Los Angeles County
Biographies
MARGARET
R. ACERS, D. O.
The
only woman Osteopathic Physician and Surgeon in Alhambra is Margaret R. Acers,
D. O. She has served the community since
1944 and has maintained her home and office at 621 Irving Street in Alhambra
since 1945. A member of the California
Osteopathic Association, Dr. Acers specializes in Geriatrics and Osteopathic
Manipulation.
Dr.
Acers is a descendant of early American pioneers and settlers on both her mother’s
and father’s side of the family. Her
father, Samuel Scott Casad, was of Huguenot stock. Under the name Cosaart,
his ancestors settled in New Amsterdam, immigrating to the New World in
1662. Her mother, Mrs. Amanda Bertha
(Crampton) Casad, was born in Ohio. The Crampton’s are relatives of the former Governor Frank Orren Lowden of Illinois.
Annie Louthan Crampton
was Dr. Acer’s grandmother. The Louthan’s and the Lowden’s are of the same family
origin. Members of the Casad and
Crampton families trekked west to Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New
Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, and California.
Dr.
Acers was born in the pioneer town of Cheney, Kansas, on November 7, 1898. She was one of four children. Her father, a builder, moved the Casad’s to Roseburg, Oregon, in 1912. Dr. Acers attended elementary and high
schools in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, graduating in 1917. After Dr. Acers graduated from the University
of Oregon at Eugene, Oregon, in 1923, she began teaching science and biology at
The Dalles High School in The Dalles, Oregon.
She taught there until 1933. The
following year she entered a chiropractic college in Portland, where she
studied for two years.
In
Vancouver, Washington, the former Miss Margaret R. Casad was married to Arnold
T. Acers on August 27, 1935. Their son,
Lee Gordon Acers, was born in 1938 and attended schools in Alhambra.
Los
Angeles attracted Margaret Acers and in 1935 she moved to California to enroll
in the College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons. She transferred to the College of Drugless
practitioners in Los Angeles in 1936, receiving her license as a Drugless
Practitioner in 1938. Dr. Acers went
back to her studies at the College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons, plunging
deeper into the studies of her life’s work.
She graduated in 1943 with a degree as Doctor of Osteopathy. Soon after the completion of her internship
at the College Clinic, Dr. Acers moved to Alhambra to begin her practice.
There
have been educators, ministers, and doctors in each generation of the Casad
family since 1662. One of the most
outstanding of these was an educator and author who had a very great influence
on the formation of the American system of education. His name, Edmund J. James, Ph.D., LL.D., has
a very prominent place in Encyclopedia Americana. He was a cousin of Dr. Acer’s father. Educated at Harvard and in Germany, Dr. James
became the principal of a Cleveland, Ohio, high school and later was instrumental
in introducing kindergarten classes into the public school system. In 1883 he was appointed as Chairman of
Public Finance and Administration at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce
at the University of Pennsylvania. He
was President of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, from 1902 to
1904. He became President of the
University of Illinois at Urbana in 1904 and held this position until his
retirement in 1920. Perspicacious, he
wrote books on economic and population trends in the rapidly changing American
scene. Significantly, this great man
chose to spend his last days of his life in California, where he passed away in
Covina in 1925.
Dr.
Acers’ grandfather and his brothers and sisters were prominent tin the early
development of Covina and the adjacent area.
Some of the Casad family line still reside in
this community.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume &
Reference Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel &
Temple City, by Robert P. Studer, Pages 392-394,
Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California.
1962.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPHIES