Santa Barbara County Biographies

DR. W. B. CUNNANE

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


DR. W. B. CUNNANE, the only resident physician of the Santa Ynez Valley, was 
born at Edinburgh, Johnson County, Indiana, in 1854. His father was a farmer 
and distiller. The subject of this sketch was educated at the Sturgeon High School of 
Boone County, Missouri, but was taken from school in 1870 to accept a position with P. 
Corrigan, who was then general roadmaster of the Wabash Railroad, with headquarters at 
Moberly, Missouri, remaining two years and learning telegraphy. He was then employed 
by the Western Union Telegraph Company, for five years, at stations throughout the 
southwest. Having a desire for a medical education, he employed every odd moment in 
medical studies, and in 1877 he resigned his position to enter the Medical University of 
Louisiana, at New Orleans, taking the three years' course and also the special course of 
toxicology and chemistry, graduating with honor in 1881. He then went to Queen 
City, Cass County, Texas, where he practiced for two years, and in 1883 he came direct to 
Santa Ynez, to grow up with the new town, which was then being established. He now 
has an extensive practice throughout the valley. In 1885 he built his present residence, 
and in September of the same year was married, at Santa Ynez, to Miss Mabel Johnston, 
a daughter of W. F. Johnston, an extensive rancher of Santa Maria and also a descendant 
of that celebrated family of Johnstons of Virginia. Doctor and Mrs. Cunnane have 
one child. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.