JAMES MONROE BOND.
In the medical, as in other professions, if a man would rise he must work, and he will ever find plenty of room at the top. In Dr. Bond we recognize one who is bound to win, as he has taken his place in Kings county, Cal., as one who has come to stay, and is quietly engaged in attending to the stream of practice that is converging in his direction. Although during his early manhood days he followed ranching pursuits mainly, he finally determined to enter the medical profession, having a great deal of natural ability in that direction and having practiced to some extent before taking a special preparation. It was not until about 1890 that he entered the California Eclectic Medical College in San Francisco, and after his graduation from this institution in 1893, he practiced one year in the same city. Returning to Kings county the following year, Dr. Bond opened an office in Hanford and engaged as general practitioner. Shortly afterward, however, he started a sanitarium, and here for five years he worked with earnestness and vim in building up his practice. In 1903 he purchased the place upon which his sanitarium is now located. This place contained five acres of ground, and is well located within the city limits and just outside the residence portion of Hanford, where everything is quiet and peaceful. The extensive grounds are laid out in beautiful lawns, well-kept and beautified in every conceivable way by ornamental flowers, trees and shrubbery. The Sanitarium proper is a large and commodious two-story building, which furnishes accommodations for fifteen patients, in addition to the family living rooms. The building is well fitted with the latest medical appliances and surgical instruments, as the doctor is well informed on the latest discoveries applying to medicine and to surgery, and adopts the most improved methods of healing in treating different cases.
The birth of Dr. Bond took place near Knoxville, in Marion county, Ia., November 17, 1847, and he is one of four children born to William B. and Hannah (Hayes) Bond, the latter an Ohio lady, died in the Blue Mountains, while the family were en route to Oregon, in 1853. William B. Bond descended from a worthy English family who left England in the sixteenth century and settled in Virginia, which was also his birthplace. The progenitor of the family in America was one John Bond, the great-grandfather of William B. Bond. His son, Solomon, was a native of Virginia and served in the Revolutionary war and his son, the father of William B., was a Baptist minister and married a Virginia lady. Reared in his native state, where in his early manhood he followed farm pursuits, the father of Dr. Bond left his eastern home and traveling westward, he settled for a time in Illinois, proceeding on to Iowa in 1846. Here he took up government land in this section, which was new and undeveloped, and he was engaged in tilling the soil here until 1853. Selling out, he crossed overland to Oregon, and having lost his beloved companion on the way, he was left with the care of four small children. He took up a claim near Harrisburg, in Linn County, and lived there for twelve years, and in 1865 located permanently in Benton county, where he died shortly afterward, being forty-nine years old at the time of his death.
The boyhood days of Dr. Bond were spent upon his father’s farm, and he attended public school until about twelve years of age, receiving but a limited education. He followed farm pursuits until about the close of the war and after the death of his father, when only nineteen years old, he married and continued to farm in that section a couple of years afterward. It was in 1868 that he first stepped on California soil and at that date he took up a homestead claim at Crows Landing, in Stanislaus county, and here at times he followed farm pursuits during the next few years. In 1874 he purchased a government claim in Kings county, three miles southeast of Lemoore, but did not occupy this place as a home until the spring of 1877. He followed ranching and stock-raising here until 1889 and about this time he determined upon a medical career and taking a complete medical course, he has devoted his life to this profession every since.
By his marriage, November 11, 1866, in Oregon, Dr. Bond linked his fortunes with those of Miss Sarah T. Starr, a lady whose parents moved to Oregon in 1847, and it was in that state that she was born. Mrs. Bond is both amiable and accomplished and is in every way a fitting companion for the doctor. They have reared a family of eleven children, of whom they are justly proud, many of them filling positions of trust in a professional way and all prominent in the communities in which they reside. They are enumerated as follows: Emma, wife of R. A. Wheeler, of Healdsburg, Cal.; William F., a resident of Hanford; James E., a minister of the Seventh Day Adventists’ Church, stationed at Phoenix, Ariz.; Elmer C., A rising young physician conducting a sanitarium in the same city; Frank Starr and Walter Guy, who are Seventh Day Adventist missionaries, now laboring in Spain; Edith, a successful teacher at Phoenix, Ariz.; and Jessie May, Charles Lester, Harry Cecil and Mildred G., who are still at home with their parents. As may be inferred, both the doctor and his wife are enthusiastic Seventh Day Adventists and have reared their family in the same belief. In his political views, the doctor is a Republican, but he has had neither time nor inclination for aspirations in the field of political favor, as he places his profession emphatically before every other interest. Outside of work in his sanitarium, he has a large patronage extending far into the surrounding country, and it may be said of him that he has made a record equaled or excelled by few. A deep and logical thinker, well-read, with good judgment and keen, trustworthy common sense, he has in addition as strong ambition and a high standard of professional excellence. These attributes are bound to bring the permanent rewards of a successful career, and he can truly be said to be the “architect of his own fortune.”