Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/151

 \ IKCIXIA lUOCRAI'in-

III

Ambrose A. and Mary (llurlcyj White were the parents of eit^ht sons and three daughters.

(IV) Dr. Joseph .\ugustus White, son of Ambrose A. White, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, April 19, 1848. After passing- through preparatory schools, he entered Rock Hill College. Ellicott City, Maryland; then attended Loyola College, Baltimore. Maryland, and Mt. St. Mary's College, Em- mitsburg, Maryland, receiving from the lat- ter institution in 1867 the degrees of A. B. and A. M. lie had decided upon the pro- fession of medicine as his lifework and after completing his classical education entered the medical department of the University of Maryland, whence he was graduated ^^I. I^. in 1869. He then pursued courses of medical study abroad at the Ecole de Medi- cine, Paris, France ; the University of Free- burg un Bressgan, Baden ; Heidelberg and Berlin. Returning to the United States in 1872. he began practice in Baltimore, con- tinuing until 1880. also filling the chair of opthalmology in Washington University Medical College, in that city. In 1880 he located in Richmond, Virginia, where he has advanced to the highest rank in his profession. He is an authority on diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat, and is now professor of opthalmology in the Medical College of Mrginia. He is president of the American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, the largest association of ear, nose and throat specialists in the en- tire world, and is also a member of a num- ber of prominent medical societies, and in many of them holds official position. He has lectured and written extensi\'ely on his specialties, and is well known in the pro- fession all over the United States. He has devoted his whole life to the service of his fellowmen and has held no position ' out- side the professional societies, nor engaged in any business.

He is a member of the Westmoreland and Commonwealth clubs, of Richmond ; the Deep Run Hunt Club, and the Country Club of Virginia. Through his patriotic ancestor, Major Abraham White, he de- serves membership in the Sons of the Amer- ican Revolution, and for several years was president of the Virginia Chapter. In poli- tics he is a Democrat, and in religious be- lief a Catholic.

Although nearing the age when men

think of retirement, Dr. White is as earnest a student and as deeply immersed in re- search and investigation of cause, remedy and treatment of disease, as when forty years ago he began practice. His life has been a blessing to his fellowmen and "finis" is not yet written on his work for humanity. Dr. White married, December 2"], i^yj, in Alontgomery, Alabama, Sophia Berney, born in that city in 1856, daughter of James Berney, M. D., and his wife, Sophia (Saf- fold) Berney. She is one of the eight chil- dren : John, Saffold, Chollet, James, Mary, Phillippa and Sophia. The sons of Dr. White all died in childhood; they were: James Berney, Joseph Edward and Joseph Augustus.. The daughters were : Mary Edith, married Stuart Bowe and has a daughter, Edith ; Sophia Berney, married George Lee Mason, and has a daughter, Sophia I5erney.

John Murphy. The eventful career of John Murphy, of Richmond, Virginia, be- gan when he landed on these shores, but undoubtedly he inherited the elements of character which have contribvited to his marked success from his antecedents, and the early environment of his native land. He was born February 15. 1842, in county Cork. Ireland, and his parents, Peter and Margaret Murphy, were descended from the native inhabitants of that locality.

County Cork is generally considered to have been instituted by King John ; it was but sparsely settled before the sixteenth century, when among others to whom the crown granted lands within the county were Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, the poet, who received forty thousand acres and thirty thousand and twenty-eight acres of land respectively. After 1602 these lands, together with other large estates, were col- onized by English settlers, hence the later population of county Cork became a more or less hybrid race, consisting of the English element engrafted upon the native Irish stock. It was from these elements that the family of Murphy sprang, and the dominant influence of this antecedent history gave the elements of character to John Murphy, which enabled him to succeed under the averse conditions of life during the early } ears of his career in this country.

He was at Richmond. Virginia, when the civil war began, and the cause of the Con-