William Worrall Mayo (May 31, 1819 – March 6, 1911) was an English medical doctor and chemist. He is best known for establishing the private medical practice that later evolved into the Mayo Clinic. He was a descendant of a famous English chemist, John Mayow. His sons, William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, established a joint medical practice in Rochester in the U.S. state of Minnesota in the 1880s.
Early life
William Worrall Mayo was born May 31, 1819, in Salford, Lancashire, England, which was then situated in the ecclesiastical parish of Eccles, where he was baptized on October 24, 1819. He studied science in Manchester under John Dalton, the chemist and physicist responsible for formulating the modern atomic theory of matter and devising a table of relative atomic weights. In 1846, Mayo left for the United States. His first work in his new country was as a pharmacist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, though he soon moved westward.
Mayo spent a brief period of time in Buffalo, New York, before settling in Lafayette, Indiana, where he worked as a tailor (one of the vocations he had while in England). He returned to medicine in 1849, assisting in a cholera outbreak and then attending courses at Indiana Medical College in La Porte, Indiana. Although the training there would probably be considered mediocre by modern standards, the school did have a microscope, an uncommon tool at the time. Knowledge of how to use this instrument proved to be useful in Mayo's future practice. It is a matter of debate whether Mayo actually graduated from the Indiana Medical College. William Mayo reportedly stated orally that he graduated from the Indiana Medical College. His graduation date from the Indiana Medical College has been reported as February 14, 1850. However, no documentation of his graduation exists and he is not listed in the Indiana Medical School list of graduates for that year. He then attended and graduated from the University of Missouri on February 28, 1854, with a degree in medicine.
Migrating west
In 1851, Mayo married Louise Abigail Wright (December 23, 1825 – July 15, 1915), and two years later, they had their first child, Gertrude. Around this time, Mayo left for a winter to work as an assistant at the University of Missouri's medical department. He returned in 1854, but contracted malaria and decided to leave the Lafayette area, saying, "I'm going to keep on driving until I get well or die." Mayo found his way to Minnesota, which he thought would have a more healthful climate and where he did recover from malaria. He settled in Saint Paul, but returned to Indiana a short time later to bring his family to the Minnesota territory. Mayo then found his way to the present-day area of Duluth where he worked as a census-taker.
He brought his family to a village named Cronan's Precinct (near Le Sueur) along the Minnesota River where he became known as the "Little Doctor" because of his stature. Mayo tried his hand at a number of different activities including farming, operating a ferry service, and serving as a justice of the peace in addition to occasional medical duties. By this time, he had two more daughters in his family, Phoebe and Sarah.
After a flood in 1859, the family moved to a home on Main Street in Le Sueur, now known as the Dr. William W. Mayo House. There, he set up his first official medical practice, but the flow of patients was too meager to support the family. Mayo took to publishing a short-lived newspaper, the Le Sueur Courier, which only lasted about three months. He also spent time working on a steamboat. The family saw its first male addition, William James Mayo, in 1861.