Dr. Abernathy
OLD-TIME HEALERS -- Modest but efficient one among them lived at Lexington. Dr. Abernathy was a staunch Jacksonian as well as a skilled physician -- Many great qualities make him remembered -- In our sketches of the medical line of law makers in old Richland we must not omit the mention of a very quiet and modest man, who was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, educated at Baltimore, Md., and came into the old county in the 30's, settling in the village of Lexington, Troy Twp. He was a very quiet man, of average stature and weight, of pronounced professional ability, but withal modest and not self-assertion. This quiet man was Dr. Abernathy. In 1843 he was married to Miss Catherine Fulton, of Ashland, a lady of fine literary ability, the sister of Gen. John S. Fulton, of whom we have made mention in a prior sketch. This son of Aesculapius, was a Jacksonian politically and took rank in the old party, and to the Forty-ninth General Assembly of Ohio was elected a representative, serving in 1845-6. In that General Assembly Gen. Joseph Newman was the State Senator. Among Newman's colleagues were John Welsh, who years thereafter sat on the Supreme Bench of Ohio, and Seabury Ford, who in 1848-49 was Governor of Ohio, and Willard Warner, who thereafter was United States Senator from Alabama, after the war, and Levi Cox, of Wayne, who presided at one time on our Common Pleas Bench. Among the colleagues of Dr. Abernathy in the House were C.L. Vallandigham, Edson B. Olds and Charles Reemelin. Both Senate and House had giants in their membership. Dr. Abernathy was a very genial man, and he did the work of a law-maker faithfully and well. Were I to undertake to describe the man in a few brief sentences I would say he was mild-mannered, well-cultured, good-intentioned, well-grounded in the principles of his profession, alert in the application of his knowledge to the cases in hand. He was highly esteemed as man and physician and for fifty years of life in old Richland sustained himself well. He too has passed to the beyond and is remembered as one who deserved well of his day and generation.
From Richland Shield and Banner, May 11, 1895, Vol. LXXVII, No. 52