Baldy, John Montgomery, physician, was born at Danville, Pa., June 16, 1860, son of Edward Hurley and Henrietta Cooper (Montgomery) Baldy, and a descendant of Jacob Baldy, who came to America about 1730, settling in Berks county, Pa. On the maternal side he is descended from Thomas Cooper, the eminent scientist (q.v.). The subject of this sketch was educated in St. Paul's school, Concord, N.H., and in the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania where he was graduated M.D. in 1884. In the following year he engaged in the practice of his profession at Scranton, Pa., specializing in gynecology, in which branch he became a recognized authority. He was appointed professor of gynecology at the Philadelphia Polyclinic in 1891 and still retains that position. He was connected with the gynecological department of the Pennsylvania hospital in 1893-1905, the St. Agnes hospital, 1891-94, and the Philadelphia dispensary, 1885-89. He has been surgeon to the Gynecean hospital since 1891, and consulting surgeon in the Jewish hospital since 1906, and the Frederick Douglass Memorial hospital since 1903. Dr. Baldy has made a thorough study of his specialty, the results of which are embodied in his "American Text-book of Gynecology" (1895). He is a founder member of the International Gynecological and Obstetrical Society of which he was vice-president at its meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1896. He is a member of the American Gynecological Society and served as its treasurer during 1895-1907, and as president in 1908, and a member of the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society of which he was president in 1907-08. He is also a member of the American Medical Association, the Pennsylvania State and Philadelphia County medical societies, the Southern Gynecological and Surgical Society, the Philadelphia Art Club, and the Society of Colonial Wars. During 1881-84 he was a member of the National Guard of Pennsylvania, attaining the rank of first sergeant in Co. F of the 12th regiment and being honorably discharged in the latter year. Dr. Baldy was married in Philadelphia, Aug. 5, 1896, to Edith Lyndsey, daughter of George W. Turner of Washington, D.C.
Source: James Terry White. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women Who Are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time. New York: James T. White & Co., 1910, p. 144.
Contributed by: Nancy.