Mobile County AlArchives Biographies.....Ketchum, George A. 1835 - 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 September 17, 2011, 1:11 pm

Source: See below
Author: Smith & De Land, publishers

    DR. GEORGE A. KETCHUM. Ralph Ketchum, the father of the subject of this
sketch, who was born on Long Island, of Welch ancestors, in 1780, was married in
1807, in the city of New York, to Christiana Colden, a daughter of Gen.
Griffiths of the British Army. Prior to his marriage, Ralph had made his home in
Augusta, Ga., and there his English wife became the mother of five sons who have
made their impress upon the history of the South. Richard Colden Ketchum became
a distinguished divine in the place of his birth; Major William H. Ketchum
commanded a battery of artillery in the Confederate Army; Col. Charles T.
Ketchum became the Colonel of the Thirty-eighth Alabama Infantry; Capt. John R.
Ketchum died in the defense of Atlanta in the first battle fought after the
removal of Gen. Johnston. The career of Dr. George A. Ketchum as physician,
teacher and citizen, constitutes one of the brightest pages in the history of
Alabama. George Augustus Ketchum was born in Augusta, Ga., April 6, 1835, and
there his youth was passed up to the time of the removal of his father to
Mobile, Ala., which took place in 1835. His scholastic training, which was
committed in turn to two teachers of distinction, was completed under the
tutorship of Mr. A. A. Kimball, who prepared him for the Sophomore class at
Princeton. At this juncture his father's failure in business disconcerted his
plans, and led him, at the age of sixteen, to accept the position of assistant
teacher then offered him by his tutor, Mr. Kimball, in his Academy at
Livingston, Ala. After such wholesome preliminary training, he, in due time,
began his studies in his chosen profession, under the guidance of the late Dr.
F. A. Ross, and for two years he occupied the position of resident student in
the Mobile City Hospital. While thus employed, the yellow fever epidemic of 1843
brought him for the first time into practical contact with a disease in whose
treatment he was destined to win such wide and merited distinction. In the
Medical College of South Carolina, at Charleston, he attended his first course
of lectures at the session of 1844-1845. In the spring of 1845, he went for the
completion of his studies to Philadelphia, graduating at the University of
Pennsylvania as M. D. in the spring of 1846. While a student in Philadelphia, he
formed the acquaintance of Miss Susan Burton, a daughter of one of the original
Quaker families that came over with Penn, and to her he was married in November,
1848. Two years prior to that event he had begun the practice of medicine in
Mobile, where his professional success was marked and rapid. The yellow fever
epidemics of 1847 and 1848, which took place soon after his admission to
practice, gave him the opportunity for an experiment which produced rich and
permanent results. At this time, he, it was. who first ventured to administer
large doses of quinine in the earlier stages of the disease, a treatment which
was repeated with such success in the epidemics of l853-58-67-70-73 and 78 in
Mobile, that it has now become the genera] practice in yellow fever cases
throughout the South. With such a beginning, and with a power to labor which has
been seldom equalled, and with a charm of manner never to be surpassed, the
young physician soon won his way into as large and lucrative a practice as any
physician has ever enjoyed in the city of Mobile. For many years his labors as a
practitioner and consulting physician have been sufficient to exhaust the time
and resources of any ordinary man, and to exclude all other pursuits. And yet in
spite of this mass of work his activities have extended so far beyond the circle
of his duties as a mere practitioner of medicine, that his achievements in that
sphere constitute only a part in the sum total of his life work.

    Dr. Ketchnm's relations to the medical profession and to the cause of public
hygiene, can not be measured by any standard that excludes from consideration
the services he has rendered to the cause of medical education and to the
preservation of the public health. To every movement which has been organized in
his day, not only in his own State, but in the Union, for the advancement of the
medical profession as a corporate body, and for the increase of its usefulness
as a teacher of sanitary science, he has given his active and earnest support.
The central aim of his life has been to teach the true science of medicine in
its highest sense to the younger members of his own profession, and at the same
time to practically demonstrate how the science of public hygiene can be
utilized by the State for the preservation of the public health. In both
departments of labor he has been eminently successful, and in both he has been
awarded the very highest stations of usefulness and authority. In 1848, in
conjunction with Dr. J. C. Nott and others, he organized the Medical College of
Alabama, with which he has ever since been prominently connected. Since 1859, he
has held the position of Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine: and
since the resignation of the late Dr. Wm. H. Anderson, he has been the Dean of
the Faculty. As a medical lecturer he is especially happy. An easy and natural
delivery, coupled with a perfect mastery of English prose, render his lectures
as attractive as they are instructive. In the sanitary government of Mobile,
city and county, he has been the most important factor for nearly twenty years.
President of the Board of Health since 1871, he has rendered, without
compensation, services to the public which but few outside of his own profession
either understand or appreciate. In the medical government of the State his
influence has been hardly less potent. No one was more active than he in
bringing about the organization of the Medical Association of Alabama, of which
he became president in 1873. For many years he has been a member of the Board of
Censors and of the State Board of Health. His activity in the line of medical
organization has not been limited, however, to the boundaries of his own State;
as a member of the American Public Health Association, as a member of the
American Medical Association, and as a member of the Ninth International Medical
Congress, his name and fame as a leader in his profession have assumed a
national importance.

    No review of this many sided man, however brief and incomplete, should
exclude from consideration the influence which he has exercised as a citizen
upon the political affairs of his State and county. With a perfect comprehension
of the constitutional system under which we live, with a clear insight into all
the details of executive administration, with great gifts as an orator and
parliamentarian, had his tastes been otherwise, he might have figured as one of
the foremost politicians of his time. Whenever duty has called him into service
in that department of work, his great aptitude for public affairs, his immovable
firmness, coupled with great tact in the management of popular assemblies, have
invariably given to him a position in the foremost rank. For many years before
the war he stood at the head of Mobile's municipal legislature as president of
the Common Council; and when the stirring events of 1860-61 made every community
in the South turn for counsel to its wisest and strongest men, the county of
Mobile selected him as one of four to represent her in the convention which
severed the relations of Alabama with the Union. As volunteer surgeon he went
with the State Artillery to Pensacola, where he received his commission as
surgeon of the Fifth Alabama. While on his way to Virginia with his regiment, he
was solicited by Dr. J. C. Nott to accept a position as surgeon in an
organization formed for the defense of Mobile, which was then sadly deficient,
owing to the increase of population and the absence of physicians, in medical
aid. In this laborious position he continued until the end of the war. After the
surrender he was appointed by Governor Parsons, provisional governor under
Andrew Johnson, a member of the Common Council; and for a short time he became,
ex officio, Mayor of Mobile. In the councils of the Democratic party in his
State and county, he has been recognized as a leader for twenty years.

    And yet, neither in his capacity as physician at the bedside, neither in his
capacity as teacher in the college to which he has given the best years of his
life, neither in his capacity as a tireless administrator of health laws, nor
yet in his capacity as political leader, can be found the record of services
which will forever interlace the name of George A. Ketchum with that of the city
of his adoption. When every other memory connected with his life has been
forgotten, the fact will remain that his care for the public health, backed by
his patience and indomitable will, has brought a pure stream of living water
from distant hill tops to the cottage door and to the palace gate of every
dweller in the city of Mobile. This great achievement is the legitimate outcome
of his scientific instinct. This far-seeing eye perceived years ago that the
public health of his city was imperiled by the lack of a bountiful supply of
pure and wholesome water. With the heart of a humanitarian, with the foresight
of a scientist, and with the pluck and patience of a man of business, he imposed
upon himself the task of organizing a scheme for the relief of the city, and
that scheme he has carried into successful execution. After selecting an
available stream in the silence of the forest, he next employed competent hands
to overcome the engineering and legal difficulties which forbade its ingress to
the city, and at last induced capitalists to come from abroad and transform his
dream into a reality. Through his efforts, after twenty years of working and
waiting, Mobile to-day enjoys one of the most perfect and bountiful supplies of
water that can be found in any city in the Union, not only for sanitary but for
fire purposes. In the time to come, when his labors have ended, perhaps a
grateful people will perpetuate the memory of this great service, by the
erection of a public drinking fountain, over which the unselfish physician shall
preside in bronze or marble.

    In the social life of Mobile, Dr. Ketchum's splendid home has been a source
of pleasure and an object of interest for many years. Here his warmhearted wife
and charming daughter (married a few years ago to Robert Gage, Esq., of Boston)
dispense a hospitality as unaffected as it is attractive. When, from every point
of view—professional political and social—it appears that the life-work of a man
has ripened into a full harvest of success, honor and usefulness, the fact is
revealed that the author of such results must be a man, not only of well-rounded
character, but of systematic and conscientious habits of work. Of no one could
this be more truly said than of Dr. Ketchum.

    With high natural endowments, both of mind and person, he has trusted
nothing to chance or genius: with him genius has been made the yoke-fellow of
labor. By linking together great natural gifts with habits of patient and
systematic work, he has attained, not an eccentric eminence, but the highest
legitimate distinction as a physician and citizen. When the roundness, the
fullness, the completeness of his life-work is considered, the result may be
well expressed— "Simplex atque rotundus."


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Northern Alabama: Historical and Biographical
Birmingham, Ala.: Smith and De Land
1888

PART III.
HISTORICAL RESUME OF THE VARIOUS COUNTIES IN THE STATE.
TIMBER BELT.


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