Dr. Wallace E. Edgerton Biography


	This biography is from "Memorial and biographical record; an illustrated
 	compendium of biography, containing a compendium of local biography,
	including biographical sketches of prominent old settlers and 
	representative citizens of South Dakota..." Published by G. A. Ogle & 
	Co., Chicago, 1899. Page 992

	Scan, OCR and editing by Maurice Krueger,mkrueger@iw.net, 1998. 

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DR. WALLACE E. EDGERTON, the pioneer physician and surgeon of McCook 
county, is now making his home and base of operations at Salem, where 
he is well known as a physician of marked ability, and enjoys a 
valuable and ever increasing patronage. 

Dr. Edgerton is of English descent, although his ancestors for many 
generations have lived in America. They were represented in the early 
colonial wars and also in the Revolutionary war. Our subject is a 
native of Rome, Oneida county, New York, and the Empire state was the 
home of the. Edgerton family for three generations. Our subject was 
born February 3, 1853, the only son of a family of two children born to 
Alonson and Lodema S. (Coe) Edgerton, both of whom are still living. 
The father, who was born in 1828, is a veteran of the Civil war and is 
now working on the Southern Pacific railroad. The mother is making her 
home with our subject. When he was a child, the family moved to Dodge 
county, Minnesota, and settled near Mantorville, where the father was 
engaged for a time in farming. After completing his common school 
education, our subject went to Wyoming and studied telegraphy with a 
view of using this art to pay his way through medical college. Finally 
he entered the Lawrence University at Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1870, and 
left that institution three and a half years later. He then engaged in 
teaching school and at telegraphy until 1877, when he entered the 
medical department of the Iowa State University, and graduated in 
March, 1880, as an M. D. 

In the spring of 1878, two years previous to his graduation from the 
Iowa State University, he went to South Dakota and filed a homestead 
and a tree claim in McCook county, and also did some practicing at his 
profession, becoming, as before stated, the pioneer physician in McCook 
county. In 1882 he located in Salem, McCook county, and has since made 
that his home and base of operations, although he still holds one 
quarter-section of farm land. Politically Mr. Edgerton is a Republican, 
and on that ticket has been elected to several of the local and county 
offices. He was the first deputy treasurer of McCook county, and at the 
expiration of that term he was elected the second treasurer after the 
organization of the county. Socially our subject is identified with the 
following secret fraternities: the Masonic, Knights of Pythias, 
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the K. O. T. M. and others.