Ernest F. Day, M. D. The work of Doctor Day as a physician and surgeon had met with cordial appreciation and patronage since he came to Arkansas City over fifteen years ago. He is in every way a most competent and thorough professional man, and in recent years had extended his opportunities for service by his management, in association with Doctor McKay, of the Mercy Hospital there.
Doctor Day is a native of Indiana but had spent practically all his life in Kansas. He was born at Rensselaer in Jasper County, Indiana, October 20, 1876. He is of very old American stock. It is said that the first of the family to come to America was a silk merchant from England, who located at Jamestown, Virginia, when that was a struggling colony early in the seventeenth century. Doctor Day’s grandfather, Wilber Day, was born in North Carolina in 1819, grew up and married in his native state, and in the early days came to the Northwest and was associated with the great frontiersman, Simon Kenton, in fighting with the Indians. He became a pioneer settler in Jasper County, Indiana, and was a farmer there until his death in 1895. One of his sons, Louis, was a soldier in an Indiana regiment during the Civil war and was killed at Lookout Mountain. Wilber Day married Margaret Sands, who was born in North Carolina and died at Rensselaer, Indiana. Five of their children are still living: William, a retired resident of Rensselaer, Indiana; Amanda, who lives at Kingman, Kansas, widow of Edom Antrim, who was a ranchman; John Day, father of Doctor Day; Louise, wife of Samuel Venrick, a resident of Norcatur, Kansas; and Charles, a farmer at Kingman, Kansas.
John Day was born at Rensselaer, Indiana, in 1840, grew up there, became a farmer, and on October 18, 1872, arrived in Kansas. He was one of the pioneers in Kingman, where he homesteaded 160 acres and still owned that place. He had prospered in his business affairs and now owned altogether about 1,200 acres of farming and pasture land. He had also been promoted to places of trust and responsibility by his fellow citizens. He served as a member of the State Legislature which elected Pfeffer to the United States Senate. He is a democrat, a member of the Christian Church, and is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. John Day married Mary Burns, who was born in Rensselaer, Indiana, in 1841. They had only two children, Doctor Day being the older. Evart C., born September 21, 1881, is a farmer at San Benito, Texas.
Doctor Day spent his early life on a farm at Kingman, attended public schools there, and in 1897 graduated from the Fairmount Academy at Wichita. About that time he made choice of his future vocation and entered the University Medical School at Kansas City, where he completed the course and received the degree M. D. in the spring of 1900. In 1911 Doctor Day took post-graduate work in the Post-Graduate School of Medicine at Chicago.
With his diploma as a doctor of medicine Doctor Day came to Arkansas City in 1900 and had given all his time to the building up of a general medical and surgical practice. In 1909 he and Doctor McKay took charge of the Mercy Hospital, which had been established in 1908 by Doctor Hawk. This hospital, at 801 North First Street, had accommodations for twenty-two patients and had given Arkansas City a greatly needed service, patients coming to this hospital from a district covering 100 miles about Arkansas City.
Doctor Day is chairman of the health board of Arkansas City and had served on the city council. He is a member of the Cowley County and State Medical societies, the American Medical Association, and in 1915 served as vice president in Kansas of the Medical Association of the Southwest, covering the five states of Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Doctor Day is a director in the Security State Bank of Arkansas City. He owned a farm at San Benito in the extreme southern part of Texas along the Rio Grande River. This farm is in the irrigated section, and in productiveness and value it is equivalent to 500 acres of ordinary land. Doctor Day also owned his residence at 515 North Fourth Street and his offices are in the Johnson Building. He is a democrat, and fraternally is affiliated with Ganal City Lodge No. 352, Independent Order of Odd Fellows; Arkansas City Lodge No. 956, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks; and Crescent Lodge No. 133, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons.
At Arkansas City, in 1902, he married Mrs. Dora (Osgood) Constant. Her mother, Mrs. E. A. Osgood, is now living at Arkansas City and as a girl she was the first white female to live in Topeka, her father having helped plat and lay out the town site of the capital city of Kansas. Mrs. Day by her first marriage had one child, Cecile Marie, who was born February 22, 1896. She had taken vocal instruction in Chicago for the past four years, and is still living at home. Doctor and Mrs. Day have one daughter, Ernestine Lucile, born October 29, 1905.