The medical profession in Hancock county has long been noted for the high order of its members, many of whom have achieved a large measure of success in the field where their talents are exercised, beside attaining a distinction which has won for them much more than local repute. Among the well-known physicians and surgeons whose professional abilities have brought them prominently into the notice of the public is Dr. O. C. Neier, who since the year 1892 has ministered to the suffering humanity in the town of New Palestine and in a large area of country adjacent thereto.

Dr. Neier is a native of Indiana and the son of Amos and Lydia (Croy) Neier, natives respectively of Pennsylvania and Indiana and living at the present time in the city of Greencastle, Putnam county. The father of Mrs. Neier was one of Indiana’s earliest pioneers, moving to the state in they 1816, while it was still a territory. The Doctor’s father came to Indiana when eleven years old and grew to manhood in the county of Putnam, where nearly all of his life has been spent. His four children are Benjamin F., Charles V., Oliver C. and Maggie.

Dr. Neier received his preliminary educational discipline in the common schools and later entered Central Normal College at Danville, where he prosecuted his studies graduating in the scientific and teacher’s courses and making an honorable record as a close and painstaking student. For a period of two years after leaving college he taught in the schools of Great Bend, Kansas, and a limited period prior to entering the Central Normal. Meantime he had decided upon the medical profession as the calling most congenial to his tastes and desires and while attending school and teaching began the study of the same under the direction of a competent instructor, the better to prepare himself for his life work, he spent two years in Rush Medical College, Chicago, where he prosecuted his researches with great assiduity until completing the prescribed course and receiving his degree, having been graduated with the class of 1900.

The same years of his graduation the Doctor went to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where he remained about six months in the office of Dr. McCausland, a distinguished physician and surgeon of that city, and at the end of that time returned to Chicago, where he practiced his profession until the spring of 1892, when he located at New Palestine, Hancock county. With the exception of the time required to take a post-graduate course and about two months spent in Colorado, he has since been busily engaged attending to his professional duties here and the success with which his efforts have been crowned has won him a conspicuous place not only in the confidence of the public generally, but also among the leading medical men of this part of the state.

Dr. Neier is honored and esteemed by a large circle of friends, who have the most implicit confidence in his integrity and professional ability and as a consequence he has a very large and extended practice in the county, especially in the vicinity of New Palestine, where he is best known and where his ability in the treatment of diseases has been fruitful of most beneficial results. As already intimated, his standing among his professional peers is of the highest character and clearly indicates that his career has been no less creditable to the profession than it has been useful to the public.

Dr. Neier was married in the year 1891 to Miss Anna Snodgrass, daughter of Napoleon B. Snodgrass, of Shelby county, Indiana. He is a member of the Hancock County Medical Society, of the Indiana State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, and takes pains to keep in touch with the trends of modern professional thought, being a critical reader of the best standard literature, besides taking an active part in the deliberations of the different societies with which he is identified. Fraternally he holds membership with Lodge No. 404, F. & A. M., at New Palestine, and also belongs to the order of Eastern Star, in which at the present time he holds an important official position. Mrs. Neier is also a member of the latter society and has been secretary ever since its organization. The Doctor and his wife are highly esteemed in social circles and popular with a large circle of friends in New Palestine and throughout the county of Hancock.

Transcribed from Biographical Memoirs of Hancock County B. F. Bowen, Publisher, Logansport, Indiana, 1902 Pages 389-390.

Submitted by Sylvia (Rose) Duda, Laingsburg, MI Sept. 22, 2003.

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