Springfield-Greene
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DR. ANSON HARVEY GIFFORD. The homeopathic science of the treatment of multiform ills of the flesh has an able representative in Greene county in the person of Dr. Anson Harvey Gifford, of Springfield, formerly an instructor of music in Drury College, a man with talents sufficient to become well known in more than one avenueof endeavor, in this respect being unlike most men, for few there be who are able to rise above the mediocre even in one line of effort. Those -who know Doctor Gifford well say that he has been the architect of his own character, is a distinct personality; a man of independent mind and thought, diffident, but self-reliant, reserved but self-assertive, self-disciplined and highly intellectual. He has ever been a student, reader and thinker, and for his opportunities, a scholarly, effective professional man. None is more faithful than he in the performance of his every-day duties. Method, sys tem, order--"Heaven's first law"--are rigidly observed by him.
Doctor Gifford was born at Owego, New York, May 11, 1854. He is a son of Harvey B. and Marietta (Corbin) Gifford. The father was born at Owego, New York, and the mother at Salem, Massachusetts. The paternal grandfather was one of the pioneer settlers of New York state, where he devoted his life to farming. The maternal great-grandfather, Mr. Corbin, was born in England, from which country he emigrated to America in colonial times, and became an American officer in the Revolutionary war in which he fought gallantly until taken prisoner. He was returned to England by the British and kept in irons for some time, the chains on his ankles wearing the flesh to the bone. He was finally exchanged, but on his way back to America he died as a result of the exposure and inhuman treatment to which his captors had compelled him to submit so long. The father of Doctor Gifford spent his early life as a farmer in his native state, later removing to Chicago, Illinois, where he engaged in the music business, and had a well-patronized store which was wiped out in the great conflagration which destroyed that city in the autumn of 1871, Mr. Gifford being a heavy loser. He then removed with his family to Sedalia, Missouri, and resumed farming in that vicinity where he spent the rest of his life, dying in 1888. The mother of Doctor Gifford was born, February 22, 1824, and her death occurred in 1911 at an advanced age, being ninety years old. She was buried at Bois D'Arc, Missouri.
Dr. Anson H. Gifford was educated in the public schools, later attended Wheaton College in Illinois, also took a course at Drury College, Springfield, Missouri. Aside from a small start in life he has been self-supporting since he was about eighteen years of age, and worked his way through college, doing whatever he could get to do to make an honest dollar, but followed teaching for the most part. In 1875-76 he taught music in Drury College. He has a pronounced natural talent as a musician and has made himself proficient in the same. In 1885 he entered the Homeopathic Medical College in Chicago, in which he made an excellent record and from which institution he was graduated in the spring of 1889. Soon thereafter he came to Springfield, Missouri, where he began the practice of his profession and has remained here to the present time, all the while enjoying a large and growing business and ranking among the leading men of his science in the southern part of the state.
Doctor Gifford is a member of the Missouri Institute of Homeopathy, and the American Institute of Homeopathy. He is a member of the Woodmen lodge, in politics he votes independently, and in religious matters he is .a member of the Presbyterian church.
Doctor Gifford was married in 1883 to Alice H. Tucker, of Sedalia, Missouri. She was born in Lebanon, Kentucky, in 1862, and is a daughter of C. H. Rosanna (Riffe) Tucker. The father, who was a liveryman in Sedalia, died in 1903, and the mother is living in Boston, Massachusetts. Mr. Tucker was left an orphan when he was quite young and was compelled to carve out his own fortune unaided, but by his sturdy manhood, perseverance and indomitable courage became a man of importance and prominence. Mrs. Gifford's maternal grandfather-was Peter B. Riffe, who was a colonel in the Confederate army during the Civil war. He lived to an advanced age, dying about 1893. His father was a general in the Indian wars in the early history of the state of Kentucky, where he commanded state troops, and he was well acquainted with Daniel Boone the renowned hunter, pioneer and trapper.
To Doctor Gifford and wife one child has been born, Riffe Tucker Gifford, whose birth occurred in Sedalia, Missouri, January 31, 1885; he was educated in the schools of Springfield, and is unmarried. He is a. young man of much promise.
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