DR. J. GILBERT EBERLE
Source: Historical Review of Arkansas: Its Commerce, Industry and Modern ..., Volume 2
By Fay Hempstead
DR. J. GILBERT EBERLE, prominent in western Arkansas as a physician and surgeon for thirty-five years, ex-president of the Arkansas State
Medical Association, leading citizen of Fort Smith, was born in that city December 31, 1853, a son of Joseph and Mary (Stemmler) Eberle.
Joseph Eberle, a native of Switzerland, came to Fort Smith some years before 1850. The town was then a military post and not much else and
he was one of its pioneer merchants. He had a store, built of logs, on the northeast corner of Garrison avenue and Sixth street, and a small
residence to the rear of it. It was in this residence building that the subject of this sketch was born, and the fact that the corner mentioned
has been the property of the Eberles ever since is interesting and important in the history of the city. In a comparatively recent period
it has become the site of the Eberle building, erected by Dr. Eberle, on the second floor of which he has his offices. The corner
in question, now quite valuable, had originally, in the very early days of Fort Smith, belonged to Mrs. Stemmler, Dr. Eberle's grandmother
in the maternal line, who had come to the place from Savannah, Georgia, where Dr. Eberle's mother was born.
Dr. Eberle was educated in local schools and at old St. John's College, Little Rock. He acquired his medical education at the Kentucky School
of Medicine in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was graduated with the class of 1875. In 1876 he began at Fort Smith a practice of his profession,
which has been continued uninterruptedly to the present time. He was honored by election to the presidency of the Arkansas State Medical
Association, in which office he served one year with distinguished ability. He was for many years a member of the Board of Health of the city
of Fort Smith, a position which he resigned in 1910 upon being elected a member of the city council to represent the First Ward in that body.
As a member of the council he is making a record as a wise and honest municipal legislator of which any man might well be proud.
Dr. Eberle married Miss Jennie Pearson, of Fort Smith, and she has borne him six children; Lieut. William Eberle, a graduate
of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and now a lieutenant in the United States navy; Dr. Walter G. Eberle, a graduate
of the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and a practicing physician in New York City; Ethel, wife of E. Leslie Hunt, of St.
Louis, Missouri; Elizabeth, wife of Willis W. Johnson, of Ft. Smith; John P., and Eugene G.
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