oseph Herman Romig was born in 1873 into a family of missionaries and was raised with his nine brothers and sisters on the Chippewa Mission Farm near Independence, Kansas. He attended Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under the auspices of the Moravian church, which provided for his medical training in exchange for his promise to serve for seven years without salary as a doctor at a mission.

Soon after receiving his medical degree, he married Ella Mae Ervin, a trained nurse whom he had met in medical school. She was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania in 1871 and moved to Forty Fort, Pennsylvania with her parents and then to Philadelphia where she attended nursing school. It was there she met Joseph Romig and became interested in his plans to go to Alaska and serve his term at the mission at Bethel.

The reason Joe had chosen Bethel was that his sister and brother-in-law, John Henry Kilbuck, had been working as missionaries there for a number of years. Kilbuck was a full-blooded Delaware Indian who had gone to teach the Eskimos of the Kuskokwim River area. He was a linguist and had a good rapport with the native people. Dr. Romig felt that this relationship would increase his opportunity to make a success of his mission.

The Romigs set sail from San Francisco, stopping over at Unalaska and arriving in 1896 at Bethel, upriver from the mouth of the Kuskokwim. They were met offshore by the Kilbucks, accompanied by a host of Eskimos. Bethel was barely a village, consisting of only four houses, a chapel, an old Russian-style bath house and a small store. The Romig home was a simple two-room structure, which served as residence as well as hospital. The newlyweds immediately took hold of the situation and in short order had created a presentable clinic and home.

The villages in the area were rife with tuberculosis in those days, and epidemics of influenza and whooping cough were also common. Broken bones, cuts bruises and other maladies were rapidly treated by Dr. Romig. With his medications and healing powers, the periods of recuperation were shortened considerably from those resulting from previously used methods. Romig was soon named “Yung-Cha-wista,” person working for others, or “Remaker of People.”

Joseph Romig soon became expert at dog mushing, as his practice stretched for hundreds of miles, and all of his missions were related to saving lives. There were no planes, no highways, no snow machines; nothing but dogs or snowshoes in the winter or rowboats, kayaks and other watercraft in the summer.

In the fall of 1899 the annual re-supply ship did not make it up the Kuskokwin River, creating a serious food shortage for the village with winter coming on. Dr. Romig rounded up about twenty men and a half-dozen rowboats and headed upriver to portage and slog across to the Yukon and down to Russian Mission for supplies. They found that supplies were scarce there as well, so they headed down the Yukon to St. Michael where they were able to get supplies. The return trip was just as miserable, fighting flesh-devouring mosquitoes and bad weather. When they finally got back to Bethel, they had covered more than a thousand miles to make the relief mission.

While Dr. Romig was away, Ella held down the fort, performing minor surgeries, setting bones and doing everything that her husband could do except major surgery. She also bore the first three of their four children while in Bethel. Robert H. was born in 1897, Margaret in 1898 and Jean Elizabeth in 1900.

In 1903, after completing their mission, they returned to San Francisco, where Dr. Romig ran an emergency hospital during the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake. Before long he was called back to the north by the Nushagak Packing Company, which offered him a job as company physician at Nushagak. He accepted, and again the family moved to Alaska. He was appointed United States Commissioner while at Nushagak and held court on the ships that traveled from port to port.

After leaving Nushagak, the Romig family moved to Seward, where their fourth child, Howard G., was born in 1911. Dr. Romig opened a small hospital in Seward, but he had to close it in 1922. From there he was hired by the St. Joseph Hospital in Fairbanks as chief surgeon, then went on to Nenana, where he opened a hospital for the Alaska Railroad. In 1930 he was asked by the railroad to take over as chief of staff of its hospital in Anchorage. He replaced Dr. Haverstock, who was moving to Seward.

Son Howard G. Romig graduated from Stanford University Medical School, performed his internship and returned to Anchorage. For a short time, he and his father went into private practice together. In 1937 Dr. Joseph Romig agreed to serve one term as Mayor of Anchorage. He did a commendable job, but found that politics was not in his nature. Ella Mae Ervin Romig died in 1937, and two years later her widower married Emily Craig, who had been chief of nursing at the railroad hospital and was an old friend of both Ella and Dr. Romig.

In 1939-40, Dr. Joseph Romig became chief surgeon at the new Providence Hospital, and shortly thereafter he retired from practice. He purchased several acres of land on what is now called Romig Hill, where Anchorage High School, later called West Anchorage High School, was built. Henry Easterly had a log cabin on his homestead at the top of the hill, which he called Moosehorn Ranch. Joe Romig built an addition to the log home and started his “Board of Directors” organization. He and friends put on an annual wild game dinner, and each guest cooked and brought a wild game entrée. This turned out to be an annual affair, and the same group of men formed the beginnings of the Anchorage Rotary Club.

Dr. Joseph Romig and Emily retired to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he died in 195l. The name of Romig Hill stuck even after the family left the area, and eventually a junior high school built adjacent to West High was named Romig Junior High School, in the doctor’s honor.

Son Robert H. Romig and his wife, Louise, had no children and Robert died in Anchorage in 1962. Daughter Margaret Romig Hannon had two daughters of her own, Molly and Patricia, and died in Anchorage in 1968. Jean Elizabeth Romig Daily had five children, two of whom became doctors. Howard G. was born in Seward in 1911 and died in Anchorage in 1987. He married three times, had fifteen children, and died in Anchorage in 1987.

All of the first and second-generation Romigs are buried in the Masonic Tract of Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery. One grandchild and Louise, the wife of Robert, are also buried there with the family. Dr. Joseph H. Romig was originally buried in Colorado Springs, but his remains were disinterred, brought to Anchorage and buried in the family plot. His second wife, Emily Craig Romig is buried in Colorado Springs.