of Roanoke. They had two sons, Harvey Green III, and Fowler Woolwine. Myra died suddenly in 1922 and, again, the family history is repeated- a widowed doctor and his children living in the old brick home.

Two years latter, just as his father had done, Harvey Green II remarried. Marjorie Johnson, a 23-year-old high school teacher from Mount Airy, North Carolina, became his wife in February 1924. Mary Jane Johnston, the last child to be born in the Johnston House, was born in January 1925 and, sadly, died in February 1928. One can only imagine the frustration and heartbreak of a doctor who can’t save his own child.

Where his father’s business interest was limited to managing his private holdings and providing for the comfort and welfare of his family, Doctor Johnston II, perhaps in deference to his mother’s concerns about the lack of income from a medical career, was a partner with his brother, Vivian, in a large commercial apple orchard located behind the Johnston House. He, too, was and elder in the Presbyterian Church, a Democrat and a respected and beloved member of the community. He was considered to be the best “pneumonia doctor” in the county, and like his father, he treated all who needed his services-rich or poor, saint or sinner, black or white.

Dr. Johnston II died at age 71, ironically from pneumonia. He was ill for ten days, but only entered St. Elizabeth’s Hospital across the street from the courthouse four days before his death. His colleagues, Dr. Williams and Dr. Caudill, treated him with penicillin, sulfathiozole and mustard plasters. He died Wednesday morning, March 21, 1945 and entire community went into mourning.

The local paper published this tribute his friend, Webb Mason, gave at a Lion’s Club meeting. “When Dr. Harvey Green Johnston died yesterday, it marked the first time that an active member of this club had been taken in death. It is fitting, therefore, that we dedicate this meeting as a memorial to him and to the things for which he so nobly stood.

“When I requested to address the club on this occasion, I realized full well that to be in harmony with philosophy of life, that my words would have to be entirely devoid of ostentation of effusion and would need to be couched in simple, straight-forward language. What I have to say, then, will be only that which comes straight form the heart:; and while I would yield my place to many ability of expression, I would yield it to no one sincerity of felling.

Dr. Johnston and his family before him were friends, neighbors and physicians to my family for more than one hundred and fifty years. Dr. Johnston’s family consistently produced men of strong character, recognized ability and high ideals. He was not the exception.

He was a life-long friend of my late father; and the constant, thoughtful and tender care he gave him in all the years of his infirmity made and indelible impression upon my mind of the value of true and complete friendship. I have spent many enchanting hours, a silent listener, as the two of them reminisced over their younger days and heard them tell and retell anecdotes of fifty and more years ago; their evident pleasure in the telling diminished not a bit by having told and heard the same stories score of times before. I admired them both extravagantly.

“In our thoughts of Dr. Johnston we think of him first as a physician, and rightly so, for his life was completely dedicated to his chosen profession. In his sick room and bedside manner he was the typical country doctor; interested, sympathetic, and with no thought of the financial condition of the patient, or of the difficulties met and overcome in getting through mud, snow, rain and sleet to the bedside. I wonder how many cold motors he thawed; how many times he has got out and got under to fix a flat or to put on chains. I wonder more how he did all this and yet found time to keep himself always abreast of the modern trends and methods known to his profession. Professionally he will be missed not alone by those in high places but as well, or more, by those in shanty-town and in the secluded mountains.

“In considering Dr. Johnston as a man, there were many facets to his personality that should be remembered. He was avidly interested in all things that were for betterment of his community. He never failed to take clear-cut positions on any issue, and he was utterly fearless in the expression of his opinions. He had the happy faculty of being able to relax completely when not at work and this must account, in no small part, for the stamina with which he was able to drive himself so relentless and for so long. He loved to tease and play practical jokes, and he could do and say more things and get by with them than anyone I have ever known. I recall one story that illustrates this. In his younger days he and a fellow townsman, Hank Woolwine, went to Narrows and became involved in some sort of altercation with some of the Narrows citizenry. They were taken before the Trial Magistrate and the case of Mr. Woolwine was heard first. Mr. Woolwine was found guilty of having disturber the peace and was fined ten dollars and costs. Whereup Dr. Johnston raised up and addressed the court, saying ‘If that’s the way you are going to handle this case, I will move my case to Pearisburg’, and he walked out. The Trail Magistrate was so non-plussed he did not even offer to detain him. He was never happier than when he overbid his hand in bridge and then out-talked and out-played his opponents to the point of fulfilling his contract. He will be sorely missed in the social and civic life of the community.

“It is fitting that we should consider Dr. Johnston as a member if the Lion’s Club. A charter member, he could have held any honor within the power of the club to bestow; however, as in other things, he was happier to push the other man to the fore and then support him. I recall when we had the ban on pleasure driving that Dr. Johnston never failed to attend a meeting and that he walked both ways.* I was familiar with the regulations and I knew he was entitled under the regulations to drive his car to the meetings, so that in the event of an emergency call, he would have his car available, but his sense of honor was so great that it impelled him to make these trips on foot. Dr. Johnston’s attendance record is and has been of the best. In any serious discussion of policy he could always be depended upon to take the side that would more nearly help the Club to achieve its desired objective. His every act exemplified the sprit of Lionism.

“Here then we find a man respected for his professional attainments, admired for his support of those things that are good, liked for affability and gentility, and loved for his charitableness and self sacrifice. The passing of no other individual in this Community would be the occasion for such widespread and profound sorrow. Those who have knowledge of the last few weeks of his life know that of him it can be truly said: he gave his life that others might live.”

Two men, father and son, who knew each other for a brief seven years. Two men who shared the same house as their life long home. Two men who served their county in time of war. Two men who married, were widowed and remarried. Two men who practiced the art of medicine from the same small office. Two men of character, deeply devoted to their profession of healing and the welfare of their community. Two men who shared the same respected name, Dr. Harvey Green Johnston.

*Reference to gasoline rationing during WWII.

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Re: Civil war doctor--Harvey Green Johnston
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Re: Civil war doctor--Harvey Green Johnston