San Francisco County
DAVID
SKILLING, M. D.
DAVID
SKILLING, M. D., deceased, a physician and surgeon of Oakland, was born in
Wayne county, Ohio, August 4, 1822, a son of Hugh and Catherine (Dobbins) Skilling. The
father, born in Enniskillen, Ireland, about 1792,
came to the United States in 1811, and was married in Beaver county,
Pennsylvania, a few years later. The
mother was of Scotch parentage, and the young couple first settled on the home
place, moving afterward to Wayne county, Ohio. They had seven sons and three daughters, all
living in 1890 except the oldest brother and sister. The father lived to be seventy-eight, and the
mother seventy-two, and the oldest surviving child, Leonard Skilling,
M. D., of Hazleton, Kansas, is seventy-four.
Another son, William, of Oswego, Kansas, by trade a carpenter, is
seventy; and still another son, Josiah Skilling, M.
D., a cavalry surgeon in the civil war, is now living in Los Angeles,
California. The grandparents on both
sides lived to an advanced age, dying in Beaver county,
Pennsylvania; and an uncle, William Skilling, reached
the age of ninety.
David
Skilling, the subject of this sketch, received his
early education in the schools of his native district, and taught two terms in
Butler county, Ohio, before he was nineteen. He then entered the University of Ohio, at
Athens, remaining three years, when he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he
taught school three years. Returning to
Ohio, he studied medicine under Dr. Harper, of Lima, Ohio, three years, when he
entered the medical department of the University of Kentucky, in Louisville,
and followed a course of lectures in medicine one year. He began practice in 1848, at Atlas, Pike county, Illinois, and was there married in 1849, to Miss
Mary E. Long, a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He practiced at Atlas nearly five years, when
he took an additional course in the medical department of the University of
Missouri, in St. Louis, receiving a diploma from that institution in 1853. He then settled in Winchester, Scott county, Illinois, and became a member of the American
Medical Association in 1854. In April,
1862, at the request of the Sanitary Commission of St. Louis, he took charge of
the military hospital at Shiloh, with 1,400 patients, and in May was
commissioned by the Governor of Missouri as Surgeon of the Twenty-first
Missouri Regular Volunteer Infantry. He
was in the three days’ battle of Pittsburg Landing, and remained in the service
three months, when he was compelled to resign through the pressure of
work. He returned to private practice in
Winchester, and was one of the organizers of the First National Bank, and was
elected vice president of that institution in 1865. In 1867 he took a trip to Europe, and availed
himself of the opportunity for clinical observation while in London and
Paris. Returning the same year he
resumed practice and was elected President of the First National Bank, holding
the position for about ten years. In
1877 he came to California and settled in Oakland, where he practiced until his
death.
The
Doctor had recently inherited $40,000 from the estate of a deceased relative in
Nevada, and he took a trip (1891) into the Sagebrush State to settle the
business attending the bequest. He had
to endure a long stage-drive through the cold, and on his return erysipelas set
in and caused his death.
He
was a member of the Alameda County Medical Association, and was a member of the
National Convention of the Grand Army of the Republic at Columbus, Ohio, in
1888.
Dr.
and Mrs. Skilling were the parents of two children:
Henry Hugh, a graduate of the California College of Pharmacy, now a druggist of
this city, at the corner of Washington and Fourteenth; and Minnie L., a
graduate of the Oakland high school, and an artist, was married in this city,
June 28, 1890, to William H. Leffler, of Fresno. The home is at 1004 Fourteenth street.
Transcribed by Donna L.
Becker
Source: "The Bay of
San Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages 191-192 Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2006 Donna L.
Becker.