This Day in Jekyll History, February 19, 1917
On This Day in Jekyll History…February 19, 1917, Dr. Walter Belknap James elected to membership in the Jekyll Island Club.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1857, Walter was the son of Henry James, a wealthy lumber merchant and banker, and Amelia Belknap Cate. He received his BA from Yale University in 1879 and an MD degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Further honorary degrees were conferred by Columbia (LLD), Yale(MA), and Harvard(LLD).
Dr. James was very career centered and practiced medicine in New York City from 1883 until he died, starting as a General Practitioner and then specializing in heart and lungs. He was a lecturer and professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and head of medical services at the New York Academy of Medicine. He was a visiting physician at Presbyterian Hospital and Roosevelt Hospital; a consulting physician at Bellevue Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled and President of the Adirondack Cotte-Sanitarium at Saranac Lake, NY. James was the Chairman of the NY State Hospital Development Commission and instituted a complete re-organization of the Hospital System in the State of NY. He was on the Medical Committee of the American Red Cross Hospital in Paris, France and a Trustee for life at Columbia University.
In 1894 he married Helen Goodsell Jennings. Their children were: Oliver, Walter, Jr. who died at 18 months, Helen, and Eunice who married Henry E. Coe (also a Jekyll Club member).
In 1917 Dr. James purchased an apartment in Sans Souci from John Albright. Then in 1925 he bought the Shrady Cottage and renamed it “Cherokee Cottage”. The extended James family contained many Club members and he was very active in Club affairs and social life, eventually serving as President of the Jekyll Island Club from 1919 until his death in 1927.
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