My Genealogy Hound

DR. JOHN DURBORAW was the first physician who located in the northeast part of the county, which has been principally settled up since the war. Dr. Durboraw is a native of New York State; his ancestors were of English descent. Sometime in the seventeenth century two brothers of that name came from England. One settled in Virginia and the other in Rhode Island, from which all the families of that name in America have descended. The subject of this sketch was born in Clarence, Erie county, New York, Aug. 28, 1826. He enjoyed ordinary school advantages and laid the foundation for a substantial English education. He began learning the carpenter’s trade at fourteen, and went to school in the winter and worked in the summer; he carried on the building business on his own account. Mr. Durboraw was first married to Sophia Thomas, a native of the State of New York, Nov. 10, 1849. This marriage took place at New Buffalo, Mich. He moved west in the fall of 1849, and during the winter of 1849-50 taught school in DuPage county, Ill., near Chicago. He returned to New York in the spring of 1850 and resumed the building business in Erie county until 1857, when he began studying medicine under Dr. Orlando Parker, of Clarence, N. Y. At the University of Buffalo he attended medical lectures from which he graduated in 1861. He began practice in Genessee county the same year. His wife died in 1861, and on Feb. 14, 1865, he was married to Eliza Clark a native of Orleans county, N. Y. The Dr. left a good practice which he succeeded in building up in New York State, and in May, 1867, started for the West in company with Bella Clark, of Carthage. He purchased a drug store at Union City, Mich., which he sold out in the fall of 1869. He bought land in Lincoln township, in the year of 1868. He moved to Jasper county, Mo., in 1869 and established himself in medical practice, and his services were in demand from the first, as there was no physician in that section of the county. The Dr. has since had a large practice, not only in Jasper but in Benton, Lawrence, and Dade counties. He also carries on farming and now has a fine farm of 320 acres, all under cultivation and in pasturage, well improved, with a fine two story frame residence, a number one barn, other good out-buildings, and a fine yard filled with evergreens. He also has a fine grove of maple and a splendid orchard. The Dr. has a beautiful home and everything around him bears the mark of thrift and good management, and himself and family are universally respected.