Dr. Charles McCloud
Dr. Charles McCloud was horn in Vermont February 2, 1808, and moved with his father, Charles McCloud, to Delaware County, Ohio, and soon after to Madison County, where his father, in 1814, purchased a farm one mile east of Chuckery and here they settled, and here young McCloud, who was then only six years of age, was raised. Possessed of but an ordinary common school education, he studied medicine with Dr. Alpheus Bigelow, of Galena, Delaware County, Ohio, and on the completion of his studies located in Amity. Madison County, Ohio. The first year of his residence here his professional duties evidently were light, as he engaged to teach the village; school one or more terms; but in a few years his practice became very extensive, his patrons being scattered all through the Darby Plains, up Big Darby and on Sugar Run in Union County, and in the neighborhood of Dublin in Franklin County. In 1844, he was the Whig member of the Lower House of the Legislature of Ohio, and in 1850 a member of the convention to revise the Constitution of Ohio. In figure he was slight, never weighing probably over 150 pounds, and with a slight stoop in the shoulders. His complexion was dark. In manner he was grave almost to severity. This gravity was not assumed but natural to the man, and rarely left him even in the family circles. He was an inveterate reader, and in his younger days must have been a hard student in his profession, as he had a well worn library. Later in life, from ill health, he gave up his profession and entered upon merchandising, but still kept up his habit of study. At one time he took up the study of astronomy, and later, when past middle life, became an enthusiastic student of geology; so much so was he interested in the latter science, that he delivered several lectures upon it, illustrated by maps of his own drawing. A few years before his death, his reading took another direction, that of fiction and poetry. He read the works of Charles Dickens with great interest, and was not only a great reader of Shakespeare, but became a critical student of the great poet. He was a good debater and a writer of more than ordinary force. He was in no sense a politician, and what positions of honor he occupied were unsought; he was called to them and entered upon the discharge of his duties with clean hands. As a physician, he was cautious and conscientious; and in his diagnosis and prognosis of disease remarkably accurate, which secured to him the confidence of the people to a degree rarely equaled. Although doing a large practice, it appears he never accumulated but little means from his profession, as he was a poor collector and his charges astonishing low. Dr. McCloud, in all the relations of life, was honest, upright and pure; his character was absolutely above reproach. He married Mary Jane Carpenter, by whom he has four children living—Sophronia, Rodney, Newton and Mary. The Doctor died of obstruction of the bowels in Plain City, April 1, 1861, aged fifty-three years.
From History of Madison County - W. H. Beers [Chicago, 1883]