Gerry, Elbridge Hoffman

Elbridge H. Gerry was born in York County, Pennsylvania in the borough of Shrewsbury on October 18, 1836 to James and Salome Hoffman Gerry.  His father was prominent Methodist and Democrat in the area and three years after his son was born served two term in the United States Congress.  Elbridge attended the local public school and the Shrewsbury Academy and then, in 1858, entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1861.  While at the College he was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and became a member of Sigma Chi.  He was graduated with his class and took up school teaching.  After three years, he followed his father's path to the University of Maryland Medical School and graduated in 1867.

He joined the family practice in Shrewsbury under his father until the older Doctor Gerry's retirement in 1870 and then with his brother James, who also attended Dickinson, until 1888.  From then he ran the practice alone and built a lucrative and large network of patients in the county.  He was also very active in civic affairs and local politics.  He was like his father a Democrat and was a regular delegate to county and state party conventions and served in the borough council.  He also was a director of the Shrewsbury Savings Institution.  He continued family tradition in the Methodist Church, too, and was lay delegate and sunday school superintendent.

He had married in 1868 Anna Mitchell Scarborough of Baltimore but she had passed away after three years of marriage.  He married again, to Arabella Beck McAbee of Shrewsbury and the couple had four sons and a daughter.  After long service to his home town, Elbridge Hoffman Gerry died in Shrewsbury in the early years of the new century, around 1903.