Willard, Dr.

Dr. Rowland Willard was born at Fort Ann, New York, in 1794, and died in Haddonfield, New Jersey, in 1884. He traveled the Ohio River system during his youth, and studied as a carpenter, musician, Freemason and eventually, as a medical student, in St. Charles, Missouri from 1817 to 1825. Leaving St. Charles in 1825, he traveled to Taos along the Arkansas River and the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico. From Taos, he travelled south, administering medical advice in various Indian pueblos and establishing a successful medical practice in Chihuahua. Three years later, he returned to the United States via Matamoras and New Orleans. Willard attended Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia from 1828 until 1829 when he moved to Cincinnati to speculate on land and establish a medical practice which grew to include a wholesale drugstore. In 1829 Timothy Flint published a brief account of Willard's travels in The Western Monthly Review. The account was later reprinted as an appendix to James Ohio Pattie's Personal Narrative in 1831. Willard traveled down the Mississippi and through Alabama in 1830. In 1832, Willard married wife Elizabeth (b. 1814) in Cincinnati. After a conversion to the Baptist faith a year later, the couple moved to Covington, Kentucky, where Dr. Willard helped establish the Western Theological Institute, and then to Oswego, Indiana, where Willard again speculated on land. Three sons survived childhood: Lyman W., Nelson L., and Rowland. The Willards retired to Haddonfield, New Jersey.

From the description of Rowland Willard-Elizabeth S. Willard papers, 1825-1884. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 702172314

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