Doctor charged $25 to deliver a baby
Doctor charged $25 to deliver a baby
Written by Karen R. Thompson Thursday, 07 February 2008
In any type of weather, at any time of the day or night, Dr. Charles R. Miller would arrive in his Model T Ford to deliver a baby. Although his fee was only $25, the new parents often said “charge it.” Because many of the residents of Leander and western Williamson County were farmers, doctor’s bills were often unpaid until fall, when the crops came in.
Dr. Miller (1886-1967) arrived in Leander in 1924 and spent 40 years attending to the health needs of the community.
The doctor was a U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant in World War I and afterward attended Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He married Pearl McQueen and soon moved to Leander, where he opened his office in the back of the drugstore next to the bank. Dr. Miller filled his own prescriptions, charging $1 for a penicillin shot.
The doctor and Pearl had four children, all of whom he delivered. Charles was born in 1921, Gertrude in 1923, Rose Marie in 1928 and Douglas in 1933.
The family belonged to the Leander Methodist Church. In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the Methodist Church and the Leander Presbyterian Church were small and alternated Sunday services. One Sunday everyone would attend the Methodist Church and the next Sunday everyone would attend the Presbyterian Church. Dr. Miller was also a member of the Masonic Lodge, and Pearl was an Eastern Star.
The railroad contracted Dr. Miller to provide medical care for workers staying in the section houses, for which the doctor received free railroad passes.
Before Dr. Miller, Dr. William Robert Hazelwood (1870-1939) was the community physician. By 1924, he had moved to Austin, where he was the staff physician at the Austin State School. He and his wife, Susan, along with their sons, Merton and Leonard, are buried in Bagdad Cemetery in Leander.
Another Leander man had a more unorthodox approach to medicine. “Doc” Benjamin T. Crumley was born in Georgia July 22, 1822. There is no evidence that he attended medical school, but he treated people with herbs and a “mad stone.”
The rock was said to have “drawing properties” that could cure rabies and snakebites.
Crumley married Martha Cosby (1837-1873), with whom he had five children: Cicero, Mary, Sanford, Joseph and Smith. After Martha’s death, he moved to Cedar Park and named the area Buttercup after the flower.
For more information on Crumley’s life, visit the archives at www.impactnews.com and click on the October 2006 Leander/Cedar Park paper.
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