The Rohrs - Balsley - Saur Family

Josephine Rohrs Hilgard M.D. (1906-), the daughter of Henry F. Rohrs, M.D. (1875-1941) who served Napoleon as a physician and surgeon from 1898 until his death in 1941, prepared the following history.

In each of four generations, there was a physician, with the unusual situation for those early days that two of the four were women.

The first was Prudence Ann Belden who was born in Amherst, Ohio, in 1840 and who came to Napoleon after their marriage in 1864 as the wife of J. C. Saur, a local druggist. Prudence Ann Belden Saur attended medical school in Philadelphia, receiving an M.D. in 1871. After 1871 she practiced medicine in Napoleon for 15 years, until 1886, at which point she transferred her practice of medicine to Chicago where she was active for many years. When we consider that the first woman to be graduated from a recognized medical school in the United States did so in 1849, it is clear that Dr. Prudence Saur was indeed an early pioneer.

Prudence was the sister of my grandmother, Clara Belden (1851-1932) who married my grandfather, Warren Frazier Balsley (1847-1911). He joined his brother-in-law as a druggist in Napoleon and remained active for many years. Before coming to Napoleon in the late 1860's, Warren Balsley had run away from home at the age of 14 to join the Northern forces in the Civil War in order to serve as a bugle boy, the only position open to him at his age. Later he served with distinction as a combatant.

The drug firm of Saur and Balsley was a landmark for many years, and it persisted under different ownership in the same location on Perry Street for almost a hundred years. Other owners were Morey and Meyer, Gilbert and Herr, and finally the Napoleon Pharmacy.

Warren and Clara Balsley built their home in 1880 at 332 West Washington Street. Their daughter, Edna Belden Balsley (1879-1951) married Dr. Henry F. Rohrs in 1902.

The original Henry Rohrs (1840- 1918), father of Dr. Rohrs was one of the German immigrants who played such an important part in Napoleon's early history. At first a farmer, he broadened his interests and held several posts in the county government.

Dr. Henry F. Rohrs (1875-1941) received his premedical training at the University of Michigan, earned an M.D. degree in 1897 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and then spent a year and a half in postgraduate study at the University of Berlin in Germany where training in the clinical specialties was considered excellent. Returning to Napoleon, Fie established practice in 1898 as a physician and surgeon; later when the specialty of X-ray diagnosis and treatment was developed, he became a specialist in this field. Not only was he an extraordinarily keen and able physician, but he served in the finest tradition of the family counselor and friend to the many patients who consulted him. Except for a brief period of medical service in the military forces during World War I, he never left Napoleon. Henry Rohrs was active in the community at large, conceiving the quality of education as one of the great opportunities of citizenship in this country, he served for many years as a member of the Napoleon School Board.

The home which Clara and Warren Balsley had built in 1880 continued to remain in the family as the home of Edna and Henry Rohrs until Mrs. Rohrs' death in 1951, at which time it became the property of Evelyn and Louis Hoeffel.

Arriving at the third generation in this medical tradition, Josephine Rohrs graduated from the Napoleon High School in the class of 1924. Subsequent educational work included the degrees of Bachelor of Arts (Smith College, 1928), Master of Arts (Yale, 1930), Doctor of Philosophy (in psychology, Yale, 1933) and Doctor of Medicine (Stanford University, 1940). At Yale she met Ernest Hilgard who was teaching psychology. They were married in 1931 and subsequently moved permanently to Stanford, California, where he became a professor of psychology and chairman of the department, and she became a clinical professor of psychiatry. Specializing in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and hypnosis, she has published numerous articles in these fields and is the author of a book entitled Personality and Hypnosis published in 1970, and, in joint authorship with her husband, a book on Hypnosis and the Relief of Pain in 1975.

Of their two children, Henry Rohrs Hilgard and Elizabeth Ann Belden Hilgard, Henry became a doctor (M.D. Stanford, 1962). Specializing in the field of immunology, he also earned a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. He is now on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Submitted by J. R. Hilgard