My Genealogy Hound

JULIUS C. PeTIT, M. D., was born in the town of New Hope, Lincoln county, Mo., July 2, 1841, His father was born in Paris, France, and came to this country when he was eight years of age, and was raised and educated as a physician in New York City. After he became of age he immigrated to Carlton, Illinois, where he married Miss Julia Reynolds. After a few years he immigrated still further west and settled in Lincoln county, Mo. After the subject of this sketch, who was their second child, reached the age of two years, they removed to Carlton, Illinois, where he received his early education in the pioneer schools of the county. When fourteen years of age he was apprenticed to the trade of ornamental painting, and served a full apprenticeship, but never worked at it after his time was up. During all the time of his apprenticeship he was studying medicine, against the opposition of all his friends, save his mother. At the breaking out of the war, when he was twenty years of age, he went to Ft. Scott, Kan., and enlisted in Company G, Sixth Kansas Cavalry, as a private. At the time of his enlistment, the stewardship of the regimental field hospital was unfilled, and the lieutenant-colonel in command of the regiment learning that he had been engaged in the study of medicine, had him detailed for the place. This position he retained for a year, during which time the regiment was engaged in thirteen hard-fought battles. At the end of the year he was sent before the army medical examining board at Ft. Scott, and passed the examination, and was commissioned as compounding and dispensing druggist in the army laboratory at that place, which position he retained until the close of the war. On the twenty-fifth day of October, 1863, while stationed at Ft. Scott, he was united in marriage to Miss Annie Frederick of Fort Scott. This lady bore him three children, only one of whom is now living. Mrs. PeTit died at Denver, Col., in 1870. After being discharged from the service he went to Linn county, Kan., and began the practice of medicine. After remaining there a year and a half; he was commissioned by Gov. Crawford as special county clerk to organize the county government of Cherokee county, Kan., and to locate and lay off a county seat. After the conclusion of this work he spent the winter with his mother in Illinois, and in the spring located in Morgan county, Mo., and engaged in the practice of medicine; he remained there two years, and in 1869 went to Ft. Smith, where he engaged in the cotton trade and amassed a fortune of $40,000 in two years time. In the spring of 1872, by the sinking of the steamer Consternation and a disastrous fire in Ft. Smith, he lost his whole fortune, and after settling all claims against him, went into Crawford county, Kan., and laid out the town of Walnut Station, and in the fall he went to Keokuk and graduated there from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He then returned to his home in Crawford county, Kan., and on the twentieth of April, 1875, he was united in marriage to Miss Esther A. Archer, his present wife. By her he had three children two of whom died in infancy. In the spring of 1878 he moved to Osage Mission, and in Sept., 1879, came to Joplin. At the time of his coming to Joplin he was involved in debt to the amount of $3,000, brought upon him by the exigencies of opening up a new country. He opened an office here for the practice of medicine and attempted to build up a business according to the old routine of practice. But the town was full of doctors and they received him coldly and with all the discourtesy which only the old settled doctors of southwest Missouri can show to newcomers. Practice did not come in, and starvation stared him in the face; something must be done. At this time a man came into Joplin and by advertising carried away a large sum of money. Here was an indication of the way to secure the practice that was necessary to a livelihood, and in the winter of 1879 Dr. PeTit established, and advertised extensively, an infirmary for the treatment of chronic diseases. This course brought upon him the outspoken condemnation of the medical fraternity, but at the same time gave him business and the means to pay his debts. The following summer he bought and remodeled the building then known as the Grand View Hotel. In the fall of that year he was induced by Dr. Jno. H. Lowe to establish a medical college in that building. As soon as this institution was fairly started he ceased advertising and devoted himself to managing the affairs of the college, and the hospital in connection with it. His success in business only added to the hatred of the doctors who were opposing him, and they did not hesitate to employ every means in their power to break him down; and in the fall of 1881 he was shot at three times through a window while sitting at his desk in his office by a man on the opposite side of the street, and various circumstances gave evidence that this attempt at assassination was made at the instigation of several doctors in Joplin.