PHILLIPS COUNTY

Colorado

 

 

 

 

The attached biography came from the book:

 

Cross, Duffey and Ramsay Lines, by Lowell M. Duffey and Marcia P. Peura Published by Lowell M. Duffey 1998.

 

Many thanks to the Ramsay Family for allowing me to place it here and to Terri for obtaining it for me!

 

 

Irving Daniel Ramsay was born near Armour, Douglas County, South Dakota on 15 April 1888.  After living in Kansas and Missouri, His Father had settled on 159 acres in the southwest quarter of Section19, Township98, north of Range 62 and west of the Fifth Principal Meridian in Dakota Territory.

 

At about 4 years of age, he was carried by his parents on a long trek by covered wagon to Waskada, Manitoba, Canada.  From the beginning of his 6 year education at a one-room schoolhouse which was built by his father and a neighbor, Irving was a promising student.  His parents, Daniel and Elizabeth Charlotte (Kelly) Ramsay, sent him to advanced school at Waskada, nine miles distant from their farm. He later attended the regional senior school at Brandon.

 

About 1910 Irving Ramsay was admitted to the Medical School of Mc Gill University at Montreal and after 5 years of study, he was graduated and awarded the M.D.C.M. (Medical Doctor, Master of Chirurgy) degree 23April 1915.

 

While at Mc Gill, Irving became acquainted with a Scot immigrant named Alex Cooper who was a bellhop and ambitious to move to the farmland of western Canada.  Irving helped Alex move to the Ramsay farm at Waskada and shortly thereafter, Daniel Ramsay sponsored the immigration of Dave and Elizabeth Cooper, siblings of Alex, to the Waskada area.  Interesting results of these events was the marriage of Elizabeth Cooper to Edourous Ramsay and Dave Cooper to Irene Ramsay.

 

While at Mc Gill, during his senior year, Irving Ramsay was on the wrestling team and won the 135 pound class championship of eastern Canadian colleges.  After graduation from Mc Gill Dr. Irving Ramsay volunteered in the British Medical Corp as a First Lieutenant and served in World War I on hospital ships at Salonika and the Straits of the Dardenelles.  At the end of the war, he was a Captain of the Royal Army Medical Corp and returned to Canada for a brief visit.

 

From 1920 to 1932 Dr. Irving Daniel Ramsay served the British Government as a specialist in communicable diseases control at Baghdad, Iraq.  He also did advanced study in bone and brain surgery at the Medical School at Vienna and was a guest lecturer in Tropical disease.  He became a linguist, fluent in French, German, Spanish and Arabic besides his native English.  His investments in the London stock market grew to a significant amount.

 

On the occasion of his Birthday in 1929, His Majesty King George V of England approved the award of the Honour of the Order of the British Empire (Civil Division) I.D. Ramsay, B.A., M.D., C.M., Surgeon, at Muntafiq Liwa, Hasiriyah, Iraq. This award, the Order of Knighthood, was Dated 3 June 1929.

 

 Dr. Ramsay’s term of service with the Iraq Health Service ended 30 May 1932 and was followed on the 6th of March 1933 by notification by the British Minister at Vienna that a license had been granted him to wear the Insignia of the Fourth Class of the Order of Al Rafidain which had been granted by the King of Iraq.

 

 

After his service in Iraq ended, Dr. Ramsay returned to America.  He visited his mother and other relatives in Colorado and made plans to settle permanently there.  He took the examination of the Colorado State Board of Medical Examiners and on 28 October 1932 he was notified that he had passed with “one of the finest averages” given by the board for some time.  At this time, he also made plans to purchase the Rose Medical Hospital in Denver.  He attended the 1932 World Olympic Games in Los Angeles, visited in Seattle a nurse he had known during his service in the Middle East.  He and the nurse became engaged to be married.

 

 

In late 1932 he returned to London to conduct business and then went on to Vienna for Study and a lecture series.  His path then took him to Russia, which he crossed by the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok, and to Japan.  Somewhere on these last travels he ate improperly cooked pork and developed trichinosis.  In Osaka Japan, he was hospitalized and treated at St Barnabas Hospital, Dr. Ramsay, despite debilitating fevers helped to diagnose his own illness, advanced trichinosis of the brain.  Knowing this, he returned to his hospital bed and died the next day, 7 June 1933.  He was cremated and his ashes were sent to his mother in Haxtun, Colorado for internment at the family cemetery plot.

 

Plaque attached to his headstone records his many achievements.

 

 

 

       IRVING DANIEL RAMSAY       1888-1933

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Last updated December 2018