♂George Wesley Blanchard

George Wesley Blanchard (3 July 1868 – 17 January 1939) was an American physician from Maine. He worked as a pathologist in New York City and then practised medicine for twenty-eight years at Highland Falls, Orange County, New York, from 1899 to 1927. His son Kenneth also became a doctor. He was the grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Early life

He was born on 3 July 1868 at Kingfield, Franklin County, Maine, the son of Wesley Blanchard and Eldora M. Webster. By 1870 the family was living at Lewiston, Androscoggin County, and it was still there in 1880. His aunt Ida Alice Blanchard’s will, proved in Androscoggin County in December 1900, left $300 each to “the children of Wesley Blanchard”, naming George W. Blanchard alongside his sister Edith Coburn and his brother Channing. He took a bachelor’s degree at Bowdoin College in 1890, a second at Harvard in 1891 (conferred in 1893), and his medical degree from the Medical School of Maine at Bowdoin in 1895.

Marriage and medical career

On 5 September 1894 he married Anna Walker Merryman at Haverhill, Essex County, Massachusetts. They had four children, born between 1895 and 1902: three sons, William Wesley, Kenneth and Theodore, and a daughter, Frances Eldora. The 1900 and 1910 censuses both record the mother’s own count of children born and still living, and together they confirm that there were four children.

His obituary in The New York Times says that in 1897 he was a pathologist in New York. That year’s Haverhill register of Kenneth’s birth gives the parents’ home as New York and the father’s occupation as physician. In 1900 the family was living at 63 West 54th Street in Manhattan. From 1899 he practised at Highland Falls, and the censuses of 1910 and 1920 and the New York state census of 1925 all place the household in the Highlands of Orange County. His son Kenneth became a physician in New Jersey.

Retirement and death

His practice at Highland Falls ended in 1927, and by 1930 he was living at Pelham, Westchester County, New York. In these years he also traveled: he came back through Quebec on the liner Doric in November 1930, and in March 1937 returned to New York on the Fort Townshend from a winter cruise, giving his address as East 96th Street, Manhattan. He died at home in Pelham on 17 January 1939, aged 70, of coronary thrombosis, and was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum^W in Hartsdale, Westchester County, as the Find a Grave index and the 1991 Blanchard and Merryman family genealogy both record. The New York Times published his obituary two days later, under the headline “Dr. George W. Blanchard”. It named his widow, his three sons (then living at New Rochelle, Newburgh and South Orange, New Jersey) and his daughter, by then married and living at Tampa, Florida. Anna died in 1942.

Notes

Earlier work on this page attributed the 1930 Quebec crossing and the 1937 cruise to a different George W. Blanchard, born in Maine in 1868, who appears as a widower in the 1940 census of Harfords Point, Piscataquis County, Maine. Both passenger records give the Kingfield birth of 3 July 1868, and the 1937 record shows a married man living on East 96th Street, so they belong to this George Blanchard. His own obituary covers his career from 1897 to his death in Pelham and says nothing of travel. A cemetery memorial gives him the years 1869–1942; 1942 is the year his wife died.

Burial place

The Find a Grave index (FamilySearch 1:1:DM6S-D7N2) names the burial place as Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum, Hartsdale, Westchester, New York, with no burial date. The 1991 Blanchard/Merryman genealogy compiled by Nancy Curtis gives the same cemetery name on pages 28 and 30. Both sources are compiled from other records.