Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/555

 WESTMORELAND

495

WEY

1828. He was a descendant of Lord Westmoreland of Westmoreland County, England, from whom Westmoreland County, Virginia, was named about three centuries ago. In 1740 three Westmore- land brothers emigrated from England to Virginia, settling at Jamestown. They were Robert, William and Thomas. Robert settled in Virginia, William in North Carolina, and Thomas in South Carolina. Willis Furman was the great- grandson of William, one of whose des- cendants came to Georgia and settled at that time in Fayette County, known as Pioneer Georgia, coming here long before the Indians had left that part of the State.

Young Willis went to the best country schools and like most farmer boys alter- nated between farm and schoolhouse till about twenty years old. He then read medicine with his brother. Dr. John Gray Westmoreland, at that time practising in Pike County.

His first course of lectures was in the Georgia Medical College during the winter of 1848 and 1849. The next session of lectures, he graduated at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1850. In 1851 he went to Paris where he spent three years making himself proficient in his favorite department, surgery. Returning home, he first settled in his native county in 1854, but soon removed to Atlanta and from the very beginning fully identified himself with surgery. Together with his brother, John G., he estabUshed the "Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal," to-day one of the leading medical journals. He joined the Georgia Medical Asso- ciation in which he held during his life many important positions. For fifteen years he was president of the Atlanta Association of Medicine. His contributions before these organizations, and in many medical journals on surgery stamp him as one of the ablest men of the age.

Dr. Westmoreland was an active, energetic man, capable of undergoing much physical labor. Wishing to visit

Texas in his youth, he rode all the way on horseback from Pike County, Georgia, to middle Texas. Remaining a short time, he returned, each ride taking him about thirty days to make it. At present the same distance can be traveled over in as many hours by rail.

As a monument to the memory of this energetic man, his old neighbors in Pike County point with pardonable pride to a plain, two room frame building, still standing at a neighboring cross-road. In 1851 when he determined to start country practice, there was no room to be had fit to see patients in. He had no money to build one, so he went to the woods, cut down and hauled the timber to the nearest sawmill, had the lumber sawed and with his own hands built the rooms himself.

Aside from being a leading surgeon, during the late Civil War he ranked as general, by special appointment from Pres. Davis himself, in the Confederate service.

Being an ardent supporter of the Atlanta Medical College from its very beginning, he occupied the chair of surgery for at least thirty years.

In 1856 he married Maria Jourdan, of LaGrange, the daughter of a leading politician; they had two children, the second being Willis F. Jr., who became a surgeon and after the death of his father, occupied the same chair (surgery) at the Atlanta College of Physicians and surgeons.

In June, 1890, Dr. Westmoreland died of apoplexy. R. J. M.

Atlanta M. and S. J., 1S84-.5, n. s. i. port.

Wey, William C. (1829-1897).

The Wey family had lived for some- time in Catskill; the great-grandfather of William C. Wey was a physician there, his father a druggist, and William was born on January 12, 1829, graduating from the Albany Medical College, 1849, settling in Elmira that same year to practise. He did good work for forty- eight years for the State and the medical profession as manager of the State