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Notes for Alonzo Amasa Bemis:
"History of Worcester County Massachusetts", Supervising Editor-in-Chief, Ellery Bicknell Crane, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., New York and Chicago, 1924, Vol. III, p. 188-9:
Alonzo Amasa Bemis, one of Worcester County's prominent men in professional, public, and private life, is a descendant of an old and honored English family, emigrants of which came to America and settled in the New England States, where they and their numerous offspring exerted an incalculable influence upon the growth and advancement of their several localities. To-day throughout the New England States are many hundreds who bear this distinguished patronym. The numerous Bemis families of Spencer and of Worcester County, of all descended from Joseph Bemis, the emigrant ancestor, who was born in England in 1619, and came to America while a young man, settling in Watertown, Massachusetts, where he is listed as a planter as early as 1640. He became a town officer and one of Watertown's foremost citizens, his death occurring at that place in 1684. The lineal descent goes from Joseph to John (1), to John (2), to John (3), to Abijah, to John (4), to Samuel, and to Amasa, grandfather of Alonzo Amasa Bemis.
Amasa Bemis was born in Spencer, February 25, 1831, and married Laura Pike, a native of Brookfield, and they were the parents of Edwin Amasa Bemis, through whom the line continues. Edwin Amasa Bemis, the father of Alonso Amasa Bemis, of whom this biographical record, was born on December 25, 1824, at Spencer, Massachusetts, where he spent his long life and as an agriculturist, and where he died November 27, 1887. He was married, at Spencer, in 1847, to Julia Draper Watson, who was born at Leicester on July 15, 1826, a daughter of Robert Watson, who was a descendant of an old Scotch family that at an early date emigrated to America, settling at Leicester, where scions of that patronym later became of great influence and importance. Julia Draper (Watson) Bemis survived her husband until 1908. To Edwin Amasa and Julia Draper (Watson) Bemis were born eleven children, two girls and nine boys.
Amasa Alonzo Bemis, the ninth child of Edwin Amasa and Julia Draper (Watson) Bemis, and a representative of the tenth generation of the Bemis family in America, was born at Spencer, Worcester County, Massachusetts, on May 2, 1864. His early education was obtained in the local public schools, following which he entered high school. In 1865 he matriculated in the Dental Department of the University of Maryland, from which institution he was graduated with the class of 1887, receiving the degree of D. D. S. After two years of study with Dr. A. A. Howland, of Worcester, before graduation, he engaged in the practice of his profession in West Brookfield, where he remained for three years. He then returned to his native city, where he opened offices and built up a large clientage, practicing with steadily increasing success in the same suite of offices for a period of thirty-six years. Recently Dr. Bemis has removed his office to a new block, built expressly by him for his dental practice, and here he continues in a profession in which he has no peer in his native county.
Politically Dr. Bemis gives his hearty support and cooperation to the Republican Party. He is a trustee of the Sugden Library, the Sugden Block, and of the Bemis Memorial Park Association, and a member of the Massachusetts Dental Society. His religious affiliation is given to the Congregational church, of which body he is a sincere member and an earnest worker.
Dr. Bemis married (first), October 4, 1887, Nellie M. Thayer, daughter of Clarke and Nancy Thayer, of Natick, Massachusetts. She died December 15, 1907, and Dr. Bemis married (second), April 8, 1911, Maud Etta Varney, daughter of Arthur W. and Cora L. (Baker) Varney, of Hermon, Maine.
Some years ago Dr. Bemis undertook the arduous task of compiling a complete and comprehensive genealogy of the Bemis family, which, with the able assistance of his mother, he brought to successful completion. This genealogy to-day stands as an invaluable historical record of a family whose members were protagonists in the upbuilding and advancement of the early colonies. Alonzo Amasa Bemis maintains his residence at No. 12 High Street, Spencer, Worcester County, Massachusetts.
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