Dr. Theodore F. Wolfe

NJGenWeb ~ Morris County, New Jersey

Source: History Morris County New Jersey, Volume II, Lewis Publishing Co., 1914

Theodore Frelinghuysen WOLFE, M. D., Ph. D., Litt. D., of Succasunna, Morris county, New Jersey, youngest son of Daniel R. and Mary Logan WOLFE, was born in Roxbury, July 5, 1843. His ancestry is traced to the family of the hero of Quebec on the one side, and to the Lords Stirling on the other. His is a race of soldiers; both of his great-grandfathers were officers in the Revolution, his grandfathers in the War of 1812, and he and his brothers served in the Civil War.

His education was begun in the Succasunna Academy, continued in the Philadelphia High School, and completed in the Columbia University, where he won the degree of M. D. in 1868. The degrees of Ph. D. and Litt. D. were subsequently conferred by other universities in recognition of his membership in various learned societies of this and other countries.

His medical training began in 1861, in the Army of the Potomac, where he had subordinate charge of the field hospital. In 1868 he established himself in Jersey City, where for many years he enjoyed a large and lucrative professional practice, being police surgeon, surgeon to the Pennsylvania railroad, and consultant to two hospitals – a practice which ill-health finally obliged him to relinquish. During this period he wrote many monographs and minor treatises upon surgical topics, and was an official member of medical associations of New Jersey and New York. After retirement from active practice, he gave much time to other scientific researches, especially in the department of ethnology and the study of the Lenape Indians of New Jersey, making many translations of their dialects and traditions, and exhuming numerous implements and weapons.

Later his chief interest has been the critical study of the world’s famous authors and their production. For the purpose of this study he has made several sojourns in Europe, and many more in all the other States of the Union, visiting the environments amid which the authors lived and wrote, their habitual resorts, and the scenes they embalmed in their books. Much of the edifying results of his lettered travels and researches Dr. WOLFE has recorded in his "Literary Series," some volumes of which have now reached the eighteenth edition.

Since 1890 Dr. WOLFE has owned a cottage at Succasunna, New Jersey, where he remains for a considerable part of each year, in the intervals between the journeys in search of literary material, and where most of his later writings have been done, including books, reviews, translations, magazine articles and historical sketches. The following are titles of some of his works: "Tetanus," "Anaethesia and Anaethetics," "Contributions to a Dictionary of the Lenni-Lenape Language," "Literary Shrines, American Authors." "A Literary Pilgrimage to Scenes of British Authors," "Literary Rambles at Home and Abroad." Four other books have been published under the pen name which Dr. WOLFE has not yet acknowledged.

In 1880, Dr. WOLFE was married to Gertrude, daughter of Louise FRANKLIN, of Winsted, Connecticut, who died in 1900, survived by one child,

Mary Franklin WOLFE.

This biography was transcribed by John Cresseveur (1949-2003).