This home’s owner was an early doctor of osteopathy

With the cooperation of the Southeast Iowa Union/Mt. Pleasant News, the Mt. Pleasant Historic Preservation Commission will be publishing, every week or two peeks at some of the featured homes in the 1909 book, Mount Pleasant Beautiful.

In the series, the 1909 picture will be contrasted with one of recent vintage. The Commission has been collecting information for the eventual issuance of a new book updating the information on the still standing homes from the 1909 publication.

You can test your knowledge of historic Mt. Pleasant with this column. The identity of the featured home will be published with the next featured home. The last featured home was the Mitchell House, 205 East Broad St.

This week we feature a home built by widow Sarah Hulings between 1898 and 1900. She was about 60 years old at the time of construction and her husband had died a decade or so earlier.

In 1900, she built another home on Walnut Street but enjoyed it only briefly before her passing in 1902.

The lessees of the featured home were Dr. Elmer Westfall and his wife Ella. Westfall was about 34 years old when he came to Mt. Pleasant to practice osteopathy. He was educated at the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri.

The school was founded by Andrew Still who, although a doctor of medicine himself, was profoundly disturbed by the state of medicine based on family experience and his experience as a doctor in the Civil War.

He came up with the term osteopathy for medicine as he believed it should be practiced.

Despite the general skepticism surrounding osteopathy at the time, Westfall quickly was accepted in the Mt. Pleasant community. An item in the Nov. 16, 1898 Mount Pleasant Daily News indicated that many of the city’s elite were well pleased with his treatment.

That his success continued is evidenced by the fact that he continued his practice here for 42 years.

On a larger scale, doctors of osteopathy (D.O.) were not recognized as equals of “M. D.s” until well into the second half of the twentieth century.

In 1903, the Westfalls purchased the home they had been leasing and were the residents at the time of the 1909 publication of Mount Pleasant Beautiful. Westfall lived until 1953, while his wife, Ella, had passed in 1937.

In 1913, Westfall sold the featured home to farmer/horse trader/auctioneer Levi Wenger of Wayland.

Like numerous others we have reported on in this series, they moved to Mt. Pleasant for “the excellent school facilities.”

They had two daughters. In 1920, they sold the home, moving closer to downtown on West Monroe.

Wenger died in 1938. His wife Jessie lived to age 90 and passed away in 1969 in California where both daughters lived.