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Note: Dr. Reser was a Physician from Lafayette, IN. He wrote the original history of the Waymire family in 1925.
WILLIAM M. RESER, physician and surgeon, is a native of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and the chief work of his life has been done in the City of Lafayette, where he has been an honored and successful physician, holding many responsible relationships in his profession.
Doctor Reser was born near Stockwell in Sheffield Township, June 19, 1863, son of Harvey and Sarah (Waymire) Reser and grandson of Jacob and Sarah (Purgett) Reser. His grandparents were natives of West Virginia and moved to Ohio about 1816. Harvey Reser was born in Ohio, near Springfield, spent his active life as a farmer and was well-to-do and highly respected citizen of Tippecanoe County.
The mother of Doctor Reser was a member of a notable pioneer family. Many of the most substantial virtues of the American pioneer stock were possessed by the Waymires. One of Doctor Reser's literary and historical labors of recent years has been compiling the genealogy of the Waymire family, descendants of John Rudolph Waymire, and his labors are exemplified in a booklet handsomely printed and illustrated, which not only possess a family story of special interest to the Waymires, but is an epitome of the development of our American civilization. John Rudolph Waymire was born in Hanover Germany, about 1725, was a soldier of the King of Hanover, but subsequently rebelled against the arbitrary authority of his ruler and in 1753 brought his family to America and first settled in Pennsylvania, but in about 1757 moved to what is now Randolph County, North Carolina, in the midst of the strong Quaker colony, where he lived until his death in 1801. Doctor Reser estimates that the descendants of John Rudolph Waymire number more than fifty thousand. Because of their opposition to slavery and also because the new lands of the West offered better opportunities, the children of John Rudolph Waymire soon after his death began their exodus to Ohio, and all of them had settled in that state by 1808.
Among them was Daniel Waymire, who was born May 3, 1776, and died July 3, 1825. He married in North Carolina in 1799 Sophia Plummer, who was born June 15, 1783, and died July 19, 1859. They had a family of thirteen children, and of these five daughters and four sons were still living in 1880. Daniel Waymire in 1806 moved to Ohio and settled on land ten miles north of Dayton. Part of this land he donated for school and church uses, and on it was built in 1844 a church ever since known as the Polk Church. On the grounds near this church the Waymire family reunions have been held for fifty-five years.
The fifth child of Daniel and Sophia (Plummer) Waymire was John Waymire, who was born August 30,1808, and died February 20, 1894. He was a man of strong intelligence and much business ability, though he had only the barest rudiments of learning. Like many other members of the family, he was skilled in the use of carpenters' tools and was, like other pioneers, a trained woodsman. He owned several farms in Montgomery County, Ohio. Hard work, thrift and honesty were his dominant traits. John Waymire married in 1833 Margaret Coble, who was born September 8,1813, and died September 14, 1846. Of her three children the only daughter was Sarah Waymire, who was born October 16, 1835, and died June 28, 1914, and was married on September 10, 1857, to Mr. Harvey Reser. Harvey Reser was born February 4, 1825, and died July 14, 1906. Of their ten children one is Dr. William M. Reser, of Lafayette.
Doctor Reser completed the work of the common schools in Tippecanoe County on March 15, 1882, and for a time was a student in the Lafayette High School and spent one year in Wabash College. When he was twenty-two years of age he took the management of the home farm during his father�s illness, and farming was his occupation until he was past thirty-five years of age. Having decided to study medicine, he spent two years in the Indiana Medical School of Indianapolis and completed his preparation in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, where he was graduated M. D. in 1903. In the same year he located at Lafayette, and has been practicing steadily since September, 1903. He has never specialized, but has performed the routine of a busy general practitioner. During the World war period he was local health officer and medical examiner for the draft board. He is a member of the Tippecanoe County, Indiana State and American Medical Associations, being a fellow of the American Association, and for fourteen years was secretary of the County Medical Society. He also belongs to the American Hospital Association and was a charter member and one of the organizers of the Indiana State Hospital Association and served as its vice president two terms. He is on the staff of the St. Elizabeth and Home Hospitals and for twenty-five years donated his services as physician to the Orphans Home. For eight years until 1829, he was a member of the Catholic Hospital Association.
Doctor Reser married Miss Mary Erisman, a native of Lafayette and a member of a family that settled in that city in 1854. Doctor Reser has been a member of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association since it was organized in 1923, and since 1925 has been vice president of the society. In addition to his work as a genealogist for the Waymire family he has written out the results of his extensive researches into the subject of grist mills of pioneer days. Doctor Reser for twenty-five years was a director of the Star City Building & Loan Association. He is a Republican, for forty-two years a member of the Knights of Pythias, and in religion is a Protestant.
INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 3 By Charles Roll, A.M. The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931
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