DR. DEWITT HITCHCOCK

   The community was saddened Sunday afternoon on learning that Dr. DeWitt Hitchcock had succumbed that day to an operation performed at the Moore-Overton Hospital, Binghamton, Friday.  For the past few years he had been in poor health and had relinquished a greater portion of his practice, doing only office work, until his condition became so serious that a very serious operation became necessary on Friday last.

   Dr. Hitchcock was a man of quiet tastes.  He was not a member of any organization for he much preferred to spend his spare time with his family.  His home, wife and children were his all.  However, through his kindly nature and love for his fellow men, to know him was to like and admire him.  He was the beloved physician to all classes of people and many have cause to remember his universal kindness in the sick room no matter how humble it might be, and where he was ready to reach out his hand in any time of trouble or distress.  He knew how to extend aid to the unfortunate with that delicacy that never made it appear as charity.  Friendly, meeting difficulties and discouragements with a cheerful smile and a stout heart, brave in confronting the battles of life, he made friends in every direction, and words of praise for his manhood, and sorrow for his taking off, are on the lips of all.  In his death Oxford loses one of its loved citizens.  For a number of years he had been a member of the Board of Education of Oxford Academy and he was greatly interested in the Brotherhood of the Congregational Church.

   Dr. Hitchcock was born in Oriskany, October 7, 1849, and received his education at Whitestown Academy and his medical studies were persued in New York University.  On the completion of his college education he was house physician two years in the hospital on Blackwell's Island.  Later he went to Long Island City and practiced for several years till his health became impaired and he spent a year or two in Berlin in rest and in study.  It was during his residence in Long Island City that he married Sarah Lynn, daughter of the late Samuel E. Robinson of South Oxford.  Her death occurred in March, 1896.

   He came to South Oxford to reside about 25 years ago and lived on the Robinson farm ten years when he moved into the village.  His second wife was Mary Elizabeth Jamison of Worcester, Mass., whom he married in May, 1898, and who survives him.  They have three daughters, Pauline, Helen and Elizabeth, and one son, William.  There are also surviving one son, John, by the first marriage, now a student at Norwich University, Northfield, Vt., and two brothers, Albert Hitchcock of Yorkville and Julius Hitchcock of Syracuse.

   There was a large attendance at the funeral at the house Wednesday afternoon at two o'clock.  Dr. Inman L. Willcox, pastor of the Congregational Church officiated and burial was in Riverview cemetery.   A large number of floral emblems and cut flowers indicated high regard for the deceased and sympathy with the bereaved.  The Board of Education, faculty and students of Oxford Academy, and members of the medical profession were present.

   Dr. Hitchcock - An appreciation

   Editor of The Review-Times:

      Dear Sir: - Your paper today will contain the obituary notice of Dr. Hitchcock, whose beautiful life drew to a close on Sunday of this week.  I wish that you might find a place in your columns for this little word of appreciation.  To the writer and the writer's family he has been that greatest of all earthly possessions, an absolutely true and loyal friend.  He has been with us in our hardest and bitterest hours and he has understood and helped.

      What he has been to us, I know he has been, in such measure as circumstances permitted, to many, many others.  From the earliest days of his practice, when, as a police-surgeon in New York, he treated the waifs and strays of society and made himself their friend and comforter as well as their physician, up to the last week of his life, when suffering in body and mind, he still retained his deep sympathy for the illness and sorrows of his former patients-for more than forty years, indeed he spent himself freely for others.  I have never known anyone so absolutely without thought of self or anyone who obeyed so literally the Master's command, "Bear he one another's burdens."  No one who needed his aid was ever turned away, no matter how unworthy, or how little able to make him any recompense.

      But words are poor and futile things when we try to express our deepest feelings.  Our aching hearts are, after all, the best witness to our love and gratitude. 

                                                                                                                             A Patient