E. E. GILBERT, M. D. In making any mention of the prominent citizens of Haskell county, Texas, the list would not be complete without including in it Dr. E. E. Gilbert, a physician of acknowledged ability and skill and who has been a resident of the state for nineteen years and for the past ten years of Haskell, where he has been in the active practice of his profession.
Doctor Gilbert is a Kentuckian. He was born in Spencer county, twenty-five miles southeast of Louisville, May 19, 1860, a representative of what might be termed a family of physicians. Dr. Robert Stone Gilbert, his father, also a Kentuckian, practiced medicine in Kentucky for many years. He has three brothers who were physicians and two of his sons adopted that profession. Also he had numerous distant connections who are engaged in the practice of medicine. He was a graduate of the Medical Department of the Louisville University, with the class of 1865. The mother of the subject of this sketch, nee Susan E. McGrew, was a daughter of Robert and Minerva (Collins) McGrew, the former of Scotch and the latter of Holland descent. Mr. and Mrs. McGrew died aged respectively ninety-seven and one hundred years. They were born and resided all their lives in the same home in Waterford, Kentucky, and in which Mrs. McGrew was born. Dr. Robert Stone Gilbert and his wife were the parents of ten children, six sons and four daughters, of whom three are now living—two sons and one daughter. They are all large people, heavy frame and portly. Dr. E. E. Gilbert, weighing at present two hundred and eighty-six pounds and being six feet, two inches tall, is the smallest one of the children. Their father was a medium-sized man, but their mother was large, weighing at the time of her death three hundred and sixty-five pounds.
Dr. Robert S. Gilbert moved from Kentucky to Texas in 1886 and settled at Sulphur Springs, Hopkins county, where he practiced medicine up to 1890. He then moved to Oak Clift, now a part of Dallas, and was in active practice there until within a year before he died. His death occurred September 22, 1902. His wife died November 19, 1901.
Edward Everett Gilbert was reared on his father’s farm and received his early education in the common schools of Waterford, near which town they lived. Later he was a student at East Cedar Hill, in Jefferson county, Kentucky, where he graduated in 1880, at the age of twenty; and the following January he completed a course in the Southern Business College at Louisville. Then he went back to his father’s farm and superintended affairs there until September, 1884, when he entered the Medical Department of the University of Louisville. He holds a diploma form that institution dated March 3, 1886. That same year the family came to Texas. After a short sojourn in Hopkins county, the young doctor went to Delta county, where he practiced medicine until April, 1890. The next five years he was a resident of Dallas county. He had not been in Dallas county long, however, before his health began to fail him and he was greatly reduced in flesh. Acting on the advice of other physicians and in accordance with his own judgment, he finally came to Haskell, but it was not until after he had traveled a great deal, visiting every state in the Union except one. Just as soon as he got west of the Brazos river he says he found relief, and from that time to the present he has enjoyed the best of health. Taking into consideration the healthfulness of the climate, Dr. Gilbert has built up a good practice. He is closely interested in all matters pertaining to the welfare of the country, and especially Haskell county. This county won first prize on many of her exhibits at the Dallas State Fair in 1902, which can be attributed almost entirely to the enterprise and efforts of Dr. Gilbert.
Dr. Gilbert has been a Mason for twelve years and has filled a number of chairs in the subordinate lodge. He has been County Health Officer of Haskell county sever since he has been a resident here, and was president of the District Medical Examining Board for the Thirty-ninth Judicial District, until the new law went into effect.
In Delta county, October 12, 1887, Dr. Gilbert married Miss Ollie Morris, a native of Cooper, that county, and a daughter of G. W. Morris, an old resident of the state. Dr. and Mrs. Gilbert are parents of five children, three sons and two daughters, namely: Everett, now Mrs. Willis Buchannon, of Haskell, born September 12, 1888; Robert Morris, December 25, 1890; Jessie Karl, January 28, 1893; George Yandell, May 27, 1896, and Virginia Sue, October 19, 1905.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. I, pp. 576-577.
Dr. E. E. Gilbert was mentioned in a news item in the 5 December 1903 editon of the Dallas Morning News. Submitted by Dr. Barbara Allen, a great-granddaughter of Dr. Gilbert.