By FRIENDS OF SILVERBROOK CEMETERY

Editor’s note: This article is part of a continuing series on Niles’ historic Silverbrook Cemetery provided by Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery, a group working to preserve and restore the cemetery.

We have featured several of Niles former military dignitaries over the past several years.

Their stories always give us a sense of pride in the role those who called Niles home played in building our country.

John Knox Finley served his country with honor. It was a family tradition. His father, Samuel, was educated in the family of his uncle, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Finley, president of Princeton College.

A Major in the Virginia line during the Revolutionary War, he was taken prisoner at the battle of Long Island and confined in the Jersey Prison Ship. According to Centennial biography: “Men of Mark of Cumberland Valley, Pa., 1776-1876:” “In the War of 1812, he commanded a regiment of Mounted Riflemen ordered to the frontier to protect the peaceable Indians, after Hull’s surrender. He was always receiver of public monies, for the sale of public lands during the administration of President Washington.”

John K. Finley’s brother, Gen. Clement A. Finley, 10 years his senior, graduated at Washington College, Pa., then studied medicine in Chillicothe, Ohio, receiving his diploma in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania.

His brother then entered the Army Aug. 10, 1818 as surgeon’s mate of the First Regiment of Infantry commanded by Col. Daniel Bissell, then stationed at Baton Rouge, La. He then filled the positions of assistant surgeon and surgeon, eventually becoming medical director in the field during the Black Hawk, Seminole and Mexican wars.

Brother Clement succeeded Lawson in the early days of the Civil War as surgeon general of the Army. He was awarded the commission of brevet brigadier general for long and faithful service on his retirement.

Our Dr. Finley was an apt student who could read Hebrew as readily as English before he was 20 years old.  Although his original goal was to join the clergy, he eventually decided to study medicine receiving his degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1827.

For two years he was associated with S. A. McCrosky, who eventually became bishop of Michigan, when both were professors with Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. Finley was the chairman of chemistry and natural history.

In 1830 he resigned and returned to Chillicothe, where he was born in 1806, to practice medicine. After five years he moved to Niles where according to his obituary, “he took high rank as a physician from the first.”

He remained here for 20 years. Finley was part of several important legislative actions.

In 1836 he joined forces with Henry B. Hoffman, Jacob Beeson, Vincent L. Brandford, J. C. Larimore, Thomas Green, Daniel Old and Nathaniel Bacon to incorporate the Niles Free Bridge Co. to build the Main Street bridge.

In 1849 he became part of the group which incorporated the Pittsburgh and Isle Royal Mining Co. of Pittsburgh. The incorporation stipulated that one member of the board must always reside in Michigan. The other members remained in Pittsburgh.

He was president of the village of Niles in both 1843 and 1855 when he returned to Pennsylvania. His wife was ill and they moved to be near family in Pittsburgh. Both his wife and son John died while there.

Perhaps it seemed incomprehensible to him that he would not follow his father and brother into the military. His obituary in the Niles Weekly Mirror, Feb. 11, 1885 said, “When the war of the rebellion broke out, he felt it his duty to devote his talents and skill in the good of the country” and given the choice between being a navy surgeon or a surgeon under the newly formed U.S. Sanitary Commission, he chose the latter.”

The commission was “organized by civilians, run by civilians and funded by civilians.” Doctors, clergy, lawyers and other interested parties who recognized a need for better coordination of relief efforts, attended the conference. After members of the delegation lobbied the war department, the department sanctioned the creation of the U. S. Sanitary Commission on June 9, 1861.

The Civil War claimed a horrific number of lives. While casualties are an unavoidable by-product of war, it may be surprising to learn that for every man killed in battle, two died of disease. Many of these diseases – dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid and malaria – “were caused by overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in the field. Preaching the virtues of clean water, good food and fresh air, the (U. S. Sanitary) Commission pressured the Army Medical Department to ‘improve sanitation, build large well-ventilated hospitals and encourage women to join the newly created nursing corps. Despite the efforts of  the Sanitary Commission, some 560,000 soldiers died from disease during the war.”

Finley returned to Niles in 1864 and though he did not try to revive his practice, he remained a force in the city. It was said that his association with the public was “always dignified and never haughty.”

He was an elder with the First Presbyterian Church and a member of the board of education. His home was on the northwest corner of Sycamore and Third streets and was thought to be the oldest home in Niles at the time Louise Reddick wrote her letter to her children describing life in early Niles.

“Miss Coolidge recalled her grandmother saying that in that home, when a Dr. Meade lived there they had protected a negro slave. A mob formed in front of the house and tried to get at the slave who had run away and was being hidden by Mrs. Meade,” she wrote.

Given Dr. Finley’s life we feel he would have approved the actions of those who took over his home while he was away.

Finley died Feb. 3, 1885 at age 79. After being described as “a true type of Christian physician” who would often “kneel with the sorrowing family group and comment them to the care and protection of the Great Physician,” perhaps it is little wonder that he was laid to rest under the inscription: “a just man made perfect.”