My Genealogy Hound

THOMAS DAVIS STRONG, M. D., a prominent and well-known physician of Westfield, was born in the town of Pawlet, Rutland county, Vermont, November 22, 1822, and is a son of Return and Laura (Davis) Strong. Many New England families have taken a justifiable pride in the preservation of their genealogies, and among that number is the Strong family, which was founded at Northampton, Massachusetts, by Elder John Strong, from whom Dr. Thomas D. Strong is lineally descended. Elder John Strong was a member of the Plymouth colony, and afterwards removed to Northampton, where he reared a respectable family. Within two centuries and a half thirty thousand of his descendants have lived in various parts of New England and the Union, and their names are recorded in a large, two-volume history of the “Strong family, founded by Elder John Strong,” which was published some ten years ago. It is said to be one of the most accurate and carefully kept family records that is to be found in the United States. Return Strong (father) came in 1851 to Westfield, where he was engaged in the mercantile business for several years, and died.

Thomas Davis Strong prepared for college at Burr seminary in Manchester, Vermont, then under the charge of the celebrated Rev. Joseph Wickham, D.D., who is now in the ninety-sixth year of his age. He then entered the University of Vermont, from which he was graduated in 1848. Leaving college he read medicine with his cousin, Dr. P. H. Strong, of Buffalo, this State, and attended his first course of lectures at Castleton medical college, of Vermont, while his second and third courses he took at the medical department of the University of Buffalo, which was then under charge of Prof. Hamilton Flint, afterwards of Bellevue, and from which he was graduated in 1851 with the degree of M.D. In the same year he came to Westfield, where he has enjoyed a remunerative practice ever since. Dr. Strong served as surgeon of the Sixty-eighth regiment of New York State troops, and made a trip in 1871 to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific slope, in whose development he takes a deep interest.

On May 25, 1852, Dr. Strong married Lucy M. Ainsworth, of Williamstown, Vermont.

Dr. T. D. Strong has been for twenty-five years a member of the boards of trustees of Westfield academy and Westfield Union schools. He was one of the commissioners for locating the western New York asylum for the insane at Buffalo. He is a member and has served as president of the Chautauqua and the Lake Erie medical societies. He is an honorary member of the California State medical society, was vice-president of the New York medical association in 1889, and has been for the last twenty-five years curator of the medical department of the University of Buffalo.