Samuel Clagett Busey. 

 1828-1901. 



Samuel Clagett Busey, son of John and Rachel Clagett 

 Busey, was born July 23, 1828, on a farm known as " Stony 

 Lonesome" a few miles west of Washington. His father's an- 

 cestors came from Scotland and settled in Maryland in 1754, 

 while the Clagetts arrived from England as early as 167 1. 



His elementary education he received from his mother, whose 

 early widowhood compelled her, though in feeble health, to per- 

 sonally supervise the management of the farm. She was a re- 

 fined and cultivated woman possessed of great force of character 

 and energy, qualities which she carefully inculcated in her sons. 



From 1841 to 1845, the boy Busey attended the Rockville 

 Academy then in charge of Mr. Wright. In 1844 he was of- 

 fered an appointment to a cadetship at West Point. This he 

 had greatly coveted, but his mother refused her consent and in- 

 sisted that he should enter the medical profession. In May, 

 1845, he began the study of medicine in the office of Dr. Heze- 

 kiah Magruder, of Georgetown. The following winter he at- 

 tended the lectures on Anatomy and Operative Surgery at the 

 National Medical College, but he soon discovered that private 

 teaching with text-books twenty-five years old, was far from 

 satisfactory, and, although the income from his estate was quite 

 inadequate even in those frugal da3's, he went to Philadelphia 

 in the spring of 1846 ; here he entered the office of the famous 

 Dr. Geo. B. Wood, and at the same time the University of 

 Pennsvlvania, where he enjoyed the teaching of such men as 

 the elder Pepper, Wood, Gerhard, Chapman, Gibson, Homer, 

 Hodge, and graduated April 8, 1848. In May, 1848, he began 

 his lifework in Washington in an office on Capitol Hill ; and in 

 the following year he married Miss Catherine Posey. In the 

 struggle for existence, which confronts every beginner in a pro- 

 fession, it must be a source of encouragement to know that so 

 eminent and successful a man as Dr. Busey began at the bot- 

 tom, earning less than a dollar a day the first year, while the 



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