While working in the genealogy room at the Effingham Public Library, I came across an intriguing article in an 1896 issue of an Effingham newspaper. The title was “Effingham County’s Wanderers.” What followed was a list of former residents who moved on to seek a better life elsewhere. Dozens were mentioned; almost all were male. Major occupations included railroad workers, newspaper men, farmers and physicians. Some were European immigrants. Their departure dates ranged from recent to 40 years ago. The publisher tried to follow up and let readers know if the wanderers were happy and more successful after they got away from Effingham.
One of these men was Dr. Antoine Leon Jean Willien. Dr. Willien was a French immigrant. He was born in Haguenau, Bas-Rhin, Alsace-Lorraine, France, on Oct. 1, 1840. His father was Dr. Leon Jean Willien and his mother was Marie Josephine Philippine Hartrich Willien. After his father died, young Leon and his mother came to the United States by way of New York. The plan was to join Hartrich relatives in Sainte Marie. Mrs. Willien’s older brother was one of them.
Dr. Willien’s first mention in the local public record came in 1858, when he was documented as a student at St. Louis University in Missouri. Next, the 1860 federal census noted he was 19 years old and living with his mother in Sainte Marie in Jasper County. Her name was stated as Philippine Willien, and she was 47. After that, young Willien graduated from St Louis Medical College, which was part of St. Louis University.
Dr. Willien started practicing in Effingham right after he finished medical school. He married Sally (Sarah Alexis) Rider in Mattoon in 1865. At that point, he dropped Antoine Jean from his name and used the initials L.J. (for Leon John). There were two children, Mary Pauline (b. 1868), and Marie Louise (b. May 30, 1870). The first girl died when she was 1 year old. Dr. Willien’s wife died four months after the birth of their second daughter, on Sept. 20, 1870. She was 29, and is buried at St. Anthony Parish Cemetery. Sarah Willien is the only Willien in that cemetery.
The earliest civic activity Dr. Willien engaged with in Effingham was associated with establishing a “fire company” in 1867. He could devote effort to that because doctors then had limited office hours, usually a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon. That allowed more time for other things.
Dr. Willien was the treasurer of this fire company group of around 50 men. The official history on the Effingham Fire Department website confirms the 1867 start date. News items several years later note that the early name for Effingham’s fire unit was the Deluge Fire Company. They stood at attention in full uniform when the cornerstone for the new second empire-style county courthouse (now the Effingham County Museum) was laid in 1870. One of the documents placed in the cornerstone contained a list of the names of the Deluge Fire Company officers.
There is also evidence that Dr. Willien worked to improve the status and quality of Illinois medicine. He was a surgeon and the practice of surgery had advanced due to the Civil War, particularly in the field of orthopedics. Nevertheless, there were multiple challenges. There was no hospital in Effingham yet, and no trained nurses. Surgery had to be done in an office or in the home. Doctor offices were small, one or two rooms at most, and usually upstairs over a business. That left the home, where the kitchen table had to suffice, or a door laid over two sawhorses.
Other barriers were the risk of hemorrhage on the table, followed by sudden death, or post-surgery infection, followed by a slow and painful death. There were some anesthetics, but their safe use was challenging. Surgery on the abdomen, chest or pelvis required muscle relaxation, but not so much that the respiratory muscles stopped working.
Therefore, a group of the younger doctors met to share information they had gleaned from medical journals and from experience. One such meeting was held at Effingham in May of 1871. About 25 doctors gathered for a full day of sharing and continuing education. They came to Effingham from Charleston, Mattoon, Paris, Vandalia, Neoga, Tuscola and Kinmundy. Dr. Chambers of Charleston was the group’s president and Dr. Willien was their vice president.
One doctor read a paper about administering morphine by hypodermic injection for pain. He emphasized that morphine sulfate worked best, and that was important because more than one salt of morphine was produced at the time. Morphine sulfate is a product we use today.
Dr. Willien also gave a pharmacology paper. He reported on a dog experiment, in which chloral hydrate was given to the animal hypodermically at 30-minute intervals, without producing anesthesia. That would not surprise doctors today, as this very old drug is classed as a sedative, not as an anesthetic. So, the doctors at this 1871 meeting learned two important facts – about one drug they should use for severe pain, and one drug they shouldn’t use in surgery.
Dr. Willien continued to practice full-time in Effingham into 1872. He served as a mentor to Dr. Joseph Brumleve of Teutopolis, starting around March of that year. Dr. Brumleve was a recent graduate of the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. This relationship would probably have been somewhat similar to a family practice residency today. It was short-lived, however, as Dr. Willien made the decision to move to Terre Haute, Indiana, in the summer of 1872. His mother and daughter LuLu (Mary Louise) moved with him. He continued to advertise in the Effingham Democrat, however.
Dr. Willien’s Indiana office was on North Sixth Street in Terre Haute. He was in the office from 8 to 9 a.m. and 11 to noon, and from 1 to 3 p.m. and 7 to 8 p.m. The location of his office was not a coincidence. It just a short distance from Terre Haute’s first Catholic hospital, which was built on North 7th Street. The Sisters of Providence opened Providence Hospital on June 30, 1872. It was a three-story Gothic structure, with three elevators, an attic and a basement. John Baty, MD, of Vincennes was the chief of staff. Dr. Baty and his wife didn’t get along with the other Terre Haute doctors, however, and he resigned in September of 1873.
At that point, Dr. Leon J. Willien took on the hospital’s chief of staff role. The financial problems of 1872-1873, as well as the reluctance of many non-Catholics to seek treatment there, lead to its closure on Nov. 17, 1874. The local bishop acquired it and converted the structure into St. Ann’s Orphanage for Girls. It served that purpose until 1919.
Meanwhile, Dr. Willien went back and forth, practicing on both sides of the Illinois-Indiana border. He was surely glad to see St. Anthony Hospital in Effingham open in 1876. And when Illinois started requiring a license in the aftermath of the country’s first Medical Practice Act in 1876, he complied. According to the Illinois Secretary of State’s online Physician database, he was issued two copies of Certificate 5118 in 1881, one for Illinois and one for Indiana.
The second Catholic hospital in Terre Haute opened in 1884. As in Effingham, it was known as St. Anthony Hospital. It was on the opposite end of town from the first hospital, on South 6th Street. It was also operated by Franciscan Sisters, but not the same order as the Effingham hospital.
Dr. Willien kept his residence in Terre Haute and that is because his second wife was an Indiana woman. On Feb. 12, 1874, he married Mary Elizabeth Fleming at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The couple went on to have five children: William Fleming (b. 1874), Mary Gertrude (b. 1877), twins Josepha Antonia and Mary Helen (b. 1881) and Leon John (b. 1885).
Dr. Leon and Mrs. Mary Fleming Willien’s first child became a medical doctor. Dr. William Fleming Willien was licensed in Illinois in 1899 but made it clear he intended to practice in Indiana. Twenty years after Illinois initiated a medical licensure process, Indiana did pass a Medical Practice Act in March of 1897. But, as in Illinois, it took several years for everyone to get on board.
As the turn of the century approached, the practice of surgery advanced. Blood loss and pain control improved and anesthesia was more controlled. Gynecology and its associated surgeries became less risky, but the outcomes were still uncertain. In 1881, Dr. Willien removed a 20-pound ovarian tumor from a local teenager. She went on to get married, bear eight children and live to be 85. Twenty years later, he attempted to repair a female organ prolapse for a middle-aged woman who had delivered 10 babies between 1872 and 1899. The surgery was a last resort, and it was unsuccessful. The patient died a week later at the age of 49.
Dr. Willien continued to display interest in subjects other than medicine. In 1909, he formed a company to purchase a rundown summer resort in a remote area of Montgomery County, Indiana. It was informally known as The Shades, but some referred to it as the Shades of Death because of the rumors swirling around the area.
It seems that one of Montgomery County’s early pioneers was a habitual drunk, as well as an abusive husband. While inebriated, he threatened his wife with an ax. She waited until he passed out, struck his head with a fatal blow and then turned herself in. She was tried by jury and acquitted, but the story remained in local memories.
Dr. Willien was president of the Shades company, and he and some businessmen considered turning the resort into a sanitarium for housing and treating TB patients. That plan didn’t come together, and eventually the State of Indiana acquired the property. It is known as Shades State Park. The official explanation for the name today is that the Park’s uneven sandstone hills and deep rocky glens are covered with thick and shady woods.
Dr. Leon John Willien’s mother died in 1889, and she is buried with the rest of her Hartrich relatives in Ste. Marie. Lulu (Marie Louise) became a Notre Dame teaching sister. Sister Mary Aloysius Willien, SSND, performed most of her ministry in Michigan and Wisconsin. She is buried at their Motherhouse in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. Dr. Willien’s second wife died in 1908, and the doctor himself died on June 17, 1919. They are buried at Calvary Cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana, and they are the only Williens interred there.