To the Editor—The house pictured on the cover of the January 2015 issue of the NCMJ has a legacy in North Carolina medicine. It is the Caldwell home in Cataloochee, North Carolina. Cataloochee Valley was settled in 1814, with the first family being the Caldwells. The house was constructed in 1903-1906 by my great-great-uncle, Hiram Caldwell. His nephew Eston, my grandfather, spent much of his youth in this home after the death of his parents. Eston’s son, my father, was E.R. Caldwell Jr. He was the first in the family to go to college, finishing at Wake Forest College and Bowman Gray School of Medicine. He practiced in Statesville and served for many years on the North Carolina Board of Nursing. He had five children. Three sons are physicians, educated at Wake Forest and Bowman Gray: E.R. Caldwell III is a pediatrician practicing in Winchester, Virginia; Stephen Caldwell is a hepatologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; and I am a rheumatologist at Duke University Medical Center. Two daughters, Susan Madison and Lynn Vessells, became nurses; they completed training at North Carolina Baptist Hospital and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, respectively. Perhaps this history was predestined. My great-grandfather’s given name was Doctor.
The Caldwell home is now maintained by the National Park Service as part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The stream in the foreground is Caldwell Fork. Descendants of the original settlers return there every August for a reunion.
Acknowledgments
Potential conflicts of interest. D.S.C. has no relevant conflicts of interest.
- ©2015 by the North Carolina Institute of Medicine and The Duke Endowment.
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