It took days of researching records at the Sarpy County Historical Society and historical records found online to confirm that indeed, William and Mary are members of the Upjohn Pharmaceutical family and were early medical pioneers of Papillion.
Who knew?
Who cares?
I do, and you might once you realize that...
Mary Hoagland Upjohn graduated from the Michigan University Medical School in 1877. William graduated in 1875.
Perhaps my feminist side is getting the best of me, but I'm impressed that a woman who graduated medical school came to Papillion, Nebraska which was little more than a wild west town at the time. (more about some of our wild west characters in blogs to come.) She graduated from medical school!
Happily, I've gotten a load of information from the University of Michigan and will be reading the thesis of both William and Mary. Mary wrote about maintaining health through good nutrition and William researched new methods in combating infections.
I've embarked on a mission to find photo's of these people to include in my pictorial history of the city of Papillion that is being published by Arcadia and will be released sometime in the winter of 2011 or spring of 2012. Today, I spent some time at the Douglas County Historical Society and imagine my joy when I found this in The History of Medicine in Nebraska:
Proof positive that William Cyrenes and Mary L. Hoagland Upjohn were members of the medical community in Papillion from 1877 to probably 1899 when they went to New York to complete graduate school then returned to the area making their home at 2411 Cumings in Omaha until about 1915 when they moved to California.
SADLY...I cannot use these photo's because they are of poor quality. HELP!!! I would love to find useable photo's so they can take their rightful place in Papillion's History.
By the way, my initial belief is that William Cyrenes is a first cousin to William Eurastas Upjohn, who founded the Upjohn Pharmaceutical company.
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