Degree Recipient

Life Experience

Joseph Glass McPheeters was born in Kentucky on New Year’s Day in 1810. His family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where he took a lifelong, active interest in the affairs of IU. Soon after graduating from Indiana College (now IU) in 1834, he was placed in charge of the preparatory department and was assisted by M. M. Campbell. He then taught in Madison, Indiana. He returned to the family farm in Kentucky, staying there two years before he began studying medicine and then received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He returned to Morgantown, Indiana, and then to Bloomington, as a physician and surgeon. From 1851 to 1856, he was a member (and president for part of that time) of the IU Board of Trustees.

During the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, McPheeters, age fifty-one, entered the Army as surgeon of the 14th Indiana Volunteers. He advanced to staff duty as medical director in the 33rd Regiment of the Indiana Volunteers under General Beard, and afterwards on the staff of General Whitaker, and after that General James B. Stedman. McPheeters was regarded as one of the most useful and efficient surgeons in the Army. As Charles Blanchard wrote, “having been kept so constantly in charge of hospitals in various parts of the South, his health became impaired, and...he received an honorable discharge for disability.” After his discharge in September 1864, he recovered and resumed his medical practice.

After the war, McPheeters served as a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service and became postmaster for Bloomington and Monroe County in 1869. He died in his own home in April 1888.He was beloved by family and respected by the city he served.

Marriage and Family

During his return to his family farm in Kentucky, McPheeters married Clara Dunn from Bloomington. They saw all seven of their children grown and married. Clara said to a minister upon the death of her sister, Lucinda, in May 1885, “Lovely and pleasant in our lives, in our death, we will not be divided. I will not be far behind.” Clara died eight months later surrounded by all her immediate family members. All seven children and their spouses, plus five grandchildren, assembled once again with their father in McPheeters’ home in January 1887. Theophilus Wylie (Presbyterian minister, college professor, and cousin of IU’s first president, Andrew Wiley) wrote, Joseph was “a kind and affectionate husband and father, a member of the Presbyterian Church, and a public-spirited citizen.”

References

1. Wylie
2. Findagrave.com
3. Indiana American 10/13/1837
4. Bloomington Progress 05/26/1869
5. Blanchard, Charles (1884) Counties of Morgan, Monroe, and Brown, Indiana Historical and Biographical (Chicago: F. A. Battey & Co.)
6. Bloomington Republican Progress 01/26/1887