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Dayton’s Doctors from the 1860s to the 1930s.
by Ceil Leedom. December 2008
The Slack-Carroll House in Dayton next to the WAWA has long been known as the home of Dayton’s Dr. Clarence Slack and Dr. Edgar Carroll from the 1800s and first part of the 1900s. Efforts to preserve this property and to create a museum dedicated to Dayton’s physicians, to medical practices of their times and to the cultural life of their community has revealed more information about their activities and about other physicians who served Dayton in the 1800s. In the years after the Civil War Dayton began to change and grow. The completion of the Freehold and Jamesburg Agricultural Railroad to Monmouth Junction soon after 1865 gave local residents and farmers access to distant markets. About this time Dayton became the new name for the village of Cross Roads, the town gained a resident physician, Dr. Slack, and the Dayton Presbyterian Church building was completed in 1870.
For the next 70 years, the Slack-Carroll House would be the home of three physicians, all graduates of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Exactly when Dr. Slack, the first of this series of physicians, began his practice in Dayton is not known. Records from the Medical Society of New Jersey list Dr. Slack as Dayton’s physician in 1867. Deeds for property associated with the Slack-Carroll House record that Slack purchased 0.53 acres from Samuel Pullen in October 1868 and in March 1870; he purchased adjoining property for $2,500, the same 0.40 acres that Richard M. Rowland had purchased from Samuel Pullen in October 1869 for $300. The cost difference suggests that Rowland built a house on this lot and then sold it to Dr. Slack. At the same time, land adjacent to Slack’s property was deeded to the Dayton Presbyterian Church, which was dedicated in August 1870.
Dr. Clarence M. Slack was born in Hightstown in 1841. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1865 and served as a surgeon on the “USS Pembina” at the end of the Civil War. He later served as a military surgeon in the Spanish-American War. Slack married Mary Elizabeth Conover and their two daughters Hetty and Mary were born in Dayton. The 1880 Census shows his nephew, Horace G. Norton, was living and working with him as a physician. Slack was active in politics serving South Brunswick as Freeholder from 1875-1876. However, sometime after 1880, Dr. Slack relocated to New Brunswick with listings in the city directory from 1883 to 1910 as a druggist and physician. He was elected County Clerk, serving from 1884-1889, and was active in several fraternal organizations.
Physicians that covered Dayton until Dr. Carroll arrived in the late 1880s was revealed in a review of the NJ State Board of Health Registry that listed a Dr. J. Marion Baldwin serving as Dayton’s doctor in 1883. Dr. Baldwin, a recent Jefferson Medical College graduate had purchased Dr. Slack’s medical practice in 1881 and it is likely that he lived in Slack’s house. This information came from Baldwin’s obituary after his unexpected death at the age of 30 in October 1883. At the same time, the Transaction of the Medical Society of New Jersey lists another physician, Dr. William V. Wilson, as a physician for Dayton along with Dr. Slack in 1875 and again in 1882, 1883 and 1884. Wilson appears in the 1870 Census for South Brunswick, but he was not living in the Slack-Carroll house. By 1880, he had relocated his family to Chambersburg, Mercer County, which makes one question his serving as Dayton’s doctor from 1882-1884.
Dayton’s longest serving physician was Dr. Edgar Carroll of Keene, Ohio. Born into a locally prominent Irish family in 1853, he followed his older brothers to Jefferson Medical College where he graduated in 1880. He came to Dayton sometime in the mid-1880s, purchasing Dr. Slack’s house in March of 1887. He married Matilda [Tillie] Buckalew about 1890 and they had three children Nathaniel born in 1891, Margaretta in 1895, and Edgar Wallace in 1897. He was a beloved member of the community, highly respected for his integrity and medical skill. In later years, he served as South Brunswick’s Township physician and as medical advisor to St. Joseph’s College in Princeton. Besides serving the South Brunswick community Dr. Carroll was elected Middlesex County Physician many times between 1893 and 1917. He was a member of the Middlesex County Medical Society and a permanent Delegate to the State Medical Society. He died in 1934. It is said as he lay dying that he asked his wife to mark all bills owed as paid in full. His family lived in the house until 1949. |
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