WELLFORD
489
WELLFORD
of William Greenleaf, of Boston. He
died in New Haven on May 28, 1843,
when eighty-five years old.
W. H. W.
Yale in Relation to Medicine, Wm. H. Welch,
1901.
Am. J. Med. Sciences, 1876, vol. Ixxii.
A History of the Pennsylvania Hospital,
T. G. Morton, Phila.. 1895.
The Century Cyclopedia of Names.
Noah Webster, H. E. Scudder, 1882.
Wellford Beverly Randolph (1797-1870).
The son of Dr. Robert Wellford, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, he was born in that town on July 29, 1797. Both father and grandfather were doctors. His father was a native of England, and a licentiate of the Royal College of Sur- geons. The son studied medicine under his father and then attended two courses of lectures in the University of Maryland, taking his M. D. in 1817.
He was a member of the Medical Society of Virginia (ante-bellum), in 1851-2, president of the State Society and president American Medical Asso- ciation. In 1854, professor of materia medica and therapeutics in the Med- ical College of Virginia; he continued to fill the position until the infirmities of age caused his retirement in 1868, when he was made professor emeritus. After graduation he began practice in conjunction with his father in his native place, where he remained until called to Richmond.
His first wife was Betty Burwell Page, whom he married in 1817. She died the next year, leaving one daughter. His second wife was Mary Alexander, whom he married in February, 1824, by whom he had five sons and a daughter, all of whom survived him, except the second son, Dr. Armistead N. Wellford, of Rich- mond, who died in 1884. The oldest son, Dr. John S. Wellford, succeeded his father in his chair in the Medical College of Virginia. Beverly Wellford died after a protracted illness following a stroke of paralysis, in Richmond on December 27, 1870. He does not seem to have been a contributor to medical literature. We
can find no record of any article by him,
except his presidential addresses to the
American Medical Association in 1853
("Transactions, American Medical Asso-
ciation," 1853), and the Medical Society
of Virginia in 1852. R. M. S.
From data furnished by Dr. Wcllford's son, Mr. Beverley K. Wellford, .Jr.
Wellford, Robert (1753-1823).
Robert Wellford, a surgeon in the British Army, was the son of William Welford (the name was spelled in Eng- land with a single 1), a surgeon of the town of Ware in Hertfordshire, where he was born on April 12, 1753, and most probably pursued his professional studies in London, as he was a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons, London.
Soon after he began practice in Ware a traveler who was passing through sus- tained a fracture of the thigh, and in the absence of Wellford's father, who was ur- gently summoned, the treatment of the case fell into the son's hands, and so successfully did he manage that the patient became a friend and through this friend, who had influence at court, the young surgeon was tendered an appointment in the medical service of the British Army, either in India, or with the troops then preparing for service in America. Choosing the latter, he came to this country as surgeon of the First Royal Grenadiers for service in the War of the Revolution.
The battles of Brandywine and Ger- mantown threw many prisoners into the hands of the British ; these who were held in Philadelphia, receiving the most un- kindly, if not brutal, treatment at the hands of the British surgeon and many valuable lives were unnecessarily lost in consequence. This condition of affairs caused Gen. Washington to remonstrate forcibly with Gen. Howe, with the result that the latter upon investigation re- moved the surgeon, and in his place ap- pointed Dr. Wellford. His administra- tion ]-»roved a great success, for by his careful attention a marked change for the better was brought about in the
