Clinton D. Vermillion, M. D. The professional work of Doctor Vermillion had been performed with home and office at Tescott since 1901. He had spent the greater part of his life in Kansas.
Doctor Vermillion was born in Clay County, Missouri, September 10, 1868. In the paternal line he is of French descent. The Vermillions were one of the French families that located the historic and romantic district of Arcadia in Canada, and after the English captured that country they went as exiles, locating in Virginia. Doctor Vermillion is a son of Clinton M. Vermillion, who was born in Bracken County, Kentucky, in 1842. When he was a boy his parents removed to Brown County, Ohio, where he grew up and married. In 1861, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted in the Fifty-ninth Ohio Infantry and was in active service three years and five months. He fought at Shiloh, Lookout Mountain and began the great Atlanta campaign with Sherman but at the battle of Peach Orchard was shot through the knee and on account of consequent disability was mustered out. He never fully recovered from his service and the old injury was diagnosed as the immediate cause of his death forty years later. After the war he returned to Brown County, Ohio, married and then moved to Clay County, Missouri. He was a farmer, and in 1877 brought his family to Saline County, Kansas, where he bought a homesteader’s right and did his part among the pioneers of that section of the state. He died on his old farm in Saline County in 1900. He was a republican, a member and active supporter of the Methodist Episcopal Church and belonged to the Grand Army of the Republic. The maiden name of his wife was Mary J. Larkin, who was born in Bracken County, Kentucky, in 1847, and died at Tescott, Kansas, in 1907. Doctor Vermillion was the oldest of their five children. Fred is a farmer and owned and operates 160 acres in Saline County. Ella E. is the wife of William Johnston, a farmer at Blackwell, Oklahoma, Ida died unmarried at the age of twenty-eight. Clarence lost his life in a lumber camp in the State of Washington at the age of twenty-six.
Doctor Vermillion was nine years of age when the family came to Kansas. In Clay County, Missouri, he had attended school four months each year for a period of three years, and after coming to Kansas he continued his education in the rural schools. He also entered the Salina Normal School, from which he graduated in both the teachers and commercial departments in 1891. For ten years Doctor Vermillion taught school in Saline County, partly in the rural districts and for two years was principal at Assaria and two years principal at New Cambria. It was his work as teacher which gave him the funds necessary to prepare for his real career. He entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Kansas City, where he received his M. D. degree in 1901, and he had a similar degree from the Kansas University. In 1908 Doctor Vermillion took post-graduate courses in the Chicago Polyclinic.
After being qualified for practice he located at Tescott in 1901 and had steadily carried the burdens of a heavy medical and surgical practice to the present time. In 1903 he bought a drug store on Main Street and conducts one of the best stores of the kind in Ottawa County. His offices are in the store. In 1910 he built a modern residence on Main Street.
Doctor Vermillion is a member of the Ottawa County and State Medical Societies, is a socialist in politics, is affiliated with Saline Lodge No. 60, Ancient Free and Accopted Masons; Isis Consistory No. 3 of the Scottish Rite, and Isis Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Salina. He is past noble grand of Tescott Lodge of the Odd Fellows and is affiliated with Tescott Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America and Gypsum City Lodge of the Knights of the Maccabees.
Doctor Vermillion had a fine family. He married at Salina, Kansas, in 1893, Miss Eva Wells, daughter of Frank and Charlotta (May) Wells. Her father lives with Doctor and Mrs. Vermillion, being a retired farmer. The household of Doctor and Mrs. Vermillion comprises seven children: Una, born July 8, 1894, is a graduate of the Salina High School and is now a sophomore in the Kansas University. Earl L., born July 24, 1895, graduated M. D. from the Kansas University in 1917, being the youngest accredited physician in the state, and had recently enlisted with the rank of first lieutenant in the United States Army. Carl M., the third child, was born April 6, 1897, and is now serving in the coast artillery, stationed at Fort Kamehameha in the Hawahan Islands. The four younger children, all at school, are: Thyra, born March 1, 1903; Dale D., born July 23, 1904; Beryl, born in February, 1907; and Oda, born October 15, 1908.