Augustus Nathaniel Lushington, VMD (ca. 1861 – 1939)

Q-6-59

Dr. Augustus Lushington, veterinarian, practiced in Lynchburg for nearly four decades. A native of Trinidad, he attended Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, where in 1897 he became one of the first Black men in the U.S. to earn a degree as a doctor of veterinary medicine. By 1900 he had moved to Lynchburg and opened his practice as a large-animal veterinary surgeon, primarily caring for horses and cattle on nearby farms. He served as a statistical reporter to the federal Bureau of Animal Industry, charged with combating disease in livestock. He also worked as a probation officer and was president of the Lynchburg Negro Business League. Lushington lived here at 1005 5th St.

Department of Historic Resources, 2020

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

A.B. Caldwell, ed., History of the American Negro, Virginia edition, vol. 5 (Atlanta: Caldwell Publishing Company, 1921), 117-118. Alice S. Weiss, “Augustus Lushington, Class of 1897,” Bellwether Magazine, vol. 1, no. 58 (Fall 2003): 8-9, 12. Lynchburg News, Feb. 1939. Baltimore Afro-American, 25 June 1898. Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 April 1922. U.S. Census, 1900, 1920, 1930. University of Pennsylvania catalog, 1917. Cornell University catalog, 1922. W. H. Waddell, The Black Man in Veterinary Medicine (1969), 27-28. Cornell Alumni News, vol. 1, no. 1 (9 March 1939): 272. New York Marriage Index, 1890. Who’s Who in Colored America (1927). The Trinidad Official and Commercial Register (1882), 34.