Biography of
James S. Templeton, M. D.

p. 874

     JAMES S. TEMPLETON, M. D. The Templeton family has been prominently identified with the best interests of Perry county since the Civil war period and beyond. As ministers of the gospel, medical men, and in the field of business they have ever been in the foremost ranks in the communities with which they have been affiliated, and much of the progress of Perry county is undeniably to be accredited to this staunch old Scotch family.

     Dr. James S. Templeton was born in Perry county, on March 23, 1871. He is the son of Reverend William Templeton, who passed his life in this district as a minister of the gospel, and whose life and work is extensively mentioned elsewhere in the pages of this history. The mother of the Doctor was Margaret Eliza Craig, a daughter of an old and highly respected pioneer of Perry county, John M. Craig of Craig Branch. The home life of James Templeton was blessed by the gracious influences emanating from a noble mother and a worthy father. He was surrounded by an atmosphere of intellect and culture, and his education was carefully conducted in the home as well as in the schools. He finished the public schools and later attended the Southern Illinois Normal University. His first independent effort was put forth as an educator, he himself engaging in country school teaching for four years. The life of an instructor did not especially appeal to the young man, and he determined to enter the medical profession, considering himself better equipped mentally and by his natural inclinations for that than for any other profession. He accordingly entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons of St. Louis, graduating from that institution in 1898.

     The first location of Dr. Templeton was in Cutler, Illinois, where he remained in active practice for five years. He left there to become official physician at the Illinois Penitentiary at Chester, but remained there only one year, believing, as he did, that a private practice would be more advantageous than institution work, and after spending a year in work in the Rush Medical College in Chicago, in post-graduate work and in hospital work in the Cook County Hospital, he came to Pinckneyville in 1905. Since that year he has been permanently located at this place and has conducted a thriving practice since his locating here. Dr. Templeton is identified with the County and State Medical Societies, the Southern Illinois Society, and with the American Medical Association. In his political connections he is a Republican, and has served his party with all efficiency as a member of the Perry County Committee, and he has at various times done duty as a delegate in state and other meetings, but he is by no means a man with what might be called political aspirations. He is a Pythian Knight, an Odd Fellow and a p. 875 Modern Woodman, at the same time being examining physician for these orders. The Doctor is a director of the Pinckneyville Telephone Company, in the promotion of which he was one of the dominant factors, and which he has helped to develop into a system which has sent its branches over much of the county and has connected the rural population of the Pinckneyville community by thirty-one different lines of service.

     On November 30, 1899, Dr. Templeton married Miss Anna Galloway, a daughter of John R. Galloway, a retired farmer of Perry county and a veteran of the Civil war, and concerning whose life and work a brief outline is most fitting at this juncture.

     The Galloways, like the Templetons, are of purest Scotch ancestry. John R. Galloway is the founder of his family in this country. He was born on September 8, 1836, in the town of Salt Wells, Ayrshire, Scotland, and his parents were William Galloway and Jane Robinson, whose people were tile-makers and had been identified with that locality for many generations, and they were the parents of John R., Andrew, James, who immigrated to Australia; Jeannette, who died unmarried; Jane, who married a Scotch lad of her native heath; and Mary, who became the wife of John McGee. But one member of the Galloway family felt constrained to seek the United States. That one was John R. When he was eighteen years of age he embarked for this country on the steamer Calcutta, out of Glasgow, bound for New Orleans. He was seventy-two days at sea, and, the voyage over, he passed ten days in his passage up the Mississippi river to St. Louis. It was Christmas week when he reached the city and soon thereafter he went to his first American home in Randolph county, Illinois. There he engaged in farming and in carpenter work on Hill Prairie, and was making rapid progress is his work there when the rebellion broke out.

     Mr. Galloway demonstrated his true manhood and patriotism, as well as his American citizenship, by promptly enlisting in the defense of the Union, and he became a member of Company I, Twenty-second Illinois Infantry, first with Captain Deatherage and later with Captain S. P. Hood. The regiment was a portion of the command ordered to Bird's Point, Missouri, and pitted against the Confederates at Belmont, one of the first engagements of the war. The command went into camp at Charleston, Missouri, and was subsequently put aboard a transport for Columbus, Kentucky in an endeavor to hold the Confederates in check there while a Union attack was being planned for the forts near Paducah. Their point won by this strategy, the Twenty-second returned to Bird's Point and were sent by boat to Pittsburgh Landing, missing the Shiloh engagement of April 6th and 7th. They were permitted, however, to be participants in the conflicts at Farmington and Rienzi, Mississippi, soon after, and then moved to Cherokee, Alabama, and Nashville, The troops crossed the Tennessee river at Jackson Landing and reinforced General Thomas, who was being pressed there, and after relieving that army went into camp for the winter. The maneuvers of the Confederate army soon brought on the engagement at Stone River, and the Twenty-second Illinois was hurried there to participate in the activities during the last days of 1862. It was about this time that Mr. Galloway was placed on detached duty as a mechanic in the engineering corps under General Norton. The army moved on to Crow Creek and Bridgeport, Alabama, and here Mr. Galloway was detached to aid Lieutenant Froelich, an engineer on the staff of General Rosecrans, and was engaged in erecting defenses for the army more or less all the way to Chattanooga.

     The engineers remained in this vicinity until the army fought its way to Atlanta and returned under Scofield, while General p. 876 Sherman completed the subjugation of the south with his march to the sea. Mr. Galloway helped survey a military road over Lookout Mountain that constituting a part of the several months spent in that historic spot. With the return of the conquering army arrangements were made to discharge many troops whose enlistment was completed, and the Twenty-second Illinois men were soon sent to Springfield for the final performance in their soldier career, the "mustering out." This event took place in July, 1864, and the incident of three years actual warfare was brought to a close for John Galloway. He returned home by way of St. Louis, and at Athens a splendid reception and ball was tendered the returning heroes. Immediately thereafter he returned to Sparta, where he once more took up civilian life as a resident of that place. There Mr. Galloway resumed the business of former years as mechanic and farmer, and incidentally became an enthusiastic Republican, his entire allegiance and devotion going to that party. He voted for Mr. Lincoln in 1860 and for Governor Yates, the war governor. He aided young "Dick" Yates in his contest for governor forty years later, and in every act has maintained his reputation as a staunch party man, although he has never aspired to office himself.

     In 1876 he came to Perry county and settled at Pyatt Station, remaining there while his activity as a farmer endured. He moved to Pinckneyville in 1906, where he and his life companion are now making their home in the evening of their lives in the home of their daughter, Mrs. Templeton. Mr. Galloway married his wife, who was Miss Jane Robinson, of Irish parentage, on March 15, 1866. Mrs. Templeton is their only child. Dr. and Mrs. Templeton have one daughter, Elizabeth J.