Dr. John Sublett Logan

John Sublett Logan was born at Shelbyville, Kentucky, June 25, 1836, the first child, and only son, of Thomas Logan and Frances Sublett.

His father, Thomas Logan, of Ulster-Scot parentage, was born in Donegal County, Ireland, August 7, 1801. His father was John Logan and his mother, Jane Shannon. His grandfather was also John Logan. Thomas Logan came to America and reached Shelbyville, Kentucky. There he knew James Huggins, born in Tyrone, Ireland, who in 1828 had married Mary Sublett of French Huguenot and Virginia English ancestry. Huggins introduced Logan to his wife's younger sister, Frances Sublett. They were married on March 18, 1834, at the Huggins home in Shelbyville. Logan was then thirty-two years of age and operating a small general store. A second child, a daughter, Mary Logan, was born in 1838, and on April 18, 1840, at the age of thirty-eight, Thomas Logan died. His widow, Frances, was twenty two, her son not yet four, and the baby daughter, a year and a half. The widowed mother married, on September 16, 1840, James Lawrence O’Neill, cashier of the Shelbyville Branch of The Bank of Ashland, Kentucky. The Logan children were fortunate in having him for a step-father. He carried out the liquidation of Thomas Logan's estate with care, and the meticulous records are on file in the Shelby County Courthouse in Shelbyville today. He became the guardian of his little step-son and saw to his education.

John Logan was given all the educational advantages attainable in his neighborhood, and he made the most of his opportunities. He attended the Boys' Academy at Shelbyville established in 1846 by Samuel W. Womack, a classical and mathematical school. After that came attendance at Shelby College, directed by Dr. W. I. Waller, a prominent Episcopal clergyman. He was then sent to Kentucky Military Institute which was headed by Colonel R. T. P. Allen, a graduate of West Point. Colonel Allen's sister, Dorothea, married Jay Cooke, later to be the financier of the Civil War. Having decided upon the study of medicine, John Logan went to Madison, Wisconsin, to study chemistry and medicine under Dr. Sehne and Dr. Faville. He returned to Louisville to complete these studies at the Kentucky School of Medicine. He graduated there in 1859 with his M.D. degree and then proceeded to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for postgraduate work at Jefferson Medical College.

John's step-father, Mr. O'Neill, had left the Bank in Shelbyville and moved the family to St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1857. There he became an officer of The Buchanan Life and General Insurance Company. John's first period of residence in St. Joseph was at that time 1857. After completing his education, the Civil War had started, so young Dr. Logan, on October 25, 1861, secured a position as a contract surgeon in the United States Army Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. He had charge of several wards in Louisville, a hospital across the Ohio River in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and an invalid corps of twelve hundred men at Camp Joe Holt, near New Albany, Indiana. Later, he was ordered to establish a hospital for the Eleventh Missouri Cavalry Regiment at Camp Gamble, near St. Louis. Then he was placed in charge of a ward in General Hospital No. 5 in St. Louis. During 1863, while on duty in Hospital No. 13 in Louisville, he made a discovery which was considered of sufficient value to be recorded by the Surgeon General in the United States Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Assistant Surgeon John Logan began to treat cases of gangrene with bromine with great success. He terminated his contract as army surgeon on April 14, 1864.

John Logan had an uncle, Lewis Sublett, a younger brother of his mother, who was a leading business man in Versailles, Kentucky. So John was well known in that community, and there he met Emma Puryear Cotton, daughter of Charles Cotton, a prominent landowner of Woodford County. Charles Cotton was born in Loudoun County, Virginia, on October 3, 1781, shortly before the end of the Revolutionary War. His father, William Cotton, was a soldier at Yorktown in the Virginia company organized by his brother-in-law, Captain Richard Spurr. After the war, in the fall of 1785, Spurr and about thirty of his group, including Cotton, went out to the western land, later to be Kentucky, to take up their land warrants, given by Virginia for military service. They floated down the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers to what is now Maysville. Cotton's land was 360 acres in what is now Clark County. His wife was Frances Taylor. When William Cotton died in 1826 he left his land to his grandchildren . . . "to have and to hold, from this day forward, their heirs and assigns forever, as long as oak and ash shall grow and water shall flow.' Charles Cotton went to Louisville as a young man, engaged in business, and by 1819 was prosperous enough to buy 600 acres in Woodford County, near Versailles. This establishment supported forty negroes. He built a rope walk at Clifton, on the Kentucky River, and slave labor made the locally grown hemp into rope and bagging. Charles Cotton married twice: to Sarah Richardson Buck in 1819; and after her death he married Sarah Blackburn Puryear of Louisville on October 26, 1837. She was the niece of the Reverend Gideon Blackburn, president of Centre College, and her father's mother was Sarah Fontaine. Charles Cotton's second marriage was blessed by three children, of which the next to the youngest, Emma Puryear Cotton, was born February 26, 1841, at 'Old Cotton Place in Woodford County. She attended “finishing school' in Versailles and while there met John Sublett Logan. They were married at the Cotton Place on November 20, 1862.

Woodford County, Kentucky, was north of most of the fighting of the Civil War, although Northern troops camped on the place on their way to the battles further south. Charles Cotton was opposed to Secession in 1860, being satisfied with the existing situation and believing the Secessionist states too precipitate. In 1862 General John Hunt Morgan of Lexington, Kentucky, was active in raising troops of mounted men for the Confederate cause, and Emma Cotton's younger brother, Frank Puryear Cotton, aged nineteen, was anxious to join. This his father forbade. Frank went ahead anyhow, joining Morgan in June 1862. He was captured in the raid on New Lisbon, Ohio, in July 1863 and was sent to spend the rest of the war in the prison camp at Fort Douglas, Illinois. Charles Cotton died at his home in Woodford County, January 9, 1863.

John and Emma Logan's first child, Charles Cotton Logan, was born in Louisville, February 25, 1864. When the war was over, the family moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, and Dr. Logan engaged in farming for about six years. He was appointed surgeon of the Buchanan County Militia in 1865. A second son, Thomas Trabue Logan, was born near St. Joseph June 15, 1866, and a third son, John Sublett Logan, Jr., was born in the house at 605 Hall Street on November 1, 1869. In 1870 Dr. Logan moved the family to Andrew County where the fourth son, Frank Puryear Logan, was born December 7, 1872. A fifth son, Lewis Sublett Logan, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, August 10, 1876. In 1879 Dr. Logan moved his family back to St. Joseph and in December 1882 he purchased the home at 408 North Eleventh Street, which had been built in 1864 and occupied by the William Wyeth family until 1870 and by Adam N. Schuster until 1881. In that house, the sixth son of Dr. Logan was born, Milton Tootle Logan, on February 15, 1883.

Dr. Logan did not practice medicine after the Civil War. After his years of farming, when he returned to St. Joseph, about 1879, he embarked upon a career of investment which occupied his full attention for the rest of his life. His wife had inherited from Charles Cotton, her father, valuable commercial real estate in Louisville, Kentucky. The liquidation of that property provided the means of the investment program. In 1884 Dr. Logan purchased an interest ın a real estate firm in St. Joseph and for a year was partner of Herbert A. Owen in the firm of Logan & Owen. He became interested in Texas, purchased land there, and was active in the cities of Fort Worth, Corpus Christi, and Houston. He was interested in cattle ranching in Texas and Wyoming, and invested in various mining enterprises. He purchased large amounts of land in southern Missouri, and in 1894 he built the Lawlor Hotel in Houston, Texas.

In January 1887 Milton Tootle died. His widow was Dr. Logan's half sister so he was appointed one of the three administrators of Mr. Tootle's estate, along with John S. Lemon and Isaac Τ. Hosea. In 1897 Dr. Logan was appointed by the Governor of Missouri a member of the Board of Managers of the Bureau of Geology and Mines for the State of Missouri for a term of four years. In 1903 Dr. Logan sold some of his Texas investments and built the Logan Building covering the quarter block on the southwest corner of Eighth and Edmond Streets, St. Joseph, across the street from the post office.

In politics, Dr. Logan was originally a Whig and he cast his first presidential vote in 1860 for Bell and Everett, who were in favor of compromise on the slavery issue. They carried the border states of Kentucky and Tennessee. After the Civil War, Dr. Logan followed the Democratic Party and was a delegate to the state Democratic Convention of 1872 which nominated Silas Woodson for governor and again in 1880 when Thomas T. Crittenden was named. He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church, St. Joseph, of the State Historical Society of Missouri, and of the Sons of the Revolution. In May 1887 he was one of the organizers and original members of the Benton Club in St. Joseph.

On January 18, 1909, Dr. John S. Logan slipped on the ice in front of his building on Edmond Street, striking his forehead, and resulting in a fractured skull and his immediate death. He was seventy-two years of age. The press reports stated: "The news was sorrowfully received by a host of Dr. Logan's warm and intimate friends. Emma P. Logan lived on at 408 North Eleventh Street until her death there on January 6, 1920.

Newspaper account of May 26, 1895:

“DR. LOGAN'S INVESTMENT.

He Builds a Hotel for the Accommodation of Texas People.

"Texas is now filling up with a good class of people in both country and cities, at a pace that is entirely satisfactory to those who are spending their time and energies in telling the world of the vast advantages to be found in this great state. This is particularly true of south Texas and the city of Houston, and to accommodate the vast travel that is literally pouring into this good city, more hotel room was needed.

Dr. John S. Logan, of St. Joseph, Mo., came to the rescue and supplied the demand by erecting a handsome 100 room, four-story building opposite the Grand Central depot, with all the latest improvements and conveniences, and leased the same to James Lawlor, the well-known and popular hotel caterer. The new hostelry was formally thrown open to the public on the 17th instant, in speaking of which the Galveston News says:

“One of the auspicious events of the season was the grand formal opening of the Lawlor hotel Friday evening. At 8:30 o'clock Herb's Light Guard Band commenced playing delightful music while the many guests were partaking of the good things of which the tables were loaded. Mr. James Lawlor, the genial proprietor, and Dr. Logan, the owner of the building, were the recipients of many words of praise and congratulations. The new building is a handsome four story structure, with all modern improvements and furnished elegantly. The opening was a grand success, and this adds another handsome hotel to Houston, and with Mr. Lawlor at the head, will no doubt be a thorough success.' '