Robert Laughlin, M.D.
Robert Laughlin, M.D., an eminent physician and surgeon at Steubeuville, O., where his period of practice has covered thirty-four years of well directed effort and has been rewarded by a large measure of professional success, was born in Meigs County, Ohio, June 18, 1851, and is a son of Robert B. and Mary (Warner) Laughlin. The father of Dr. Laughlin was born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, in 1813, was married in Meigs County, Ohio, in 1848, and in 1856 returned to Beaver County, where he engaged in farming during the remainder of his active life. Dr. Laughlin's mother was born in 1826, in West Virginia.
Until he was fifteen years old the subject of this sketch lived on the home farm. He was a boy of considerable ambition and determination and about that time assumed the burden of his own support, securing a school to teach which gave him an opportunity to enter the Hookstown high school and thus better qualify himself for a professional life upon which he had decided. He continued to teach school and thus provided for a term of three years in Beaver Academy, and in the same manner he supplied himself with the means to enter upon the study of medicine with Dr. Hamilton, at Georgetown, Pa. He devoted the winters of 1874-75-76 to attending Cleveland Medical College, and from this institution he was graduated on March 16, 1876, having made a brave and manly struggle for his coveted degree. In 1886 he spent six months in Bellevue Medical College, New York City, taking a post-graduate course, and in the following year took a course in the Polyclinic College, and subsequently has taken numerous others in order to practically study the modern scientitic discoveries of his beloved profession. He has thus kept himself thoroughly informed through attendance on clinics, through scientific lectures, wide reading and a large practice, until he has won for himself an enviable position in his profession. He is an active citizen in the general sense, but is averse to being numbered with those who hold themselves eligible to public office. He is identified with the Republican party.
On November 20, 1878, Dr. Laughlin was married to Miss Mary M. Warrick, who is a daughter of Jonathan Warrick, formerly of Columbiana County, and they have three children: Curtis L., Ford and Perry. The eldest son is also a physician and is engaged in practice at Steubenville. Dr. Laughlin and family enjoy a beautiful home which is situated at No. 477 South Fourth Street, his office being maintained at No. 112 South Third Street. He is a thirty-second degree Mason, a Knight Templar and Shriner.
From 20th Century History of Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio, by Joseph B. Doyle. Richmond-Arnold Publishing Co., Chicago, 1910