Dr. John J. Selman was not only a striking figure in the history of Davis County, but in that of the State. He was born in Franklin County, Alabama, in 1818, and died at Bloomfield in 1904, in the 87th year of his age. He began the study of medicine with an elder brother, Dr. S. H. Selman, at Columbus, Indiana. He graduated from the Medical College of Ohio, in 1837, and entered upon the practice of his profession at Rushville, Indiana. In 1841 he removed to Van Buren County, Iowa, and three years later to Davis County, locating land claims three miles west of the present City of Bloomfield.(*) It will thus be seen that he came to Bloomfield during the territorial period. He was the first physician of eminence there, and there he continued to practice until a short time before his death--for a period of sixty years. He attained a wide reputation as a physician and surgeon, and was held in great endearment by the pioneers, and, I may say, by all the people of Davis County. He was a remarkable man in more respects than one, for, in addition to his distinction as a physician and surgeon, he acquired a more general one as a citizen and public official. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1846, and was a member of the State Senate of the First General Assembly, which convened at Iowa City on November 30, 1846. In 1848 he was re-elected and was chosen President of the Senate--the office of Lieutenant-Governor not having been created. At the time of his death he was the last survivor of the Constitutional Convention of 1846, and with the exception of Judge P. M. Casady, who was then living, the last surviving member of the Senate of 1848. In 1848 he was one of the four Presidential electors, and cast his vote for General Lewis Cass, for President. He had many distinguished friends, among whom were George W. Jones, Augustus C. Dodge, George G. Wright, James Harlan and Governors Stone and Kirkwood.
In closing this
brief sketch, I cannot forbear giving the following excerpt from the remarks of
General James B. Weaver, at the Reunion of the Pioneer Law Makers' Association
of 1906:
In my childhood, my
early boyhood, I became acquainted with Dr. John J. Selman. He was an active,
hard working man all his life, and generous to a fault. He was physically the
most perfect, and I think the handsomest man I ever saw. When I first knew him I
was a boy about twelve years of age, and was electrified by the appearance of
the man, his great personal beauty and symmetry and intellectuality. He was as
bright intellectually as he was handsome and perfect physically; a very rare
specimen of manhood. There never was a time, no difference how bad the weather,
how stormy or inclement, or the condition of his health, that he ever refused to
go to the poorest cabin in Davis County, and that characteristic kept up to his
death. For a month or two before that event he was unable to go down to the drug
store, but the patients would visit him, and while lying on his cot, unable to
rise to his feet, his mind perfectly clear, he would examine them, diagnose
their case, and prescribe for them. It was my good pleasure to visit him about a
month before he died. He received me with that same genial smile, that same
pleasant voice--the voice never lost its charm--received me with a handshake and
said, "I am in a bad fix. I shall never get well; but it is all right, for
I have had a long life." He was as cheerful as a child. He was a very
remarkable man. He might have been almost anything.
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(*) Annals of Iowa, Vol. 6, Third Series, 559. |
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