Born: Woodford County, Kentucky, 1831.
Died: Carthage, Illinois, 1901.
Those who were personally acquainted with this gentleman called him a noted physician, preacher, philosopher and friend. His father's family came to Illinois in 1837, and in 1839 into Hancock County. Orphaned of his parents at the age of fourteen, he was one of six children left penniless and alone. He appealed to the judge for the privilege of choosing his own guardian, which was granted. In the home of this friend he became one of the family. The only schoolbook he there had was an English novel, from which he would read aloud to the pleasure of the whole school.
By his persistence and pine-knot efforts, at the age of fifteen he secured a subscription school, which he taught in the kitchen of David Mason's cabin. The money thus earned was used to enable him to make some trips to Carthage and to buy and borrow some books. For three years he studied medicine, for his great ambition was to be a physician. Meanwhile, he taught schools as necessary. He became a Christian under the ministry of Gilmore Callison and began to preach at the age of seventeen. His knowledge of the Bible soon became remarkable, and later he was widely recognized as an eloquent preacher.
A minister of another church asked Dr. Booz to come to Pontoosuc at one time and meet an opponent in a public discussion. So well was the work done that the opponent failed to appear the second evening.
All his life he was a country doctor. Despite his early disadvantages and later handicaps, he rose to wide recognition. At one time he had the entire practice in 170 square miles around his home, except in twelve families. He had patients all over western Illinois as well as in Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and Kentucky. When he began the practice of medicine at the age of twenty-two, he laid down certain rules, from which he never deviated through the forty-seven years of his professional work. He was always a hard student--a progressive, a discoverer, a leader.
During the period of his practice he rode more than one-half-million miles, mostly through the brakes of Crooked Creek. He regarded a call to a bed of pain as a call to duty. Through trackless forests, bridgeless streams and Egyptian darkness, he made countless trips to the homes of suffering, and oft-times where no compensation could be expected except the love and gratitude that followed him to his dying day. He was the embodiment of cheerfulness, and his peculiar personality inspired his patients with confidence.
Without personal political ambition, he was a leader in politics.
He wrote well. His papers for township literary societies were gems of pathos, wit and homely good sense. In the early sixties he sent a communication to the Carthage Republican over the pseudonym, "Country Jake." The editor was so impressed with its pungent character that he encouraged him to send weekly contributions. Thus was born provincial journalism in Illinois.
In medicine Dr. Booz was a genius, to the world a Christian, to his contemporaries a philosopher, and to his family and to all people, a gentleman. He was the soul of honor, justice and generosity. There was not a selfish or mean streak in him. The pride of his Kentucky blood was apparent in his exalted character. And a country doctor all his life because he wanted to be!