My Genealogy Hound

DR. ISAAC M. BECK, Sardinia, a practicing physician of the village of Sardinia, is a native of Clermont County, Ohio, where he was born March 29, 1807. His parents were Samuel and Hannah (Morris) Beck, the latter a sister of the late United States Senator, Thomas Morris, of Ohio. Both of the parents of our subject were natives of Western Pennsylvania, of what is known as the Redstone country. Jeremiah Beck, grandfather of the Doctor, came from England in 1788 and settled in the Redstone country, and removed from there to the State of Kentucky. On his mother’s side, the Doctor is of Welsh extraction. Both parents were early settlers in Clermont County. Our subject received his schooling in the rude log schoolhouses known to the youth of that period. Until he had reached his seventeenth year, he had been occupied in tilling the soil, having lived near the village of Bethel; at this age he went to Georgetown and entered the printing office of the Benefactor, then published and edited by the late Gen. Thomas L. Hamer. Here he remained only six months; the trade he had commenced being distasteful to his mother, he gave it up, and when eighteen years old he commenced the study of medicine, reading at home. A year later, he entered the office of Dr. William B. Chipley, of Bethel, with whom he furthered his studies, and was licensed to practice medicine by the Medical Society at Hillsboro, of that Congressional District, in May, 1828. He then located as a practitioner at Sinking Spring, Highland County, but remained a few months only. From this point he went to Russellville, in this county, and remained six months, and in July, 1829, he located at Sardinia, or rather where the village was afterward built, and with an absence of only about five years has since been a resident of the town, and engaged in the active practice of his profession. In November, 1833, he was united in marriage with Cassandra, daughter of David Graham, a pioneer of that locality. To the Doctor and wife have been born the following named children — Hannah J., Letitia J., Cephas L., Emily I. (died young), Hermas U., Berthena C., Emily I. and Ann M., four of whom are still living. In politics, the Doctor has been somewhat changeable. His first vote was cast for Gen. Andrew Jackson; he was then, using his own expression, a red-hot Democrat. In 1838 and 1839, he voted the Whig ticket, and in 1840 he was one of the 909 who voted with the Liberty party. He belonged to the Free-Soil party, and in 1856 became a Republican, and with that party he has ever since been identified, and worked in almost every campaign since for its cause. In 1830, he became a strong temperance man, and on the first of August, in that year, delivered a lecture on that subject, in a Methodist Episcopal Church, in Highland County, and in August, 1880, just fifty years from that day, he repeated the same lecture and to some of the same audience. He was the first lay lecturer on temperance in Southwestern Ohio, if not in the State at large. His earliest sentiments were anti-slavery, and in 1835 he became an Abolitionist and was identified with the movement in Brown County. He has been a successful practitioner but not a good collector. He is a man of marked intelligence and is scholarly. In his religious views, he is of the Campbellite faith, but is not identified with any church, as there is none convenient. He is affable and courteous and a highly esteemed and respected citizen.