Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/524

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPIJY

(Dunning-ton) Wheat, was born in Dum- fries, Prince William county, Virginia, De- cember II, 1850, and there lived until he was twenty-five years of age. He then en- tered the Medical College of Virginia and was graduated from that institution, Febru- ary 28, 1877, and while a student performed work as interne at the Church Institute and Howard's Grove Asylum for Colored In- sane, the latter a state institution. After graduation he served as interne in the Pinell Hospital, then established in general prac- tice in Richmond, soon afterward, in the fall of 1878, being elected medical superin- tendent of the Retreat for the Sick. While the occupant of this position he was promi- nently identified with the Medical College of X'irginia, for five years being demonstra- tor of anatomy, and he was also secretary of the board of visitors and superintendent of the college museum. Since 1884 Dr. Wheat has been engaged in private practice in this city. He has attained the greatest success in his profession, and has achieved particularly brilliant reputation in the spe- cialty to which he has devoted himself with zeal and devotion, the treatment of crippled children. No branch of the medical profes- sion makes a greater appeal to human sym- pathy than that which gives to a child a future, that enables him to restart life with- out the fearful handicap that accident or birth has given him, and the good that Dr. Wheat has accomplished through the me- dium of his professional skill is inestimable. His record is one eminently fit to follow that of his honored father, and the two are a worthy tribute to a name nobly borne.

Dr. John Richard WHieat married, in Richmond, Tlorence, daughter of Dr. W'il- liam H. Coffin, of Cumberland county, Vir- ginia. her~ father a native of England, her mother, who was a Miss Tuck, a native of Annapolis, Maryland.

Hon. Ernest Linwood Keyser. A work of this nature exercises its highest function when it takes into consideration the career and family record of a man who has himself stood representative of the best citizenship and maximum usefulness in the practical activities of life. The Hon. Ernest Linwood Keyser, of Roanoke. \ irginia, is a man who has distinguished himself as a statesman, a business man of exceptional financial abil-

ity, and as a generally public-spirited citi- zen. His grandparents were Christopher and Ann (Brumback) Keyser, the former an elder and minister of the Baptist church.

Dr. Henry Marcellus Keyser, father of the man whose name heads this sketch, was l>orn January 22, 1835, in Page county, Vir- ginia, where his parents had also been born. There he was educated in the public schools, and the Shenandoah Valley Academy, then was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the Cincinnati Medical Col- lege. Subsequently he took a post-gradu- ate course at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He was a man of more than ordinary professional and intellectual attainments, and was well known through- out the state for his fine character and pub- lic spirit. He served Page county as super- intendent of schools, and represented it for five consecutive terms in the state legisla- ture. He was instrumental in introducing many beneficial measures while there, no- table among them being the Henkel School Bill. His death occurred in 1898. Dr. Key- ser married X'annie Kite, also born in Page county, Virginia, and they had children : Mrs. "C. E. Clinedinst, of Newmarket, Vir- ginia ; William F., commonwealth attorney, for Page county ; Ernest Linwood, of whom further ; Thomas M., a merchant in Stanley, Virginia ; Mrs. Robert R. Leas, of Saltville, Virginia ; and Mrs. James W. Holt, of Bris- tol, Virginia.

Hon. Ernest Linwood Keyser was born in Page county. Virginia, October 21, 1868.^ A part of his earlier education was acquired at the New Market (\"irginia) Polytechnic Institute, and he then matriculated at the National Institute of Pharmacy, in Chicago, from which he was graduated in the class of 1892 with the degree of Graduate Pharmacist. During the next ten years he was engaged very successfully in the drug business in San Antonio and Victoria, Texas, and in 1902 came to Roanoke, Vir- ginia, with the business and social, as well as political life of which he has since that time been prominently identified. He estab- lished himself in the drug business, and so successful were his business methods, that at the present time he is president of the Keyser-Warren Drug Company, secretary and treasurer of the Keyser-Hoback Drug Company and president of the Keyser