Finney Reform Loomis (1841-1911)

Finney Reform Loomis, from Evert's Atlas of Medina County, Ohio, 1874.

  Ohio has yielded a few new strange name discoveries over the past few days, the most interesting of which belongs to the above-pictured gentleman.....Finney Reform Loomis! A resident of Medina County, Ohio for the majority of his life, Loomis was a veteran of the Civil War and later gained distinction as a prominent Buckeye state publisher, being the editor and owner of both the Medina Gazette and the Norwalk Chronicle. Loomis's placement on the site rests on his service as a representative from Medina County to the Ohio General Assembly, where he served for one term.

   Born at Lodi, Medina County Ohio on September 3, 1841, Finney Reform Loomis was one of eight children born to Milo (1802-1852) and Lucy Greenly Loomis (died 1852), both natives of New York. With the deaths of their parents of typhoid fever in October and November 1852 the Loomis siblings were left parentless, and despite this tragic loss young Finney pressed on, taking work as a clerk and school teacher during his youth.  He enlisted in the Union Army in June 1862 and served with the Eighth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Loomis would receive several promotions during his service on the battlefield and was "severely wounded" at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. He was again wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg the following year and in July 1864 was mustered out, having achieved the rank of first lieutenant.

  Finney R. Loomis married his first wife Helen Gray Slater on December 4, 1862. Less than a year after their marriage Helen Slater Loomis died and two years following her passing Loomis remarried in January 1865 to Catherine C. Killmer (1844-1913). The couple were wed for over four decades and had one son, Clare Reform (1871-1892), who died of typhoid in February 1892 at just twenty years of age.

   After his war service, Loomis was honored with the appointment as postmaster of his hometown of Lodi, an office in which he served until 1873. In August of that year, he received the Republican nomination for representative to the Ohio General Assembly, to which he was elected in October 1873. Loomis served one term in the legislature (1874-1876) and during that term was a member of the following committees: Blind, Deaf, and Dumb and Imbecile Asylums; Claims; and Retrenchment.

Loomis during his Civil War service (picture courtesy of Find-A-Grave.)

    Loomis declined renomination in 1876 and in that same year made his first venture into the publishing field, purchasing "a half interest" in the Medina Gazette. He would serve that paper as an owner and its editor until 1879, whereafter he sold off his interest and purchased the Norwalk Chronicle, of which he was "sole proprietor and editor." 

   Remarked as being "one of the temperance advocates of Ohio", Finney R. Loomis was affiliated with a few church-related organizations in Medina and Huron County, including service as president of both the Huron County Bible Society and the Huron County Sunday School Association. Loomis was also active in veteran's organizations, being a past commander of the M.F. Wooster Post, No, 34 of the G.A.R. chapter of Norwalk, Ohio, and for one year held the presidency of the Ohio Command of the Union Veterans Union.

   After many years of prominence in both Medina and Huron County, Finney Reform Loomis died on November 26, 1911, at age 70.  He was survived by his wife Catherine and was interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Lodi, Ohio.

Walpole Gillespie Colerick (1845-1911)

From the Men of Progress of Indiana, 1899.

  Our profile today centers on the life of Walpole Gillespie Colerick, a Ft. Wayne, Indiana native who served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. A lifelong Hoosier, Colerick was born in Ft. Wayne on August 1, 1845, one of six sons born to David Hoge and Elizabeth Gillespie Walpole Colerick. David H. Colerick was himself a prominent Indiana public official, serving two terms in the state legislature and later was a Ft. Wayne judge. The subject of today's article was bestowed his unusual name due to them being his mother's middle and last names. 
   Walpole G. Colerick attended schools local to the Ft. Wayne area and began the study of law under the tutelage of his father. After a period of study Colerick was admitted to the Allen County bar and soon thereafter joined his father in his law practice. The practice of law was a prevalent theme throughout the Colerick family, with each of Walpole's brothers becoming lawyers themselves. 
   Through the succeeding years, Colerick gained praise as a leading attorney in the Ft. Wayne area, and with this rising profile came calls for him to run for public office. The 1882 work Public Men of Today gives note that Colerick was "never particularly an aspirant for political honors, preferring that if any such were in store for him, the office should seek the man, rather than the man the office." 
    In 1878 Colerick had a change of mind on political life and launched a campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. Hoping to represent Indiana's 12th district in Congress, Colerick's opponent that year was Republican John Studebaker (1817-1912), a prominent banker and merchant. On election day in October 1878, it was Colerick who emerged victorious, besting Studebaker by a vote of 17,067 to 9,712. Taking his seat at the start of the 1879 session, Colerick would serve on the committees on Elections and the joint committee on the Census. In November 1880 he won a second term in Congress, narrowly defeating Republican candidate Robert Stewart Taylor, and during the 1881-82 session served on the committees on the Census and Public Health.

From the Public Men of Today, 1882.

    After his legislative service concluded in 1883, Colerick returned to Ft. Wayne and was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court Commission in November of that year. He held this post until 1885, and thereafter resumed his earlier law practice, being joined by his nephews Guy Colerick and Kenneth Larwill. On April 11, 1904, Walpole Colerick married Clemence Carrier (1861-1947), a friend of many years standing. It's interesting to note that Colerick married quite late in life (he was almost 60) and in comparison to some of the other men profiled here (many of whom married when they were barely out of their teens), their marriage is quite unique. 
  The couple was wed only seven years before Colerick's death on January 11, 1911, at age 65. The Ft. Wayne Sentinel notes that he had been in a state of impaired health for several weeks before his death, which occurred after undergoing surgery at the Lutheran Hospital in that city. Clemence Colerick survived her husband by over thirty years, dying in 1947 at age 86. Both were interred at the Lindenwood Cemetery in Ft. Wayne, the same resting places as that of Ochmig Bird (1813-1878) an oddly named Indiana State Representative who was profiled here back on December 11.

An aged Walpole G. Colerick, from the January 18, 1911 Ft. Wayne Sentinel.

From the Jan. 18, 1911 Ft. Wayne Sentinel.

Uranus Owen Brackett Wingate (1848-1911)

  This interestingly named gentleman is Uranus Owen Brackett Wingate, an influential physician and resident of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first discovered Wingate in the Who Was Who in America, 1897-1942 edition, which was located in my high school library. I've been wanting to profile Mr. Wingate for quite a while on the site, and before getting too in-depth on his life, I must clarify the fact that Wingate can be classified as a "grey area" political figure, and while he isn't an elected public official, Wingate did hold the posts of Health Commissioner of Milwaukee and Secretary of the Wisconsin State Board of Health. Both of these positions are mentioned in Wisconsin government registers of the time, and, as he was the secretary of a state agency (the State Board of Health), it is that position that earns him a place here.
    U.O.B. Wingate was born in Rochester, New Hampshire on September 4, 1848, the son of David and Lydia Thompson Wingate. Wingate looks to have been bestowed his unusual name in honor of Uranus Owen Brackett (1836-1899), a Berwick, Maine resident who served terms in the Maine House of Representatives, the State Senate, and the Governor's Council. At age sixteen Wingate signed on for service during the Civil War, joining Sherman's Army, and later served as a member of a military railroad construction outfit until the close of the hostilities.
   After leaving the service, Wingate began pursuing medical studies at Harvard University and graduated from the Dartmouth Medical School in 1875 with a degree in medicine. He established a medical practice in the villages of Haverhill and Wellesley, Massachusetts soon after his graduation. Sources vary on the exact year that Wingate left Massachusetts, but it is known that he resettled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in either 1885 or 1886.
  Soon after his relocation, Wingate reestablished his medical practice and on July 11, 1889, he married Nellie West Schoonmaker.  In the year following his marriage, Wingate was appointed as Health Commissioner of the city of Milwaukee and served four years in that post. In 1893 he launched an investigation into the sanitary condition of the Milwaukee school system, and during the course of his analysis, found that six of these schools needed to be shut down due to their being in "unwholesome condition, owing to poor sewerage." An article mentioning his examination is posted below. In addition to his service as Health Commissioner, Wingate also served as the President of the Milwaukee County Medical Society and a visiting neurologist to both the Milwaukee County and St. Mary's hospitals.

                    This article appeared in the Feb. 1, 1893 edition of the Painesville, Ohio Telegraph.

  In the last year of his term as Health Commissioner, Dr. Wingate was appointed as the Secretary of the Wisconsin State Board of Health. He served ten years as the head of this board and during his tenure proved to be a man of remarkable foresight and readiness. A New York Times article from January 1898 notes that Wingate gave an extensive response to a questionnaire filed by the New York Board of Trade and Transportation in regards to a "uniform system of quarantine in the United States." In his response, Wingate advocated the establishment of a new governmental department whose sole responsibility was the supervision of the country's sanitary and health affairs. 
  After reading this article (which has been posted below) one should take note that Uranus Wingate actively encouraged the installation of a U.S. health department nearly sixty years before the creation of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under President Eisenhower in 1953. This department was later broken up into two separate cabinet entities in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter.

   Wingate resigned from the Wisconsin State Board of Health in 1904 and in the years following his service authored numerous articles that were published in medical journals of the day, mainly relating to hygiene, diseases of the nervous system, and neurology. It is noted in the 1906 work "History of New Hampshire Surgeons in the War of Rebellion" that soon after his resignation, he established a "private institution near Milwaukee for the treatment of mental diseases." 

  Uranus O.B. Wingate died at age 62 on February 19, 1911, as the result of pneumonia. In the course of research on him, I've been quite surprised at the number of medical journals and local histories that mention his public service and medical career, especially considering the overall obscurity of the man. I also must mention the American Journal of Public Health, Volume II, where most of this information was located. This work gave quite an extensive chronology of Wingate's life and times, right up until his death in 1911. 

    This portrait of Dr. U.O.B. Wingate was discovered in the "Notable Men of Wisconsin" 1902 edition.