Winning distinction as a physician and also as a useful and progressive citizen with a lively and active interest in his community, Dr. William D. Garlock, who specializes in internal medicine, has for more than forty years been one of the foremost physicians of Little Falls, Herkimer county, New York, and of the Mohawk Valley section of the state. He was born on April 2, 1855, at Manheim, New York, the son of Nelson and Catharine (Yoran) Garlock. The father, who was born on June 7, 1834, and died on December 21, 1898, was a farmer at Manheim, and the son of John Garlock, whose wife was a daughter of Elsie Creamer, a farmer of Manheim. Dr. Garlock's mother was born in Manheim, on February 26, 1831, and is now living at Bolton Lake, New York. She was the daughter of Jacob and Mary (Timmerman) Yoran, of Manheim, and was one of four children, three daughters and a son, born to her parents. John Christian Garlock, founder of the family in America, was born in Palatinate, on the Rhine, in Germany, and came to America with the Palatine pioneers, locating first in the Schoharie valley and then moving to the Mohawk valley. Adam Garlock, who was born in 1723 and died in 1822, was a son of John Christian Garlock, was a soldier in the Revolutionary war and had land bounty rights. His brothers, William and George, were also soldiers in the Revolutionary war.
The elementary education of William D. Garlock was obtained in district school No. 8 in Manheim and in the Little Falls Academy, which he left in 1870. He afterward took a three-year course in Hungerford Collegiate Institute at Adams, New York, graduating in 1874, after which he assisted his father in the farm work on the homestead. In 1876 Mr. Garlock entered Cornell University, at Ithaca, New York, where he took a special course for two years, and in 1878 entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York city, graduating with the degree of M. D. in the class of 1881. The same year Dr. Garlock began the general practice of his profession at Little Falls and has been in continuous practice there since. Dr. Garlock was president of the Herkimer County Medical Society in 1890, and president of the first branch of the New York State Medical Association in 1902. He was president of the fifth branch of the New York State Medical Society, a member of the American Medical Association, member of the Clinical Society of St. Luke's Hospital of Utica, New York, and was secretary of the fifth branch of the New York State Medical Society during 1909 and 1910. Dr. Garlock is medical examiner for the Life Extension Institute of New York, the Prudential Insurance Company of Newark, New Jersey, the New York Life Insurance Company, the Northwestern Life Insurance Company, the Pennsylvania Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Bankers, Farmers, Traders, and several other insurance companies. Fraternally the Doctor is affiliated with Little Falls Lodge No. 131, A. F. & A. M., and the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks. In his political views he is an independent.
On November 22, 1881, Dr. Garlock was married to Miss Mary Gertrude Biddleman, and the three children born to them are: Morgan Biddleman Garlock, a lawyer in active practice in Utica and Little Falls, New York, who is also president of the Eastern States Milk Companies of New York, was married on September 12, 1907, to Miss Jessie Sprague Girvan, daughter of G. F. and Georgiana Sprague Girvan, and they have two sons and one daughter, Sprague, Rodger and Elinor; Louise Garlock married George Holland Jones, superintendent of the Gilbert Knitting Company of Little Falls, and is the mother of three children, Dorothy, Donald W. and Lawrence J.; and Gertrude K. Garlock is living at home with her father. Dr. Garlock is fond of automobile trips and his summer home is the Biddleman homestead, formerly Major Fink's homestead.