CLASS OF 1880
Dr. Frederick Angier Spafford died of angina pectoris at his home in Flandreau, South Dakota, March 3, 1922.
The son of Alvah M. and Mary E. (Angier) Spafford, he was born in Ludlow, Vt., October 13, 1855, and graduated from Black River Academy at Ludlow. From 1877 to 1881 he was professor of Latin in Shaw University, a missionary institution for Negroes at Raleigh, N. C., and meanwhile studied medicine, attending one course of lectures at the University of Vermont and two at Dartmouth. In 1881 he was appointed professor of anatomy in Leonard Medical School, connected with Shaw Uni- versity. In 1884 he left Raleigh and located in Flandreau, S. D., where he established a practice in which he continued for the rest of his life. He came to rank among the highest of the profession in the state. He used every means to keep up with the progress in his profession, studying at the New York Polyclinic, in Berlin, and for three seasons in Edinburgh.
He was actively interested in public matters in his state. From 1887 to 1889 he was president of the Board of Health of the territory of Dakota, and from 1889 to 1891 vice-president of the Board of Health of the state of South Dakota; physician to the Board of Insanity for Moody County since 1886; superintendent of the county Board of Health; president of the board of pension examining surgeons and medical examiner for the Veterans War Risk Bureau for his county. He was a member of the American Medical Association, the American College of Surgeons, the Sioux District Medical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Twice, in 1898 and 1914, he was elected president of the State Medical Association, and was secretary of that body at the time of his death. He was local surgeon to the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, and physician to Riggs Institute since the opening of that institution in 1893. At the entrance of the United States into the World War he was commissioned as medical aide to the governor vith the rank of first lieutenant, and subsequently promoted to captain. He was the first chairman of the executive board of the county Red Cross, and at his death commander of the American Legion Post at Flandreau and vicecommander of the Legion for South Dakota. He served 27 years on the Flandreau school board, and was a member of the board of regents of the State University from 1897 to 1909, and again since 1919. From 1886 to 1896 he was mayor of Flandreau.
He was a member of all Masonic bodies, and past grand commander of the state. In early life he became a member of the Baptist church in his native town, but of recent years he had been an attendant at the Episcopal church.
September 4, 1881, Dr. Spafford was married to Harriet E. H., daughter of Thomas P. and Sarah F. (Atwood) Davis of Boston, Mass., who survives him, with a daughter and two grandchildren.
