Claude Emmett Hamill, M. D. The first thirty-two years of his life Doctor Hamill spent in gaining a liberal education and in successfully following the industry of farming. His ambition was always fixed on medicine, but various business interests contrived to keep the goal distant until some six or seven years ago. Since 1910 he has been in active practice at Parsons and enjoys a splendid reputation as physician and surgeon.
His name represents an old and honored family in Kansas. His paternal ancestry goes back to Ireland, where his grandfather, Samuel Wallace Hamill, was born at Dablin in 1776. He came to this country before his marriage, lived a year in New York City, and then went to Cadiz, Ohio, where he spent the rest of his life as a farmer and died in 1872. He married a Miss Graham, who was also a native of Ireland. She died at Cadiz, Ohio, in 1878, at the age of eighty-four. Doctor Hamill’s maternal grandfather was John Gallagher, also a native of Ireland. He was a painter and decorator by trade, and came to Kansas after a youth spent in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He died at Willow Springs, Kansas, and is buried in Baldwin City, of this state. John Gallagher married Miss Elizabeth Ross, who was born in Scotland and died at Overbrook, Kansas.
Dr. Claude Emmett Hamill was born in Fredonia, Kansas, January 10, 1877. His father, Robert Emmett Hamill, was born at Cadix, Ohio, in 1838, grew up in Ohio and was one of five brothers, all of whom served in the Civil war in the Union army and one was killed while in service. As a young man Robert Emmett Hamill enlisted in the fall of 1862 for service in the 126th Ohio Infantry. He was in the Union army three years four months. At first he was in the Army of the Tennessee and took part in the great battle of Shiloh. Afterwards he was with the Army of the Potomac and among the more important battles in which he participated were those of Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor, the Battle of the Wilderness, where he was wounded in the abdomen, and was almost constantly on duty until he received his honorable discharge. He as well as his wife were highly educated people considering the time and circumstances in which they were reared. After the war Robert E. Hamill returned to Ohio and completed his education in an academy. For a time he taught school in Illinois at $50 a month, and in 1870 arrived in Kansas. His first settlement was fourteen miles south of Lawrence, where he was engaged to teach a school. He then took up a homestead of 160 acres seven miles from Eldorado at Quito in Butler County. He conducted a general store while proving up his claim. His next removal came in 1876 to Fredonia, Kansas, where he paid $700 for a claim of 160 acres under the pre-emption law, and lived on it six months to prove his title. It was during the six months residence on that claim that Dr. Claude Emmett Hamill was born on January 10, 1877. His birth occurred in a log cabin, his parents residing in a humble home while proving up the claim. All the other children were born in more comfortable houses. Robert E. Hamill next returned to Butler County, where he built a store and was in the mercantile business until the fall of 1880. He then bought 124 acres of land in Douglas County, lived there until the spring of 1884 and moved to his last home, a farm seven miles southeast of Lawrence, where he died September 9, 1884. He is buried at Baldwin City, Kansas. He was a very successful man as the above outline of his enterprises suggest and left a large estate. His widow still owns 620 acres of land in Kansas, including 280 acres in Douglas County, 160 acres in Cherokee County, and 180 acres in McClain, Oklahoma. Robert E. Hamill was a republican and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His wife, Susan Matilda (Gallagher) Hamill, was born at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, April 14, 1844, completed her education in a college at Pittsburg, and for five years was a teacher prior to her marriage. She is now living on her farm eight and a half miles southwest of Lawrence. Her children were: Lillian B., who died unmarried at Lawrence August 7, 1892; Bertrand D., who looks after his mother’s farm and resides with her, though he is well equipped for the profession of law, being a graduate of the Kansas University Law School; Dr. Claude Emmett, who was the third in age; Estella, who died at the age of one year; and Robert Sylvester, who died in the spring of 1885 at the age of nine months.
Doctor Hamill received his early education in the public schools southwest of Lawrence, and graduated from the high school of that city May 15, 1898. He was with the first class in the high school that took the subject of plane and solid geometry. The year 1893-94 was spent in the Kansas State University. After being out of school a year he resumed his studies and was graduated in the classical course with the degree Bachelor of Arts June 7, 1898.
On leaving college Doctor Hamill spent a year on the farm in Wilson County, made a number of improvements during that time, and then sold. The next spring he went to live on his father’s old place in Douglas County and was a farmer there two years. Chartering two cars, he moved his live stock and other goods to the 160 acre farm which he had bought east of Columbus, Kansas. His family still owns that place. About that time he was first able to lay out his plans for a medical training. He spent one term in the preparatory department of the medical school of the Kansas State Medical College, but then gave up his studies and bought a farm he still owns near Kansas, and was engaged in its active management for three years. He then entered the medical department of the Kansas State University but took his last two years in the Northwestern University Medical School at Chicago, where he graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1909. After a year of hospital training in the Wesleyan Memorial Hospital of Chicago he returned to Kansas and in the spring of 1910 opened his office at Parsons. His offices are at 1805½ Main Street and he has a very satisfactory general practice in medicine and surgery. He is a member of the Labette County, Kansas State and Southeastern Medical societies and the American Medical Association.
Doctor Hamill is an independent republican in politics, belongs to the Presbyterian Church and fraternally is affiliated with Camp No. 14, Woodmen of the World at Parsons, New Ideal Council No. 1881 of the Knights and Ladies of Security, the Mystic Workers of the World, the Sons and Daughters of Justice, the National Americans, and is a member of the Parsons Chamber of Commerce. Doctor Hamill is unmarried.