Dr Cheston's Last Call

In 1881 Dr Morris Cheston moved into the corner house at the Owensville crossroads. 

“After breakfast each morning he would come over to the store to supply himself with Virgin Smoking Tobacco from Marburg's factory in Baltimore.  It was the brightest tobacco on the market.  He rolled his own cigarettes which he smoked incessantly.  When he came into the sick room he carried the fragrant odor of tobacco with him.

“He was the typical country doctor who mastered circumstances and delved into surgery.  He removed a cancer from the breast of one patient, and performed an emergency hernia operation on another with no light save that which came from the feeble glimmer of an oil lamp.  These operations were successful and the patients outlived him by many years.

"Kind and lovable, he was never known to turn his back on any patient, no matter how humble, poor, or unfortunate.

                           Dr Cheston's House c1900.  Door to the doctor's office is at right.

Dr Morris Cheston b1850 d1898

“The last professional call Dr Cheston made was on old Alec Pratt, a destitute ex-slave who, in the last days of his illness, sent for ‘Dr Morris’ who came willingly although hardly able to sit in his buggy.” 

                         - Recollections of Sam Chew, Storekeeper 1893-1937