James Foster Scott photograph collection, 1850-1940

James Foster Scott was born at Futteguhr, India in 1863. Scott's father, Rev. James Long Scott, was a Presbyterian minister and his mother, Eliza Jane Foster, was a Presbyterian missionary. Young James attended Hastings Academy in Philadelphia and later took an A.B. at Yale in 1884. At Yale Scott was on the rowing team and he developed a love of boats and rivers that he kept for the remainder of his life. After Yale he received an M.D. degree from Edinburgh University. For three years he was a member of the Volunteer Medical Staff Corps of the British army. He was later named head of the Columbia Hospital for women and living-in asylum in Washington, D.C. In 1898 he left the Hospital to lead the life of an outdoorsman. He built a house on an island in the Potomac River where he spent the remainder of his days writing philosophy and boating on the river. In 1940 he married Karen Gram Scott. He died in 1946.