Preston County, West Virginia Biography of MILTON H. PROUDFOOT, M. D. This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: ********************************************** ***The submitter does not have a connection*** ********to the subject of this sketch.******** ********************************************** This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 557 Preston MILTON H. PROUDFOOT, M. D. While he has been busy in his work as a physician at Rowlesburg for over thirty years, Doctor Proudfoot has always exemplified the all around interest and good service of a citizen and one willing to work for the welfare of his community. His is a position of peculiar honor and esteem in that part of Preston County. Doctor Proudfoot was born at Grafton, West Virginia, August 20,1860. His grandfather came from Old Virginia and settled in Barbour County. He was a slave owner, but very conscientious and religious, and when John Brown raided Har- pers Perry for the purpose of freeing the slaves he took this opportunity of freeing his own blacks. His family consisted of three sons and three daughters by his marriage to Miss Reed. The daughters are all deceased. The sons were: Mack, who died unmarried in Upshur County; Francis R.; and James W., now a resident of Grafton. Francis R. Proudfoot, father of Doctor Proudfoot, was born in Barbour County, August 18,1834. He had a common school education, lived on a farm but learned the carpenter's trade, and in 1863 entered the service of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company at Grafton in the car shops. He spent all the rest of his active life in the service of the Baltimore & Ohio. He was promoted to general foreman of car repairs, sub- sequently transferred to Baltimore and was general foreman of car repairs at Camden Station and remained there on duty until 1899, when he retired on a pension and subsequently lived at Rowlesburg, where he died March 20, 1918, at the age of eighty-four. He had his father's strong religious principles, was a Methodist, and exemplified his religion in everyday life. He was a republican, a Master Mason and a member of the Knights of Pythias. Francis R. Proudfoot married Emily C. Freeman, daughter of Evan Freeman, who came from old Virginia to Taylor County, West Virginia, and was a blacksmith by trade. Mrs. Proudfoot died May 23, 1911. Her children were: Doctor Proudfoot; Mrs. Frank Menefee, of Denver, Colorado; Gordon F., of Franklin, Pennsylvania; and Ernest J., of Rowlesburg. Milton H. Proudfoot spent bis early life at Grafton, that city being his home until he was twenty-four. He was educat- ed in the public schools, and as a young man spent two years in the railway mail service on the Baltimore & Ohio between Grafton and Wheeling. In the intervals of that work he studied medicine, and when he resigned he entered the Starling Medi- cal College at Columbus, Ohio, where he was graduated M. D. in the spring of 1884. Doctor Proudfoot after practicing medi- cine at Rowlesburg for two years abandoned his growing patronage in that locality to identify himself with a new and rapidly settling community in Kansas, at Kendall, where he located in 1886. A man of his professional ability was greatly needed and esteemed among the pioneers there, and he shared in all their vicissitudes, traveling great distances to see his patients, and being lost on the prairie was a very common occurrence. There were crop failures that soon discouraged most of the settlers, and though Doctor Proudfoot was well contented with the country otherwise he could not remain in the face of rapidly decreasing population, and after four years he too retired from the unequal struggle and in 1890 returned to West Virginia and re-established himself in prac- tice at Rowlesburg. He has had a large private practice, and has also for thirty years been local surgeon for the Baltimore & Ohio Railway, for four years was a member of the West Vir- ginia State Board of Health, and is an active member of the County and State Medical Societies. He is also Preston County examiner for the Bureau of War Risk Insurance and during the World war he and Mrs. Proudfoot took an active part in Red Cross work. Doctor Proudfoot cast his first presidential ballot for the plumed knight of Maine, James G. Blaine, and the only excep- tion to his party regularity was due to his devotion and admir- ation for the personality and character of the late Colonel Roosevelt, with whom he went into the progressive party. Doctor Proudfoot is a member of the Board of Education at Rowlesburg and is a trustee and treasurer of the Methodist Church there. At Baltimore, Maryland, June 29, 1887, he married Miss Lida D. Sawtelle, daughter of W. D. Sawtelle. She was born at Wheeling but was reared and educated at New Orleans, Louisiana, and in 1886 returned to West Virginia to teach in the schools of Tucker County. Her father is still living at Shreveport, Louisiana. The other members of the Sawtelle family still living are Mrs. C. H. Hooton, of Baltimore; Frank, of Brooklyn, New York; Mrs. O. A. Annan, of Balti- more; and the wife of Rev. Robert Wynne, of Shreveport, Louisiana. Doctor and Mrs. Proudfoot have one daughter, Eva, now Mrs. C. W. F. Coffin, of Englewood, New Jersey. Mr. Coffin is vice president of the Franklin Railway Supply Company. Doctor and Mrs. Proudfoot have two grandchildren, William Allison and Charles Floyd Coffin.