BIO:  John W. C. O’NEAL, Gettysburg, Adams County, PA

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History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania
Chicago:  Warner, Beers & Co., 1886
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Part III, History of Adams County, Pages 367-368

JOHN W. C. O’NEAL, M.D., was born in Fairfax County, Va., April 21, 1821, of 
Irish and American parentage.  His classical and literary education was obtained 
at Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg, Penn., and in the primary schools connected 
therewith.  His medical studies were pursued under the private tutorship of Dr. 
John Swope, of Taneytown, and N. R. Smith, Baltimore, Md., and the teaching of 
the medical department of the University of Maryland, from which he received his 
degree of M.D. in 1844, together covering a period of four years.  He settled in 
Hanover, York Co., Penn., in the spring of 1841, moved to Baltimore in 1849, and 
finally established himself at Gettysburg in 1863.  He is a member of the 
Phrenakosmian Society of Pennsylvania College; a member of Adams County Medical 
Society, of which he was president in 1875; belongs to the Pennsylvania medical 
Society and the American Medical Association.  He has contributed to the 
literature of the profession a pamphlet on the cholera of 1852, as it appeared 
in Baltimore, another on medical and surgical experience upon the battlefields 
of Antietam and Gettysburg, the Katalysine spring water, and a comparison of its 
powers with the waters of foreign springs, and other fugitive papers and 
reports.  He served as commissioner of public schools of Baltimore City during 
the years 1850-51-52, and was vaccine physician of the Twentieth Ward of that 
city for that period.  He served as delegate to the Maryland State Medical 
Society, from Pennsylvania, in 1877 and 1886; was made a member of the Board of 
Commissioners of Public Charities of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1883, 
which position he still fills.  He attended as medical and surgical adviser the 
House of Industry for Adams County from 1863 to 1871 inclusive, and resigned in 
favor of his son, Dr. Walter H., who continued to fill the appointment for 
several years after; he was a delegate to the National Medical Association in 
1884 from the State of Pennsylvania, and has held continued membership since.  
In 1847 he married Ellen, daughter of Henry Wirt, of Hanover, York Co., Penn.  
His report of rectal alimentation and medication, to the Adams County Medical 
Association in 1878, brought him cards of thanks from many eminent physicians, 
as William Goodell, of Philadelphia; Henry F. Campbell of Augusta, Ga., and W. 
W. Potter of New York.  He with two others represented the State of Pennsylvania 
in the Thirteenth National Conference of Charities and Corrections at St. Paul, 
Minn., in 1886, by appointment from the Pennsylvania State Board of Public 
Charities.