Joseph Cook Bunten, M. D. Since 1915 the medical profession at Douglass had been capably represented by Doctor Bunten, a young physician and surgeon of thorough training and capabilities and already well established in practice. He is a native son of Kansas, and had shown those traits and talents which have been distinctive of the Scotch people and also the enterprise of the typical Kansan.
Doctor Bunten was born at Scranton, Kansas, January 27, 1891. His grandfather, John Bunten, was born in Scotland at Irvine, April 7, 1830. He came to this country in May, 1885, locating at Scranton, Kansas, where he was one of the early farmers. He is now living at the venerable age of eighty-eight in Evanston, Illinois. He married Miss Isabella Muir, who was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, May 2, 1829, and died at Topeka, Kansas, in 1911. Their children were: Robert, who was killed in the coal mines at Scranton, Kansas; William, a tailor at Pawnee, Nebraska; Archibald, an employee of the city government of Vancouver, British Columbia; Daniel C., father of Doctor Bunten; Alexander, a druggist at Scranton, Kansas; James, who was a man of thorough scholarship, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, a graduate in law from the University of Kansas, and a teacher in the Presbyterian College at Tulss until his death at Scranton in 1912; Andrew, now a tariff inspector living at Chicago; and Peter Wiley, who is a railroad station operator at Ransom, Kansas.
Daniel Cook Bunten, father of Doctor Bunten, was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, June 30, 1864. He came to America with his parents when nineteen years of age in May, 1885. He grew up at Scranton, Kansas, and became a mechanic for the Carbon Coal Company and later entered business for himself. Still later he went to the gold mines of South Dakota for change of climate, was a blacksmith and machinist for the D. & D. Smelting Company Union shaft near Deadwood, and was killed there April 24, 1900. He was a loyal member and liberal supporter of the Methodist Church, was a republican, belonged to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and was also a member of Clan Stewart of Lead City, South Dakota. Daniel C. Bunten married Jane McNeish. She was born in Fallbrook, Pennsylvania, in 1872 and in still living in that city. She was married in 1889, when seventeen years of age. There were three children; John, who died at the age of four months; Dr. Joseph Cook; and William Livingston, who is assistant cashier in the bank at Ransom, Kansas.
Joseph Cook Bunten spent most of his early life at Scranton. He attended the public schools there, graduating from high school at the age of seventeen in 1908 and receiving the scholarship of the class. After that for two years he was in the Kansas State University, and then entered the Northwestern University Medical School at Chicago. He pursued the regular medical course for four years, graduating M. D. in 1914, and before taking up private practice he had the inestimable privilege of one year as an interne in the General Hospital at Kansas City. He was there during the year 1914-15. Doctor Bunten is a member of the Alpha Kappa Kappa International Medieal Fraternity.
He began private practice at Osage City. Kansas, where he remained five months, but since December, 1915, had been located at Douglass. He is both a physician and surgeon and had done exceedingly well during the leas than two years of his practice. He had his office at the corner of Forest and Third streets, and he owned some real estate in the town.
Doctor Bunten is a member of Douglass Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America and belongs to the Cowley County Medical Society and the State Medical Society. On June 26, 1915, in Burlingame, Kansas, he married Miss Gladys Elsie Kirchner, a graduate of the Kansas State Agricultural College and a member of the Pl Beta Phi Sorority. Her parents, Samuel and Nellie Kirchner, live near Burlingame. Her father is a farmer.