California Biographies

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

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

Source:
History of the state of California and biographical record of the San Joaquin 
Valley, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from 
its earliest settlement to the present time.
Prof. James Miller Guinn , A. M.
The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1905
Notes: Missing Page: 865-866,983-984,1175-1176


DR. CICERO McLEAN BATES. The death of Dr. Cicero McLean Bates, November 
18, 1898, at his beautiful country seat near Fresno, terminated a career of exceptional usefulness, 
and one in which heart, brain and keen understanding wore unfalteringly utilized in an effort to 
establish the highest possible professional and sanitary standards in the state of California. While 
his presence in the mining camps was a boon for the motley crowds assembled to wrest wealth from 
the earth, his name will be more emphatically associated with the early professional history of 
San Francisco, where his record, from the stand-point of actual good accomplished and zeal in 
the prosecution of many salient reforms, had no equal at the lime and place. 

A son of Ezekiel Bates, he was born in Cleveland, Tenn., August 15, 1831, and was educated 
in the public schools, at O'Clare Academy and Hiawassa College, his professional training be- 
ing received at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, from which he was graduated in the 
class of 1850. Returning to Tennessee, he engaged in practice for a number of years, in the 
meantime chafing in an atmosphere stagnant to one of his force and determination. Disposing 
of his interests in Tennessee, he arrived in San Francisco November 14, i860, at once going to 
Nevada City, then the most active center of mining in the state. Success came to him from the 
start, and in an atmosphere foreign to his culture and refinement he accumulated wealth, and was 
glad of the ambition which had led him to the Pacific coast. The fire of 1865, which practically 
laid Nevada City in ashes, devoured about all that he had in the world, and in 1868 he re- 
turned to San Francisco, where, with characteristic forgetfulness of past trouble, he threw him- 
self into the vortex of its crude and varied activity. His mind was too practical and far-reach- 
ing to content itself with a practice which astonished even himself with its rapid growth, and he 
began to look around to better the condition of those who were too intent upon money-getting 
to have any thought for sanitation or laws of health. He took upon himself the task of draw- 
ing up a bill providing for extensive sanitary improvements, and through his vigorous deter- 
mination secured its passage in the legislature of 1870. Upon the organization of the state board 
of health, he was elected the first health officer, holding the position four years, and during that 
time working wonders in his department. In the face of all manner of opposition, and even after 
personal threats had been directed against him, he unfalteringly strode to his goal, enforcing all 
of the ordinances, and maintaining the most rigorous oversight of sewerage and general 
health conditions. His sense of justice was aroused from the fact that many charlatans made 
the town a Mecca, and he accordingly presented a resolution to the San Francisco Medical So- 
ciety, petitioning it to appoint a committee to draft a bill for the legislature, regulating the 
practice of medicine in the state of California. The bill met with the approval of the society, and 
Dr. Bates was made chairman of the committee, and, with the late Dr. Henry Gibbons, drafted the 
bill which became a law April 3, 1876. He was a member of the state board of health for six 
years, and for two years was its chairman. Subsequently he was elected to the chair of clinical 
practice in the Toland Medical Institute, was appointed visiting physician to the City and County 
and St. Luke's hospitals. He also was commissioner of the insane for several years, and for a 
long period served as visiting physician to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of San Francisco. 

In 1882 Dr. Bates' health began to fail, so earnestly and self-sacrificingly had he striven to 
better the conditions of those around him. Compelled to give up practice, he visited many re- 
sorts in search of the boon of health, and finally found, at Highland Springs, Lake county, Cal., 
that which he desired. Recovering, he purchased the place and installed himself as manager, and 
under his wise rule it became one of the foremost health resorts in the state. In 1888 he sold the 
property and purchased the place now occupied by his wife, four and a half miles southeast of 
Fresno, on North avenue. From time to time he invested in city property, but disposed of the 
same as the market seemed to warrant. His home place of eighty-six acres supplied the work 
and interest which his enthusiastic nature craved, and he made of it as nearly an ideal country home 
as exists in Fresno county. About sixty acres were set out in raisin grapes, twenty in Zinfandel 
grapes and he had two hundred and fifty orange trees. 

Dr. Bates was united in marriage in Tennessee with Virginia Ernest, and of this union there 
are two surviving children : Fred L. Bates, now in the Klondike, and Dr. Walter E. Bates, a 
practicing physician and surgeon of Woodland, Cal. Two children are deceased : Kittie, a gradu- 
ate of Mills College, who died at the age of eighteen, and Cicero, who died when four years 
old. For his second wife Dr. Bates married Mrs. Eusebia (Reynolds) Worth, widow of William E. 
Worth, a native of Albany, N. Y., and the founder of the Fulton Iron Works of San Fran- 
cisco. When his health began to fail his wife established, on Rincon Hill, San Francisco, the 
Worth house, the first select family hotel to be opened in San Francisco, and received the patron- 
age of the leading people of the Pacific Slope. Mrs. Bates was born in Binghamton, N. Y., and 
is a woman of keen intelligence. She finds her greatest pleasure in keeping in good order the 
delightful home which speaks so eloquently of her gifted husband. So extensive are her hold- 
ings, now including one hundred and ninety acres, that she employs a foreman and from five to ten 
men the year round. 

Too much cannot be said of the high moral character of Dr. Bates, nor of his prominence 
among the mental giants who helped to establish law and order on the western slope. In keeping 
with his brain and heart, his physique was large and commanding, and his manner dignified and 
reassuring. He was too generous and disinterested to accumulate a large fortune, for he found 
it impossible to turn a deaf ear to an appeal which seemed to him just and worthy of his help. 
One of his finest traits was his loyalty to friends, and it is recalled that he once said : "I would 
scale a burning mountain barefoot to serve a friend." He was a Mason and Knight Templar, 
and a man of pronounced social tendencies, being a good story teller and a wonderful inspiration 
in a sick room. His knowledge of medical and surgical science was exhaustive and clear, and 
he invariably maintained the best tenets of his absorbing and ever-widening profession.