Doctors lured to Columbus with promise of success
A remarkable part of the story of early central Ohio is the speed at which men of professional training and expertise came into the area.
In the wake of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the southern two-thirds of what is now Ohio was opened to survey and settlement by the recently formed United States.
Surveyor and frontiersman Lucas Sullivant was an appointed surveyor of the northern reaches of the Virginia Military District between the Scioto and Miami rivers in the country north of the Ohio River.
Taking his pay in land, Sullivant laid out a town at the forks of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers in 1797. An admirer of Benjamin Franklin, Sullivant called his town Franklinton.
Franklinton had some problems initially. Sitting on low ground, the whole site was flooded in 1798. Having more fortune on higher ground, Franklinton survived a short distance to the west of its original site. And it was to this site – a village of only a few dozen people – that several young professionals soon arrived. Among them were attorneys, ministers, journalists and a few doctors.
They came because this small town on the edge of a moving frontier offered what often was lacking in the structured and established societies of the East and South. They had the promise of possible success in a new place.
Among the earliest arrivals was Dr. Lincoln Goodale in 1805. Goodale came from Belpre along the Ohio River, where he had received medical training from Dr. Leonard Jewett. His father had been robbed and killed when Goodale was young, and he grew up as the sole support of his mother. He brought her with him when he came to Franklinton and established his medical practice.
He soon found that this would not be easy. Most residents had little money, and Goodale tired of taking his pay in fruit, vegetables and the occasional live chicken, decided to diversify.
Goodale soon opened a store in the center of Franklinton. It was what later would be called a general store with special interest in the sale of herbs, drugs and medicines. The store and his continuing medical practice were successful, and Dr. Goodale soon was investing his profits in land.
He was not alone. Franklinton became the home of Dr. Samuel Parsons in 1811. Trained in Connecticut, Parsons soon was known as a skilled physician. Franklinton was the county seat of Franklin County and soon attracted Drs. Pelleg Sisson and John Edmiston.
The high banks opposite Franklinton became the home of the new capital city of Columbus in 1812 just as the War of 1812 had begun. Franklinton became a mobilization and training center, and central Ohio began to increase in population on both sides of the Scioto River.
In 1814, Edmiston became the first practicing physician in Columbus. He was followed by Parsons in 1816 and Goodale shortly thereafter. Edmiston died in 1834.
Another recent arrival, Dr. John Ball, also had a short career. A local resident later remembered, “Dr. Ball sacrificed his life for the public good and died, March 10, 1818, aged but 43 years.”
Parsons and Goodale were more fortunate. Parsons acquired a lot of land east of the town limits of Columbus. In time, East Public Lane became Parsons Avenue, and the family built a large mansion at the corner of Parsons Avenue and Bryden Road. It would later become the first home of the Columbus School for Girls.
Goodale acquired land north of Downtown Columbus. In 1851, he gave the city its first park which came to be called Goodale Park. He also gave nearby land to newly formed Capital University, which stayed there until it was moved to its current home in 1876.
In time, the growing city of Columbus felt the need for a medical school and hospital. It acquired both through the largess of Lyne Starling, one of the four founding proprietors of Columbus.
In 1847, Starling gave $30,000 – a immense sum at that time – for the formation of a medical college and hospital. Shortly thereafter, a site at Sixth and State streets was acquired, and the Starling Medical College was constructed. St. Francis Hospital operated by the Sisters of the Poor opened at the college in 1865. The entire site is now occupied by Grant Hospital.
In 1910, Dr. Starling Loving, a nephew of Lyne Starling and a longtime practicing physician at the medical college, remembered the early physicians of Columbus. “These men were reasonably well-qualified and their practice compared favorably with that of their compeers in other parts of the country.”
All these people were and are well worth remembering.
Local historian and author Ed Lentz writes the As It Were column for Thisweek Community News and The Columbus Dispatch.