Ivey Foreman MacNair, M.D.

The MacNair ancestral line links to the Harvey family, well-to-do North Carolinians that arrived in 1663 along the Albemarle Sound in the northeastern corner of the colony. From that line came two provincial governors and Colonel Miles Harvey, who served in the Provincial Congress before forming a militia in 1776. By the 20th century, however, the more notable aspect of Ivey MacNair’s life, according to his obituary, was that he was a cousin of Hollywood film producer Cecil B. DeMille.

The colonel’s great-great-grandson was Augustus Harvey MacNair, Ivey’s father. Although firmly entrenched in North Carolina, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1843, then returned to serve his little hometown of Tarboro as a physician for the rest of his life.

That was the start of a tradition among certain MacNair family members. Augustus had a brother who also got his M.D. degree from UPenn. Three of the five sons of Augustus also went north to train at Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, including Ivey, the youngest.

The oldest of those three boys came home and ran a successful drug store business there for decades. The other was Edward, five years older than Ivey, who probably graduated before 1890. He remained in Philadelphia and took Ivey under his wing as a partner. “E. D. MacNair and Bro., Druggists” was how their business on Passyunk Avenue was listed in the city directories from 1894-1901.

In 1898 Ivey married a Philly native, Florence Hill, and they lived with her widowed mother and five adult siblings at 1506 South 6th Street. A short time later they moved to South Broad Street but it was during this first decade of the new century that Ivey found his calling as a medical doctor. 

He studied at the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia (later absorbed by UPenn) and graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons (later absorbed by the University of Maryland) in Baltimore. In the midst of that, Florence had their only child in 1907. The little boy lived just 18 days. Fortunately they were comforted by the tightly-knit Hill siblings with whom they lived on Broad Street. Ivey passed the state medical exams and began practicing medicine shortly after that.

As World War I was ending, the MacNairs moved to the far southeastern corner of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Ivey had a practice in the farming community of Kirkwood, but after four years they moved further west. He took over the practice of a recently-deceased doctor in Littlestown, a little town southeast of Gettysburg.

His time there was interrupted by having to deal with his own medical issues, taking some time off for treatment in Baltimore. After three short years, Dr. MacNair died from cancer of the tongue.

The grateful community paid their respects before his coffin traveled by train to Philly for burial with his wife’s family and their infant son. Florence took her place beside him 42 years later.