Joseph F. McKay, M.D.

Joseph F. McKay, M.D.

Joseph F. McKay, M. D. The medical profession of North Carolina, not to mention a large portion of the general public, will regard any amount of space well used which is devoted to some record of the McKay family, representatives of three generations of which have been distinguished in medical history. While the services of this long line of physicians have come to be pretty generally understood and appreciated among medical men throughout the state, the beneficiaries of those services for over eighty years have been chiefly in Harnett County.

The McKays are descended from Highland Scotch who located in pioneer times in the Cape Fear district and constitute one of the best known Scotch names in that section. The founder of the family was Archibald McKay, who was born in Scotland and came to Wilmington, North Carolina, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, establishing his home in Robeson County. The record of the family in connection with the medical profession begins with one of his sons, Dr. John McKay, who was a man of special distinction, a scholar as well as a physician, and whose mental horizon was unbounded by every diverse field of knowledge. He was born in Robeson County, near old Floral College, graduated in medicine from the University of Maryland in 1823, and for several years practiced in Robeson County. He married in 1829 Miss Mary McNeill, and in the following year removed to Buies Creek in Harnett County. From that year to the present time the people of that section have never been without the capable services of some member of the McKay family Dr. John McKay did his work in a comparatively pioneer era, enduring all the hardships and inconveniences connected with traveling far and wide to attend his patients scattered over the rural districts of several surrounding counties. On these rides he carried his medicines and also his surgical instruments, and most of these instruments are still carefully preserved by his grandson, Dr. Joseph F. McKay, of Buies Creek.

The second generation of McKay physicians was the late Dr. John Archibald McKay, who died at the home of his son, Dr. J.F. McKay, in Buies Creek, October 25, 1917. He was born March 13, 1830, at the home which had been established by his father on the old Raleigh and Fayetteville stage road in Neill's Creek Township, Harnett County, and only about two miles from the home where he died. He attained the great age of eighty-seven years, seven months, twelve days. As a boy he attended the schools of his home community, and like his father his range of intellectual interests was remarkable. He was thoroughly grounded in the classics and had the ideals and culture of a man of the old South. He matriculated in the University of North Carolina in 1849 and was graduated in the class of 1853. At the time of his death, so far as known, there was no other living survivor of that class. One of his class mates was his brother, D. McN. McKay. Dr. John A. McKay had been prepared for college at old Summerville Academy, near Lillington, under the direction of the famous Doctor Coiton. From the State University he entered the Medical College of the State of South Carolina at Charleston, where he was graduated in 1857. He almost immediately began practice at Buies Creek, as successor to nis father, and continued to respond to calls upon his services until a few years before his death. He was the oldest member of the medical profession in Harnett County.

Of his character and attainments a local paper has spoken as follows:

“No physician in this county or section of the state stood higher in his profession than Dr. John A. McKay. His superior knowledge was given unreservedly to benefit the people among whom he had been born and reared. He had a high conception of the obligations resting upon a physician, and the ethical standard set by him has had a most wholesome influence upon the profession throughout this whole section. No man ever came in contact with Doctor McKay without being convinced that he was a man of superior intellect and learned not only in his profession but in almost everything that pertains to human knowledge.”

When a young man Dr. John A. McKay married Miss Christiana Foy, of Wilmington, North Carolina, who died in 1880, the mother of five sons and two daughters. The living children are: Mary Isabelie, the widow of Dr. J. H. Crawford; Dr. J. F. McKay, John A. McKay, Rev. E.J. McKay, Mrs. Martin B. Williams, and D. McN. McKay.

Dr. Joseph F. McKay, son of the late Dr. John A. McKay and grandson of Dr. John McKay, was born at the old McKay homestead at Buies Creek in 1861. His academic training was acquired in Lillington Academy, and his medical education in the Medical College of South Carolina at Charleston, where he graduated with the class of 1884, just twenty-seven years from the time his father had gone forth from the same institution with his diploma. He returned home to relieve his father of some of the burdens of practice, and thus his work is a direct continuation of the service so long rendered by both his father and grandfather. Dr. McKay is a former president of the Harnett County Medical Society and also a member of the State and the Southern Medical associations and Tri State Medical Association.

Like his forefathers, Doctor McKay has always espoused the faith of the Presbyterian Church. He married Miss Mattie Rogers, of Lillington, North Carolina. They have four children: John A., now a student in the Johns Hopkins Medical School; Mrs. Alton M. Cameron of Vass, North Carolina, Joseph Lister, and Martha.

Source: History of North Carolina, Vol. VI, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago and New York ©1919