DR. HENRY J. HERRICK stands in the front rank of the physicians and surgeons of the west, and as a man has long since won repute equal to his reputation as a medical practitioner. Thoroughly educated, highly cultured, with a long and varied experience, he possesses in addition a high-minded Christian character, and a wonderful fund of sound sense that have made him an example and a force of unquestioned power in the community wherein he dwells. He is of the best New England stock, and has all his life been a supporter of the moral reforms and various forms of progress that found life in the New England mind. His father was a native of Massachusetts and his mother of Connecticut. They came to Ohio in an early day to aid in the development of this then new land, and to obtain a field wherein their native energy and industry could have full play. The subject of this sketch was one of a large family of children, and was born at Aurora, Portage county, on January 20, 1833. When he was a mere lad his father removed to Twinsburgh, Summit county, where one-half the boy's time was given the public school and the other half to the severe labors of the farm and saw-mill. It is needless to say that he gave to the one task the energy and industry that are

native traits in his character, nor that he made use of the other with all the strength of a nature that hungered and thirsted for knowledge. The whole bent of his mind was toward the education of himself and the full equipment of the powers with which he felt he had been naturally endowed. One of the surest signs of a high mental stature was found in the fact that the boy, amid the rudeness of the new country life that surrounded him, and without the suggestion from an outside source, should mark out for himself a course that included the obtaining of an education against the greatest odds and in the face of stern difficulties, and should move steadily forward until they were one by one overcome. He was with his mother much when a mere boy, and it was from her that he received an encouragement and a sympathy that was given him in no other direction, and in speaking of those days he always refers to her with the greatest affection and veneration. His thirst for knowledge drove him to close study at night when the work of the day was over, and the more he learned the greater within him was the desire to know more. In this way he fitted himself for college, and this preparation was assisted by a time at the Twinsburgh academy, under the care of the Rev. Samuel Bissell. At the

age of twenty-one he entered Williams' college, where he spent four years in close and earnest study, his vacations still being given to manual labor and to school teaching. One of his comrades in Williams' was the late President Garfield, and because of their commanding size and Buckeye nativity, the two young men soon found themselves bearing the pet school appellation of "the Ohio giants." Young Herrick graduated with high honors, and then seriously set himself to the learning of the science of medicine, to which profession he had decided to give his life, although it had been the wish of his father that he should enter the ministry. He attended a partial course of lectures at the Berkshire Medical college, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1858 he returned to Ohio and again betook himself to farm work in order to earn the with which to continue his studies. He engaged with an uncle and went into the hayfield, and when his time was up had twenty-nine dollars in cash. He had paid for his entire college course of four years out of his own earnings, with the exception of seven hundred dollars which his father had advanced him as his share of the parental estate.

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His labor in the hay-field ended on Friday night, and he spent Saturday in serious reflection. He felt that medicine was the direction in which his nature was set, and to which his mental faculties pointed. When his father asked him what course he had decided on, he said: "Take me to Cleveland, and I will take my chances of getting

through." His father brought him here on the following Monday, and left him at the City hotel. He had no friends here and only one acquaintance, Jarvis M. Adams, then a young lawyer, whose brother he had known in college. He called on Mr. Adams, and during the course of their conversation mentioned his desire. Mr. Adams' partner, Mr. Canfield, suggested Dr. Brooks, and after a call on him the young man made arrangements to study in his office. The next question was as to what he should live on. He decided to try for a position as teacher in the public schools, and for that purpose at tended an examination conducted by Leonard Case, Bushnell White, and Professor Thome. He passed the examination, but failed in getting a school under a rule that no one should be engaged who did not intend to make teaching a profession. Finally a night school was opened in the Prospect street school house, and he was given charge of that. He taught during one hundred evenings of the winter, and attended lectures during the day. The next year he was asked to take charge of Geauga seminary at Chester, and did so, teaching there for one year. In 1860 he went to Chicago, where he resumed his medical studies under Dr. Daniel Brainard, an eminent surgeon. Through the influence of that gentleman he was appointed house physician at the United States Marine hospital in Chicago. He also entered Rush Medical college, from which institution he graduated in the spring of 1861, with the degree of M. D. About the same