Joseph Pomeroy Widney, M.D. D.D. LL.D (December 26, 1841 – July 4, 1938), was an American doctor, educator, historian, and religious leader.
After the American Civil War led him to medicine, he followed his brothers to California where he received his medical degree. He saw southern California as a "Garden of Eden". In Los Angeles he was a founder of the Los Angeles Medical Society. He was a strong proponent of the new University of Southern California, and became its second president and the founding dean of its school of medicine. The Los Angeles Public Library was one of his major interests.
His real estate interests in California flourished, and he was an early environmentalist as well as promoter of the new metropolis. He believed deeply in Los Angeles becoming a major city with a seaport. The city would use water from across local mountains, and would recreate Lake Cahuilla.
He was a founder of the Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles, as well as a Methodist pastor. He published many books, mainly on his views about California and its history, but only Race Life of the Aryan Peoples was commercially published.
He died at 96, having seen Los Angeles become a major city and seaport. One of the "most conspicuous Southern Californians of his generation", Widney was a cultural leader in Los Angeles for nearly seventy years.
Early life
Joseph Pomeroy Widney was born December 26, 1841, in Piqua, Ohio. The third son of John Wilson Widney and Arabella Maclay Widney, Widney was a nephew of Robert Samuel Maclay, and Charles Maclay. His father died of pneumonia at the age of 42, when Widney was 15.
After graduating from Piqua High School, he entered Miami University at Oxford, Ohio where, for five months, he studied Latin, Greek, and the classics. In 1907, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree for his Race Life of the Aryan Peoples.
In 1861 he enlisted in the Union Army in the Civil War (Ohio Volunteers). He served as a medical corpsman on ships on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. He was discharged in 1862 due to physical and nervous collapse.
With the encouragement of his two older brothers and his uncle, Charles Maclay, in California, Widney sailed to San Francisco via Panama, arriving in November 1862. He travelled throughout California, visited missions and lived with the Spanish-speaking inhabitants.
He returned to university in 1865, receiving a Master of Arts degree from the California Wesleyan College (later the University of the Pacific). In January 1866, he moved to San Francisco. On June 4, 1866, he began the third session of the medical course at the Toland Medical College (later part of the University of California, San Francisco), graduating at the head of his class with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree on October 2, 1866.
Widney married twice. His first wife was Ida DeGraw Tuthill Widney on May 17, 1869, in San Jose, California. They lived in the Bunker Hill area, next to his brother Judge Robert M. Widney. Ida died in Los Angeles on February 10, 1879, and is buried in the Los Angeles City Cemetery.
His second wife was Mary Bray, whom he married on December 27, 1882, in Santa Clara, California. On February 18, 1884, a Los Angeles River flood caused the loss of 43 homes, including his own. Dr. and Mrs. Widney moved to 150 W. Adams Boulevard (formerly S. 26th Street), nearer the new University of Southern California. As founder of the Flower Festival Society, she organized flower festivals to raise money for the Woman's Home, a home for poor working women. Mary Bray Widney died on March 10, 1903, at their home at 150 W. Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles. Widney never remarried.
Medical career
He graduated from Toland Medical College, then the only one in California, on October 2, 1866. He re-enlisted in the army as a military surgeon. He was posted to Drum Barracks in Wilmington, California, for a month in 1867, and was named Acting Assistant Surgeon for the Arizona Territory during the Apache Wars.
In 1868, he was discharged and moved to Los Angeles. He began his medical practice on October 8, 1868, sharing offices with John Strother Griffin (1816–1898). General William Tecumseh Sherman and Mexican bandido Tiburcio Vasquez were among his patients.
Before the "Anti-Quackery Law" was enacted in 1876, doctors were not licensed. Medical practitioners would advertise their medical skills. On January 31, 1871, Widney helped found the Los Angeles County Medical Association, the oldest such association in California.