My Genealogy Hound

JACOB L. SCHOCH. M. D., a prominent medical practitioner and highly esteemed citizen of Shippensburg, was born May 14, 1843, at Mt. Carroll, Ill., a son of Michael P. and Caroline E. (Buehler) Schoch.

Michael P. Schoch was born in 1812, at Newmanstown, Pa., where he was reared to manhood, after which he went to Kentucky, where he became interested in an iron business with Mr. Buckner. Some years later he came to Big Pond Furnace, six miles east of Shippensburg, where his father, M. P. Schoch, was financially interested. After severing his connection here, and giving some years to the settling of the well known Martin estate, he went to Virginia, during the Civil War, making the visit in the hope of securing a government contract. Later he located in Lawrence county, Ky., engaged in the coal and salt business and was later at Catlettsburg where he carried on a mercantile business on the Big Sandy River, this being a large depot for supplying miners and a large backwoods tributary territory. Mr. Schoch was a man of continual business activity and he next went to West Virginia and bought an interest in a gristmill and in an oil business, continuing to operate both for some years. In 1869 he returned to Pennsylvania and located at Carlisle until he had settled up his father’s estate, when he removed to Shippensburg, where he died in 1898.

The mother of Dr. Schoch was born and reared in Kentucky, and died in 1903, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Charles F. Hanna, at Baltimore, Md. She was well known in Shippensburg, it having been her custom for years to spend her summers in this city, at the home of her son. The surviving members of her family are: Mrs. Hanna, of Penmore Park, Baltimore, whose husband has been cashier at the Baltimore Custom House for years; Floyd, of St. Louis; Edward of Fort Worth, Texas; and Jacob L. Her remains were laid by the side of her husband and son in the family burial plot in the Spring Hill cemetery.

Dr. Schoch had the privilege of being educated at a private school at Catlettsburg, Ky., after which he entered the employ of William Heeley, in the steamboat business, running from Cincinnati to Charleston, W. Va., and then to Portsmouth, Ohio. In 1863 he went to Baltimore, and read medicine with Dr. John W. Dunbar during that and the succeeding year, and then took a medical course of two years at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa., in 1870 graduating from the medical department of the University of Maryland, at Baltimore. In the same year he located at Shippensburg, where he engaged in practice for five years. He was then called by the Texas Railway, through the Graham Young Company, in connection with the location at Waxahachie, on Chambers Creek, intending to locate later at Fort Worth, Texas, but owing to the illness of his daughter was called East. Dr. Schoch returned to Shippensburg in 1878 and resumed practice in company with Dr. William Nevin, and in the succeeding years has built up a very satisfactory patronage. He is a man of much ability in his profession and is not only held in high esteem locally, but by his brethren in the Baltimore Medical Society, and the American Medical Association, and in the leading medical journals to which he is a frequent contributor.

In 1880 Dr. Schoch married Sarah J. Matthews, daughter of Ira and Sarah Matthews, prominent farming people. Mr. Matthews died in 1865. The two children of this marriage were Edna, now the wife of Gordon Smith, general manager of the New York Life Insurance Co., and Tiffany McClain, who is at home.