Joseph Wellington Lehr
J.W. Lehr was first introduced to this planet January 16, 1859, in Chester township, Wayne county, Ohio and is a son of Abraham and Susan B. (Carl) Lehr. His father was one of the early settlers of Wayne county, removing here from Pennsylvania and first locating in Canaan township, subsequently removing to Wayne township, later to Chester township. He followed the vocation of farming, which seems to have been the pursuit adopted and prosecuted by his ancestors for generations. The subject of this sketch was a strong and active youth, and performed the boy's and afterward the young man's part in assisting his father in the various duties that are associated with and lie within the scope of the plans and processes of farming. He availed himself of the opportunities and advantages made possible at that period to attend the country schools, where he was industrious and studious, making commendable progress and acquiring good grades in his different studies and all assignments made by his teachers. He then resolved and executed the resolution to register as a student at Ada, then under the exclusive supervision, management and control of his cousin, Prof. Henry Lehr, then to Smithville for three years, when he entered upon his career as teacher, acting in this capacity for one year, or from 1875 to 1879. When he was yet in his first teens it was his boyish disposition and determination to become a physician. There being in his present mind a glamour, fascination, an animating and inspiring halo, encircling the practice and the profession, this seemed to be the predominant thought, the distinctive and separate aspiration, the lode-star of his life, his studies at the district school, at Smithville, at Ada and his other and co-related pursuits. It must be remembered that if it was a youthful, it was likewise a wise, commendable and honorable ambition, in the fact that he possessed the intelligent independence and judgment to decide for himself, to make the choice for himself, as to his life-work, present and future, upon the wisdom of which selection hinged future destiny.
Personal friends, intimate acquaintances and parental influence and direction played no part, or if so, no important one in dictating or even suggesting the course or pursuit this young man should or might adopt. His inclinations were not to be a farmer, after the manner and example of his father, or a merchant, a man of business, a teacher, lawyer, or preacher---simply and only a physician. It may therefore be logically conjectured, and philosophically deduced, that, by this uniform preparation, invariable expression of purpose, were the keynotes sounded by a strong and flexible determination and will, supported by a young but discreet judgment, which of themselves were fore-shadowing the avaunt couriers of his subsequent success on the profession of his boyhood's selection.
Success was then coming half-way to meet him. His aptitude and genius for his work was congenital; it was born with him. Selftrust in his case proved to be the first secret of success and it was the best test of his capacity and character. There was no doubt or indecision in his composition; opposition and competition did not dishearten him, for they operate as whetstones by which a well-balanced highly tempered nature are polished and sharpened. His student and college years were a series of self denials of rest, recreations and many of the animating diversions he would not have found it in his heart to have enjoyed. But he studied, pondered, sacrificed and toiled on, and thus we find the predicate and the ultimate deductive and the legitimate result. For as in the planetary system myriads of orbs revolve in resplendent order around one common center, directed in their course by fixed, unalterable laws, so complicated that the slightest variation on the part of anyone body must have its climax in a "wreck of matter and crush of worlds," so in human life every cause produces its legitimate effect, every action or series of actions are followed by their legitimate consequence.
Joseph W. Lehr became a student of medicine in 1879, entering the office of the late Charles J. Warner, of Congress, a physician of wide practice and high professional attainments, with whom he remained for four years, graduating from the medical department of the University of Wooster in 1883. He began practice a once, opening an office March 1st of this year at Overton. Here for eight years he remained where his professional ability was recognized in the building up of an encouraging and lucrative practice, but having determined to locate at the county seat, he removed to Wooster, March 1, 1891. On January 6, 1903, he was married to May C. Newall, of Wooster township, with whom and in the circle of his home there is serenity and pleasure of domestic enjoyment.
The Doctor has reached the top of the hill of life, but instead of it being studded with peaks and spurs and crags, it is a plateau, from which he can survey the vanished eighteen thousand yesterdays and look up, and forward, and on, to that many more useful and compensating tomorrows.
Doctor Lehr was not born with the imaginative "spoon in his mouth" nor a Sir or Don prefix to his name, nor any hope for peerage. He stands not on what he borrows from his ancestor, but knows that he must work out his own name and honor. He cares nothing for display, pretense, nor ostentation, but for the solid virtues, the excellence and the genuiness of man and things. Self made, he is responsible for this. He has now attained his zenith, is in the full strong prime of life, the descendant of a stanch and rugged German ancestry, with the Teutonic enthusiasm in his blood and the loyalty to friends and country of the old Prussian and Hohenzollern of the Fatherland. He is five feet ten inches in height, straight as the mast on a frigate, with dark hair and eyes, a firm and well rounded neck, admirably adjusted to a brace of shoulders after the manner of a veritable modern Ajax, tipping the beam at two hundred thirty pounds, active, muscular,---in short, the picture of health, a model in physical outline, in facial assertiveness, force, will and expression as one who had obeyed the Scriptural command, "Physician, know thyself," standing four square to the winds, and sound as the pillars of the Sistine Chapel of Rome. He sprung from the commonality. He has fashioned his nature on moral and intellectual worth, personal qualities and not personal possessions. He fixes a high value on his professional honor, upon his self-respect, his intrinsic value, not so much of it only as can be seen by others, but as he sees it by his introspection. He discovered himself and cannot run away with himself. The world at best is but a sort of a big university and he is still a learner and student in it, in which he is constantly gathering thoughts, sending them abroad with his eyes, his brains traveling with his feet. he is a man inhabitied by kindly dispositions and a gentleman in and out of his profession. Courtesy and affability can be no more severed from him than life from his soul, not out of a base and servile popularity and desire of ambitious insinuation, but of a native gentleness of disposition and true value of himself. His individuality is strongly marked, with the healthy geniality of a large-shouldered man combined with it. He is possessed of an acute sense of humor, quick in repartee and, seeing the point, has a story to tell--the latest one, that he renders in idiomatic English, that he heard or saw in some newspaper or magazine. He is a fluent talker, a good conversationalist, fond of open debate and wields a sledge hammer in public discussions. He has an innate passion for the woods, hills, the gorges and streams and all the beautiful wild offerings of nature. The country affords to him its free sports and amusements; its wider range of rambles or, better still, for both physical and mental training, it gives him opportunity to employ spare hours of labor and attention to his farm, as the chances are, if he had not been a doctor he would have been a farmer. It was the original and divinely appointed calling of man God planted in Eden, and made it man's first duty to "dress and keep it" When driven from Eden it was still his mission "to till the ground from which he was taken," and to "eat bread in the sweat of his face." As said, he is now at the zenith of his power, alert, energetic, practical, scientific and remarkably successful in the extension and expanding practice of his profession. Stout, active and muscular, an actor and athlete, a devotee at the shrine of baseball, a firm believer in physical recreation and the stimulating, health-giving and invigorating results of the college gymnasium. He is public spirited and projective, wants good school houses, more schools, academies, universities,etc., and the standard of education raised from high to higher, "in the parliament of man, the federation of the world." If in the skirmish with disease or the clenched battle with death he is repulsed or vanquished, he moves on with a steady step, his sanguine temperament impels him to a more vigilant quest for the better and best protection and defense against the Mercurys that stand and point at the door of death. Victory doesn't always perch on the banners of the great physician, but he enjoys a noble recompense, the loyal hosannas of the myriads he has rescued from the fateful jaws of disease. He looks down the vistas with a justifying hope, for on the ruins of today are built the temples of tomorrow. According to the legend of Virgil when Troy fell, its banished citizens reared a mightier city of the Tiber.
From The History of Wayne County, Ohio, B. E. Bowen & Co., Indianapolis, 1910