Joseph H. Romig

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Dr. Joseph Herman Romig (1872 - 1951) was a frontier physician and Moravian Church missionary, who served as Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska from 1937-1938.

Joseph H. Romig was born September 3, 1872 in Edwards County, Illinois to Joseph and Margaret Ricksecker Romig, both the descendants of Moravian immigrants who had settled in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.

In 1896, he married Ella Mae Ervin of Pennsylvania and the couple moved to Bethel, Alaska to join Joseph's older sister Edith Margaret and her husband John Henry Kilbuck as missionaries to the Yup'ik people. Joseph and Ella Mae had four children: Robert Herman (b. 1897), Margaret Maryetta (b. 1898), Elizabeth Helen (b. 1901), and Howard Glenmore (b. 1911).

For a time, Dr. Romig was one of the only physicians in Alaska. He became known as the "dog team doctor" for traveling by dog sled throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the course of his work.

He left western Alaska in 1906 and worked for a time in Seward, Alaska as the Southwest District Superintendent of Schools.

In the 1920s, he moved to Anchorage to head the Alaska Railroad Hospital. He was elected Mayor of Anchorage in 1937, and served a 1-year term.

He died in 1951 and was buried in Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery. Romig Junior High School in Anchorage is named in his honor.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

Anderson, Eva Greenslit Dog-Team Doctor: The Story of Dr. Romig, 1940 (ISBN 0342407997)
Romig, Ella Mae Ervin When the Geese Come: The Journals of a Moravian Missionary, 1997 (ISBN 0912006897)