Dr. Joseph S. Homan, an alumnus of the St. Louis University in which he won his professional degree, has throughout the intervening period successfully engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery in St. Louis. He was born in Buchanan county, Missouri, January -, 1882, and is a son of Henry Homan, a native of Maryland, who represented one of the old families of that state of German lineage, founded in America prior to the Revolutionary war. On leaving Maryland Henry Homan came to Missouri in 1870. He was a Civil war veteran, acting as a bridge builder with the Union troops. In the later years of his life he was successfully engaged in agricultural pursuits and stock raising and was quite prominent in democratic politics in Buchanan county, where he served as justice of the peace and in other local positions. He there passed away in 1913, at the age of seventy-eight years. He married Celia Moxley, a native of Kentucky, whose ancestors came from England. She is still living, now making her home in St. Joseph, Missouri. By her marriage she became the mother of five children, three sons and two daughters.
Dr. Homan, the youngest of the family, was educated in the public schools of Buchanan county and also in the State Normal School, from which he was graduated in 1908. His early life was spent on the home farm, where he became familiar with the beat methods of tilling the soil and caring for the crops, but his ambition urged him into other fields of labor and he became a student in the Missouri State University, where he continued his education for four years and then entered the St. Louis Universtiy, in which he completed a medical course, winning the degrees of M. D. and B. S. in 1917. During the last two years of his university work he served as an interne in the Bethesda and St. Luke’s Hospitals. He afterward spent eighteen months in Bethesda and then became assistant to Dr. Harvey G. Mudd in surgical work. At the end of that time he entered the army at Fort Riley and later was made a member of the hospital staff at Camp Dodge. Subsequently he was connected with the Nineteenth Division and was commissioned a lieutenant, thus serving until honorably discharged February 3, 1919. Since that time he has engaged in the private practice of medicine and surgery. From 1917 until 1920 he lectured in St. Luke’s Hospital on anatomy and chemistry. He is a member of the St. Louis, Missouri State and American Medical Associations, and has studied broadly along the lines of professional development and progress.
Dr. Homan was united in marriage at Des Moines, Iowa, February 3, 1919, to Miss Fannie Pearson, a native of Fayette, Missouri. She was a graduate nurse. They now have one child, Treva Jane, born in St. Louis, November 29, 1920. Fraternally Dr. Homan is connected with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and politically he maintains an independent course, voting for men and measures rather than party. He finds his diversion in hunting, fishing and golf and realizes that a man must not only work well but play well in order to maintain that even balance so necessary for development in the business world. Dr. Homan deserves much credit for what he has accomplished, as he worked his way through college, providing for his support under the urge of necessity. Steadily he has advanced and is now accorded a liberal and gratifying practice, his work making heavy demands upon his time and energy.
