James Henry Peabody

He was a Page in the US House of Representatives as a boy, and became a clerk at the Pension Office in 1852. After completing medical school, he established a medical practice in Washington, DC in 1860. He was a (contract?) surgeon at Carver Hospital immediately before the battle of Antietam.

One of a group of 60 or 70 doctors sent to the Army of the Potomac from Washington on 17 September, he arrived in Frederick, MD on the 18th and was in charge of the US Hotel Hospital and then US Army General Hospital #2 there for about a week until relieved.

He served at USA General Hospital #2 in Frederick into January 1863 when he was commissioned Assistant Surgeon, US Volunteers (7 January 1863) and sent to St. Louis, MO, where he was in charge of the Marine Hospital. He was promoted to Surgeon on 15 August 1863 and was assigned as medical director of District of the Platte, Department of Missouri in Omaha. He was honored by brevet to Lieutenant Colonel on 15 August 1865 for war service and mustered out on 18 August.

He attended a course at Bellevue Hospital, NY, then returned to Omaha in April 1866 and began his medical practice there. He was in the midst of a cholera outbreak in 1867, and contracted the disease himself, but recovered. He was president of the Nebraska State Medical Society (its second) in 1870.

His service from Heitman1 and the MSHWR.2 Details from sketches in A. T. Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska (1882), online from Liz Lee at the NEGen Web Project, and Kelly's A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography (1912). More from the Nebraska History Museum, Lincoln. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

A collection of his papers [finding aid] are in the collection of the Nebraska State Historical Society.

03/07/1833; Washington, DC

09/09/1906; Omaha, NE; burial in Prospect Hill Cemetery, Omaha, NE