 He attended Georges Creek Academy at Smithfield, and taught school in West Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois from 1867 to 1873.He moved to Chicora, Pennsylvania, in 1873 and engaged in the production of petroleum and natural gas.He studied medicine at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, in 1883, and graduated in 1884 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Baltimore, Maryland (which later merged into the University of Maryland School of Medicine which is a component of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.