John S. Wiseman, M.D.
Prominent among those who are upholding the dignity and prestige of the medical profession in Lawrence County is Dr. Wiseman, who is engaged in practice in the City of Ironton, judicial center of the county and the metropolis of the Hanging Rock Iron Region. The success and high reputation achieved by the Doctor are the more pleasing to note by reason of the fact that he claims as his native heath the county in which he has gained this precedence through ability and sterling worth of character. Dr. Wiseman was born in the village of Sherritts, Lawrence County, on the 3d of September, 1865, and is a representative of a well-known pioneer family of this section of the state. The doctor is a son of Louis F. and Mary Jane (Carter) Wiseman, the former of whom was born in Monroe County, West Virginia, in 1826, and the latter of whom was born near Gallipolis, the county seat of Gallia County, Ohio, in 1832, her parents having been early settlers of that county. Louis F. Wiseman devoted the greater part of his active career to the basic industry of agriculture and was long numbered among the prosperous and honored representatives of this line of enterprise in Lawrence County, where his death occurred in the year 1896. His was the distinction of having represented the Buckeye state as a gallant soldier in the Civil War, in which he served two years and ten months as a member of Company D, Ninety-first Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in which he became sergeant of his company. In later years he was an appreciative and popular member of that noble patriotic organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, the ranks of which are being rapidly thinned by the one implacable adversary, death. Mrs. Wiseman survived her honored husband and passed forward to the "'land of the leal" in 1905. Of the eleven children, Henry J. is the eldest and is a resident of Lawrence County; Sarah and Mary are deceased; Louis A. maintains his home in Lawrence County; Sarepta is the wife of Dr. William Griffith, of Pedro, this county; William W. is a resident of Sherritts; Ruth J. likewise remains at Sherritts; Dr. John S., of this review, was the next in order of birth; Susan A. lives at Sherritts; Martha is deceased; and Thomas F. is a representative farmer in the vicinity of Sherritts.
Dr. John S. Wiseman was reared to the sturdy and invigorating discipline of the home farm and continued to be actively identified with agricultural pursuits until he had attained to the age of twenty-three years. In the meanwhile he fully availed himself of the advantages of the public schools of his native county, and his ambition led him to formulate definite plans for a broader career of usefulness than that of the prosaic but sterling work of farming. In consonance with his ambition he entered the Miami Medical College, in the city of Cincinnati, and in this excellent institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1893 and with the well-earned degree of doctor of medicine. For the first six years of his active professional work Dr. Wiseman maintained his residence at Powellsville, Scioto County, and he then removed to Beaver, Pike County, where he continued in successful practice until 1907. He then returned to his native county and established his home in the city of Ironton, where he has built up a large and representative general practice and has secure status as one of the leading physicians and surgeons of Lawrence County. The doctor has availed himself of the best of the standard and periodical literature of his profession and in addition to being a close and ambitious student through this medium he has also taken effective post-graduate course in the New York Polyclinic, in 1898-9, and in the Chicago Polyclinic, in 1907. Dr. Wiseman is actively identified with the Lawrence County Medical Society, the Ohio State Medical Society and the American Medical Association. He is a member of the Ironton Chamber of Commerce, is steadfast in his allegiance to the cause of the republican party, whose basic principles he believes best adapted for the safe government of the nation, but in local affairs he is not constrained within strict partisan lines. While a resident of Beaver, Pike County, he served three years as president of its board of education. The doctor is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the Knights of Pythias, and he holds membership in the First Baptist church of Ironton, of which his wife, now deceased, likewise was a devoted adherent.
On the 24th of October, 1888, was solemnized the marriage of Dr. Wiseman to Miss Sadie Stuart, daughter of the late Calvin M. Stuart, a prominent farmer of Symmes Township, Lawrence County, and she was summoned to the life eternal on the 18th of August, 1912, secure in the affectionate regard of all who had come within the compass of her gracious influence. Dr. and Mrs. Wiseman became the parents of five children, of whom the first, Alma, and the third, Clayton L., are deceased. Those who survive the devoted mother are Lucille P., Avanelle P. and Marcelle E.
From "A Standing History of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio" by Eugene B. Willard, Daniel W. Williams, George O. Newman and Charles B. Taylor. Published by Lewis Publishing Company, 1916