EDMUND JOHN OVEREND

EDMUND JOHN OVEREND

Edmund John Overend, a physician and surgeon of Oakland, was born in San Francisco, December 16, 1854, the only child of William Gibson and Annie (Hassett) Overend. The father, a native of London, England, died of an accident in San Francisco, in 1882, aged about forty-nine. The mother, a native of Ireland, is living, in 1890, at the age of fifty-two. They were married in New York city, and came to California by the Panama route in 1852. The father did some mining at Forest Hill and in Virginia City, finally settling in San Francisco. He was a man of good education and of some artistic talent as a painter and sketcher, doing some work for Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine. During the civil war he did some military service on this coast, being a Lieutenant in the Second California Cavalry, serving for a time as Acting Assisting Adjutant-General on Governor Low’s staff, and at another time as Quartermaster of his regiment.

This subject of this sketch received a good education in the public schools and in St. Mary’s College. In his eighteenth year, a few months before graduation, he took the position of ordnance clerk in Mare Island navy yard. Deciding to adopt the medical profession as a life career, he began study of medicine in the medical department of the University of California. He then went East and prosecuted his studies in the Medical College of South Carolina, where he won two prizes for anatomy and surgery. He next entered the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and while attending its course of lectures was demonstrator in the School of Anatomy in the winter of 1883-4, and was graduated from Jefferson College in March, 1884. He returned to this coast in July to take the position of resident physician of Paso Robles Springs, much frequented by invalids suffering from rheumatism and skin diseases. In 1885 he moved to Wheatland, Yuba county, and in September 1886, he settled in this city. Besides his general practice, which is very good, he is physician to St. Mary’s College, to St. Joseph’s Academy and to Oakland Parlor, N. S. G. W. His is also on the staff of the Oakland General Hospital.

Dr. E. J. Overend was married in September, 1882, to Miss Marietta Hamilton, born in Grass Valley, June 26, 1865, a daughter of Garvin and Mary (Larkin) Hamilton. The father, a native of Maine, had emigrated to Louisiana, and thence to Texas, and finally to this coast, accompanied by his wife in 1852. He was a contractor and builder in Grass Valley, and a somewhat prominent citizen. Among other buildings he erected Hamilton Hall, called after his name. He died in Grass Valley toward the close of 1864, at the age of sixty-nine. The mother of Mrs. Overend is still living in that city, aged about fifty-five.

Dr. and Mrs. Overend have one child, Paul Hamilton Overend, born in Oakland, April 29, 1887. Dr. Overend has been a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West since 1885.

Transcribed by Donna L. Becker

Source: "The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 1, pages 561-562, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.