Edward Young Anthony

(14 Nov 1870 ‑ 23 Jan 1946)

 

The mystery of Edward Young Anthony’s background is what first led me into genealogy.  My father, the only child of E. Y. Anthony’s own only child, had been raised in his grandfather’s home. Although he never said so, it seemed pretty clear to me that he had a great deal more respect for his grandfather than for his own father.  Certainly E. Y. Anthony was a greater influence on him than his father.  In the late 1960s, more than twenty years after both men had died, my father began an attempt to trace his grandfather’s origins; I joined the hunt in 1972.  Unfortunately, much of what is in these pages was discovered after my father’s death in 1986.

 

In several records, Edward Young Anthony wrote that he was born 14 November 1870 in Tuscumbia, Colbert County, Alabama.  Indeed, his mother was from Tuscumbia, and was enumerated there in the 1870 census just four months before he was born.  By 1880 his parents were back in Bedford County, Tennessee with Edward, age 9, in the household along with a sister and two brothers.

 

He told his wife that he ran away from home after his mother’s death, but before his father remarried.  His mother, Emma L. Anthony, was alive for the 1880 census (age 30) and evidently had one more daughter after the 1880 census was taken.  In his two life insurance applications of  1913[1] Edward Young Anthony wrote that his mother died at the age of 30 and that his youngest sister was then (in 1913) age 35.  Thus it appears his mother died about the time she gave birth to that sister not long after the census counted the family on 14 June 1880.  He also stated in these applications that his father died at 53, and that he had two living brothers, ages 39 and 37, and two sisters, ages 41 and 35 (all as of 1913).  Whether he actually had kept in touch with his family is doubtful, for his wife recalls no contact with them.  He may have merely assumed that they were still living or guessed at the ages.  Note, though, that the ages of his brothers and sisters are consistent with the 1880 census, except for the youngest sister who (if living) could have been no older than 33. 

 

According to my father, Jack Anthony Baird, E. Y. Anthony told his wife and daughter almost nothing about his family or their background.  Neither his wife nor his daughter remembered his having any contact with his family.  He spun a somewhat vague story of running away from home, working riverboats, and learning the blacksmith trade as a teenager.  Unfortunately, the 1890 census is lost, but he was in Morris County, Texas by 1895, when he was 25 years old.  According to his wife, he was working at a blacksmith shop in Omaha when they met.

 

He married Lou Ella Witt in Omaha, Morris County, on 15 March 1896.  Their only child, Allie, was born 24 May 1897.  Her birth certificate gives her father's occupation as “blacksmith.” [2]

 

He was truly a self-made man.  His wife said that they left Omaha temporarily while Edward Young Anthony attended medical school.  Although he never attended college, he took and passed the entrance examination for medical school.   From the papers left after his death, we know he attended the University of Louisville medical school in 1901‑2, the University of Nashville 1902‑3, and Ft. Worth University medical school in 1906‑7.  Perhaps he attended other schools we have no records for.  On 23 April 1903, the Texas Board of Medical Examiners granted him a license to practice medicine, and he became the town doctor in Omaha at the age of 32. 

 

My parents related a number of stories about Dr. Anthony.  He was widely considered to be the most educated man in town, and was apparently largely self-educated.  My parents told me that he was perhaps the only person in the county to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, and the only person in the town who owned an Encyclopedia Britannica (including the complete 1904 edition, recovered after his death by my father.)

 

The Omaha Times published a photograph of a large house at the corner of Third and Sloss Avenues in Omaha which it identified as the home of “Dr. Edward Y. Anthony and Family in 1905”.   That would have been across from the Baptist Church, two blocks north of the railroad station.  His later home, on South Main Street opposite the old railroad station, was the site of a livery stable in the early 1900s.  On 28 October 1910, he bought lots 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of block 20 on South Main Street from the owners of the stable, J. T. and J. B. Beasley, for $700[3] and built the house in which my father was born and raised.  His only child, Allie Anthony, remained in the house after she married and died there in 1977.

 

His will, dated 25 May 1943, left everything to his wife and executrix.  He died on 23 January 1946 in Omaha.

 

The Omaha Times also published several photos in the 1920s and 1930s of his medical office and surgery.  In addition to the Omaha Times photographs, I have a number of family photographs which my father inherited after his mother’s death.  The earliest are photos taken of E. Y. Anthony and his wife in 1896 on their honeymoon in New Mexico.  A portrait of the couple is dated 1901, when he would have been 31 and she 25.  Several later photos are also in the collection, the latest a studio portrait apparently taken not many years before his death.

 

Their only child was:

 

1.      Allie Anthony (24 May 1897 ‑ 26 Nov 1977).  She was born and died in Omaha, Morris County, Texas.  She married Harry L. Baird on 21 February 1915 and had one child, my father.  (See Baird pages.)