My Genealogy Hound

JACOB H. DRAWBAUGH, M. D., one of the leading physicians and surgeons of Shiremanstown, was born Aug. 11, 1859, in Monaghan township, York county. When four years of age his father removed the family to Upper Allen township, Cumberland county, where our subject had an opportunity to attend school. Later he became a student at the Mechanicsburg Institute, and still later of the Cumberland Valley Normal School at Shippensburg. He then entered the Baltimore School of Physicians and Surgeons, and was graduated with the class of 1886.

Dr. Drawbaugh entered upon the practice of his profession at Robesonia, Berks county, where he remained until 1898. For the following nine months he practiced at Bowmansdale, Pa., and then located at Shiremanstown, where he has established a large and lucrative practice, and is highly regarded also by his brother physicians.

In 1887 Dr. Drawbaugh married Miss Amanda Kunkel, of Lisbon, Cumberland county, a daughter of Jacob S. and Sarah (Laird) Kunkel. One child, Claire, has been born to this union.

Dr. Drawbaugh is a member of the Berks County Medical Society, the Cumberland County Medical Society, the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, and the Harrisburg Academy of Medicine, taking a deep interest in their work and aims.

Samuel O. Drawbaugh, the Doctor’s father, was born in Dover township, York county, and was a miller by occupation. He married Elizabeth Hamaker, of the same county, where both died. They had these children: Dr. Jacob H., of this sketch; Daniel, of York Haven, married Flora Flory; John, a physician, druggist and dentist, a graduate of the National University at Washington. D. C. and who took special lessons and work under Dr. Kol Penski, of Vienna, Austria, the greatest throat specialist in the world, afterward practicing in Washington, and later in Asheville. N. C., where he died, his wife, formerly a Miss Iseman, also being deceased; Tempest, who married a sister of the late Dr. John A. Kilmore, and both are deceased; Eli, who has been a teacher in the public schools in Steelton, Pa., for the past fifteen years, and who married a Miss Reider; Samuel, of Shiremanstown, who married Emma Myers; and George, who died in infancy.

Dr. Drawbaugh is descended from Revolutionary stock in both paternal and maternal lines. Both the Drawbaughs and the Hamakers came to America with Baron Steigel in 1730. The latter became known as a pioneer iron and glass manufacturer in the colonies. Members of the Drawbaugh and Hamaker families assisted in the Revolutionary war, and the latter family has been conspicuous in military life from then to the last representative in the Philippines. The Drawbaughs have fallen little short of the same patriotic record.

A pleasant little family incident has come down as a testimonial to the grace and beauty of the maternal side of the family. A Miss McGreggor, who later became the great-grandmother of our subject, was one of a delegation of beautiful and charming maidens selected through Dauphin county to go to a point along the march of General Washington, as he made his way from Mt. Vernon to New York, for his inaugural, and was particularly noticed by the great chieftain as she strewed flowers in the path of his coach. Later we find this beauteous maiden the wife of Christian Hamaker, a learned man who could read the Bible in three different languages. After her death her husband married a Miss Black, and a survivor of this union is Amos Hamaker, a resident of Stevens Point, Wis. Daniel Scott Hamaker, maternal grandfather of Dr. Drawbaugh, was educated at Yale, and was a man of learning and prominence.