Will County IL Archives Biographies.....Knapp, Ira Owen M D 1810 - 
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Author: Portrait & Bio Album, 1890

IRA OWEN KNAPP, M. D. Among the early settlers of the county who played an 
important part in its development, the pioneer physician held a prominent and 
influential position, and as a noble type of the profession, we place before 
the patrons of this work, to many of whom he is well known and bound by no 
common ties, a brief life record of Dr. Ira Knapp. Coming to Northern Illinois 
at an early day, fresh from his studies and in the ardor and vigor of the 
opening years of a splendid manhood, our subject cast in his lot with the 
sturdy pioneers whom he found already here, and immediately entered upon an 
honorable career in his calling. In those days the life of a physician was 
fraught with hardships inconceivable at the present time, but our subject with 
cheerful and courageous self-sacrifice, bore them uncomplainingly, and soon 
won a warm place in the hearts of those whom he so faithfully served in their 
sickness and became the friend and counselor of his patients, and was known 
and welcomed in many a household far and wide. Ill health obliging him to give 
up the practice of his beloved profession as its duties were too exacting, he 
has given his attention to improving the land that he bought from the 
Government fifty-seven years ago, which he has developed into a choice farm, 
one of the pleasantest places on the DuPage River and Canal, located about a 
mile and a half from Channahon Village. Mr. Knapp was born in Barre, adjoining 
the city of Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, February 12, 1810. He received 
his early education in the excellent schools of his native city, and then went 
into the office of Dr. James Spaulding, of Montpelier, and while there 
attended medical lectures in Dartmouth College. He subsequently became a 
student at the Woodstock Medical School, in Vermont, whence he was graduated 
in 1833, having attained a high standing for scholarship in his class. He was 
then twenty-three years of age and he determined to enter upon his profession 
in the West, and selecting this county as a suitable field for the exercise of 
his calling, he left his home among the green hills of his native State on 
September 17, and on October 12, arrived as his destination. He was 
accompanied by his bride, and with them came George and Russell Tryon, and 
Miss Emily S. Knapp, (afterward the widow of Mr. Lyman Foster,) now a resident 
of Aurora, Ill., residing with her daughter. The Doctor and his uncle, George 
Tryon, the only other surviving members of the party are now eighty and eighty-
five years of age. Our subject came to Channahon, opened an office occupying 
it but one day, when he was called seven miles to visit his first patient, he 
continued the practice of his profession for fifteen years, his patients being 
scattered over a wide area of country, and he has ridden as far as Rockford, 
on Rock River, some ninety miles distant, in pursuit of his calling. The 
country being so sparsely settled, this was a very lonely route and there was 
a stretch of twenty-five miles on which there was not a house to be seen. The 
Doctor is a man in advance of his profession. When he was graduated blood-
letting was taught and advised by his instructors as under the old medical 
regime, but the Doctor when he left school, left that and many other customs 
that were in use at that time, behind. Our subject had a good opportunity to 
study the various forms of malarial fever that was so prevalent in the early 
days of the settlement of the country, and he had great success in treating 
the disease, which he observed abated to a great extent after the people had 
subdued the soil and had it well cultivated. When he first came here, there 
were five times as many Indians as whites and he has seen as many as five 
hundred together. They usually camped along the river and often visited the 
home of our subject and would sit with Mrs. Knapp, who enjoyed the company of 
the squaws and their little papooses. Having been among the Indians for at 
least ten years and carefully observed their customs and character, he thinks 
them very much maligned and ill-treated. In his intercourse with them he 
followed the Golden Rule, and seems to have found his red brethren truthful 
and honorable. Many years he lived among them and under no circumstances did 
he ever put anything under lock and key; his house was always open day and 
night and they never offered to molest a thing, which he accounts for by the 
fact that he always treated them as he would wished to be used. They have come 
to his house at any hour of the day or night, often under the influence of 
liquor, and never did they offer to injure a thing. He never met one of them, 
but what he would advance and shake him politely by the hand and say: "Bushu 
Nic-Kan," which means "How do you do my friend." The Doctor tells the 
following incident of those days as showing the grateful character of the 
untutored savage: A Mr. Treat, who was a great friend of the Indians, made a 
claim on a piece of land on the Des Plaines River, the place on section 11, of 
this township, now owned by Oscar Mills. He had no money to pay for the land, 
and the Indians refused to treat with the Government officials until they 
agreed to give him $1,000 to buy land with. He had always treated the Indians 
with consideration, and they held him in great affection. He took care of the 
grave of one of their chiefs who was buried on the place that he owned, now 
known as Millsdale. The Doctor located on his present farm which he bought 
from the Government in the month of June, 1835. He built a log house in which 
he lived for ten years, and in that his children were born. He then replaced 
it by his present substantial and comfortable dwelling. He retired from his 
profession about 1850, and since then has devoted himself to the improvement 
of his place, which at one time comprised two hundred and forty acres, but he 
has disposed of several acres, and now has a farm of one hundred acres that is 
one of the most desirable in the locality. Dr. Knapp has been twice married. 
In July, 1833, he was wedded to Miss Almyra Joslyn, daughter of Luke Joslyn. 
She bore him three sons and one daughter, as follows: George, a carpenter and 
joiner, of Wisconsin, married and has one child; Orrin S., a farmer living 
near his father, married and has four boys and one girl; Melinda S., the wife 
of Silas I. Parker, a mechanic and farmer, of Miller County, Mo. The beloved 
wife of our subject who shared with him the privations and hard-ships of 
pioneer life, and aided him in the building up of their home, passed to 
eternal rest in 1861. The marriage of our subject to his present worthy wife 
was consummated in 1864, and has proved of mutual benefit to both, as thereby 
he secured a true helpmate and companion, and she a devoted husband. Mrs. 
Knapp at the time of her marriage with our subject was Mrs. Ann S. Peebles, 
the widow of Robert Peebles, who came from England. She is the mother of two 
children by that marriage: Charles, a young married man; R. W., a resident of 
Egypt, Ill., who is married and has two children, one of whom lives with its 
grandmother, Mrs. Knapp. A man of superior intelligence and sound principle, 
and of blameless character, and an earnest supporter of what he considers 
right in every walk in life, Dr. Knapp has always exerted a wholesome 
influence in this community with whose interests his own have been bound for a 
period of more than half a century. He has earnestly labored in behalf of the 
social and religious development of Channahon, and has taken an active part in 
the work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he and his wife are 
consistent members. Politically, he has always voted according to his honest 
convictions, and has sided with whichever party he thinks to be the nearest 
right at the time, and he is now identified with the Prohibitionists.

Additional Comments:
Portrait and Biographical Album of Will County, Illinois, Containing Full Page 
Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens 
of the County; Chicago: Chapman Bros., 1890

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