“Newsworthy”

The thought made me smile. I have found very little in my family research that I would call “Newsworthy”. We are common everyday folks who didn’t get mentioned in the Newspaper or on the Evening News. Around the turn of the century, most newspapers has a “society page” of sorts so you might occasionally see a one liner which said ” Addie Anderson entertained her parents, Charles and Mary Densmore for Sunday dinner”. These columns would bring a smile to my face when I came across them but there is no real newsworthy value to them. And I rather like it that way!

A few weeks back I was researching Dr. William Edward Best for the July 21 Tombstone Tuesday blog and I came across a couple of interesting news articles on him from a Newspaper in Eugene, Oregon. George Best has done a lot of family research on our Best Family members and very generously shares with us what he finds. He found all these articles and shared them on Ancestry.

William Edward Best was born in Canada. After completing his primary schooling, he went to a University of Toronto thinking that he might want to be a minister but later decided he wanted to be a physician. He changed his course and attended the Rolph’s Medical School in Toronto and from there he went to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He was a practicing physician in North Branch Michigan for over thirty years. Some time after the 1900 Federal Census, Dr William Edward Best left rural Michigan and moved to Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Apparently he did not file his license with the proper authorities and a case was brought against him as a result. These articles are from the “Eugene Guard newspaper in Eugene Oregon.

This was from the same Newspaper on the same day but buried in the “Society “ section of the Newspaper. It was Dr. B.R. Job and the Druggist J. S. Benson who seemed to come to support Dr W. E. Best’s defense.

The following articles appeared on August 9, 1907 on pages five and six. The first one appears to have been from the Society page and the other on a news page focusing on ongoing news. It appears that the trial has cause a bit of a commotion in the community.

This page two article is from the August 10, 1907 edition of the Eugene Guard. It states that Dr W.E. Best has been acquitted.

And he seems to be cleared of all charges…

In this September 12, 1907 article on the society page appears to indicate that Dr. Best has returned to Michigan. Not for too long….

By February 22, 1908, Dr Best is back in Cottage Grove and back in the newspaper. It appears that he attended to G.W. Hubbard when he had an accident and broke some rib. So quite obviously he is practicing medicine again.

And his Obituary indicates that he was in Cottage Grove, Oregon on July 21, 1908 when he died.

His body is brought back to Michigan and he is buried Maple Grove Cemetery in North Branch.

I find it interesting that a man of Dr. Wm Best background would neglect to contact the correct authorities when he moved to a new state. Dr. Wm Best went to a prestigious medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time of his schooling many medical schools were popping up all over the country and not all schools were of the same quality as that of the University of Pennsylvania.

I did investigate a bit about when each state required a practicing physician to have a license. It appears that it was regulated by each state and that the requirements were different from state to state. In 1889, the State of Oregon, mandated that all physicians must be registered, show their degrees from a qualified Medical School to the State Medical Board and may have to take a state test if the board deems necessary.

Dr. Wm Best had a license which was issued in Michigan that he eventually showed the court. Was he just a rebel? Did they want him to talk a test after 30 years of experience in Michigan? All of the information that I find about Dr. Wm Best in Michigan is positive. He was well-known and well loved.

There are many still unanswered questions. This is often what I find while tackling this type of research. I am certain that there is an interesting story hidden here that will likely never be told. It has been another interesting week genealogy research.

Happy Hunting,

Jan