DAVID FRAVEL, S/O GEORGE FRAVEL SR AND ELIZABETH BUSHONG --------------------- Part 3 HISTORY OF THE GREAT KANAWHA VALLEY (WEST VIRGINIA) WITH FAMILY HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. A STATEMENT OF ITS NATURAL RESOURCES AND INDUSTRIAL GROWTH AND COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGES. Brant, Fuller & Company 1891 Volume 2 "Edward H. Fravel, M. D., an eminent physician and scholar of Poca, Putnam County, West Virginia is a son of Philip James and Emma Ellen (Koontz) Fravel. he was born 30 March 1855, at Woodstock, Va. His parents are also Virginians, and the father, Philip James Fravel, who is one of the celebrated poets of the day, is the son of David Fravel, of Swiss descent, and has been a merchant of Woodstock for many years. They raised eight children, five sons and two daughters still survive. Edward is the oldest of these. He was reared in Shenandoah County, and attended the common schools and the Academy of Woodstock, until he reached his seventeenth year, when he entered a military academy and remained there for two months, after which he returned home and taught various different schools for several years. After teaching for some time, he took a course at the Hampton and Sydney College, and in 1872, reading medicine with Dr. G. W. Magruder, of Woodstock, now living in Fort Worth, Texas. After remaking with him for five years, Dr. Fravel entered the Jefferson Medical College in 1877, and two years later was graduated. In 1878, he had the honor to be elected a physician on the disease of the eye at the Jefferson Medical College hospital in Philadelphia, and did not begin the practice of his profession as a regular physician until 1880, when he located at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and remained there for two years, in partnership with Dr. Barbee. At the expiration of this time he removed to Poca, and has since built up a large and lucrative practice amounting to several thousand dollars annually. He is president of the Ohio Valley Medical Society of West Virginia and is an honored lecturer each year in the medical society of West Virginia, having already delivered them on the following important subjects: In 1880, The Ophthalmoscope; 1884, Diphtheria; 1885, "A Case of Cerebral embolus; 1886, a Chromatopsia; 1887, Glaucoma; 1888, Anomalies of Refraction; 1888 Fifty Cases of Keratitis; 1889, A Case of Amaloid Degeneration of the Cornea and in 1890, a valuable paper on Five Cases of Pneumonitis. Dr Fravel married Miss Bettie Stewart, 2 May 1882, and they have three children: Mary, Stewart and Philip. Dr. Fravel is an honored member of the Kanawha Medical and Surgical Society, and is a staunch Democrat." ---------------------- Researched, Copied and Submitted by Gloria Bushong