George Washington Mitchell (c.1834-1917)

George W. Mitchell was born in Perry Valley, Perry County, Pennsylvania to William and Alice McBlair Mitchell. He grew up in Juniata Township, attending school there and at the Bloomfield Academy. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1859 and became a member of the Belles Lettres Society, but left Dickinson to study medicine with Dr. Robert C. Brown of Newport, Pennsylvania. Mitchell subsequently graduated from the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in March 1860.

Mitchell returned to Newport to practice and then moved farther west in the county to set up in Andersonburg. He enlisted on February 14, 1863 as assistant surgeon in the 119th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, "The Gray Reserves," then heavily involved with the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. As one of two or three trained medical personnel in the regiment, Mitchell saw heavy duty when his regiment fought at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and in the Shenandoah Campaign. He mustered out with the 119th on June 19, 1865 and returned to his practice in Andersonburg. Mitchell worked there as a family physician until 1903, when he joined his family in Alliance, Nebraska where they had settled.

Mitchell married Ellen C. Carpenter of Halifax, Pennsylvania, and the couple had seven children. Ellen died in April 1904, soon after the move to Nebraska. Mitchell moved to Denver to live with his son a few years later. George Washington Mitchell died there late on an afternoon in early February 1917. His obituary recorded his age as eighty-three years.