Edwin J. Moffitt, M. D. A physician and surgeon of Manhattan for the past fifteen years, Doctor Moffitt is highly esteemed professionally and also as a citizen. He is a man of wide experience and thorough professional qualifications, yet is unostentatious and allows his merits and abilities to speak for themselves.
He was born at Jesup, Iowa, May 23, 1872, a son of William and Alice (Muncey) Moffitt. William Moffitt, who was born at Cadiz, Ohio, of Scotch parents, was a Union soldier in the Civil war, as was also his father. Grandfather Moffitt attained the post of provost marshal, and died from wounds received while in the discharge of duty. A shoemaker by trade, William Moffitt soon after the close of the Civil war moved to Jesup, Iowa, where for many years he conducted the only exclusive boot and shoe house of that town. His death occurred in 1895 at the age of forty-eight. Doctor Moffitt’s mother was of English parentage. Her father, Doctor Muncey, was a graduate of Rush Medical College of Chicago and practiced with splendid success and eminent service in Jesup, Iowa, from pioneer days until his death in 1913 at the advanced age of eighty-two.
Reared at Jesup, Iowa, to the age of sixteen, and spending the next five years at Waterloo, Iowa, Doctor Moffitt received a sound educational foundation for his professional career. It was both taste and natural gift that led him to the study of medicine. In 1896 he received his M. D. degree from Drake University at Des Moines, Iowa. Since then he has taken post-graduate courses in Chicago and elsewhere and is today, as he was twenty years ago, a constant student of medicine and surgery.
He began practice at Jesup, Iowa, with his maternal grandfather, Doctor Muncey, an association that continued very agreeably for five years.
In 1898 Doctor Moffitt married Miss May Murphey, the only daughter and child of Mr. George S. Murphey, a prominent banker and citizen of Manhattan, Kansas. Three years later, in 1901, Doctor Moffitt and his wife came to Manhattan, and since then he has been identified with a large and increasing practice. He is district surgeon for the Union Pacific and Rock Island railroads, is a member of the hospital staff of physicians and surgeons for the Park View Hospital at Manhattan and is physician to the State Rebekah-Odd Fellows Home at Manhattan. His professional associations are with the Riley County Medical Society, the Kansas State Medical Society, the American Medical Association and the Golden Belt Medical Society.
Fraternally he is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Pythias and the Chapter Degree of Masonry. Religiously he is a Presbyterian.
Doctor and Mrs. Moffitt have three children, named Harriet Alice, Georgia May and Roberta Mary.