Walter plecker biography

          Walter Ashby Plecker (April 2, – August 2, ) was an American physician and public health advocate who was the first registrar of Virginia's Bureau....

          Early Years

          Walter Ashby Plecker was born in Augusta County, Virginia, on April 2, 1861, the son of a well-to-do merchant and enslaver.

          Walter Ashby Plecker was a physician and the first Virginia state registrar of vital statistics, a position he served in from to

        1. Walter Ashby Plecker was an American physician and public health advocate who was the first registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics, serving from to He was a leader of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, a white supremacist.
        2. Walter Ashby Plecker (April 2, – August 2, ) was an American physician and public health advocate who was the first registrar of Virginia's Bureau.
        3. Walter Ashby Plecker was born on April 2, , in Augusta County, Virginia.
        4. The new law prohibited interracial marriage and ushered in a long period of discriminatory racial designation administered by the government.

          5. In 1880 Plecker graduated from Hoover Military Academy in Staunton and earned his medical degree from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1885. Plecker worked as a country doctor in western Virginia and the coalfields of Alabama before settling in Elizabeth City County, the area that is now Hampton, in 1892.

          In 1902 he became the public health officer for Elizabeth City County. He took a special interest in delivering babies; educating midwives; developing a simple, use-at-home incubator; and working to reduce by half the 5 percent birth–mortality rates among the poor.

          Plecker distributed silver nitrate to be administered to the eyes of newborns, a procedure that helped reduce incidences of syphilitic blindness. He also kept records to search for ways to improve birthing, a goal made more difficult by the fact that most people were born (