Jesse Lynn Macbeth: 52 Ancestors Prompt "Road Trip"

Jesse Lynn Macbeth: 1880-1946
52 Weeks 52 Ancestors Prompt "Road Trip"
 

                As a country doctor in the first half of the 20^th century, my second great uncle Dr. Jesse Macbeth’s life was one long “road trip”. He was a doctor in the era of house calls, starting his practice with a horse and buggy before upgrading to a Model T.

                Jesse was born June 20, 1880 to parents Charles Macbeth and Ann Herneman Macbeth. He was the youngest of eleven children, born when his father was 51 years old and his mother 45.

While his father was a farmer in rural Minnesota and some of Jesse’s siblings followed him into farming, Jesse’s older brother Albert Macbeth paved a different path. Albert attended medical school in New York state and set up practice first in New York and then in Fort Wayne Indiana. He generously helped siblings and nephews to pursue medical and dental degrees, funding their schooling and helping some set up their own practices.

Jesse was a recipient of his brother’s help. I believe he attended the same medical school as his brother back in New York state, although I haven’t found confirmation yet. Once he finished medical school, he set up practice first in Macpherson, Minnesota, where he cared for his mother until her death. He then moved to St. Clair, Minnesota, and later practiced out of Mankato.

                Like his brother, Jesse encouraged his nephews to consider a medical career. My grandfather, Ivan Macbeth, rode along with his uncle on numerous house calls one year, trying to decide if medicine would be a good fit for him. According to my mother, her dad found medicine too gory and disgusting for his taste, and grew to dread heading out in Jesse’s Model T to deal with some new illness or injury. Ivan retreated back to farming, saving his limited medical skills for his cattle.

                Jesse was my grandparents’ doctor. My mother remembers him driving up and pulling his medical bag out the car when she or a family member was sick. Jesse attended my grandmother in her second pregnancy, delivering my Uncle Rex in my grandparents’ bedroom in their farmhouse. My mother still remembers with some horror hearing her mother’s moans and cries for over a day—it was a difficult birth. (My mother was delivered in a hospital by a woman doctor—my grandmother was more particular the first time around!)

Note on draft card he lists brother Albert as next of kin, not wife, and provides local address for Albert, who lived in Indiana.

                I believe Jesse practiced out of his house in St. Clair and then in Mankato in addition to attending patients in their homes. The life of a country physician was exhausting and physically demanding. That may explain Jesse’s comparatively early death at age 66 on November 19, 1946.

                Jesse married Sadie Eaton sometime around 1920. She had been working as a clerk in Mankato as late as 1919, and then appears in local directories as Jesse’s wife in the mid-1920s. I have been unable to locate a marriage record for them. My mother has the impression that the marriage was not a very happy one, but she has no clear memory of any family gossip that would explain her impression. The couple had no children, and Sadie died in 1956, ten years after Jesse.