Surname Saturday - McCorn of Newfield, NY

On April 25 I posted a wedding announcement for Maggie Weatherell and William A. McCorn of Newfield, NY.  Recently, through my blog, I received additional information from David Marshall on the McCorn family that I would like to share.

Mr. Marshall writes: “I have been doing research on Dr. William Alfred McCorn for a project in which he is a minor character. You might be interested to know that McCorn was born in 1859 in Newfield, New York, and he graduated from Cornell University in 1879 and received his medical degree from the University of Buffalo in 1882. He died prematurely on February 18, 1904 at the age of 45, leaving a wife and daughter. McCorn worked all over the country in what were then called insane asylums, and he lectured and published and translated in the formative years of American psychiatry. Among the institutions with which he was affiliated are the New York City Asylum for the Insane (part of Manhattan State Hospital), the Wisconsin State Prison, the Milwaukee State Hospital for the Insane, the Long Island Home, the River Crest Sanitarium, the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane, and the Elizabeth General Hospital.

I believe that the marriage notice is from about 1879, when McCorn graduated from Cornell and began his medical studies.”

 ***

An interesting aside is that my great-grandmother Katherine Kurtz Nunn was an inmate in the Manhattan State Hospital for 17 years.

Thank you, Mr. Marshall, for sharing this information on the life of Dr. William McCorn.