San Francisco County
Biographies
JAMES
MAIRS SELFRIDGE
JAMES
MAIRS SELFRIDGE, a physician and surgeon of Oakland, California, was born in Argyle, Washington county,
New
York, September 29, 1824, a son of Isaac and Mary (McEachran)
Selfridge, both natives of that county and of Scotch-Irish descent. His grandfather, Oliver Selfridge, and two of
his brothers were Americans by birth, having been born before the Revolution,
in which they served as soldiers in the American army. All lived to an advanced age, Oliver being
ninety-eight at his death. His wife died
about 1828, being over seventy. They
were the parents of six sons and four daughters, of whom Isaac, the father of
our subject, lived to the age of sixty-five, dying of heart disease in
Caledonia, Livingston county, New York, where he had settled with his family in
1832, after having resided a short time near Clyde, Wayne county, and one year
in Freedom, Cattaraugus county. He had
been a soldier in the war of 1812, was a blacksmith by trade and in later life
a farmer. The mother reached the age of
eighty-five, and her mother, Nancy McEachran, was seventy-nine, but his
grandfather, Cornelius McEachran, a Scotchman by birth, died of some acute
disease in middle life.
J. M.
Selfridge, the subject of this sketch, received his early education in the
district schools of Argyle, Freedom and Caledonia. He learned his father’s trade of blacksmith
and farmer in young manhood, and at twenty-one was an acknowledged expert in
both lines, as work was done in those days.
Meanwhile he had shown marked proficiency in his studies and kept them
up assiduously at intervals. At
twenty-one he began to attend the Roundhouse Academy in Leroy, Genessee county, New York, under Principal McCall, doing chores for
his board and earned his clothes by working out during harvest. Through the recommendation of Mr. McCall he
was appointed teacher in the Limestone district of Caledonia, Livingston county, attending the academy between school terms. In the winter of 1847-’48 he taught in Leroy,
and in the summer of 1848 he went to Riga Academy, where he finished his
academic education. He then took up the
study of medicine in that town, with Doctors Smith and Lovejoy, and in the
winter of 1848-’49 taught school in the town of Sweden, Monroe county, New
York, returning to the office of his medical professors in the spring of
1849. Later he took a similar position
with Dr. Wirts in Waterloo, Seneca county, New York,
but before the close of the year was taken sick of typhoid fever and returned
to his home. In the winter of 1849-’50
he again taught school in Riga, and in the summer of 1850 studied under Dr.
Patterson of Waterloo, paying his way with him and Dr. Wirts by doing
chores. In the spring of 1851 he began
to attend lectures in the medical department of Hobart College in Geneva, and
for a few months during the summer took the place of Mr. Botsford, Principal of
the Waterloo Academy, who required a rest from his labors. In the winter of 1851-’52 he studied in the
University of Buffalo and by close application, under Doctors Austin Flint,
Frank H. Hamilton and other professors, he was enabled to secure his diploma,
February 25, 1852. Invited by Dr.
Patterson of Waterloo, he joined him under
the firm name of Doctors Patterson & Selfridge, physicians and surgeons.
This
arrangement was short-lived, as in June, 1852, Dr. Selfridge set out for California, leaving New York in the steamship Illinois. He was in Panama on the Fourth of July, and
arrived in San Francisco July 26, by the old steamer California. He then went to Sacramento and spent some
time prospecting for a location, finally settling in that city, October 2,
1852. A month later he escaped from the
big fire with his medical books and returned to San Francisco, where he remained
until March 3, 1853, when he moved to this county, settling near the Mission
San Jose. In May, 1855, he went East,
and was married, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, to Miss Elizabeth Loveridge, born
in Seneca county, New York, whose acquaintance he had formed when a medical
student in Waterloo, and who, by his assistance, was then finishing her
education in Holyoke Seminary. Leaving
Mrs. Selfridge for a season in the home of her father, a farmer of Seneca county, New York, Dr. Selfridge went to Philadelphia to take
a post-graduate course in the Jefferson Medical College, from which he received
a diploma, March 8, 1856. Joining his
wife, he opened an office in Seneca Falls, New York, where he practiced his
profession until October, when he moved to Iowa, settling in Winterset, Madison
county, in November, 1856. Being invited to return to California he set
for this coast, landing in San Francisco from the steamer Golden Gate, with his
wife and child, June 27, 1857. He again
settled in this county, near Centreville, and soon built up a good practice. He there erected a home, where five children
were born to him, one of whom died in infancy.
His surviving children in order of their birth are: Mary, born in New
York, a graduate of the Oakland high school, and a pupil of the school of
design in San Francisco, went to Paris in 1879 to perfect herself in art,
recently married to M. Forget, Assistant Professor in the University of
Lauvain, Belgium; Arthur James, who completed his literary course in Hamilton
College, New York, studied law in the Harvard Law School, at which he was
graduated with high honors, and is now an attorney in Boston. He is married to Miss Louise Johnson, born in
Maine, a daughter of C. F. A. Johnson of that State, who was a Presidential
Elector on the Republican ticket in 1884.
They have one child, Mildred.
Clarence M., now a physician and surgeon in Port Townsend, Washington,
received his literary education in Oakland, and his professional studies, begun
under his father, were completed in the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. Grant, who completed his literary studies in
Hamilton College, New York, also a physician, began his medical studies with
his father, then attended lectures for two years in the Cooper Medical College
of San Francisco, and was graduated at the Hahnemann Medical College in
Philadelphia. He afterward took up the
special study of the eye and ear, under the celebrated Dr. Knapp of New York,
receiving his certificate of proficiency.
He began practice in San Francisco in April, 1890, in his
special line, and received the appointment of oculist and aurist
to the Pacific Homeopathic Dispensary of that city and of the Oakland
Dispensary in Oakland. Grace, educated in Field’s Seminary, is by
marriage Mrs. Joseph B. Dyer of Oakland.
Dr.
J. M. Selfridge practiced his profession as an allopathic physician from 1852
to 1863, when, becoming dissatisfied with certain features of that system, he
looked into the homeopathic system and soon became convinced of the superiority
of the principle on which it is based. He moved to Oakland in 1866, and has practiced
as a physician of the new school ever since.
He helped to organize the State Medical Society of Homeopathic
practitioners, and in 1874 became a charter member of the later Pacific
Homeopathic Medical Society of California, and cooperated in 1878 in securing
the coalition of the two bodies into the California State Homeopathic Medical
Society, and was its President in 1881.
He also aided in organizing the Alameda County Homeopathic Medical
Society, of which he has been twice President, and of the Oakland Homeopathic
Hospital and Dispensary Association, which institution is now known as the
Fabiola Hospital, of which he was the first surgeon, and with which he is still
connected as Surgeon. Dr. Selfridge was
elected Coroner for one term, and from 1872 to 1878 was the attending physician
of the Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind in Berkeley. He is universally regarded as a
representative physician of the school of practice to which he belongs. He is a member of the American Institute of
Homeopathy, the California Academy of Sciences, the
San Francisco Microscopical Society and of the Astronomical Society of the
Pacific.
As
will be seen by the above brief sketch Dr. Selfridge is emphatically a
self-made man, having received assistance from no one during his career.
Although
sixty-seven years old, his surgical operations are a surprise to all who
witness them, for coolness of head and steadiness of nerve, due largely to the
fact that he neither drinks tea, coffee, nor spirituous liquors.
Transcribed by Donna L.
Becker
Source: "The Bay of
San Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages 194-196 Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2006 Donna L.
Becker.
California Biography
Project
San
Francisco County
California
Statewide
Golden
Nugget Library