James Asbury Ogden, M.D., Ph.D.

The Ogdens were among the first families to settle in William Penn’s city of brotherly love. A book published in 1899, “The Quaker Ogdens in America” traced David Ogden’s arrival date to 1682, the same time as Penn himself. It was the same year that Thomas Paschall, a wealthy non-Quaker in England, bought 500 acres from William Penn in the southwest corner of what became Philadelphia County. 

That’s where some of the Ogdens settled, in Paschallville, which was eventually shortened by one letter to Paschalville. It is now part of the Elmwood Park section of the city, just south of Mount Moriah Cemetery. A few reminders of its former existence remain, including Paschall Avenue, Paschall Playground, and the Paschalville Library. (One of the Paschalls made his fortune in bricks and married the daughter of Mount Moriah Cemetery’s co-founder. Read his notable story here.)

As time went on, a number of Ogdens abandoned their membership in the Society of Friends. James’ father and uncle helped establish the Siloam Methodist Episcopal Church in 1834. The structure shown here was built in 1871 and remains today at 70th and Woodland Avenue across from the library. The church was active until 1992.

James had two older brothers and one younger sister. John Ogden would later become chief of the city’s Water Bureau. Shortly after James marked his 18th birthday the Civil War was over, as was his public school education. 

However, finding a career that matched his interests took many years. James first thought he would become a carpenter and builder like his father. At age 22 he decided to study at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, focusing on ornithology, the study of birds. Founded in 1812, the Academy is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the country. Just a year before James enrolled in classes, the museum gained fame and notoriety when the world’s first mounted dinosaur skeleton was put on display.

His stay at the Academy was brief, as was a term at the Pierce Business College in 1870. Then he pursued a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. The year that the nation’s eyes were on Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition was the year he earned his Ph.D. and was ranked fourth in his class.

James set up his practice in West Philadelphia, and in a few years he married a woman who had her own notable story, Helen Virginia Norton. Her mother’s ancestor was Henry Burr of Mount Holly, New Jersey, another friend of William Penn and fellow Quaker. When Helen was a teenager, her family was living in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Andrew Johnson was the military governor in the early 1860s and a friend of the family, so after her father died he became her legal guardian, probably in 1864. Events happened quickly after he was elected vice president later that year and took Abraham Lincoln’s place in 1865 after he was assassinated. Helen then lived with the Johnsons in the White House for about 18 months before getting married in October of 1866. But it wasn’t to James.

She gave birth to a son the following year, then her husband died sometime in the 1870s. She married Dr. Ogden on July 1, 1879. The 1880 census lists them at 7101 Woodland Avenue with a live-in servant. After 17 years of marriage, Helen died in 1896 due to heart failure and was buried here, as was James’ father two years earlier.

The doctor then found another previously-married woman to be his wife. Everybody in her hometown of Bunker Hill, Kansas knew her as Dolly, the woman who had married in 1887, had a daughter in 1888, and buried her husband in 1889. She found James in his hometown and married him in 1898 in Chester, Pennsylvania. Neither of his marriages produced any offspring.

James wasn’t in the best of health, which is one reason why his obituary says he left his practice. The other reason is he had an inventive nature and an interest in new ways of mining precious metals. It had been brewing in his mind for years, but the timing and the circumstances (including a new wife) prompted him to make a giant leap. 

The 1900 census finds the newlyweds living in Deadwood, South Dakota. He bought 300 acres near some other successful mines there in the Black Hills where he hoped to prove his ideas.

In 1903 he received two patents, one for a different kind of chemical process of extracting gold from mined ore and the other for the apparatus he invented to extract it. The first step was establishing a mining company and a milling operation to treat the iron ore. He founded the United Ruby Gold Mining and Milling Company in Deadwood, where gold had been discovered in 1874, 25 years before he arrived. Using shafts, tunnels, and open cuts, he traced the course of the ore and assayed its value, then built a milling operation.

But just before it was about to begin, the plant was destroyed by fire. At that point James sold his stake in United Ruby and started the Superior Chemical Reduction Company in 1905. Another attempt to make money from his invention was made in partnership with the Globe Mining Company. It failed because the low-grade ore wasn’t suitable and wouldn’t provide a sufficient return. 

Still believing in his process, he returned to Philadelphia in 1910 to solicit new investors. He was convinced his company would be successful in building a similar operation in California if they could raise the capital.

In the meantime, Dolly went south to visit her relatives in Kansas. While in Philly, James developed a bacterial infection of the skin called erysipelas. Penicillin would have treated it but that life-saving antibiotic wasn’t discovered until 1928. He rejoined Dolly in Bunker Hill but they couldn’t leave. He was confined to bed as the bacteria entered his bloodstream, leading to sepsis. He died a few days later at his sister-in-law’s house in Kansas.

His remains were buried here beside his first wife. Dolly died 55 years later and she, too, was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery, but she was still 1710 miles away from James. The name was the same but it was in Deadwood, where she lived the rest of her life. That cemetery has its own notable burials, the resting place of two famous folk heroes known as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.

Joining James and his first wife at our Mount Moriah Cemetery are his brother John and his wife and most of their children in this underground vault in Section 147.  James’ parents, his other two siblings and most of their children have a plot in Section 6, Lot 61.