HISTORY
Much More than a Country Doctor Horace Franklin Eames by Patty Williamson, PhD February 1882 (not unusual in those days) and enrolled in a normal school in Valparaiso, Indiana. Most normal schools existed only to train teachers, but this one also offered medical training. Eames taught in Clay Banks and Egg Harbor for three more years, leaving early each spring to return to Valparaiso, but in the fall of 1886, he enrolled in a medical college in Iowa.
D
oc Eames is still a familiar name in some parts of Door County, even though he died nearly 85 years ago. But Horace Franklin Eames was not always a doctor. Born on May 30, 1859, in Masham, Québec, he moved at age 17 with his parents, William and Asenath, to a farm in Clay Banks, Wisconsin, and later to Sevastopol. By the fall of 1881, Eames had graduated from Oshkosh Normal School and was teaching in Egg Harbor. He closed school for the winter in
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Seven months later, he was awarded a diploma to pursue the healing arts and set up practice in Waucedah, Michigan. On April 7, 1887, Eames married Emma Baker of Egg Harbor in Stephenson, Michigan, but by September 1888, she had returned to Egg Harbor to stay with her mother while Eames went to Illinois University in Chicago to resume his medical studies. By March 1889, he was an M.D. The first of their eight children was born that month in Egg Harbor. From 1890 to early 1893, Eames practiced in Rapid River, Michigan, but by May 1893, he had purchased Levi Baraboo’s house in Egg Harbor, as well as a fine horse and buggy. Franklin Eames, as he was known by that time, had settled into the role of country doctor: one he would hold for 48 years. There were no privacy regulations in those days, so the newspapers faithfully reported the condition of those who
were ill or injured and the doctor’s prognosis for their recovery. Eames did little advertising, but he helped to keep his name before the public by dropping by the newspaper offices (The Weekly Expositor Independent, The Independent, The Republican, The Democrat, The DC News and The Advocate) when he was in Sturgeon Bay. Although Doc Eames always had his office in his home, he treated most of his patients in theirs. He dealt with many illnesses such as diphtheria and pneumonia that were potentially more fatal then than they are today, along with farm and mill accidents, horse and auto catastrophes, scaldings, neardrownings, poisonings, stabbings and gunshot wounds. In March 1894, he vaccinated all the schoolchildren in Egg Harbor, and three months later opened his first business venture: a drug store to “provide for the ailing.” It was soon being referred to as Eames’ Store, and Sherwin-Williams paint was advertised for sale. Within the next few years, Eames was appointed to head Egg Harbor’s board of health, was in charge of the town’s 1900 census, became a leader in the Republican Party and took charge of the new circulating library, which was located in his home. He also owned an extensive collection of medical books dating to 1764 that contained accounts of the first attempts to “use the knife” to cure the ill. In 1902, Doc Eames purchased a 120-acre farm from Gus Peterson and bayside property from Fred Hanson, on which he built a pier and warehouse. In April 1903, the first fruit trees were planted in what was to become the huge Eames Orchard.
