Photo: “Horses with sleigh”

Dr. James A. Thompson located at the little settlement on the creek in 1815, being the first physician who became a permanent physician practitioner in this town. Dr. Thompson practiced till his death, forty-four years later. Yet this long professional career was certainly not the result of an easy life. The labors of a country physician in those early days were arduous almost beyond the conception of their successors. Dr. Thompson’s rides, says his son, often extended over twenty miles. They were not buggy rides either, but were invariably performed on horseback, over roads which language could but poorly portray. Sometimes, after making one of these long circuits, on coming along the shore of the great pond to the mouth of Sandy Creek, after dark, he would find it at the top of its banks. Taking off his clothes and holding them aloft with one hand while clinging to the horse’s tail with the other, he would make the passage of the torrent; then dress, remount and ride home, fortunate if he had a few dry threads upon him on his arrival.