Glendale, California Biographies

Dr. William C. Mabry.

Dr. William C. Mabry, who is an internist in the practice of his profession, maintaining offices in Glendale and Los Angeles, is a native of Donellson, Montgomery County, Illinois. He was born October 29, 1871, a son of William Dudly and Irene (Dutton) Mabry. The Mabrys are of Scotch, Irish and English ancestry and the family was founded in America in 1665. Robert Mabry was a Major in the Revolutionary War serving with the Virginian troops. He was a pioneer in Southern Illinois, where he became a large landowner and a man of big business. Joseph Braxton Mabry, grandfather of Dr. Mabry, was a soldier in the Mexican War. As a young man he, with an older brother, made the trip to Puget Sound, two years before the Lewis and Clark expedition crossed the continent. Mabry’s Landing, a town on the Ohio River, was named after the Mabrys. They were owners and operators of a line of boats on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. They were large slave owners, but gave all their liberty before Illinois was admitted as a state.

William Dudley Mabry is a resident of Washington, D. C., where he is at the head of a bureau in the United States Treasury. He is a veteran of the Civil War, having served with the Second Illinois Cavalry for the duration of the war. He has been a government employee for twenty-five years, his first government appointment, under President McKinley, in the ordinance department. Dr. Mabry’s parents moved from Illinois to McGregor, Iowa, when he was seven years old. He attended the public schools of McGregor, after which he enrolled at the Upper Iowa University, at Fayette, and graduated with the class of 1892, with the degree of A. B. Mining called him to California, but after a few years of it he returned east and matriculated at Western Reserve Medical College, Cleveland, Ohio. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War he enlisted in the Hospital Corps and served until the end of the war. Returning to his studies at the medical college he graduated in 1900 and returned to the Army Medical Service. Being sent to China and the Philippines for the campaigns there, he obtained, incidentally, an extensive experience in tropical diseases. Returning to the states he served in various posts of the army until 1905, when he accepted a position as mine surgeon and as assistant surgeon for the Sonora Railway Company in Mexico, remaining in that country for seven and one-half years.

He came to Tropico to live and has since given his time to his profession there and at Los Angeles, excepting for the time he was a Captain in the Medical Corps during the late war. He was in service from July 1918, to September 1919, and was stationed at Camp Lewis and at Fort Douglas. He was a member of the exemption board for district No. 9, before receiving his commission. Dr. Mabry is a life member of Woodward Lodge, No. 508, F. & A. M., Cleveland, Ohio, an Elk, a Knights of Pythias, the Sons of Veterans, the American Legion, and charter member of the United Spanish War Veterans. Before Tropico became a part of Glendale, Dr. Mabry was its health officer. He also had been President of its Chamber of Commerce and Superintendent of Playgrounds. During the time that Thornycroft Farm and Sanitarium was given to the care of disabled World War veterans Dr. Mabry was its house physician.

At Salt Lake City, Utah, September 7, 1904, Dr. Mabry married Bessie Mayne, a daughter of Alvadus H. and Janet Mayne. Her father was a well-known mining man of Utah. Mrs. Mabry is of notable Yankee ancestry on both her father’s and mother’s sides, both families having been established in the Colonies in the pre-Revolutionary days. She is a graduate of the University of Utah. She is active in the social and club life of Glendale, being president of the Thursday Afternoon Club, a member of Chapter A. H. of the P.E.O, Women’s Auxiliary to the United Spanish War Veterans, American Legion, and various other societies and clubs. Dr. and Mrs. Mabry are the parents of three children: Janet Elizabeth, Bettie, and William Braxton, all natives of Glendale. The family home is at 115 East Acacia Avenue.

From “History of Glendale and Vicinity” by John Calvin Sherer. The Glendale Publishing Company, c. 1922 F. M. Broadbooks and J. C. Sherer. p. 406-407.