OLD TIME, MEDINA AREA MEDICINE

VENERABLE AREA MEDICAL CARE FROM THE LATE 1800s

The Somerset area has been home to some respected medical doctors and others engaged in health care such as midwives and curanderos.

Doctors back then were few and far between.  One story tells of South Texas cattleman George Bell and his family in a Comanche raid in the late 1860s. George had been shot several times and Alfred Andrew “Cowboy Dave” Anderson rode the 100 miles from their “mavericking camp” on the Nueces River near Eagle Pass to Pleasanton to get the doctor.  He made it, brought both the doctor and Mr. Bell back home to the Pleasanton area. George Bell survived to become Dave’s father-in-law.

(NOTE: An account of George Bell and a cattle drive he and his hands made to Mexico in the early 1860s can be read in George W. Saunders’ 1924 masterwork, The Trail Drivers of Texas. The current edition is compiled and edited by J. Marvin Hunter for the University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas. It is a wonderful read and area resource.)

ON TO OUR DOCTORS

That story above may help us understand just how precious those few men and women who helped out when folk go hurt or sick. Many were “home grown” doctors in those years of the late 1800s like “Doc Craddock.” The Lytle History book, Patchwork (page 39) recorded reports from the area’s early residents describe “a Dr. Craddock who had ‘read medicine’ in order to minister to his slaves back in the south.  When he moved to this area, people here were without a doctor and he was able to help a great deal.” 

Another area doctor was a Dr. J. F. Neal from Alabama who was also a Methodist minister and pastor of the church at Benton for a time. These men of medicine had to be multi-talented.

Getting closer to the 20^th century more medical college and university trained doctors were becoming available to our south-of-the-Medina residents.  In his blog, Memory Tracks in the South Texas Brush Country, Bernard Pyron, whose family has lived for several generations in this area, recounts, ” ‘Back in the day’ Somerset had three doctors that are still remembered fondly by realllly old timers, stories that old timer’s kids remember hearing, and Somerset’s street names: Dr. Robert B. Touchstone, Dr. Thomas P. Ware, Dr. D. E. Hilton, and Dr. James A Matthews. (Note: Dr. Matthews was the oldest.  His practice was “pre-Somerset with home/practice at Bexar, before there was a Somerset.)

These country doctors, until the 1920s, did not have automobiles to reach patients who could not show up at their home office.  Until the doctor’s custom grew, he had to rely on a neighborly buggy driver to take him where he was needed. As more patients came and paid their bills, these doctors could purchase their horse and later with more custom, a real buggy that might be able to haul their medical supplies to someone’s home or transport them to better treatment. In the early days of the automobile, those machines had difficulty on sandy-dirt roads. Horses always gotcha ya through.

DOCTORS WITHOUT HOSPITALS? WHO WERE THESE GUY?

Bernard Pyron goes on, “These country doctors, for the most part, worked without hospitals.  They did not work in hospitals and worked independently of the hospitals that existed in larger cities.  Dr. Preston T. Ware, the youngest of the three Somerset country doctors, had a small hospital after he moved to Poteet sometime between 1935 and 1940.”

The medical doctors in the area included James Arthur Matthews, Robert Bayard Touchstone, Denson Ellis Hilton, and Thomas Preston Ware.  One was born in Texas while the other three hailed from Mississippi.

DR. JAMES ARTHUR MATTHEWS

I do have an photo of a corner of that house taken about 1945. The family of Jesse Garfield James standing in the photo, lived there since the mid 1920s, after the last doctor moved to the new town of Somerset.

Dr. J. A. Matthews was born March 25, 1846 in Melrose, Nacogdoches County, Texas.  By 1880, he was a practicing physician in Kasse, Limestone County, Texas and living with wife Clara (born in Texas about 1858) their son John A. Matthews, a brother, school teacher J. E. Matthews, age 29 and a nephew, John M. Gunning, age 20, who was attending school.

Dr. Matthews came to the Somerset area in the 1890s and according to the 1900 United States Census was living in the Bexar Community with wife Clara, daughter Mary C. who was born in November, 1889, and two sons, George C. Matthews, born December, 1883, and James A. Matthews, born June, 1889.

By 1910, Dr. Matthews family had moved to Scurry County, Texas and in 1920 they were living in Mathis, San Patricio County where Dr. Matthews was living when he passed away March 14, 1936 at the age of 89 years 11 months, 20 days.  The “cause of death was senility.”  The Texas Death Certificate notes that he had suffered from this disease “since 1912” or “about 40 years.” 

DR. DENSON ELLIS HILTON

After 1910 Bexar Settlement or Community was no longer the center of commerce in the area.  A small community created in 1908-1909 on the Artesian Belt Railroad about 1.5 miles east of Bexar Settlement, replaced Bexar.  The new town, called Somerset, would have a doctor, too.

Dr. Denson E. Hilton arrived from medical school in Mississippi to establish himself in Dr. Matthews home near the corner of Kinney Road and Pain (Payne) Road in the Bexar Community by 1910.  He, his wife Ida and son D. E. Jr., lived next to Joe Fowler and Lee Johnson, just down the road from Pat Kinney, Tom Kinney, and Luther James. 

An interesting look at Dr. Hilton’s World War I Draft Registration of 1918 say  he was “born 21 May 1880” and is a “medical student.”  Other information shows him to be of “medium height, medium build, blue eyes and brown hair.”  Fred C. James, the draft registrar for the area, writes that he is physically “all right.”  He and his wife Ida report that their permanent home address and place of business is the same: House #57, RFD #1, town of Atascosa, Bexar County, Texas.

Dr. Hilton in 1920 was still living in the Bexar Community area on Bexar Road near Briggs Road with his wife, son and 3 boarders one of whom was an automobile mechanic and two were school teachers.

By 1922, at age 42, Dr. Hilton, was dead of an “abscess of the lung.  Mr. B. B. Pyron of Somerset was the informant on the Texas Death Certificate.  Dr. Hilton’s body was returned to be buried near his family home in Braxton, Simpson County, Mississippi.

Ida Hilton Oliver, daughter of A. M. Pyron and Virginia Blackburn of Somerset area, stayed in the Somerset area, and was buried in Bexar Cemetery following her death on July 19, 1962.  Their son D. E. Hilton, Jr. lived in Beeville.  According to Ida’s obituary there were also two other daughters and sons, not named.

DR. ROBERT BAYARD TOUCHSTONE

Dr. Touchstone of Lytle was not only a physician, but also a rancher and philanthropist who was born “on the old Touchstone plantation in Simpson County, Mississippi on August 20, 1876.  He attended high school at the Braxton Collegiate Institute and then received his medical degree from the Memphis Medical University in 1903.  According to the Light, in that same year of 1903, Dr. Touchstone arrived in San Antonio and began his medical practice in Bexar and Atascosa counties. 

The venerable history of Lytle, Patchwork (1978), published by the old Lytle Women’s Club, says of Dr. Touchstone:

            Dr. Touchstone was a Mississippian….For health reasons he was advised to go West and having heard of San Antonio as a health resort, he came here. He was a Young doctor, leaving home, parents, and a lovely young lady, all back in Mississippi.  This was truly  the loneliest time of his life, he remembered later.

            He came to Lytle after getting off the train, he sat on the window seat at the Wells store, waiting for some person to speak a welcoming word or extend a glad hand.

            Then one did.  Tom Foster came toward him and said, “Howdy stranger, where are you going?”

            Dr. Touchstone asked if Lytle had a hotel. This was answered affirmatively and the doctor made ready to go there.  Mr. Foster said, “No, you are going home with me.”

            He did and the visit lasted a whole year.  After the year was over, Dr. Touchstone went back to Mississippi and married his lovely Miss Evie, bringing her back to Texas.

            He started medical practice at Benton, Bexar and Lytle and continued for some forty years.  Dr. Touchstones house and office still stand, one section now housing Dr. W. H. Joyce’s office. (Referring to Lytle buildings in 1978.)

Dr. Robert B. Touchstone was a “founding father” of the town of Somerset.  In 1908-1909 he and other shareholders formed the First Townsite Company, Inc., that met with the Artesian Belt Railroad leadership to convince them to create rail stop on their route about 1.5 miles east of Bexar Settlement.  The Railroad agreed to do so and the town of Somerset began. Dr. Touchstone was not only a shareholder, but also on the board of directors.

His 1918 World War I Draft Registration form provides some personal information about the man.  The document says he was 42 years of age, and living with his wife, Mrs. E. V. ”Evie” Guynes Touchstone, in Lytle, Atascosa County, Texas.  The document states he is “tall, of medium build, has brown eyes, light hair color and slightly bald.”

The 1920 US Census indicates the Touchstone family of Robert, Evie, daughter Gladys includes Evie’s mother and father Albert B. and Almeda Guynes.

As one who embraced helping his community in a variety of ways, Dr. Touchstone did so through his membership in an area Masonic lodge and as a member of the Elks Lodge.  A San Antonio Evening News article of Tuesday, March 30, 1920 announced the candidates initiated into membership of the San Antonio Lodge #214 of the Order of Elks.  Joining the 1,400 lodge members, and making the San Antonio lodge the largest in Texas, was new initiate Robert B. Touchstone.

A physician to the end, Dr. Touchstone was stricken at his desk with a heart attack and died three hours later on Saturday, October 4, 1941.  He was 65 years of age.  On October 5^th, he was laid to rest in the Masonic Cemetery in Lytle.

TWO MORE PERSONAL MEMORIES OF and WITH OUR SOMERSET AREA DOCTORS

(1) According to Bernard Pyron, “Dr. D. E. Hilton was the first husband of my aunt Ida, and Patricia (Patricia Kenney Anderson) says she divorced him.”  She says Dr. Hilton and Dr. Touchstone once operated out of the same office.   She also said that Dr. Ware had his Somerset office either in the back of Tom Kenney’s store or in that area where the drug store was located.  Dr. Ware ran a small hospital in Poteet.  But there was no real hospital in the area other than in San Antonio.”

(2) AND FINALLY, Dr. Ware was needed one afternoon in the mid-1930s, my dad Jesse Columbus James told me, when younger kids decided to emulate the high school track kids who are practicing shot putting and javaline throwing.  In an empty lot across from the telephone “exchange office” in operator Mrs. Mill’s living room, her son James Mill and several other kids including Pete Richie were tossing a “javaline” they found for practice – a piece of long, narrow wood.  During one toss James ran up to catch the javelin before it landed in the street.  He caught it just under his right eye, tearing the eyelid and causing the eyeball to drop out on his cheek, swinging like a pendulum from the optic nerve.

Pete Richie ran up to James Mill to hold his eye.  Our “field trials” were over, but each participant wanted to know what James was seeing out of that dangling eye.  Could he see anything behind him?  If I turn it can you see over there?  James, in shock, said nothing and the boys walked him around the corner and over a block to the doctor’s office (presumably Dr. Ware), still holding the eye against his cheek.  Once there they called James’s mom.  The doctor replaced the eyeball and sewed up the eyelid and it healed just fine.  It was just all in a day’s play and a doctor’s work…and a mom’s headache.

Thank you for reading this far. As we go through weeks with the new “novel virus” be thankful and being prayerful for all the doctors, nurses, treatment specialists of all kinds, lab technicians, therapists, cleaning staff, food/nutritionists, as well as emergency responders…and their teachers/instructors at all levels. Our medical practice has come so far in the last 150 years, with more miracles around the corner. I am so thankful you all are around to enjoy, or appreciate, the wonderful gifts our medical community provides to us.