William George Jack, M. D. Though born and reared on a farm and spending most of his early years in the vicinity of Chautauqua, William G. Jack had an early ambition for a professional career and gratified it after a thorough course in colleges and clinics and for the past fifteen years had successfully practiced as a physician and surgeon at Chautauqua. He is regarded as one of the best informed physicians and most skillful surgeons in this section of the state.
A resident of Chautauqua County since he was nine years of age, William George Jack was born in Des Moines, Iowa, July 24, 1874. His father A. J. Jack was born in Scotland in 1831, and in 1833 was brought to Ameriea by his parents who settled near Coshocton, Ohio. In that Ohio community he grew up and married, and becoming a carpenter and builder followed that trade in both Ohio and Iowa. In 1883 he came to Kansas and was one of the earliest contractors and builders in the Town of Chautauqua. For a number of years he also conducted a lumber yard and hardware business in that town, but giving up his commercial activities he retired in 1903 to his farm a mile northwest of Chautauqua, where he now lives. He is eighty-five years of age and had had a long and useful career. During the Civil war he served as a member of the Iowa State Guards. He is a republican, having become affiliated with that party when it was first organized. His church is the Presbyterian. The maiden name of his wife was Julia A. Young, and she was born in Ohio in 1843 and is now seventy-three years of age. Their children were: Dora M., who died at El Reno, Oklahoma, at the age of forty-five and was at that time president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Oklahoma; she married C. A. Cleveland, who was a merchant at Anadarko, Oklahoma. Sadie B. is the wife of J. M. Chittenden, and they reside on their farm on Coon Creek 2½ miles west of Chautauqua. Belle is an invalid and lives with her parents. A. J. Jack, Jr., is a farmer a half mile north of Chautauqua.
Doctor Jack, the youngest of his parents’ children, attended the public schools of Chautauqua, and gained the equivalent of a modern high school education. At the age of nineteen he left school and for a time was employed in his father’s lumber business. He studied medicine in the Kansas City Medical College at Kansas City, Missouri, and was graduated from there with the class of 1900 and the degree M. D. He had since taken much post graduate work in the clinics and hospitals of Kansas City, at the hospitals in Chicago, at the Chicago Policlinic and had also attended the Surgical Congress in Chicago.
In 1899, the year before his graduation, he was licensed to practice and opened his office in Chautauqua, where he had since centered his practice with the exception of one year spent at Sedan. His offices are on Main Street, and he owned the building in which his office is located, and he also had a comfortable residence in the west central part of town.
Doctor Jack served one year as health officer of Chautauqua County, as coroner four years, and is now a member of the school board. He is a live and energetic citizen and had always made the best interests of the town his own. He is a member of the County and State Medical societies, the Medical Association of the Southwest and the American Medical Association. Politically he is a republican. Doctor Jack takes much interest in Masonry, being affiliated with Vesper Lodge No. 136 Ancient Free and Accepted Masons at Sedan, with Wichita Consistory No. 2 of the Scottish Rite, and with Midian Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Wichita. Among other interests he is a member of the Chautauqua State Bank.
On November 5, 1906, at Kansas City, Missouri, Doctor Jack married Miss Ermie L. Lemmon, daughter of W. F. and Mattie (Crockett) Lemmon, who are now living near Peru, Kansas. Her father is an oil producer. Doctor and Mrs. Jack have two children: George, born August 31, 1908; and Pauline, born March 5, 1910.