BLACKFORD
85
BLACKFORD
Arkansas, later, in 1S73, returning to
Kentucky and resuming practice in Louis-
ville, doing good service in the epidemics
of 1S75 and 1878 as an organizer of
physicians and nurses. In 1S79 he was
elected governor of Kentucky.
Prior to his election as governor, the penitentiary became crowded to double its capacity. This he promised to relieve if elected and this he did by pardoning the lesser criminals until the number was reduced in keeping with the capacity of the penitentiary, a practice that forced his state to build another prison to ac- comodate its criminals.
His first wife was Ella Guest Boswell, by whom he had one son, Cary Black- burn, who afterwards became a practi- tioner in Louisville. His second wife was Julia M. Churchill, whom he married in 1857. A. S.
(Biographical Encyclopedia of Ky. (Biography of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons, by R. French Stone, M. D.)
Blackford, Benjamin (1834-1905).
Benjamin Blackford, army surgeon, was the son of Dr. Thomas T. Black- ford, of Luray and, later, of Lynchburg, Virginia, and was born in Shenandoah County on September 8, 1834. His father removing to Lynchburg while he was a youth, he attended a private school in that town conducted by his uncle, William M. Blackford, then editor of the Lynchburg Virginian. Afterwards he obtained a clerkship in the post-office, and by hard work and close economy, saved enough money to go to the Uni- versity of Virginia, and later to the Jefferson Medical School in Philadel- phia, from which he graduated in 1855. After serving a term as an interne in Blockley Hospital, he began to practice in Lynchburg.
lb- was a member of the American Association of Superintendents of Hos- pitals for the insane, and the Medical Society of Virginia. Of this latter society he was several times a vice- Bt, president in 1887, and was elected an honorary member in 1888.
He was also an ex-president of the Lynch-
burg Medical Association.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he was elected surgeon of the Lynchburg Home Guard, Company G., Eleventh Virginia Infantry, and went to the front with that command. He was soon put in charge of the hospital at Culpeper, and later was placed in command of the mili- tary hospital at Liberty (now Bedford City), where he remained until the end of the war, when he resumed practice in Lynchburg. He gave considerable atten- tion to eye affections without, however, becoming a specialist. He was one of the ninty-two charter members who found- ed the State Society in 1870. In 1890 he was elected superintendent of the Western State Hospital for the Insane at Staunton, and filled this position un- til his death.
Dr. Blackford was a Virginia gentleman of the true type, polite, gentlemanly, courteous, mindful of the feelings of others. As superintendent of the hos- pital, he filled the position with marked ability and success, adding many im- provements to the institution, and ever looking most carefully after the well- being of his unfortunate charges.
He married, in 1871, Mrs. Emily Neilson Byrd, and was survived by six sons.
He died of pneumonia at his home in Staunton on December 13, 1905, just two weeks after the death of his wife from the same disease.
Among his valuable contributions to medical literature are:
"Report on the Advances in Surgery." ("Transactions of the Medical Society of Virginia," 1876.)
"Presidential Address." (Ibid., 1888.)
"Gonorrheal Ophthalmia." ("Virginia Medical Monthly," vol. i.)
"Suppurative Keratitis." (Ibid., vol. iii.)
"The Bedford Iron and Alum Springs." (Ibid., vol. iv.)
"Historical Sketch of the Western State Hospital." ("Annual Report for 1903-04.") R. M. S.
Trans. .Mid. Sue. of Va., 1906.
