GUSTAVUS LINCOLN SIMMONS, M.D.

GUSTAVUS LINCOLN SIMMONS, M.D. Dr. Simmons was born in Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, March 13, 1832. His paternal ancestor in America was Moyses Simmons, one of the Pilgrim colony of English that sailed in the ship Fortune; the vessel which followed the Mayflower, and which reached Plymouth in 1621. His maternal ancestor was a Lincoln, who went from Hingham in England, and founded Hingham in America, and whose descendants have furnished to the country numerous examples of ability in patriotism. Young Gustavus received his preliminary education in the schools in Derby Academy of his native town, and when but a boy of seventeen years old, and 1849, sailed from Boston, in the brig Curacoa, and rounded Cape Horn to join a brother-in-law, the late Dr. Henry B. May, in San Francisco. After a latency passage of nearly nine months he reached California, while the State was yet in its territorial condition; and after a few months' stay in San Francisco he removed to Sacramento, during the terrible epidemic of cholera, and while the excitement incident to the squatter riots was still intense. Here he engaged himself with his medical relative in the business of the old Boston drug store, which was still then located on the north side of J street, between Front and Second streets, at that early period, owing to want of accommodations elsewhere in town. A large number of prominent physicians examined their office patients in the little cloth ante-rooms attached to the establishment, and as the location was quite near all the large gambling houses and hotels, it was a common sight that pioneer period to see here not only victims of cholera and kindred diseases, but also those who had been shot or stabbed, and who needed surgical treatment. In this kind of practical school young Simmons began his interest in the profession of medicine, and for several years did a large amount of work in connection with the care of the sick and wounded. After he returned to the East and entered the Tremont Street Preparatory Medical School in Boston, and subsequently the medical department of Harvard University, receiving his degree of Doctor in Medicine and Surgery from that famous institution in 1856. Soon after graduating he returned to Sacramento, where he has since been successfully engaged in the practice of his profession, excepting only the time spent in two extended trips to Europe, taken with the view to observing the hospital practice of the Old World. Dr. Simmons is a member of the American Medical Association and served on the committee of arrangements at the great gathering of that body in San Francisco in 1871. He is also a member of the California State Medical Society; of the Massachusetts State Medical Society, and one of the charter members of the Sacramento Society for Medical Improvement. For over twenty years he served as the commissioner in the lunacy and as a member of the Board of Health; also for a term as County Hospital physician and as United States Pension Surgeon, and was the first secretary of the City Board of Education that acted as school superintendent. He is now the president of the board of trustees of the Marguerite Home for old ladies, founded by the munificent charity of Margaret E. Crocker. Dr. Simmons was married in 1862 to Celia, daughter of the Rev. Peter Crocker, formerly of Richmond, Indiana, and Barnstable, Massachusetts. They have three living children: Gustavus Crocker, Celia May and Samuel Ewer. The elder son, Gustavus, is a graduate, like he is father, of Harvard University, receiving his medical degree in 1885. He is now in Europe taking a post-graduate course in the Vienna hospitals.

An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. By Hon. Win. J Davis. Lewis Publishing Company 1890. Page 268-269.

Submitted by: Nancy Pratt Melton.