Weston Wednesday: Pioneer physicians
Editor's Note: In collaboration with the Bartlesville Area History Museum, the Examiner-Enterprise has revived the late Edgar Weston's 'Revisiting the Past' columns that ran in the newspaper from 1997-99. Weston's columns recount the history of Bartlesville as well as Washington, Nowata and Osage counties.
Drs. J.V. Athey and O.S. Somerville are pioneer physicians from the days when Bartlesville was still trying to get a foothold on the banks of the Caney River.
Dr. Athey was born March 26, 1872, in Parkersburg, W.V. He grew up on a farm and attended a country school near Parkersburg. After completing his elementary education he worked for several years, first by teaching school and then doing office work in Parkersburg, before starting his medical education.
He attended the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, graduating from there in 1899 and began his first practice of medicine in Belpre, Ohio. Here he met and married Mrs. Emma Cramer. Mrs. Cramer's daughter, Miss Flora Cramer, in now Mrs. O.S. Somerville of Bartlesville. Two other of her children make their homes in New York.
Dr. and Mrs. Athey continued to live in Belpre for several years but finally decided to come out to Oklahoma in 1908. Oklahoma was a brand new state at that time and looked as though it might be a good place for a physician to establish a practice and make a home. Dr. Athey indicates that he has never regretted his decision, he speaks highly of his colleagues in the medical profession in this community and his conversation is more inclined to stray into praise of those he has worked with rather than dwell on what he himself has done.
In the horse and buggy days, Dr. Athey recalls a great deal of his time was consumed in just getting to and from the patient. A drive of 15 or 18 miles into the surrounding countryside, into the areas where Oglesby, Mission Creek, and Herd are now located, required all day for a round trip with a team and wagon; and you could only make it in a single day, he says, by making liberal use of a whip to encourage the team into something other than a slow trot.
Dr. Athey has been in more or less retirement since 1952, he only occasionally consulted with a patient of many years who insisted on seeing him. But for the most part, he says, he was content to turn over the rigors of a practicing physician to those who are younger. However, at the request of the local Selective Service Board, he helped them out by occasionally working in the office of the draft board but the rest of the time he did a little fishing, worked a few cryptograms, and cross-word puzzles, and on the whole, enjoyed his retirement.
Dr. O.S. Somerville has the distinction of having been a graduate physician longer than any other of his colleagues in Bartlesville. He is also among the top few in the state of Oklahoma, counting his years of service since graduation from medical school.
Born in Rockport, W.V., on Feb. 11, 1871, Dr. Somerville was one of a family of six. He attended elementary school near his home then graduated from Elizabeth Seminary, at Elizabeth, W.V., where he taught school for one year before beginning his medical studies. He is an alumnus of the University of Louisville, having graduated from Louisville Medical College in 1894. He was married while still a medical student and began his first practice at Elizabeth, where his two children were born. His daughters are Mrs. D.V. Swing and Mrs. H.L. McAdoo, both of Bartlesville. Mrs. Somerville died in 1928 and Dr. Somerville later married Miss Flora Cramer, daughter of Mrs. J.V. Athey.
Dr. Somerville came to Indian Territory in 1904, and first settled near Muskogee, then moved to Bartlesville in 1905, where oil had been discovered only a few years earlier.
The town had a population of about 3,000 persons. Dr. Somerville recalls, and most of what is now Bartlesville was wheat and corn fields. They were just getting ready to put in the first brick streets, he says, which were to extend two blocks east of the Katy Depot. Many of the business houses were set up in tents and the "side-walk" in front of the Union Bank Building had the distinction of having sawdust scattered across it for use of pedestrians. The housing and office situation was critical and Dr. Somerville set up his first office in the old King Building, which was located on a part of the property which is now occupied by the Union Bank Building.
The town of Bartlesville worked on an around-the-clock schedule he says, there being just as much activity at two o'clock in the morning as there was at two o'clock in the afternoon. The streets were either thick with dust or deep in mud, churned up by the wagons, which carried in oil field equipment for the many new wells that were being drilled. Oil derricks were thick in the area around where the courthouse now stands and extended down to and along the Caney River and into other areas where the central business district of Bartlesville is now built.
Dr. Somerville says that his first practice included not only the town but many of the outlying districts such as Hogshooter, Osage County, and the towns of Dewey and Copan. Of the three notorious early Oklahoma bandits, Dr. Somerville had two for patients, Henry Starr and Emmett Dalton, and once spent an afternoon visiting with the third, Frank James, brother of Jesse James.
This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Weston Wednesday: Pioneer physicians
