Dade County FlArchives Biographies.....Schfield, Major 1876 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/fl/flfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Nancy Rayburn http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00025.html#0006128 November 6, 2015, 10:55 pm Source: Vol. II pg.148-149 The Lewis Publishing Co. 1923 Author: History of Florida, Past and Present MAJOR SCHOFIELD, Doctor of Veterinary Surgery, a resident of Florida since 1911, has performed some very distinguished service in his profession and in the development of the fruit, live stock and other interests of Dade County. He was born at Adswood, Stockport, Cheshire County, England, in 1876. He was ten years of age when he came with his parents to New York City, where he completed his primary education. He early became interested in veterinary surgery, and at the age of sixteen having completed his preparatory course, he entered the New York College of Veterinary Surgeons and School of Comparative Medicine, an institution that has subsequently become a school of the University of New York. He graduated at nineteen, being the youngest man known to receive a medical degree. Doctor Schofield won the highest honors perhaps ever bestowed by that school on an individual student. He excelled in his individual class and was awarded a gold medal for general proficiency throughout his college course and had numerous other honors as well. He was first assistant to Dr. WILLIAM SWAN of the New York Street Cleaning Department. After graduating in 1896 he acquired further practical experience in a dairy district near New York City, where there were 10,000 dairy cows within a radius of ten miles. After five years there he entered the Government service, and was employed in inspection work at Chicago from December, 1901, until August, 1902. Owing to ill health, he spent a few months in Virginia, and when the Foot and Mouth Disease broke out he was one of the first men sent out by the Government from the Boston office. Subsequently he spent three years in Southern California cleaning up the Texas fever epidemic. With another outbreak of the Hoof and Mouth Disease in 1908 he was sent to Louisville, and subsequently had an active part in the Government program for the eradication of the cattle tick in Oklahoma and Texas. Doctor Schofield’s ambition was to practice veterinary surgery rather than remain in the Government service, and in February, 1911, during his vacation, he came to Miami from El Paso, Texas. His personal investigation and his study of climatic and sanitary statistics convinced him that Dade County was a section with a remarkable future, and while here he purchased a tract of thirty acres about three miles southwest of Miami, paying $1,500 for the land. In 1913 Doctor Schofield located permanently in Miami, and his important professional service has been continuous since that date. Doctor Schofield was Miami’s first food and dairy inspector, an office he held four years. He wrote most of the earlier health ordinances of Miami. He was the first veterinary surgeon to come down the East Coast of Florida and locate permanently in practice. Owing to his wide previous experience in the Government service he was well-qualified to initiate the campaign for tick eradication among the cattle of Florida, and was the first to start a campaign in that direction. As a result of his work Dade County was the first in Florida to be freed from the tick and from quarantine restrictions caused by that parasite. He not only advocated but outlined the methods by which this source of loss to cattle raisers could be accomplished. He figured prominently in formulating the tick legislation in the state. Doctor Schofield was also the first to undertake a practical campaign of education and instruction for the eradication of tuberculosis from cattle, and he made the first test for tuberculosis in Dade County. This test was made under the first law demanding such a test as a means of ensuring pure milk in any city in Florida. Doctor Schofield for many years has been personally as well as professionally interested in the production of pure milk, and he is an acknowledged authority on the handling of dairy stock. Through his profession in his expert advice and selection of stock in care he has done more to contribute to the fame of Dade County as a center of pure bred dairy herds than any other individual. Doctor Schofield still carries on a very extensive veterinary practice, having expensive equipment for that purpose in Miami. He has the most extensive library on veterinary science in the state and probably in the entire South. The thirty acre tract bought by Doctor Schofield in 1911 for $1,500 has been greatly improved and developed by him. Ten acres of this he has kept under expert supervision to the then little-known but now greatly appreciated Central American fruit, the avocado. His is one of the pioneer groves in Southern Florida, and while it was severely injured by the great frost of 1917 it is now a valuable property, commercially productive, and Doctor Schofield through his experiences one of the most enthusiastic advocates of the avocado as a permanent fruit crop for this section of Florida. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/fl/dade/bios/schfield270bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/flfiles/ File size: 5.6 Kb