My Genealogy Hound

RICHARD WATSON PADGHAM, M. D., is a comparatively new-comer in Farmer, having been located here since October, 1889. He was born in Barbadoes, West Indies, April 11, 1850, his parents being Rev. Henry and Eleanor (Appleton) Padgham, who were natives of England. His father was educated as a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and was sent by that church as a missionary to the West Indies, remaining two terms of ten years each, when, in 1864, he returned to England, and died there October 13, 1887, aged seventy-two. For forty-nine years he had been a minister. His wife was born May 31, 1810, and died October 23, 1881. They were the parents of five children, of whom two died in the West Indies, and three are now living. Robert A. is a traveling salesman in England, making his home in Yorkshire. Mary C. is the wife of Samuel Johnson, an artist in Sheffield, England.

Soon after his birth Dr. Padgham was taken to England, but in 1854 was taken back to Barbadoes, where he remained for ten years. Then the family journeyed once more to England, and there our subject’s education was carefully conducted by private tutors. As a young man he favored the calling of his father, and in 1870 was made a Wesleyan minister. He was sent to Canada, and found work in the Hamilton, Glantord and Watertown Circuits until 1875, when he came to the United States, and was attached to the Odessa and Ontario Circuits. He afterwards had churches at North Bradford, Pa., and Bath, N. Y.

As a minister Dr. Padgham was highly respected and counted an able minister of the Gospel. The medical profession, however, had long drawn him, and he finally turned from the saving of souls to the healing of bodies, feeling that the one was no enemy of the other. In 1887 he entered the New York Eclectic Medical School as a student, and was graduated from it as a doctor of medicine two years later. He soon located at Farmer to engage in the practice of medicine, and for one year was associated with Dr. A. R. Hill, but since that time he has conducted his large and growing business without professional assistance.

Dr. Padgham found his wife in Canada. She was Elizabeth, the daughter of Joseph Clark. They have had five children, all girls but one. Ethelbert G. was born May 9, 1875. Eleanor E. died May 2, 1895, at the age of eighteen years. Mabel G. has passed her seventeenth birthday. Maud B. and Leila Blanche are, respectively, fifteen and twelve years of age.

Dr. Padgham has worked with the Republican party, and has been a strong and effective worker in the temperance cause. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Sheldrake, and cannot resist the call to preach at times. Socially he is a member of the Farmersville Lodge No. 183, F. & A. M., and is authority on the history and secret work of the craft. In his chosen profession Dr. Padgham stands well, and his ability is conceded by his fellow-practitioners, who have elected him Vice-President of the New York State Eclectic Medical Society. He is also a member of the Southern Tier Eclectic Medical Society. For a number of years he did considerable literary work of high grade, but at the present time is devoting all his attention to his chosen profession.