Jirah Dewey Buck
Dr. Jirah Dewey Buck was a physician who worked to establish the first Theosophical lodge in the United States, the Cincinnati Theosophical Society, and the American Section of the international Theosophical Society in 1886.
Early life
Buck was born in Fredonia, New York on November 20, 1838 to Reuben Buck and Fanniy Morton. He was educated at Belvidere Academy in Belvidere, Illinois.[1]
Career in medicine
Jirah Buck received his medical training at Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College, completing the program in 1864. He began practice that year in Cincinnati as a homeopathic physician in general practice. He also taught medicine at the Pulte Medical College in Cincinnati and at Cleveland Medical College.[2]
Family life
Dr. Buck married Melissa Claugh (1838-1908) in about 1865. They had six children: Alice, Cora, Edgar, Charles, Robert, and Ruth. Cora was very active in the Cincinnati Theosophical Society. Edgar became a physician, and practiced in Kentucky for a time before returning to Cincinnati. There, in 1910, he had taken his wife and son to live with J. D., Cora, and Robert, an electrical engineer. Mrs. Melissa Buck had died in 1908.[3]
Theosophical Society activities
On May 13, 1884, he was appointed by HSO to be a member of the Board of Control of the Theosophical Society's activities in the United States.[4]
In Mahatma Letter 140, written in March, 1886, Madame Blavatsky gave A. P. Sinnett an indication that Dr. Buck was being "helped" by the Mahatmas to make the Society "a grand movement" in America.[5]
Masonry
In an obituary in The Builder, one of his fellow Masons wrote,
Dr. Buck was an active and influential member of every Rite of our historic Order, holding the highest rank both in the esteem of his Brethren and in the gift of the fraternity --including the honorary Thirty-Third Degree of the Scottish Rite in its Northern Jurisdiction. Indeed, he was a recognized leader of a definite school of Masonic thought and propaganda; and while we have never been able to agree with all the conclusions of the school which he represented, we are none the less appreciative of its services to the Craft--knowing that Truth is larger than the formula of any one school or of all schools put together...
His Masonry, on one side, was a spiritual patriotism in the exposition of which he was truly and impressively eloquent. In behalf of free thought, free conscience, and the sovereign right of man to worship in the way his heart loves best, he was a crusader--as every Mason must be.[6]
Later years
Dr. Buck died on December 13, 1916 in Cincinnati.[7]
Writings
- Modern World Movements:Theosophy and the School of Natural Science. Chicago: Indo-American Book Co., 1913. Available at Blavatsky Archives.
- Mystic Masonry
- Genius of Freemasonry
- The Lost Word Found
- A Study of Man
- Constructive Psychology
- The Lost Word Found
Notes
- ↑ Hafner, Arthur Wayne, ed. Directory of Deceased American Physicians, 1804-1929: a genealogical guide to over 149,000 medical practitioners providing brief biographical sketches drawn from the American Medical Association's Deceased Physician Masterfile. Chicago: American Medical Association, 1993.
- ↑ Hafner, Arthur Wayne, ed. Directory of Deceased American Physicians, 1804-1929
- ↑ U.S. Census for 1910.
- ↑ George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 222.
- ↑ See Page 6].
- ↑ Joseph Fort Newton, "J. D. Buck: A Militant Mason," The Builder (February 1917). Available at MasonicDictionary.com
- ↑ State of Ohio Death Index, Volume 2119, Certificate 74792.
Additional resources
- Correspondence and other archival materials related to Dr. Buck's activities in the Theosophical Society are in the Theosophical Society in America Archives. Records Series 20.02.01. Cincinnati Theosophical Society Records. Theosophical Society in America Archives, Wheaton, Illinois.
- See also Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement (book), p. 184; A Short History of the Theosophical Society (book) index (many references).