CLASS OF 1871
Dr. Leander James Crooker died at his home in Augusta, Me., October 9, 1917, of cancer of the stomach.
He was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, February 24, 1837, the fifth in a line of physicians in direct descent. Discouraged by his father from following the family profession, he went to live with a sister in Somerville, Me., where he attended the public schools. As cook in lumber camps and itinerant mender of clocks he earned sufficient money to begin the study of medicine. At the age of twenty he performed a delicate surgical operation, and later engaged in regular practice in Boston. In 1868 he began regularly to attend medical lectures at Harvard, but came to Dartmouth for his final course and his degree. He then located in Augusta, where he remained through life, and acquired a high reputation as a physician.
He engaged profitably in real estate transactions, and at the time of his death was a large owner of real estate in Augusta and elsewhere. He was a Mason and an Elk. He was active in politics as a Democrat, and as a Greenbacker during the brief existence of that party, and a stump speaker of note.
In 1857 he was married to Clara B. Tarbell, who died in 1861, and in 1867 to Fannie Guppy of Boston, who died in 1886. His only surviving child was Dr. Leander J. Crooker, Jr., D.M.S. '91.
