Military Monday : Dr. William Ogden McDonald

This week's military bio is on Dr. William Ogden McDonald. Aside from marrying my first cousin five times removed, Barbara Helen Hitchcock; and that he was a surgeon in the Civil War very little is known about him. Most of the documentation that I have on him comes from his 26 March 1918 obituary in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. His obituary is below:

W.O. McDONALD DIES;

CIVIL WAR SURGEON

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With Armies of Cumberland and

Potomac in Many Battles. 

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Dr. William Ogden McDonald, a Civil War veteran, and a practicing physician and surgeon in New York City for fifty years, died at his residence, 519 Fifth street, South Brooklyn yesterday, after a short illness. His funeral services will be held private, followed by cremation. Dr. McDonald is survived by his wife, Barbara Helen Hitchcock, who was born in Troy, N.Y., and to whom he was married on January 9, 1870. He is also survived by a brother, Dr. Roderick E. McDonald of Daytona Beach, Fla.

Dr. McDonald was born in Waddington, N.Y., the son of Angus McDonald of Scotland and Ann Case. He was educated in public and private schools, and graduated from the new York Medical College in March, 1855. He practiced in New York City until the breaking out of the Civil War, when he entered the service of the United States on June 10, 1861, as assistant surgeon of the Sixty-first Regiment of New York Volunteers. In January, 1863, he became surgeon of the Twenty-seventh Regiment of Connecticut, ranking as surgeon of United States Volunteers staff. He was in the Army of the Potomac until May, 1863, when he was sent to the Army of the Cumberland, as surgeon of the Second Regiment of Kentucky Cavalry in the Cavalry Corps. He participated in the Peninsular campaign, the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg and "Mud March," Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the operations around Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and in Sherman's march to Atlanta. He went with his command to Resaca, Ga., He was then sent to the Army of the Potomac, with which he took part in the Wilderness campaign, and from that on to Appomattox. During this service he was on duty in the depot field hospital of the Army of the Potomac, and when that was dissolved he became chief medical officer of the Third Division of the Fifth Army Corps, and afterward chief medical officer of the hospital of the Sixth Army Corps.

Dr. McDonald resigned from the Army service on June 10, 1865, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was examining surgeon for pensions in New York City from 1877 to 1884. He practiced medicine in New York City, with the interval of his service in the Army, from March, 1855 to 1905, when he retired from practice. For some twenty years he was in the faculty of the New York Homeopathic Medical College, first as professor of anatomy, and afterward as professor of gynecology.

Dr. McDonald was a member of the American Institute of Homeopathy, the Army and Navy Club of Connecticut, the Society of the Army of the Potomac, the New York Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, and of George Washington Post, G.A.R.