William L. Chrisman was born on December 9, 1834, in Warwick, Pennsylvania, to John Chrisman and Sarah Evans. His father was a farmer who owned $14,300 of real estate in 1850. He grew up in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and attended school in the Tremont Academy and the Morgantown Academy. He began studying medicine in 1854, and he enrolled at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1855.

 

He graduated two years later and began practicing medicine in Virginia. He settled in Eldred, Pennsylvania, in the late 1850s, and by 1860, he was working as a teacher. During the Civil War, he served as a surgeon in the Union army. He married Mary Carpenter around 1863, and their daughter Mary was born around 1870.

 

He became a prominent physician in the Eldred community, and by 1870, he owned $4,000 of real estate and $500 of personal property. In the 1870s, he began diversifying his economic interests, purchasing oil-rich lands and buying stock in a Colorado gold mine. He also reportedly became “one of the leading and most progressive farmers in the county.” His wife died in 1915, and he passed away of “general paresis” in Eldred on August 4, 1917.

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