My Genealogy Hound

HENRY ARTHUR DUVALL, M. D., was born in Louisville, August 18, 1847, and is a son of Claudius and Julia (Mercer) Duvall. The former was born near Annapolis, Md., May 27, 1814, and came to Louisville in 1836. For years he was a prominent merchant but is now retired, and for the past twenty years has enjoyed in ease the fruits of an industrious and well spent life. In early life, with his mother and brother, when visiting her relatives on Kent Island, on the eastern shore of Maryland, he was taken prisoner by the British when their fleet came up the Chesapeake Bay for the purpose of attacking North Point, near Baltimore, Md., where occurred one of the most desperately contested actions of the war of 1812. After coming to Louisville, Claudius Duvall, who had a military education, was commissioned colonel of the militia of the State and assisted in organizing the old Louisville Legion, which went to the front during the war with Mexico, but the colonel was obliged, by reason of his large and increasing business, to decline going with the Legion to engage in that war. Henry Duvall, the grandfather of our subject, was born in Maryland, and was a captain while his brother Lewis Duvall was a colonel in the United States army. Carver Mercer, maternal grandfather of Dr. H. Arthur Duvall, was a native of Virginia, came to Louisville at a very early day, owned 300 acres in the western part of the city, and also built the first brick house in its limits. He was a relative of Gen. Mercer, the famous Revolutionary hero. Dr. H. Arthur Duvall received his rudimentary education in the best schools of Louisville, Ky.; began the study of medicine in 1877, under Drs. Foree and Bolling, and graduated from the Hospital Medical College in 1880. He engaged in the general practice of medicine until 1885, when he made a specialty of nose, chest and throat disorders, in the treatment of which he has made a great success. He was married, in 1875, to Miss Anna B. Crowfoot, a daughter of Frank Crowfoot of Louisville, and to this marriage has been born one child, William T. Duvall, who, by the death of his mother when he was three months old, was left to the care of his grandmother Duvall, and by her was reared, and is now a promising youth of more than usual intelligence and vigor of constitution. The doctor was also successful in the introduction of the mechanical massage in the city of Louisville, Ky., which process is regarded by some of the most eminent medical men of the day as a curative agent of extraordinary power, and a remarkable improvement on manual massage. While Dr.Duvall does not claim to be the pioneer in the introduction of massage treatment of various diseases, he does claim to have brought this treatment not only to a high degree of perfection but to have met with unusual success in relieving suffering humanity, especially all those cases amenable to massage treatment Many chronic as well as stubborn cases have readily yielded to massage treatment in the skillful hands of Dr. H. Arthur Duvall, and it is destined at an early day to become one of the most important factors in the medical profession for the relief of diseases to which man is subjected.