Lakewood Lore

Early settlers coped with crude health care

Availability of ample medical care is a hallmark of our community, but it wasn't always so.

In the early 19th century, doctors were few in pioneer country. Homemade remedies were administered by mothers. Patent medicine cure-alls, bought from the wagons of wandering peddlers, were household staples.

The poultice (a soft, moist wad of bread, meal or herb placed on a cloth and then applied to affected parts of the body) was popular as a healing agent.

Price French, one of our area's first settlers, recalled the time about 1819 when he was given poultices of slippery elm bark after being scalded. Each morning, his eldest son, Collins, 12, had the chore of finding fresh bark for his father in a nearby woods.

Soon, Collins' 4-year-old sister, Calphurnia, wanting some slippery elm of her own, cut her knee with a drawshave. She was treated with a rye flour poultice ordered by a doctor who took two days to reach Calphurnia.

The girl recovered after a year's illness, but she was lame the rest of her life. She died at age 38 and was buried in a little cemetery once located across from Lakewood Hospital on Belle Avenue.

Collins French grew to become a trustee of Rockport Township, which encompassed our area. He also was treasurer of the Plank Road Co., which paved muddy Detroit Avenue with oak logs that remained until 1901.

Collins, for whom Lakewood's French Avenue was named, married Rosetta Saxton in 1832. The couple had no children of their own, but they dearly loved Rosetta's niece, Virginia Harron. They adopted Virginia when the girl was left motherless as a baby.

Virginia Avenue took its name from her, and Andrews Avenue from the man she married—Edwain Ruthven Andrews—who had a farming partnership with Collins French.

This article appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post January 12, 1989. Reprinted with permission.

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