With Compliments, 
From Dr. Rtjschenbergee, 
1932 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, 
CASPAR WISTER, M.D. A SKETCH 
OF THE LIFE OF 
CASPAR W1STER, M.D. 
BY 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, M.D. 
REPRINTED FROM THE 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF PHILADELPHIA. 
NOVEMBER 5, 1890. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
WM. J. DORNAN, PRINTER 
1891. A SKETCH 
OF THE LIFE OF 
CASPAR WISTER, M.D., 
WITH NOTICES OF HIS ANCESTORS. 
By W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, M.D. 
[Read November 5, 1890.] 
Theories of heredity imply that the foundation of the natural 
characteristics of a man, structural and mental, is laid and gradually 
evolved by his ancestors very many decades before his birth ; and that 
a detailed record of the natural qualities of his lineal predecessors 
might enable an expert in the premises to foretell the general char- 
acter, if not the fortune of the newly-born infant, as satisfactorily at 
least as any forecast made by astrologers of old. In the present state 
of our knowledge of the complex operations of heredity, this suggestion 
is manifestly premature, and not likely to be realized. 
Professor James H. Stoller says, in an essay on Human Heredity, 
“All the qualities of our human nature come to us by inheritance.”1 
And Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes says—Over the Tea cups—“ What he 
is by nature is not determined by himself, but by his parentage.” 
The accuracy of this assumption maybe questioned. Even if exact, 
the inheritance is unequally and irregularly transmitted. Of many 
children of the same parentage, born and reared under the same 
circumstances, all may be of normal stature and intelligence or above ; 
but sometimes one is unaccountably an ingenious dwarf, or an idiot 
physically well developed, or misshaped, “ scarce half made up.” 
Dr. August Weismann says, in his essay on the Duration of Life, 
“We know that long life is hereditary.” And yet all the children of 
1 Popular Science Monthly, July, 1890. 4 
W. S. W. RDSCHENBERGER, 
octogenarian ancestors do not uniformly attain advanced age, although 
all alike live under the same influences. Some of them do not reach 
adult years. 
Notable fecundity, and other natural qualities of ancestors, are not 
always transmitted to their descendants. 
The sons of eminently great fathers are not always endowed in any 
respect above the average of men of their class and time. And very 
frequently the sons of clergymen are neither naturally fitted nor 
inclined to follow their fathers’ examples. The ancestors of distin- 
guished men are often obscure people. For instance, Benjamin Frank- 
lin. His remote origin has been traced to a family of the name, in 
which a farm was owned for three hundred years or more at Ecton, in 
Northamptonshire, sixty-six miles from London. The eldest son regu- 
larly inherited the farm, and was always a blacksmith. All males of 
the family worked at the same or other trades. Josiah Franklin, 
father of the Doctor, about 1685 came to Boston with his wife and 
three children. Lack of custom and profit in his trade of dyer, 
induced him to become a tallow chandler and soap boiler. In 1689, 
when he was thirty-five years old, his wife died, soon after the birth of 
their seventh child. Within a year he married Abiah, youngest 
daughter of Peter Folger, “a learned and godly Englishman.” Dr. 
Franklin was one of their ten children ; and possibly may be indebted 
to the Folger stock for some of his natural endowments,1 mental and 
physical. Be this as it may he far out-measured in every sense his 
uterine fellows. 
On the other hand peculiar qualities so fully characterize members 
of the same family that their kinship is easily recognized. Dramatic 
talent often runs in a family through several generations, but not 
always. And in many instances musical talent in like manner seems 
to be an inheritance. 
Observation shows that criminal classes include numerous squads of 
blood relations, sires and sons. This feature in heredity seems to be 
so clearly determined that it might be accepted as a conclusive reason 
for diminishing the number of criminals in the future, by legally 
requiring that every person, male and female, on admission into a 
prison on a second conviction of crime should be at once ancesthesitized 
and permanently sterilized by the surgeon of the institution, as the 
1 Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, by James Parton: Mason Brothers, New 
York, 1864. SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
5 
initiatory, radical means of their reformation. Such an economic 
application of a doctrine of heredity might be opposed by those who 
do not believe in it, as well as by those whose clemency for criminals 
makes them forgetful of the welfare of honest people. 
Besides virtues and vices, according to both popular and medical 
opinion, diseases are inherited. Insanity, gout, drunkenness, tubercu- 
losis run in families from parents to children. The inheritance of 
tuberculosis may be now considered questionable by some since hosts 
of observations, it is asserted, demonstrate that tuberculosis is a specific 
infectious disease, caused alone by the bacillus tuberculosis. But in 
spite of the earnest, ceaseless and praiseworthy labors of Dr. Koch 
and many others during several years, to ascertain the origin and 
habits of this bacillus with a view to discover means for its destruction, 
it still carries on its ravages with impunity; and notwithstanding the 
indictment found against it by most astute detectives, the mortality 
from tuberculosis remains unchanged. 
The many problems of heredity remain to be solved. Mr. Francis 
Dalton, who has studied the subject during the past quarter of a cen- 
tury and published several essays and books about it, says, in his last 
work, that “no complete theory of inheritance has yet been propounded 
that meets with general acceptance.”1 
And Dr. August Weismann says, “ I am unable to indicate the 
molecular and chemical properties of the cell upon which the duration 
of its powrer of reproduction depends; to ask this is to demand an ex- 
planation of the nature of heredity—a problem the solution of which 
may still occupy many generations of scientists. At present we can 
hardly venture to propose any explanation of the nature of heredity.”2 
And recently it has been asserted, that we of the present generation 
are wrong to be unconcerned for the physical and mental qualities, 
not only of the next but of all generations in the remotest future. 
Heredity and evolution, in obedience to the will of the omniscient 
Creator, have wrought alone from the beginning, to increase, raise the 
physical and mental powers of the human race from the lowest level 
to the highest degree of excellence; but now, the cooperative assistance 
1 Natural Inheritance, by Francis Galton, etc.: Macmillan & Co., London and New 
York, 1889, 8vo., pp. 259. 
2 Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, by Dr. August Weis- 
mann, Professor in the University of Freiburg in Breisgau. Authorized Translation 
edited by Edward B. Poulton, M.A , etc., Selmar Schonland, Ph.D., etc., and Arthur 
E. Shipley, M.A., etc., 8vo., pp. 455. Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1889. 6 
W. S. W. RUSCHEXBERQER, 
of all men of to-day is needed to prevent the rate of progress from 
being lessened. Over-work of all kinds, and many other excesses are 
impairing our vigor, and for this reason it is a duty to secure for our- 
selves, by appropriate hygienic means, the highest degree of physical 
and mental force attainable for the benevolent object of transmitting 
the same to our posterity. 
Accepting an assumption that the characteristics of man may have 
come to him through the functions of reproductive cells in the bodies 
of remote ancestors, this sketch of the life of Dr. Caspar Wister begins 
with brief notices of his great-great-grandparents and their lineal 
offspring. 
The family names, Wister and Wistar, have been traced back about 
two centuries. 
The Great-Great Grandfather of the Wisters. 
Hans Caspar Wiister, and his wife, Anna Katarina, resided at 
Hilsbach, a village seventeen miles S.S.E. from Heidelberg, in the 
Duchy of Baden. He was Jager, that is, Hunter or gamekeeper of 
the prince Palatine—a prince entitled to privileges in the palace. 
The Rector of the Lutheran church at Hilsbach has in his keeping 
a book in which are recorded the baptisms of the parish, from 1699. 
The register used in the church for the purpose prior to that date had 
been accidentally consumed by fire. This one contains the names of 
five of their six children, with the date of birth of each. The name 
of Caspar, the oldest, is not in it, because he was born February 3, 
1696, before the Rector’s old church book was opened for entries. 
Though not recorded, it seems fairly supposable that Hans Caspar 
and his wife knew who were their parents, grand parents, and great 
grand parents, though comparatively obscure people, and for this 
reason it may be admitted that knowledge of the family existed as far 
back at least as the middle of the seventeenth century. Unfortu- 
nately, the individual characteristics of Hans Caspar and his ancestors 
have not been recorded. 
Theories of evolution and heredity suggest that all pedigrees started 
alike and at the same time with the beginning of the human race, 
and that, under natural law, their growth and duration were the same. 
In this condition of perfect equality in this respect, every one knew that 
he had forefathers as a matter of course, and did not appraise himself 
more highly than his neighbors on that account. In the course of SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
7 
time, however, views changed and men were pleased to believe they 
were better for the virtues of parents. Then it came to be conven- 
tionally agreed that a pedigree worthy of mention must be traceable 
through a line of ancestors, each being named with his relative posi- 
tion and connection in the line clearly designated. Therefore, the 
value of a pedigree is commensurate with the length of the period 
during which it can be traced. 
As early as 1683, William Penn invited Mennonites in Holland, 
Germany, and elsewhere to settle in the new country, and offered to 
sell them land in his province. Numbers accepted the invitation, 
and, to escape persecutions they suffered from religious intolerance at 
home, became valuable citizens of the English colonies. Among the 
early Mennonite settlers in Germantown were many weavers. The 
Friends and the Mennonites were peaceable neighbors; both sects con- 
scientiously believing that war and bearing arms under any circum- 
stances are repugnant to their sense of religious duty. 
These immigrants no doubt reported to their kinsmen and friends 
in Europe the advantages of living in America in a manner to induce 
many to follow them. 
Caspar, the eldest son of Hans Caspar, dissatisfied with the aspect 
of the probable opportunities to increase his means of livelihood in 
Germany, started, as soon his age authorized him legally to act 
independently of his father, to seek better chances of happiness and 
fortune in the new world. He arrived in Philadelphia September 16, 
1717. His Jiiger rifle, which he brought with him, is still an heirloom 
in the family. 
When Caspar Wiister settled in Philadelphia the inhabitants were 
subjects of George I., King of England, and were English in their 
modes of thinking, their political affiliations and language. Accord- 
ing to a family tradition his name was anglicized by his American 
associates. As he spelled it aloud as he had done in his native land, 
they substituted in place of the German u, marked by an umlaut, the 
English i, which letter in sound was supposed to approximate nearest 
to his pronunciation of it; and for like reason, the German e was 
superseded by the English broad a, and so they wrote his name Caspar 
Wistar; and concordantly he signed his oath of allegiance to King 
George I., in 1721. 
In the first years of his residence in Philadelphia he carried on the 
business of button-maker, and was successful. The Colonial Assembly 
enacted a law “ for the better enabling Caspar Wistar and John 8 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBEEGEE, 
Crapo, merchants, and Nicolay Gateau to trade and hold lands in the 
Province.” Hd and other born subjects of the Emperor of Germany 
had petitioned for such legislation, April 27, 1724. The Weekly 
Mercury, in 1726, recorded him among “the principal merchants of 
the city.” 
He purchased land where North Broad Street and the Ridge Avenue 
are now; .some of it is still owned by his descendants. 
In 1726 he married Katherine Johnson of Germantown. His son 
Richard, born in 1727, the eldest of his seven children, married in 
1751, Sarah, daughter of Bartholomew Wyatt, of Mannington town- 
ship, Salem County, N. J. He bought between two and three thou- 
sand acres of land in that county, and established, about a mile and a 
half from Allowaystown, a glass factory, said to be the first in this 
country. The immediate management of it was confided to a super- 
intendent, for the reason that he resided in Philadelphia. 
He had eight children. One of them was Dr. Caspar Wistar, the 
eminent professor of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, and 
the fourth President of the American Philosophical Society—from 
January, 1815, to January, 1818.1 
As soon as his observation and experience had satisfied him that 
Philadelphia afforded better opportunities than Hilsbach for a young 
man to seek a fortune, Caspar advised his younger brother John to 
settle here without delay. John, however, declined the invitation, 
because he was not willing to leave Germany while his father was 
living. 
Not very long after the death of Hans Caspar Wiister, January 
13, 1726, and about the time that George II. became King of Eng- 
land, June 11, 1727, he left Hilsbach, and, at the end of a four 
months’ voyage, landed in Philadelphia, September, 1727, in the 
nineteeth year of his age. He was born November 7, 1708. 
These two brothers, who were the founders of the Wistar and 
Wister families of Philadelphia and New Jersey, probably had no 
more education and training at home than were usually given to 
hunters and gamekeepers in Germany at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century. 
1 History of the Counties of Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland, Hew Jersey, with 
Biographical Sketches of their Prominent Citizens. By Thomas Cushing, M.D., and 
Charles E. Sheppard, Esq. Quarto, pp. 728. Everts <fc Peck: Philadelphia, 1883. SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
9 
The Great-Grandfather of the Wisters. 
Besides robust health, good sense, a cheerful disposition, honest and 
industrious ways, John brought with him little, if any, capital. He 
soon found employment. 
He was so prosperous that he was able in 1731, to purchase an 
extensive plot of ground on the north side of Market Street; between 
Third and Fourth Streets. It was overgrown with blackberries. 
These he converted into wine, and sold it so well that he was induced 
to become a wine merchant, at first on a small scale; imported wines 
from Germany, and prospered in the trade. Subsequently, however, 
he dealt exclusively in drygoods. 
He attended closely to business, was thrifty and invested his savings 
preferably in real estate. He built a store and dwelling on his Market 
Street property; bought land in Germantown, part of which is still 
known as Wister’s woods, and a tract on the main street, upon which 
he constructed, in 1744, a fine large house for his family residence in 
summer. 
The Market Street house, now No. 325, was one of the first in the 
city in which Dr. Benjamin Franklin (who was among the acquaint- 
ances of John Wister as well as of all good citizens of the time), about 
the year 1753, erected a lightning rod—a hexagonal iron rod—still in 
possession of the family—which was so connected with a bell that it 
rang whenever the atmosphere was locally surcharged with electricity. 
The ringing of the bell annoyed Mrs. Wister, who entertained a notion, 
then not uncommon, that a lightning rod was in some manner sinful; 
—“an impious attempt to ‘control the artillery of Heaven,’”1—and at 
her instigation was after a time removed. 
Simple in his manners and tastes, John Wister gave his leisure to 
books; was benevolent, disposed to be religious. He sent money to 
relatives in Germany; for a time, he had bread baked in his kitchen 
to be distributed on Saturdays to destitute applicants for it at his door; 
and, in 1760, he contributed his quota towards founding the German- 
town academy. 
He married, February 1731, Salome Zimmerman of Lancaster 
County, Pa., who died at the end of five years. Of their four children 
only one, named Salome, reached adult age. 
1 See, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. By James Parton. New York, 1864, 
vol. i., p. 294. 10 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBEB6EK, 
Anna Catherina Rubenkam of Wanfried, Germany, became his 
second wife, November 10, 1737, and lived till May 17, 1770. Three 
of their five children attained mature age. 
His third wife, a Moravian nun of Ephrata, was without issue. 
While a British army occupied Philadelphia he v7rote to his grand- 
daughters, Sally and Betsy, then at Gwynedd, July 6, 1777, “I am 
not at liberty to visit you because I cannot take the ‘ Test,’ and I am 
afraid to venture for fear of being arrested and committed to jail. I 
intend therefore staying at home. 
“ Do not be ashamed to learn to do any country work; if you do not 
want to do it hereafter you can always let it alone. There is no shame 
in learning to do anything that is useful.” 
Again, December 22, 1777, he wrote, * * “I cannot at present 
send you anything, for the merchants will not sell their goods but for 
hard money; and hard money I have but little of * * * We 
cannot buy provisions for old or for Congress money here in town. 
“ But, my dear children, if the Lord grants me health till next 
spring, I then intend to buy cloth and other necessary things for you 
all. I then hope that old money will pass again. 
“ They have quartered a Cornet and his wife, and a white man and 
a negro, besides three horses and a cow upon me. 
“They have taken the three best rooms in my house, and I must 
now live in the back building. It most kills me to be so ill-treated in 
my old age, that I must give up my own bedchamber, which I have 
occupied nearly thirty years to a stranger. I have very little rest, day 
or night besides.” 
Nevertheless, he survived these annoyances several years. 
His last illness of six days, during which his faculties were unim- 
paired, was passed without a murmur. He died, January 31, 1789, in 
the eighty-first year of his age. His remains were buried in the 
Friends’ cemetery, at Arch and Fourth streets. 
He bequeathed his estate to his children. 
It is conjectured that John Wister opportunely trained his sons 
Daniel and William, as well as his grandson John, to the dry-goods 
trade, and at the proper time admitted each to a share in it. As the 
sons were partners in the firm at the time of their father’s death, they 
jointly continued the business. 
William Wister, who was born March 29, 174fi, died unmarried in 
1800, in the 54th year of his age. It is stated as evidence of his good 
standing in the community that the Provincial Assembly appointed SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
11 
him with his kinsmen Owen Jones, Jr., and Col. Samuel Miles, to 
endorse the paper currency of the time. 
The Grandfather of the Wisters. 
Daniel Wister, son of John and his second wife Anna Catharine, 
both of German birth and parentage, was born at No. 141—now 325— 
Market Street, Philadelphia, February 4, 1739. 
He was educated in the Moravian College at Ephrata, Pa. His 
classical attainments were good. Besides German, he understood other 
modern languages. 
His temperament was kindly and cheerful; his natural disposition 
genial, social, a bon vivant; and he possessed so much of the sports- 
man’s spirit as to be interested in owning horses, dogs and cats. He 
had many caged birds in his house. At times their singing was so 
noisy and discordant that it was usual to silence the birds by covering 
their cages to enable persons at meals to hear each other talk. 
Like his father he was successful in business. 
He married, May 5, 1760, Lowry, a daughter of Owen Jones, (who 
was Colonial Treasurer), and his wife Susannah, of St. Mary’s and 
Wynnewood, Lower Merion, Pa., and so crossed his German with a 
good Welsh breed of the Society of Friends, They had nine children, 
namely Sarah, Elizabeth, John, Hannah, Susan, John, William, 
Charles Jones and William Wynne. Some of them died in infancy. 
In Sept. 1777, he moved his family to Gwynedd, North Wales, Pa. 
where his daughter Sarah, then a sprightly girl of fifteen, commonly 
called Sally Wister, kept a diary addressed to her friend Deborah 
Norris, beginning Sept. 25, 1777, and ending June 20, 1778. This 
interesting journal, kept during an exciting period of the Revolution, 
has been published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and 
Biography. She as well as all of his descendants, with rare exceptions 
were endowed with a poetic vein and wrote rhyming letters; and some 
of them had a taste and capacity for music. 
Daniel Wister died Oct. 27,1805 in the sixty-seventh year of his age. 
During the last few days of his life he was mentally astray and talked 
only in Latin. 
The Father op Dr. Caspar Wister. 
Charles Jones, the eighth child of Daniel and Lowry Wister, was 
born, April 12, 1782, at the Market Street home; and died July 23, 
1865, in the 84th year of his age. 12 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, 
In virtue of his birthright in the Society, derived from his mother, 
at the age of nine years he entered a school established, at the time, 
on Fourth Street south of Chestnut Street, by members of the Society 
of Friends. English, mathematics and the classics were taught in the 
school. He studied French under Monsieur N. G. Dufief, author of 
Nature Displayed, etc., a prominent teacher in his day, and German 
under Herr Giese. In the summer time he attended the Germantown 
Academy. He was a merry, mischievous boy, and wrote verses at the 
age of twelve. 
In 1799, in his seventeenth year, he was apprenticed to his uncle 
William to learn the ways of the dry goods trade. 
It was a duty of the apprentice to go at least once a year on horse- 
back to places in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to collect 
debts to the firm. As payments were made in coin which was carried 
in his saddle-bags, during those journeys he was not always free from 
apprehension of highwaymen. 
While travelling on those collecting tours his sisters, Sally and 
Betsy, occasionally cheered him with rhyming epistles, sometimes 
jocularly alluding to his scientific and literary tastes. 
For instance, Sally wrote : 
“ From coatings, cloths and bombazines, 
Modes, ribbons, chintzes and moreens, 
Say, does not oft thy fancy rove ? 
Or, when in packing box thou’rt placed 
With all mercantile powers graced ; 
Surrounded half way to thy neck, 
With callimancos, muslin, check, 
Say, is thy active roving mind 
Chained to the spot where thou’rt confined ? 
Or does it wander, day by day, 
To chemistry or algebra ? 
Say, does the microscopic wonder 
Keep merchandizing tumults under? 
Or, does the bright electric fire 
Bid all inferior thoughts retire?” 
Again, his sister Elizabeth, commonly called Betsy, who often con- 
tributed stanzas to the Portfolio, wrote to him, with other lines : SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
13 
“ While fancy paints and wishes roam 
We strive to fix content at home ; 
Yet wishes warm and fancies free 
Are wafted from our hearts to thee. 
Oft times, a social hour we spend 
In converse with a favorite friend. 
We talk of women, books, and men 
But not a word of oxygen. 
No chemical discussion passes— 
The alkalies and all the gasses, 
Till thy return, are laid aside. 
Yet then, I trust, we shall compare— 
With sage experience for our guide— 
The different properties of air, 
Whether ’tis best, at home abiding 
When chilling northern blasts prevail, 
Or, over hills and mountains riding, 
To catch fair Nature’s purest gale— 
“ My vein of rhyme is exhausted. When I write again, it will, I 
trust, be at full tide.” 
Mr. Charles J. Wister, in 1801-2, attended a course of lectures on 
chemistry by Professor James Woodhouse in the University of Penn- 
sylvania, then on Fourth Street, south of Arch Street, not far from 
his own residence. Influenced by a notion that he might adopt medi- 
cine as his profession, he at the same time attended some of the ana- 
tomical lectures of his kinsman, Dr. Caspar Wistar. 
Immediately after the close of the chemical course he arranged to 
continue his study of the subject experimentally with Dr. Adam 
Seibert, a German apothecary and chemist, recently established in his 
neighborhood. The doctor, who was also a mineralogist, had brought 
with him from Germany a cabinet of European minerals, the first 
imported to this country.1 
Perceiving how useful and convenient such a cabinet, for reference, 
must be to the student, Mr. Wister at once began to form a similar 
collection for himself; and in the course of a few years made it in 
quality and interest second only to Seibert’s. He had gathered from 
1 Dr. Adam Seibert’s cabinet of minerals was bequeathed by his son Henry to the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 14 
W. S. W. RUSCH ENBERGER, 
their natural positions specimens of all minerals he could find within 
thirty miles of the city, and had become a working mineralogist. In 
this connection it seems proper to mention that in 1814 he attended a 
course of lectures on mineralogy delivered in Philadelphia by Pro- 
fessor Parker Oleaveland, of Bowdoin College, and was ever after- 
wards his friend and correspondent. In the second edition of his 
Treatise on Mineralogy, 1822, Professor Cleaveland cites him as 
authority for the localities of many minerals. 
In 1803, about the beginning of the twenty-first year of his age, he 
succeeded his uncle in business under the firm name of John and 
Charles J. Wister. 
The Friends informed him, November 25, 1803, substantially that 
he had forfeited his birthright in their meeting, because he had paid 
a State militia fine. 
He married, December 15,1803, Rebecca, a daughter of Joseph and 
Esther Bullock. She died September 20, 1812, leaving him four 
children. Two of them are still living. 
His mother, Lowry Wister, died February 15, and his sister Sally 
April 28, 1804. 
In a newspaper notice of these two ladies Dr. Benjamin Rush, who 
was at the time the family physician, said : “ Few families have ever 
furnished two such shining examples of prudence, piety and eminent 
acquirements.” 
In 1812, in the early summer, Mr. Wister moved to the Germantown 
homestead, which his uncle William had bequeathed to him, and con- 
tinuously resided in it ever after. 
He married, December 4, 1817, Sarah, a daughter of John and 
Sarah Whitesides, by whom he had three sons and three daughters. 
She died in her seventy-first year May 31, 1869. 
In 1819, he and his brother John retired from business ; and both 
were permanently settled in Germantown. 
At that period and for several years after the Germantown and 
Norristown Railroad was opened, 1831, Germantown was a suburban 
village, mostly built along the main street in the midst of farms on 
either side of it. The Wister homestead had connected with it a large 
garden of fruits and flowers, a barn and farm of many acres under 
cultivation. To his many occupations the proprietor added, in 1824, 
the care of bees and in time became a noted bee-master.1 Besides 
1 See, American Quarterly Review, June, 1828. Carey, Lea & Carey, Philadelphia. SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
15 
horticulture, bee culture and agriculture, in which he was much in- 
terested, he had other pursuits. 
From May 7, 1810, he was a trustee of the Germantown Academy, 
Secretary of the board from May 3,1813, till 1842 when he resigned, 
having been active in all its affairs during thirty-two years. 
He delivered a course of lectures on mineralogy and geology in the 
winter of 1820-21 ; and a course of lectures on chemistry in the 
winter of 1821-22, free to the pupils of the Academy but others were 
charged a small fee for the course. The net proceeds of both courses 
were spent in the purchase of globes, maps, etc., etc., for the Academy. 
He was a director of the Bank of Germantown, during fifty years 
from its foundation 1814, till his death, and Secretary of the board 
thirteen years, till Nov. 18, 1827. He was also for many years a 
manager of the Perkiomen Turnpike Company. 
Yet, his serious occupation was the study of botany, mineralogy, 
mechanics, astronomy. 
He was chosen a member of the American Philosophical Society Jan. 
1811; and the Academy of Natural Sciences elected him a corre- 
spondent in 1814. 
His familiarity with plants indigenous to the city region and country 
surrounding it brought him into pleasant intercourse and correspond- 
ence with prominent American botanists. They were pleased to con- 
sult his herbarium and visit his garden. 
At the back part of his dwelling he constructed, 1819, a workshop 
which was in time furnished with turners’, clockmakers’, carpenters’, 
engravers’, blacksmiths’, tinsmiths’ tools and implements which he 
skilfully used. In this shop he spent much of his time, especially in 
bad weather. He turned tops for the boys preferable to any they 
could buy ; mended his neighbors’ clocks, made mechanical puzzles, 
etc., etc. He delighted in clocks, possessed many, no two exactly 
alike, and found pleasure in keeping them so regulated that they 
harmoniously struck the hours. 
Mr. Isaiah Lukens, a well known clock maker, machinist and 
mineralogist, who was an intimate friend, passed many an hour with 
him in the workshop; and sometimes Mr. Joseph Saxton—notable for 
his sensitive modesty—also an intimate, joined them. He was an 
eminently ingenious mechanic, who had devised and constructed im- 
proved machinery for the U. S. Mint in Philadelphia. He invented 
an automatic ruling machine for accurately engraving coins and 
medals of all kinds; and for many years up to the close of his life, 16 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, 
he had charge of the standards of the weights and measures of the 
United States in Washington. 
Mr. Wister’s interest in clocks and their regulation rendered the pos- 
session of means to ascertain time accurately very desirable. Accept- 
ing the suggestion of his friend he built an observatory in 1835; and 
Mr. Lukens constructed and set up in it an astronomical clock and 
transit instrument. 
They observed a transit of Mercury in 1845, and reported their 
work to the American Philosophical Society.1 
To what degree, if any, his home surroundings had a formative 
influence on the character of Dr. Caspar Wister is uncertain, purely 
conjectural. 
Dr. Caspar Wister. 
Caspar Wister, the first child of Charles J. Wister and his second 
wife, was born Sept. 15, 1818, in the Germantown homestead. 
At an early age he was sent to a day-school kept by Miss Hooker. 
In 1828 he entered the Germantown Academy and remained in it five 
or six years. 
Germantown was still a village. The deportment and ways of 
many of the boys while out of school were not satisfactory. Caspar 
had never been much restrained at home; was somewhat insubordi- 
nate, irascible, self-willed ; and was probably a popular leader in mis- 
chievous pranks among his playmates. 
He was in his sixteenth year when it was determined to remove him 
entirely from the influence of this connection. His father, accom- 
panied by his mother, took him in his carriage to West Chester, and 
entered him there, June 4,1834, in the Institute for Young Gentlemen, 
a boarding school, the proprietor of which, Mr. A. Bolmar, managed 
his pupils so judiciously that they properly observed the rules of his 
establishment, and the most wayward boys soon became amenable to 
discipline. 
The correspondence between Caspar and his family portrays the 
prominent features of the boy’s character, as well as the affectionate 
nature of the inmates of his happy home. It suggests that every thing 
there was redolent of harmony, the special interests of one being the 
common interest of all. While out of school each of the juveniles had 
1 Labour of a Long Life; A Memoir of Charles J. “Wister. By C. J. W., Jr. 2 vols. 
8vo., pp. 200-210. Germantown, 1866. This memoir, printed for private circulation 
only, is the authority for many facts and dates. SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
17 
his petty occupation. A flower patch in the garden, with pet chickens, 
or pigeons, or canaries, or cat or dog were cared for; and the swarming 
of bees was a notable event. In the evening all gathered around a 
table in the sitting-room, the ladies with their sewing and the boys 
with their lessons ; and, when the sky was clear, they were out o’ doors 
observing the stars under their father’s instruction. 
Those letters, commonplace as they are, bring quite pleasantly into 
view the varied surroundings—supposed to exert a formative influence 
on character—amidst which he grew from boyhood to full maturity; 
but little more than allusion to them can be made. 
The day after returning to Germantown, June 6, his mother wrote 
to him about the homeward journey by way of the Yellow Springs and 
Norristown, where they lodged, and at the close of her letter, said;— 
“ I hope you are pleased with your school,” etc. 
His sister Mary wrote to him June 9:—“ We miss you very much 
although you were such a plague, etc.and his father, June 11, sub- 
stantially that all his boyish faults had passed from his memory. 
In his first letter from West Chester, which is without date but post- 
marked June 13, Caspar addressed his father and mother jointly, and 
said;—“I received your letter on Sunday last and was very glad to 
get it. * * * Tell Mary I received her letter this morning and 
was much pleased with it. * * * I have a bed to myself, but there 
are six of us in a room. They keep as good a table as we have at 
home. * * * On Saturday afternoon we all went into the woods. 
We get up at five o’clock every morning which makes the day so long 
that it seems as long as a week did at home. * * * We have four 
teachers * * A cloudy day makes me so homesick I can hardly 
talk. This is a great place for birds in the morning from five till about 
eight o’clock. The robins are singing all around us, and sitting all 
around on the fences and tops of the trees and chimnies. Give my 
love to all and write often. I remain your affectionate son, 
“ Caspar Edmond Wister.” 
At the time he was named some proposed to call him simply Edwin 
and others, Caspar. After fairly considering the subject, it was agreed 
by those interested that his name should be as he signed his letter. 
But a few years afterwards Caspar himself dropped Edmond. 
In a letter, June 27, it is stated in substance that a cousin in the 
sophmore class told his father it was wrong to send him to a boarding- 
school—that he ought to have gone to the University, because there 
the boys need not study unless they please. 18 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, 
Caspar wrote July 18;—“ I have been in West Chester more than a 
month and it becomes more natural to me. We had no school on the 
Fourth, and we went morning and evening to the Court House and 
heard the Declaration of Independence read and several orations 
delivered by some of the young lawyers of the place. In the morning 
it was read by a little boy not as big as Owen * * * * On Sat- 
urday we went out the Strausburg road to the Brandywine to swim. 
It is a beautiful place and we had a very pleasant time. I found some 
flowers that I dont think you will know. I have tried to dry them to 
take home with me * * * I have seen but one stand of bees since 
I have been here. It consisted of about eight hives in the old German 
style of boxes. I have discovered a great difference between my letters 
and those of the other boys. Theirs contain five dollar notes, and there 
are none in mine, which is a great difference. I want to buy a small 
box to put minerals and such things in and keep in my trunk * * * 
N. B. remember, five dollars.” 
Caspar was at home during the August vacation. 
He wrote to his father and mother Sept. 24 ;—“ I arrived here safe 
after a very pleasant ride on the Columbia rail road, at about half 
after six o’clock. Mr. Bolmar did not expect that I would return. 
* * * I have been attending a course of lectures on astronomy. 
* * * I wish you would get my Grceca Minora of Will.” 
A request often repeated to date his letters provoked Caspar to 
write, “ Letter begun Oct. 25, and finished Nov. 8, half past ten in the 
morning.” He was dissatisfied with the school fare. “ Bolmar gave 
us for dinner the other day pies made of green tomatoes served and 
sweetened the same as apple pies. They were the worst things I ever 
tasted. * * * Received the Grceca Minora safe and sound, 
Saturday in October. * * * No Christmas presents this year. 
We rise before the sun every morning and breakfast at 7. The rest 
of the day is passed [as] formerly.” 
In a letter, Dec. 8, 1834, his father gave a detailed account of an 
eclipse of the sun, observed Nov. 30, by himself, Lukens and Charley. 
Caspar had passed the Christmas holidays at home. He wrote to 
his father and mother, Jan. 15,1835 ;—“ I am once more in this horrid 
place, now doubly so since seeing you. From the day of my arrival 
till about three days ago I have been terribly home sick, but am now 
nearly well. * * * All here is very different from home, espe- 
cially the eating. It is worse than you have any idea of, especially 
the bread and butter.” SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
19 
Caspar wrote Feb. 13, that he had received a long looked for letter 
—that except from his father and Mary he had not received a letter 
from any member of the family since his return, more than a month— 
that he had attended lectures on phrenology, and witnessed interesting 
experiments in natural philosophy and chemistry. 
“ And now, my dear father, I want to consult you about my studies. 
I think when I have finished Grceca Minora to give up the study of the 
Greek language and in place of it to attend closely to mathematics 
and Euclid,” etc. etc. 
In a letter to his mother, March 7, Caspar said;—“ I now pro- 
ceed to answer some of your questions. I have not touched a card in 
play since I have returned, and have thought of the five-dollar note 
you spoke of if I would give up the same. It would come very 
a propos at present, as I have but one cent and a half” 
His father wrote to him, March 22, substantially that he had received 
a letter from Mr. Bolmar the other day enclosing his bill, and was 
greatly rejoiced to hear from him that he had conducted himself with 
much greater propriety than heretofore, and that, as a small return 
for Mr. Bolmar’s report about card-playing, he enclosed a bank note, 
which he did not doubt would make this letter the most agreeable he 
had received. 
Caspar replied March 28, 1835. 
“ I received your very interesting letter last week, and I assure you 
it was the most interesting that I have ever received since I have been 
in West Chester. I do not care how many such letters you send me. 
They will always be agreeable. You cannot think how proud I felt 
when I got it for the first time in my pocket.” 
July 5, 1835, his father wrote to him in substance that Bolmar said 
that he learned something, but was too fond of promiscuous reading. 
Caspar wrote August 13, 1835:— 
“ It has been a very long time since I have written to you, but I 
have been prevented by my accident, which kept me in bed three 
weeks.” He relates that while playing ball in the yard he fell upon a 
piece of a porter bottle, and received a wound on the back of his 
thigh, an inch and a half deep and two and a half inches long. 
“ I dont know why Charles should want to go to boarding school. 
He had better go to the House of Refuge I can tell him. If ever he 
goes he will soon wish to be at home,” etc. 
Probably Caspar spent the Christmas vacation of 1835, at home and 20 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGE R, 
did not return to West Chester. In order to qualify himself to be a 
land surveyor, a vocation which he had chosen for himself, he early 
in the year 1836, entered a boarding school, of which the Rev. S. 
Aaron was principal, at Burlington, N. J. His time there passed 
pleasantly. 
In a letter to his father and mother May 23, 1836 he says;—“Tell 
Charley; last night I swam the Delaware and was not more than 
twenty minutes in reaching the Pennsylvania shore.” 
He addressed them again August 21st. 
“There are so very few occurrences taking place in Burlington 
worthy of being committed to paper that, when the postage of my letter 
is considered, the value of these incidents is so very much below that 
of sixpence, that I cannot write often through motives of economy. 
* * * I go a boating very often indeed. I never yet found any 
thing so pleasant as rocking in a boat out in the river about sunset, 
just when the moon begins to silver the water, and the- blue hills of 
Pennsylvania to grow indistinct in the distance. I sometimes go over 
to Bristol of a Saturday afternoon and lounge about, and see the people 
and the coal come down the Pennsylvania canal, or the Hew York 
passengers on the Trenton Railroad. * * * * I shouldered the 
chain the other afternoon and went out with Mr. Aaron to survey one 
of the curves on the railroad.” 
His school days ended, Caspar resumed his residence at home, about 
the close of 1836, prepared to serve the public as a land surveyor. 
Two years were passed, trying to obtain profitable employment in his 
profession, but with little encouragement. 
December 4, 1838 the Legislature of Pennsylvania assembled at 
Harrisburg. The genuineness of certain election credentials from some 
districts was questioned, their legality disputed. Two Houses of Rep- 
resentatives were formed. Each claimed that it alone was lawfully 
constituted. The Senate refused to recognize either. A mob of three 
or four hundred Democrats, sent for the purpose, it was asserted, had 
possession of the Capitol. Their turbulence was so alarming that a 
Senator escaped through a window of the Senate chamber. 
The turmoil became so great that Governor Ritner, apprehensive of 
bloodshed, proclaimed the existence of rebellion, and required General 
Robert Patterson who commanded the first division of volunteer 
militia of the State to furnish troops to keep the peace. 
Twelve hundred men under command of the General arrived at SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
21 
Harrisburg from Philadelphia Dec. 8, by the Columbia Rail Road, 
and were detained till the 25th.1 
Caspar Wister joined a regiment, of which his townsman and friend 
Dr. Thomas F. Betton was surgeon, as his assistant. It is evident that 
professional examination did not precede appointment in this case. 
Nevertheless, he received the pay of an assistant surgeon while 
employed. 
Up to that time he was the first of his kinsmen to engage in military 
service, because bearing arms was repugnant to their sense of religious 
duty. Subsequently however several of them served with credit in the 
late rebellion as regimental or company officers. 
This riotous disturbance at Harrisburg made by political partizans, 
was called the Buckshot War, because Governor Ritner had directed 
the volunteers to load their guns with buckshot and ball. Though 
many were alarmed nobody was w’ounded. 
Dispairing of lucrative employment in his vocation at home, he prob- 
ably imagined that a country where settlers were many and increasing, 
land sales would be common; and for such reasons the services of a 
surveyor would be in constant demand. His attention was directed 
to Texas, the independence of which had been recognized by the 
United States in 1837. 
Equipped with surveying instruments and a rifle, he sailed from 
New York, Oct. 28, 1839, for Texas, by way of New Orleans, where 
he arrived Nov. 18 and reached Galveston Nov. 20, and took the boat 
up the river to Houston. He proceeded immediately to the west. In 
a letter, dated Houston, Dec. 28, 1839, he wrote :—“You may imagine 
the figure I cut, mounted on a mustang poney, about half tamed, on a 
Mexican saddle, leggings, a queer blanket coat, and around my waist 
a broad leathern belt in which were placed a pair of pistols and a 
bowie knife, it being necessary to travel armed in this country—par- 
ticularly when travelling alone, as I was, there being men here who 
might take advantage of an unarmed man, should his money be seen; 
and you are frequently meeting some prowling Indians who are 
friendly to Texas, but more through fear than love.” 
1 See “Address of the Hon. Charles B. Penrose, Speaker of the Senate; and the 
Speeches of Messrs. Fraley, (City) Williams, Pearson and Penrose, delivered in the 
Senate of Pennsylvania, [March 1839] on the subject of the Insurrection at Harris- 
burg, at the meeting of the Legislature in December 1838.” 8vo., pp. 207. Printed 
by E. Guyer, Harrisburg 1839. 
Also, History of Philadelphia—1609 to 1884. By J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson 
Westcott. Quarto. L. H. Everts A Co., Philadelphia 1884. 22 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBE RGER, 
This journey was to make collections for a cotton-shipper from 
Kentucky, and led him over “ the best lands of Texas.” He travelled 
on the prairies some two hundred miles, the huts of settlers being 
fifteen to twenty miles apart and the roadways very indistinct. “At 
night,” he says, “ I made my supper on corn-dodger; and, wrapping 
myself in saddle-blankets, with my head on my saddle bags and feet 
to the fire, was soon sung to sleep by the dismal music of the 
wolves. * * * * 
“There is nothing doing here in engineering. I have turned mer- 
chant ; been to New Orleans, bought some $400 worth of goods and 
consigned them to men here at so much per cent.; and at the same 
time, I am broker and speculator in a small way, so that I pay my 
expenses and manage to keep an eye on everything around.” 
His experience during 1840 was unhappy. While at Walnut Bluff 
on the Colorado, in May, he and his four companions were taken, about 
the same time, with “ bilious remittent fever.” In this condition they 
were obliged to wait four or five days for a wagon to bring them 
medicine from Houston. Their only food was corn bread and venison ; 
and some days none was well enough to prepare it. On the day the 
wagon arrived he took ten grains of calomel; two days after fifteen 
grains, and the next day ten grains of tartar emetic without relief. By 
advice of an old settler he took forty grains of calomel, and was free 
from fever for two weeks. It then returned, and he “ again broke it ” 
by the same means. The fever recurred at intervals of one or two 
weeks, and each recurrence was met with the forty grains of cah mel 
till July. Then he became alarmed on account of the quantity of 
mercury he had taken to which he ascribed the cramps with which he 
was afflicted, and resolved to travel till he found a doctor. 
He rode two hours morning and evening and completed thirty miles 
before another attack. He stopped at the house of a settler and sent 
ten miles for a doctor, but in spite of all he could do the disease con- 
tinued, with pain in the region of the liver and night sweats, till the 
middle of September. Then the fever became intermittent with a 
much swollen spleen. At last he found partial relief, with a relapse 
every few weeks. He had pain in his stomach, which “ refused to digest.” 
In October while chopping a limb of a tree to be used in construc- 
tion of a hut, or cabin he divided the bone of his left big toe and split 
the bone of the second toe, the axe cutting through the side of his boot 
to the sole. This accident caused him to be on his back with his foot 
higher than his head during four weeks. SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
23 
He ends his long letter, dated Houston Dec. 28, 1840, of which the 
above is a summary, saying; “ it has healed up. I have thrown away 
my crutches and walk with a stick. * * * I cannot help laughing 
when I look back over my misfortunes, but looking forward is another 
matter.” 
Without announcing his coming, he appeared at home, in April 
1841, bringing with him a cargo of deer skins which he sold to glove 
makers. 
During this visit he related to a friend that while travelling with a 
companion over the prairie they lost the track. Their provisions and 
ammunition were nearly exhausted. It was agreed that one should 
remain where they were while the other should search for a settlement. 
It fell to Caspar’s lot to remain. After his companion had left him 
alone he kindled a fire, and, to promote its burning, heedlessly poured 
upon it from his horn some grains of powder. The horn exploded. 
After the flash he was in darkness. He had been totally deprived of 
sight. His condition was appalling. Alone on the prairie, blind, 
without food. In this desperate state, unable to direct his move- 
ments, he crawled to find water which he knew was not far off. For- 
tunately he reached a little stream and by freely washing partially 
recovered his sight. His companion returned after an absence of a 
few days, bringing food and ammunition in time to rescue him from 
starvation. His sight was quite restored; and they were speedily on 
their way once more. 
He remained at home till the autumn and then returned to Texas 
with a cargo of merchandize. He wrote, Dec. 9,1841, that he “found 
Houston quite healthy and business good.” 
As soon as it was reported that Mexican forces had invaded Texas 
and captured San Antonio de Bexar, every one who could ride was 
armed and in the saddle eager to fight. 
Caspar left Houston as a private in a company of mounted rifles. 
He wrote, April 17, 1842, just after he returned from the army, 
“Active service in this country combines all the hardships that can be 
endured. Our bed was the grass, the saddle for a pillow, without tents 
or covering of any kind. Rain or shine we had only saddle-blankets 
to wrap up in. Our food was little chips of jerked beef, heated on a 
ramrod till they resembled the cinders of a blacksmith’s forge, and just 
about as nourishing. Of bread or farinaceous substance of any descrip- 
tion we had none. This was slim diet upon which to ride thirty miles 
a day, stand guard, etc. It was harder work than soldiering abouf 24 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, 
Germantown on the Fourth of July. As we approached San Antonio 
preparations were made for battle, and I rose to the distinguished rank 
of Second Sergeant, which exempted me from guard duty and placed 
me in the proud position of file leader of the first squadron of our com- 
pany. But alas! for the laurels. The Mexicans would not fight, and 
retreated from San Antonio at a full run. We took possession without 
firing a gun, and placed the Lone Star in triumph on the cross of the 
Cathedral. 
“After travelling 250 miles, 100 of them through a country inhabited 
by Comanchees, without a vestige, a house or any object to give notice 
that the white race had ever trodden this wilderness, it was a singular 
feeling to find myself riding down the streets of a city, dating its birth 
anterior to that of Philadelphia, and built entirely of stone—its palaces 
and churches, its missions and cathedrals, immense in extent, grand in 
conception and beautiful in construction, all sinking in confused masses 
of earth from which they originally sprang. A few more visits from a 
Texas army and the hand of time will be spared the work of crumb- 
ling their monuments. * * * I left my business in good hands ; 
and if I had been killed, you would have been written to.” 
In the same year he was again in the army of Texas. He did not 
receive the pay due for this service till 1855, a modest sum, with which 
he procured four silver goblets and had inscribed upon each a “ lone 
star,” the national symbol,and beneath it—“Service of the Republic 
of Texas. 1st Sergeant in Sherman’s Mounted Dragoons. Mexican 
Invasion. 1842.” 
Thus end the records of Caspar’s sojourn in Texas, which was 
probably extended a year after he was discharged from the army. 
His experience as a merchant had not been quite satisfactory. In 
April or May, 1843, he came home not to return. 
He began to study medicine, probably in the autumn of 1843, in 
the office of Dr. George B. Wood, and in March, 1846, received the 
degree of M.D. from the medical department of the University of 
Pennsylvania, his thesis being on the Origin and Progress of Medicine. 
The same year, July 20, he married Miss Lydia H. Simmons, of 
Philadelphia. 
He was now in his twenty-eighth year. He had had rough experi- 
ence among pioneers and adventurers in a comparatively new country 
—then an asylum for such as go to Canada now, preferably incog.— 
and had resumed his connection with a better mannered society. He 
was no longer a citizen of Texas. He had become Dr. Caspar Wister SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
25 
of Philadelphia, and felt no doubt that he was bound in some vague 
way to uphold the dignity of the profession—to work for the welfare 
of others, and not exclusively to please himself and increase his for- 
tune, as he had done in Texas. He had taken leave of that method. 
Starting with an equipment suitable and sufficient to enable him to 
follow his vocation successfully, he soon laid the foundation of a good 
practice. His attractive manners and attentive ways won for him the 
confidence and lasting respect of his patients; and his professional asso- 
ciates regarded him as a pains-taking and efficient general practitioner. 
In Feb., 1848, his wife died, leaving an infant daughter to his care. 
He was physician of the “ Indigent Widows and Single Women’s 
Society” from May, 1847, till 1852. In the annual report for that 
year it is stated that “ the acknowledgments of the Society are de- 
servedly due to Dr. Caspar Wister for his honorary though laborious 
services as physician. It is a subject of sincere regret that he has found 
it necessary at last to resign the charge he has borne so faithfully.” 
From 1848 to 1869 he was physician of the Association for the Care 
of Colored Children—commonly called the shelter for colored orphans. 
He was elected a member of the Board of Managers of the House 
of Refuge, Jan. 9, 1849, and was habitually present at their meetings 
during thirty-nine years, till his death. Though he was not a con- 
sulting physician of the House, he was called to important cases and 
cheerfully responded to all demands upon his time and skill. 
He married June 26, 1854, Miss Annis Lee Furness. 
From 1856 until his death he was Medical Examiner of the Phila- 
delphia branch of the New York Mutual Life Insurance Company. 
He was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 
delphia from June, 1851, and of the American Philosophical Society 
from January, 1859. 
From June 9, 1862, to June 16, 1863, and from July 8 to Oct. 6, 
1863, he served at the U. S. A. Satterlee General Hospital, Philadel- 
phia, under contract as an acting assistant surgeon*!!. S. Army. 
“ Being a warm personal friend of General McClellan he accepted 
an invitation from him to join his head quarters at Yorktown. He 
accompanied the army on its advance from that point and its subse- 
quent movement to the James river, being present at all the battles 
during that period, known as the seven day battles.”1—June, 1862. 
1 Obituary notice of Caspar Wister, M.D. By Craig Biddle. Read before the 
American Philosophical Society, Oct. 4, 1S89. 26 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, 
He was a member of the Biological Club, a dining association, com- 
posed of members of the Academy of Natural Sciences, of Philadel- 
phia, from 1866. 
He was elected a Trustee and Director of the Philadelphia Library 
Company in 1868. 
His only child by his second wife, a promising boy fourteen years 
old, died Dec. 14,1869. 
From May till October of 1873, he passed in Europe; and in the 
same year was elected a member of the Mutual Assurance Company. 
He was elected a member of the Penn Club, May 31, 1878; and 
about the same time President of the Social Art Club, of which he 
was an original member. The name of the association was changed, 
March, 1888, to Rittenhouse Club. 
In the morning of Aug. 21, 1879, Dr. Wister accompanied his wife 
to the Pennsylvania Rail Road depot in West Philadelphia. Just 
after they had alighted from a street car opposite to it, an impatient 
horse, ridden by an incapable boy struck his back and dashed him 
headlong against one of the iron columns which support the roof of 
the approach to the depot. Although his frontal bone was badly 
fractured, near the left temporal ridge, and his lower limbs were 
rigidly extended, his consciousness was not impaired. He gave de- 
tailed instructions for his conveyance home, and directed a messenger 
where to find Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, who had engaged to meet him at 
that hour in consultation. 
Drs. Agnew and Walter F. Atlee conducted his case. A trephine 
was applied in two places, the depressed bone raised, and more than 
twenty fragments removed. His intelligence was clear throughout 
his illness. He recovered without any mental detriment, and, except 
a stiff neck, no permanent evil seemed to follow the injury. 
Some of his friends, however, entertained a notion that the effects 
of this injury in some manner shortened his life, though nothing in 
his subsequent career can be cited in support of the conjecture. 
Physically he was a typical man, and up to the date of the accident 
his health had been generally vigorous. To break thin ice in the 
Schuylkill for a bath ; to walk ten miles to dine with a friend in the 
country and wTalk home after dinner; to swim along side of a yacht 
underway, with a line fast to a wrist, were to him delightful. 
His interest in athletic sports led him, in 1860, to take an active part 
in forming the Philadelphia Sparring and Fencing Club. He was 
one of its incorporators in 1873, and its president from 1867. It has SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
27 
been notably prosperous under his administration. The roll of its 
members now includes the names of five hundred gentlemen, all of 
unquestionable standing. 
He was elected a Director of the Philadelphia Saving Fund, and 
president of the Inspectors of the County Prison in 1880. Infirm 
health induced him to resign the office in Sept., 1888. 
In 1886, he assisted to reestablish the Wistar Association which had 
ceased to be active since the winter of 1863-64, because during that 
season guests sometimes disturbed the social harmony of the Wistar 
parties by over-earnest discussions of political questions connected 
with the rebellion. Not long afterwards the Saturday Club, of which 
Dr. Wister was a member, superseded the Wistar Association and con- 
tinued active for several years. 
Only a fourth of the score of corporations with which he was asso- 
ciated was medical. The purposes of the rest were different, perhaps 
discordant—scientific, social, financial—and in no sense congenial in 
their methods or proceedings; and yet he found pleasure in con- 
tributing to the progress of each. Habitually prompt to decide, firm 
of purpose and punctual to his appointments, he acceptably discharged 
whatever duties fell to him in every instance. 
In the course of his career, his experience of men and things had 
been varied and wide ; and perhaps therefore, he was able to adapt 
himself admirably to any situation in which he happened to be placed. 
His friend, the Hon. Craig Biddle, most truly said of him that 
“although no man was less bashful, few men were so modest.”1 And 
possibly the quality here implied may have prevented him from ever 
drifting into narration of reminiscences of himself under any circum- 
stances. 
His genial, manly, open and pleasing address constituted in him a 
kind of magnetic force which powerfully attracted and influenced 
strangers at their first accost; and they, quickly perceiving his good 
sense, at once gave him their confidence, but without getting his in 
return, for his faith in men was notably restricted. 
His spirit of humor enlivened his conversation, and his literary 
compositions which were too few and seldom printed. As specimens 
of his work in this line the following are presented. 
Early in 1877—two years before his injury—neighbors of St. Mark’s 
Church in Locust street, complained that the chiming of the bells, then 
1 Obituary notice of Caspar Wister, M.D. 28 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, 
recently hung up in its steeple, was a nuisance and brought suit 
in Court to have it abated. Dr. Wister described the situation in the 
following lines for the amusement of his friends. 
“ Concordia, we the bell shall call.” 
—Schiller. 
Tune.—The Bells of Shandon. 
With deep vexation and execration 
I wake at six to those St. Mark’s bells, 
That, with clash and jingle, make my nerves tingle, 
While the doctor’s visit my pulse foretells, 
As I lie quaking and the house is shaking, 
With the noise they’re making— 
I dread to meet 
The storm that’s brewing, 
To their undoing, 
In the troubled bedding of Locust Street. 
From Christ Church steeple, o’er the humble people 
Who dwell around it, the sweet chimes ring, 
And add a savour to the rest from labour, 
That the peaceful Sabbath is sure to bring. 
But here’s no liking to the din and smiting 
That makes indicting 
A purpose meet, 
For the roar and rumble, 
The growl and grumble 
That make a Bedlam of Locust Street. 
There’s a bell whose swinging gives out no ringing, 
And I hear no dinging in the State House yard ; 
And where its rolling looks like tolling 
I stand and tremble lest my hearing’s hard ; 
For, with steeple rocking and hammer knocking, 
And the people mocking, 
I hear no more 
The low dull mutter 
Those dumb lips utter 
Than the Stone Washington before the door. SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
29 
I’ve seen belles charming for vict’ry arming 
With beauty conquer, with wit compel, 
And read the story, in legends hoary, 
How friends fled shrieking from the passing bell; 
But the bell that’s staying and keeps on swaying 
Is but delaying 
The time we’ll greet, 
When saint and beauty 
Shall unite, in duty 
To drive the devil out of Locust Street. 
Two years after fracturing his skull, Dr. Wister, the guest of his 
friend Mr. H. C. Lea on board of the yacht, Vega, visited the West 
Indies, and some months after returning home, published in Lippin- 
cott’s Magazine for 1883;—“A Cruise among the Windward Islands 
—The Log of the Vega.” The article is a fair sample of his literary 
ability. A few extracts from it are presented to show his style and 
the character of his humor in prose. 
The Vega arrived at Barbadoes on the first day of the week. In 
this connection it is recorded in the Log that, 
“ Sunday was a day always sanctified to us by the absence of cards 
and the presence of plum-duff, a day devoted to in—and intro—spec- 
tion—inspection of habiliments often ending in looking up the diddy- 
bag, while introspection gradually slid into sleep.” 
“ The mango is a very favorite fruit, about the size and color of a 
fine yellow plum. The pulp is very light yellow and tastes like a mild 
turpentine stupe. The skin is leather and its contents are fibres and 
bristles. There is no amount of personal intimacy that would warrant 
any two persons of either sex in sitting down together to eat mangoes, 
for the rending of the fibres, the dripping of juice, and the drawing out 
of bristles, unite to produce so unseemly and unclean an exhibition 
that this fruit should be indulged in only in the privacy of one’s own 
bath room and in a sitz bath to the chin.” 
“ With Antigua to windward we passed Redonda, a peak of rock 
rising sheer six hundred feet out of the water ; one side of it is perfectly 
smooth and straight, and seems made for American embellishments, 
such as ‘Use Purifying Pills,’ or ‘Two thousand miles to Wana- 
maker’s.’ ” 30 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER, 
“ Mount Nevis enjoys a local celebrity for its sheep, and the steward 
went on shore and procured some diaphanous mutton—a sheep that 
cast no shadow, not because the sun was directly over its head, but 
from lack of substance—a sheep which if left to live might in time 
have developed progressively into a burning glass. When we got him, 
all chance of animal development was long past. We found that his 
flesh when cooked broke with a vitreous fracture.” 
“At six p M. we passed Saba, its coast iron-bound, and without land- 
ings except in favorable states of the weather. The island is an irreg- 
ular plateau two thousand eight hundred feet above the sea, diversified 
by precipitous rocks, sharp acclivities and ravines. Through one of 
these, called the Ladder, the town is reached, around which is found 
the only cultivation—that of potatoes, which are sold among the other 
islands. The population, amounting to one thousand eight hundred, 
is mainly devoted to the raising of chickens. From the sea the town, 
with its white houses and red roofs, looked exceedingly neat and 
pretty. The island belongs to Holland ; its language is English. The 
people, almost all either Simmons or Hazel by name, largely send 
their children to Paris to be educated. They are famous for building 
a class of small vessels, although they have no port. The town, nine 
hundred and sixty feet above the sea, is named the Bottom,—which is 
quite in keeping with the other anomalies of Saba.” 
June 21, 1882, Delaware Breakwater. “And here we took the trade 
wind once more,—that of the region, which blows unceasingly through 
the funnels of the tugs.” 
The name of Dr. Caspar Wister was placed on the roll of the fellows 
of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, January 1848. 
Between the years 1852 and 1874 he was frequently elected a dele- 
gate from the College to the American Medical Association. At the 
meeting of that body, in 1855, he was appointed its Treasurer and a 
member of its Publication Committee. On retiring from these posi- 
tions, in 1877, his services were noticed as follows;— 
“At the twenty-eighth annual meeting of the American Medical 
Association, at Chicago, June 8, 1877, on motion of Dr. P. F. Hibberd 
of Indiana ;—Resolved, That this Association, in view of the retirement 
of the gentleman who, for twenty-two years, has discharged the respon- 
sible and laborious duties of that situation, desires in this manner to 
express its high appreciation of, and full satisfaction with the prompt- 
ness and completeness with which Caspar Wister has discharged the SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
31 
incumbent obligations of its financial agent, for so many years, and 
hereby tenders to him the sincerest thanks of the Association for such 
long and honorable service.” 
Being a delegate from the College to that body, he was appointed 
Treasurer of the International Medical Congress, which met in Phila- 
delphia in 1876. After settling the affairs of the office, Dr. Wister 
transferred to the College, Feb. 4, 1880, $800, the balance of the fund 
of the Congress in his custody, to establish the International Medical 
Congress Trust Fund, the income thereof to be applied to illustrate 
the Transactions of the College. 
In 1860, Dr. Wister contributed to the first building fund of the 
college; and from Dec. 1882 was an efficient member of its Committee 
on Finance. 
Many months prior to the close of his life his good health began to 
fail; digestion was impaired, and his appearance and movements signi- 
fied to a close observer that he was in some degree an invalid. Then, 
he had frequent attacks of intense gastric suffering which were con- 
trollable only by the hypodermic use of morphia. Organic disease 
and malignant disease were sometimes suspected, notwithstanding that 
small tophi, which had long been observable on the terminal phalanges 
of his fingers, suggested gout. Many weeks in anticipation of the end, 
he directed that a post mortem of himself should settle his doubt, re- 
marking at the time, in a spirit of grim humor, that he would like to 
be present, for he was sure it would be interesting. 
Convinced for a long time that his recovery was hopeless he serenely 
awaited the coming end, and, as sane men always do, acquiesced in 
the inevitable. 
He peacefully died at four o’clock, a. m., Dec. 20, 1888. 
His funeral was after the manner of the Society of Friends. He 
approved of their doctrine generally, and irregularly was present at 
their Sabbath meetings. 
He bequeathed his moderately ample estate to his wife and daughter. 
Several of the Societies with which Dr. Wister was associated ex- 
pressed the sense of their loss in formal resolutions. Extracts from 
them will be sufficient testimony of their appreciation of his worth and 
services. 
December 21, 1888, “ Resolved, That the officers and members oi 
the Philadelphia Fencing and Sparring Club desire to inscribe on 
their minutes an expression of the lasting obligations which Dr. Caspar 
Wister has conferred upon them by the zeal and sagacity with which 32 
W. S. W. RUSCHENBERGER 
he has directed their Organization, and which, in a material way no 
less than in the sentiments of respect and affection which he has every- 
where inspired, have made this Organization itself a monument to his 
honored memory.” 
A portrait of Dr. Wister in oil has been hung in their club-house. 
The following is from the Minutes made by the Board of Managers 
of the House of Refuge, December 27, 1888. 
“ Elected to this Board in 1849, for many years and until the severe 
accident which curtailed his usefulness, and indirectly was the cause 
of his death, he was always found most faithful and energetic in pro- 
moting the best interests of the House of Refuge, as well as of the 
County Prison, and with kindred institutions where his excellent ex- 
ecutive abilities, wise counsel and eloquent and incisive address weie 
always highly appreciated by his colleagues. 
“ His kindly and courteous and general manner greatly endeared 
him to his associates who will long hold in affectionate remembrance 
his many good qualities of head and heart.” 
The Library Company of Philadelphia, January 5, 1889, Resolved, 
“ That in him we have lost one of our most valued associates, whose 
rigid conception of duty led him to discharge ably and conscientiously 
all the responsibilities of life, and whose rare natural gifts and varied 
culture invested with a peculiar charm his personal intercourse with 
all who were privileged to reckon themselves among his friends.” 
The Rittenhouse Club recorded a “ minute to the memory of the 
late president,” Jan. 7, 1889. The following is an extract from it. 
“ Dr. Wister who was of the finest type of manly vigor, met un- 
fortunately with an accident which sapped his vitality and eventually 
caused his death. 
“ The untold sufferings which he has endured for the last few years 
were known only to his family. The heroic firmness with which he 
faced his inevitable fate, the cheerful alacrity with which he performed 
all his duties and the unruffled exterior which concealed the tortures 
which he suffered, made it almost impossible to believe that his life 
hung by a thread and that he was fully conscious of it. 
“ He felt, if ever man felt, that it was not necessary that he should 
live, but it was necessary that he should perform to the last hour of his 
life every duty that he had undertaken. No soldier ever died at his 
post with calmer courage or serener port than he of whom we are now 
speaking. 
“ He possessed, as we all know, the most genial nature To the SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
33 
young and the old, to the man of business and to the man of leisure, 
at the hospital and in the prison, his presence was as welcome as at the 
play-ground, where he mingled with the most youthful of his friends. 
“ His popularity arose not from any easiness of disposition, but from 
the profound regard for his manly character. Open, frank, decided 
and truthful, his convictions, from their sincerity, impressed themselves 
upon everyone whom he met, and, though you might not agree with 
them, it was impossible not to respect them. With the sternest sense 
of honor he had the gentleness of a woman toward those whose weaker 
nature had been the cause of their deviation from the path of recti- 
tude. While he could not understand it, he would always pity it.” 
The Rlttenhouse Club had painted several years ago, by a skilful 
artist, an admirable portrait of Dr. Wister. 
The following is taken from another tribute to his memory. It 
was resolved, Jan. 10, 1889, that;— 
“ The Directors of the Mutual Assurance Company desire to express 
their grief at the death of their associate Dr. Caspar Wister, for fif- 
teen years a member of this Board. His directness of character, his 
steadfast honor and his careful attention to every duty made him an 
admirable representative and guardian of the large interests committed 
to our care. 
“ His cultivation and knowledge of men and books gave to his com- 
panionship a charm of rare quality, made more delightful by a certain 
flavor in his manner of the courtesy and quiet of another day, as a just, 
honorable and careful man, we shall miss him from our business, and 
as a refined gentleman his loss will be long felt in hours of social 
intercourse.” 
The following paragraphs are taken from a memorial unanimously 
adopted Jan. 11,1889, by The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society. 
“ Few men of his time have held so high a place in the esteem and 
affection of the gentlemen of Philadelphia as our late associate Dr. 
Caspar Wister, whose death, on the 20th of December, 1888, we now 
sorrowfully record. 
“Born on the 15th of September, 1818, at the ancestral home in 
Germantown, Dr. Wister was trained, educated and developed in the 
best social atmosphere of his country, and his life and character illus- 
trated the truth of his favorite maxim—‘Noblesse oblige.’ 
“ His appointment to this Board in December, 1882, was hailed with 
pleasure by all its members and was recognized by Philadelphians as 
an addition to its strength. 34 
SKETCH OF CASPAR WISTER. 
“His duties here were wisely, faithfully and zealously performed ; 
sometimes of late at the cost of no little suffering ; for during the last 
two years, the subtle disease which terminated his useful and honored 
life made prolonged exertion very painful to him.” 
The preceding sketch of the life of the late Dr. Caspar Wister has 
been written not to eulogize him, but to describe the prominent features 
of his character, so that all may see how it grew, better and better, and 
stronger, from boyhood to maturity, and why he was beloved by his 
contemporaries. 
He was not a leader of thought in any direction, an investigator in 
any field of science, nor in any high office or capacity a ruler of men, 
nor a contributor to medical literature in any form. Nevertheless, he 
faithfully and acceptably discharged all professional and other duties 
assigned to him in this community. His manly ways and cheering 
deportment secured to him in a rare degree the confidence of all, and 
made him a favorite among gentlemen widely acquainted with men 
and affairs. He was popular. His warmly-attached friends were 
numerous. It may be said without disparagement to any, that of the 
many Fellows who have been more eminent and justly distinguished 
in professional achievement and learning, none has obtained in a higher 
degree the personal affection and respect of this brotherhood of physi- 
cians.