Return to the Land

Dr. Jacob Adam Wagner Doctor Jacob Adam Wagner, the grand old man of Bland County and often spoken of as Bland County’s first citizen, passed from this life October 15, 1941. Many of his friends think that some of the most beautiful words ever spoken, credited to a great Civil War general would apply to Doctor Wagner: ‘Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.’ Doctor Wagner was not a military general, but he was a general in life and commanded his associates and fellowmen by his untiring devotion and servitude to them and to his community. Doctor Wagner died a tired man: tired from physical exertions, but not tired from the offerings of the goodness and kindness that was in his heart and soul. His life in medicine was devoted to the poor more so than the rich. His life in education was devoted to the youth of our county. Doctor Wagner was born on a farm in the Valley of Kimberling, Bland County, Virginia, March 10, 1861. His people have been in this section of Virginia for generations. The Wagner ancestors came from Germany and were colonial settlers in Montgomery County, Virginia. Doctor Wagner’s great -grandfather, George Wagner, was a native of Virginia and one of the pioneers in the Kimberling Valley of what was then Giles, now Bland County. He married a Miss Kidd, a native of Virginia. Adam Wagner, grandfather of Doctor Wagner, was born in Kimberling Valley, and after his marriage acquired the farm of his father-in-law on Walkers Creek in what is now Bland County. He spent the rest of his life there as a successful farmer. His wife was Elizabeth Hutsell, who was born in 1814 on Walkers Creek, in what was then Wythe County. She died at the home of her grandson, Doctor Wagner, at Bland in November 1898. James Wagner, father of Doctor Wagner, was born at the Walkers Creek home in 1826. He became a farmer and, at the beginning of the War Between the States, joined the Confederate army. He died of typhoid fever while in Monroe County, West Virginia, in 1862. He was a Democrat and a Methodist. James Wagner married Ailsey Munsey who was born near Staffordsville in Giles County in 1826, and, died at the old homestead in Bland County in 1911. She was the mother of three children. David Wagner volunteered for service in the Spanish American War, went to Cuba and returned to the State of Ohio where he died August 19, 1942. The only daughter Elizabeth, died in infancy. Jacob A. Wagner, youngest child, was three years old when his father died. He was reared on a farm, attended private and public schools in Bland County, and finished his high school work at the age of eighteen. He was a student practically all his life, and as a young man qualified for a successful career as a teacher. For twenty years he was principal of schools in Bland County, served as county surveyor four years, and deputy-county clerk three years. In 1898 Doctor Wagner entered the Medical College of Virginia, at Richmond, and was graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1901. He practiced in Bland County until his death.

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