Nelson Barrere Lafferty, M. D.
Nelson Barrere Lafferty, M. D., was born in West Union, Ohio, January 6, 1840. He was the son of Joseph West Lafferty and Elizabeth Burwell Lafferty. Nelson Barrere was at that time a practicing lawyer in West Union and the father of the Doctor was an admirer and friend. Hence the Doctor received the name of the distinguished lawyer, afterwards Congressman, and Whig candidate for Governor of Ohio.
The writer became acquainted with Dr. Lafferty when he was seven years of age, and if he was ever a boy after that date, the writer has no recollection of it. The Doctor always wanted to be with men, to listen to their conversation and to learn all he could. While he enjoyed the sports of boyhood, his consuming ambition, and one which was always gratified, was to be with men and learn of them. He received a common school education prior to 1858, and in that year began to read medicine in the offices of Drs. Coleman and Coates, in West Union, Ohio. He read for two years and a half and attended his first course of lectures at Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio, in the Winter of 1860 and 1861. When he returned home in the Spring of 1861, the tocsin of war had sounded and he enlisted in Company D, 24th O. V. I., on May 27, 1861, and on the twenty-seventh of June, 1861, was mustered into the U. S. service for three years. As the result afterward demonstrated, Dr. Lafferty could not stand the hardships of the service, but he never stopped to consider this. It was a question of patriotism only with him. If the Government would take him, he was bound to go, He did go, but was physically unable to stand the strain of the service and was discharged October 13, 1862, on surgeon's certificate of disability. Company D, 24th O. V. I., was the first offering of Adams County in the Civil War, and to have been a member of that company is, in Adams County, better than a patent of nobility. Of all the heroes of the Civil War, the members of Company D were and are always the foremost. But because he was sent home from the army, Dr. Lafferty did not repine. He resumed his medical studies, took his second course of lectures at Starling Medical College and graduated in the Spring of 1863. He at once determined to re-enter the army as a medical officer as soon as his health would admit. In August, 1863, he passed the necessary medical examination required for a Surgeon in the Volunteers. November 10, 1863, he was commissioned Assistant Surgeon of the First Ohio Heavy Artillery for three years and served as such until January 9, 1865, when he resigned owing to ill health and started for home. On his way home, he stopped at Nashville, Tenn., where he unexpectedly met the Medical Director of the Army of the Cumberland, who insisted on him entering the Hospital Service, and on February 3, 1865, he again entered the service as an Acting Assistant Surgeon of the Army and continued as such to the close of the war. In May, 1865, he returned home and located at North Liberty, Ohio, in the practice of his profession, and here he continued to practice for twenty-one years. On February 4, 1880, he was married to Miss Kate Holmes, of Hillsboro, Ohio. There are three children of this marriage, Louise, Fred and Alice.
During his residence at North Liberty, Ohio, he was U. S. Examining Surgeon for a period of fourteen years. In politics, he has always been a Republican. In 1886, he removed from North Liberty to Hillsboro, Ohio, where he continued the practice of medicine until 1895, when he voluntarily retired on account of physical infirmities.
As a physician, Dr. Lafferty is thoroughly read and informed and is among the leaders of his profession. In medical ethics, he was the most fully informed, and believed in and maintained the highest standing for his profession. In whatever he undertakes, he is an enthusiast and is bound to his friends by hooks of steel. He is in favor of high standing in every avocation of life ; his interest in the affairs of the county and State are as intense now as that May day when as a youth he went into the army, and he still believes in that pure and good manhood to which he so early aspired in childhood.
From "History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time"- by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900