#fiddleback chair

[vintagehomecollection]

The French Touch: Decoration and Design in the Most Beautiful Homes in France, 1988

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[rosscountyhistoricalsociety]

   This Federal style fiddleback chair - one of a set of six - dates to the early 19th century. 

  They were used as the waiting room furniture for Dr. Josephine Griesheimer Riley. She practiced medicine in Chillicothe, Ohio in the early 20th century.

    Dr. Riley may have acquired these chairs from a son of Edward Tiffin. They used to be a dark green with senticlled decoration, but were painted plain black for use in the waiting room.

    Dr. Riley came from a remarkable family. Her father, Adam Griesheimer had a mercantile business, but he was also a self-taught lawyer who served for many years as a justice of the peace. He believed, it is written in his daughter’s biography, in “liberal education” and it showed in the remarkable achievements of his children. 

    One daughter became a lawyer who was a fierce advocate for child welfare and child labor laws, and another worked for the Treasury Department. And then there was Josephine. I’ll let her biography in A Standard History of Ross County Ohio take it from here.

A woman of high mental attainments, talented and cultured, Josephine G. Riley, M. D., of Chillicothe, has met with eminent success in her professional career, and is giving the best of her life to the relief of suffering humanity. […]

Josephine Griesheimer acquired her preliminary education in the public schools of Chillicothe, and at the age of sixteen years secured a position as teacher in the public schools of Adelphi. She afterwards obtained a similar position in Chillicothe, and taught successfully in this city until her marriage with Dr. Clinton C. Riley, of whom a brief sketch may be found on another page of this volume.

After the death of her husband, Mrs. Riley resumed her former profession, and for three and a half years taught school. Resolving to enter upon a medical career, she entered the medical department of the National University at Washington, where she was graduated with the class of 1901. She ranked very high as a scholar while there, winning the faculty gold medal by keeping at the head of all of her classes during her entire course.

In June. 1901, Dr. Josephine Riley passed the examinations of the State Medical Board of Ohio, and has since been actively engaged in the practice of her profession in Chillicothe, where she has established a large and lucrative patronage.

   Her practice was in her family home on East Second Street. She never remarried. After she passed away in 1951, she was buried in Grandview Cemetery beside her sister.