The medical profession would seem to afford a better business training than any other of the learned professions. At least, of the lawyers and clergymen who turn their attention to the business very many of them fail. Very few physicians do, and in almost any community the successful physician develops, without apparent effort, into the successful man of affairs. One of the many medical men who are making noteworthy careers as businessmen is the gentleman whose name is the title of this article.
Dr. William F. Herrington was born in Jefferson County, Missouri, September 12, 1861, a son of S. G. and Jane (Beeler) Herrington. His father was born in Missouri also, in 1841, and is now a well-to-do farmer in the southern part of that state. His mother, a native of Tennessee, died in Missouri, when only twenty-four years of age.
After gaining a practical education in the public schools of Salem, Missouri, and spending several years in business pursuits, young Herrington began the study of medicine, at the age of twenty-four, under the preceptorship of Dr. L. B. Laws, of Houston, Missouri. Later he took a course of professional lectures at Cincinnati, Ohio, and was graduated in 1889 from the American Medical College, of St. Louis, Missouri, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He practiced his profession one year in Missouri and one year in the state of Washington, and in 1891 took up his residence at Wallace, Idaho, where he was in successful practice until 1895 and was attending physician at Providence Hospital from July 1891, to October 1894. Since 1895 he has been engaged in the real-estate and insurance business, and he is now a member of the firm of Herrington & Rossi (William F. Herrington and Herman J. Rossi), which does the leading real-estate business of Shoshone county and represents forty-three strong insurance companies.
In 1885 Dr. Herrington married Miss Mary Coats, of Missouri, and they have four children, named Grover, Bessie, Maude and Edna. Dr. Herrington is an influential Democrat, active and popular in political circles throughout the state. He is a Mason, an Elk and an Odd Fellow. As a citizen he is always reliably public-spirited and helpful.