My Genealogy Hound

SHAFFER, JOSHUA MONROE, M. D., was born in Washington Co., Penn., Sept. 13, 1830, and was the youngest of ten children; he entered Washington College in 1843, at the age of 13 years, and graduated in 1848; in 1849, he began the study of medicine at Elizabeth, under the tuition of his brother, John E. Shaffer, M. D., and attended lectures at the University of Pennsylvania; in 1852, he removed to Fairfield, Iowa, and entered upon the practice of his profession; in 1862, the honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred upon him by the Medical Department of the Iowa State University; from 1862 to 1874, he was Secretary of the Iowa State Agricultural Society, an institution born in his office in Fairfield in 1853, and of which he was Secretary in 1854-55; in 1863, he was appointed Surgeon of the Board of Enrollment for the First Congressional District of Iowa, and, during the following two years, examined over five thousand men, preparatory to their admission to the army; in 1867, he was commissioned by the Governor to represent Iowa at the Paris Exposition, but, the State failing to provide for expenses, he was forced to resign; he represented his county in the State Senate in the session of 1861-62; upon the organization of the Iowa Life Insurance Co., in 1874, he was elected its Secretary, and removed his residence to Keokuk; he still holds the position. During his residence in Iowa, Dr. Shaffer has been a careful student in natural history, and has made large collections in its different branches; his collection of over five thousand specimens of stuffed birds, etc., all his own work, has given him an extended reputation as a taxidermist; in this branch of the science he takes especial pleasure, and is continually adding new specimens. He married, on the 18th of March, 1856, Miss Mel. Jane Curry, of Elizabeth, Penn ; two of the three children born of this union are still living — Susan F. and William Monroe; Lewellyn James, the second, died in 1861, at the age of 20 months.