Surnames: Van Matre, Sayford, Hall, McFarland Compendium of Biography Of Henry County, Indiana B. F. Bowen 1920 CASSIUS E. VAN MATRE, M. D. The medical profession is well represented in Henry County, Indiana, and the city of New Castle is favored with more than the ordinary proportion of truly talented physicians and surgeons usually found in cities of its size, even in much older portions of the world. Among the younger members of the healing fraternity who are noticeable in this community for their professional ability and successful treatment of the ills that afflict mankind will be found the subject of this sketch. Cassius E. Van Matre is a native of Henry County and was born near Middletown, November 13, 1868. His parents were Cyrus and Catherine (Sayford) Van Matre, the former a native of Delaware County, Indiana, and the latter of Roanoke County, Virginia. Cyrus Van Matre, a son of David, a pioneer of Delaware County from Ohio, was reared on a farm, and soon after marriage came from Delaware County to Henry County and established his homestead near Middletown, where he still resides. Catherine Sayford was a daughter of Rev. Samuel Sayford, a Lutheran clergyman who was graduated from Gettysburg Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and came from Virginia to Indiana when his daughter Catherine was nine years of age, and located on a farm in Delaware County, but continued in his vocation of preacher through all his neighborhood. Richwoods church was built on his farm and he, being the pastor, erected it himself, with possibly some little outside financial assistance. He was an eloquent pulpit orator and a devout and earnest laborer in the vineyard of the Lord. Mrs. Catherine (Sayford) Van Matre was called away June 27, 1901, having passed her sixty-second birthday the 13th of the previous February Cassius E. Van Matre passed his boyhood on the home farm and until eighteen years old attended the district school, after which he was a student in Wittenberg College at Springfield, Ohio. He began reading medicine with Dr. W. W. Hall, a well-known physician at Springfield. Ohio, and afterwards took a course at Miami Medical College in Cincinnati, from which he was graduated with the class of 1895, and began practice at New Castle in April of the same year. Since then he has felt no regret at his selection of this city as the field for the exercise of his acknowledged ability as a physician, his patrons being of the better class of citizens and his remuneration quite satisfactory. Dr. Van Matre keeps well abreast of the advanced progress of medical science, to which some new features are yearly added. In this his place is by no means retarded by his association with brother professionals in various organizations. He is a member of the Henry County Medical Society and the National Medical Association, and of the former has been secretary and treasurer for two years. In the meetings of these societies he has heard read many valuable papers, and has, besides, contributed many himself, no less valuable. The marriage of the Doctor took place at Springfield, Ohio, September 16, 1896, to Miss Minnie McFarland, a native of Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio. She was graduated from the high school, from which time she taught until she was married. She is an amiable and accomplished lady and an adept at painting on china, an art that she indulges in only for her home ornamentation. She is a very ardent member of the Presbyterian Church and active in the work of the ‘societies attached thereto; the Doctor is also a member of this congregation and is a liberal contributor of his finances toward its maintenance; no children have yet come to crown this marriage. Dr. Van Matre is a member of the blue lodge, F. & A M., and also of the Improved Order of Red Men. He is passionately fond of good horses and greatly enjoys witnessing a well-conducted race. He is one of the most agreeable of men and his good-natured face and genial conversation add as much to the recovery of a patient as do medicine and nursing.---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------