Robert Agnew was the 12th President of the Norwich Rotary Club.
Robert Robertson Agnew, M.D. – For a decade, Dr. Agnew has practiced medicine in Norwich, Connecticut, and there has attained honorable standing as a physician of learning and skill. He is the grandson of Robert R. Agnew, who was a captain in the Union army during the Civil War, who after the close of that conflict left his native Connecticut and moved to Albany, New York, where his son, William B. was born.
William Banker Agnew was born in Albany, New York, and there educated in the public schools. In 1880 he located in New Haven, Connecticut, where he entered the employ of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. He passed through the various grades of promotion between the apprentice and the right-hand side of the locomotive cab, eventually becoming a trusted engineer. Of a mechanical turn of mind, he learned pattern-making after retiring from the railroad, and while his home is in New Haven, he is employed at the plant of the Malleable Iron Fittings Company in Branford, Connecticut. William B. Agnew married, in 1881, Alice E. Page, born in Lancaster, England, coming to the United States in a sailing vessel with her parents, who settled in Branford. William B. and Alice E. (Paige) Agnew were the parents of three children: Robert R. of further mention; George A., superintendent of the Malleable Iron Fittings Company of Branford; and Edith May, wife of Alvin P. Sanford of New Haven, Connecticut.
Dr. Robert R. Agnew, eldest son of William B. and Alice E. (Paige) Agnew, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, August 1, 1882. He attended grammar and high schools in New Haven, and at the age of fourteen he was employed in a drug store, continuing in that position until 1901. He was not yet twenty years of age when, on February 10, 1901, he went before the State board of examiners and successfully passed the examination in pharmacy, receiving the seal of the State of Connecticut his license as a registered pharmacist,
This was not the goal of his ambition, however, and for three years, 1901-1904, although employed as a pharmacist, he was a student at Booth Preparatory School, and in 1904 entered Yale Medical School and pursued medical study for four years, working as a pharmacist during college vacation, and doing relief work in the drug store during the college months. He was graduated M.D., class of 1908, and to the to the experience he gained while a student in surgery and a house physician in the New Haven hospital, he added a year’s experience as interne at the William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, Connecticut. He became interne July 1, 1908, and the following year he established a private medical and surgical practice in Norwich, surgery of the abdomen and head his specialties. Surgery was his ambition always, and during his years of practice he has taken continuous post-graduate courses at the New York Post-graduate Hospital, going to New York City one day in each week. Even yet, as surgeon in the William W. Backus Hospital, he commands a large practice and has made great progress. He is devoted to his profession and is highly regarded by both his brethren and the laity. He is a member of the Norwich, New London County and Connecticut State Medical societies, and the American Medical Association. In his religions faith he is a Congregationalist, being a member of the Greenville Congregational Church. Dr. Agnew is a member of the Masonic order, being affiliated with the Somerset Lodge, No. 34, Free and Accepted Masons. He is a member of the Norwich Chamber of Commerce, and the Rotary Club, and in politics is a Republican.
Dr. Agnew married, in Ivoryton, Connecticut, February 9, 1910, Ellen Eliza Griswold, born in Ivoryton, daughter of Francis and Eliza (Jamieson) Griswold, her father born in Ivoryton, her mother in Middletown, Connecticut. Dr. and Mrs. Agnew are the parents of three children: Marion Elizabeth; William Griswold; and Robert Jamieson.
(FromĀ A Modern History of New London County, Connecticut, Volume 2, published in 1922)
By Yale University
Robert Agnew was honored on April, 27th, 1960 with a Fifty Year Membership Award from the Connecticut Medical Society (Connecticut Medical Journal)