Well equipped by thorough preparatory training, Dr. John Reith entered upon a successful career as a physician and surgeon and is now prominently known as the superintendent of the Walla Walla Sanitarium, the Seventh Day Adventist institution of this city. He was born in Huron county, Ontario, September 10, 1883, a son of John and Jane (Moir) Reith, the former a native of Ontario, while the latter was born in Ireland. The father has devoted his entire life to agricultural pursuits. He removed to British Columbia in 1892 and now resides in Lacombe, Alberta.
Dr. Reith came to Walla Walla, Washington, in 1900. He had attended the schools of British Columbia, where he had accompanied his parents on their removal during his childhood days. He was therefore reared on the western frontier. Becoming imbued with a desire to enter upon a professional career, he became a student in the Walla Walla College, which he attended for six years, and in 1907 he entered the medical department of the University of Oregon at Portland and there won his professional degree as a member of the class of 1911. He afterward served for a year as interne in the Good Samaritan Hospital of that city and while thus engaged gained the broad and valuable experience which can be secured in no other way as rapidly and as accurately as in hospital practice. In March, 1912, he was made superintendent of the Walla Walla Sanitarium, over which he has since presided. He has held to the highest standards in its management and conduct and has made it largely an ideal institution.
On the 14th of August, 1907, Dr. Reith was married to Miss Grace M. Wood, a native daughter of Walla Walla county, her father having been one of the early pioneers of this section of the state. He arrived about 1856, when the Indians were still numerous throughout Washington and when the work of progress and development was scarcely begun. He brought into Walla Walla county the first harvester ever seen here and he was closely associated with many initial movements which have resulted in the upbuilding and benefit of the county. His wife was a singer of considerable note and she was also the first teacher of music in Whitman College; likewise in St. Paul's and in Walla Walla College. She brought into this county the first organ ever within its borders. To Dr. and Mrs. Reith have been born two children, Margaret Isabel and Mabel Elizabeth.
Dr. and Mrs. Reith are members of the Seventh Day Adventist church and guide their lives according to its teachings. The Doctor is a member of the Washington State Medical Society and the American Medical Association and through his connections with those organizations keeps in close touch with the trend of modern scientific thought, research and investigation. He has developed pronounced ability in the line of his profession, is very careful in the diagnosis of his cases and accurate in his judgment. In his hospital work he has developed a splendid institution, one in which the most thorough care is given to patients, and the success which has attended the work secures to it a continued patronage.
MAJOR PAUL H. WEYRAUCH.
Major Paul H. Weyrauch, for many years connected with the United States regular army, a veteran of the Spanish-American war and now major of the Washington Field Artillery in the United States service, is a valued resident of Walla Walla, where his business connection is that of president of the Blalock Fruit & Produce Company. He was born in Barmen, Germany, April 4, 1873, a son of Ernest and Johanna (Piper) Weyrauch. The father died in Germany in 1886 and in 1889 the mother came with her family to the United States, two of her elder sons having preceded her to this country. With her younger children she settled in the state of New York, where she resided to the time of her death, which occurred in January, 1917.
Major Weyrauch was a youth of sixteen years at the time he accompanied his mother to the new world. He was educated in the public schools and in preparatory schools of his native country, and after crossing the Atlantic he worked for his brothers, who were engaged in silk ribbon manufacturing in the Empire state. After spending two years in that way he went to New York city, where for some time, through the financial panic of 1893, he was employed at whatever he could get to do that would yield an honest living. However, he was possessed of a good education and marked enterprise and subsequently secured a position as shipping clerk and bookkeeper in a silk factory at College Point, Long Island. He continued to act in that capacity until 1895, when he entered the service of his adopted country as a member of the regular army. He was first stationed at College Point and while there saw much of the army engineers stationed at Willets Point, about three miles from College Point. He became impressed with this branch of the service, and with the hope of later securing a commission, he joined the service and was assigned to the First Artillery at Davids Island, New York, there remaining for almost two years. He then went with his command to Key West, Florida. While at Davids Island he had endeavored to be transferred to the hospital corps, where there was greater opportunity for advancement, but his commanding officer did not want to let him go and his transfer did not occur until after he had reached Key West. In May, 1897, however, he became a member of the hospital corps and on the night of the blowing up of the Maine, February 15, 1898, he was sent to Havana, Cuba, with Major Paul Clendemin to assist the Maine survivors, being the first enlisted man to be sent to Cuba after the destruction of the battleship. In April, 1898, he was made hospital steward and served as such at Key West Barracks, Florida, at Fort Jefferson on the island of Dry Tortugas, at Washington Barracks in Washington, D. C., at Fort Monroe, Virginia, at Hilton Head, South Carolina, and at Fort Screven on Tybee Island in Georgia, thus continuing until August, 1899, when he was transferred to the Twenty-eighth United States Volunteer Infantry as hospital steward and served with that regiment in San Francisco, California, and in numerous places in the Philippine Islands. He took part in various engagements in the Orient and in February, 1901, he took the examination for a commission, General Pershing, now commanding the American forces in France, being then president of the examining board. Major Weyrauch was commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry to date from February 2, 1901, and was assigned to duty with the Fourteenth Cavalry Regiment, with which he served at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and also in the Philippine Islands, while in December, 1905, he came to Fort Walla Walla with his regiment. While in the Philippines he took part in several campaigns against the Moros under General Leonard Wood.
