When the California "gold fever" broke out in the spring of 1849,
Doctor Hanchett was living at Clarksville in Southern Indiana. Doctor
Hanchett, it should be stated, had received his professional title not
by the favor of any medical college or other learned institution, but
through the simpler and less formal method that obtains among the free
and generous people amongst whom his lines were cast. The process may
be explained in a few words. In the fall of 1846 a recruiting station
was established at Vicksburg to enlist volunteers for the war with
Mexico, and Hanchett, at that time a resident of Vicksburg, and
laboring in a profession--the saltatorial, to wit--a shade less
illustrious than that to which he was so soon to attain, was the first
man in the city to enlist. This momentous circumstance procured
for him not only the prompt recognition of a patriotic press, which
blazoned his name abroad with so many eccentricities of spelling
that he came near losing his identity, but also gave him a claim in
courtesy to such a position in the organization of his company, within
the grasp of the mere high private, as he might select. After due
deliberation he chose that of company commissary--an office unknown,
I think, to the _United States Army Regulations_, but none the less
familiar to our volunteer service. To this post he was promptly
appointed by his captain; and, thus placed in the line of promotion,
he rose rapidly till he attained the rank of hospital steward. The
thing was done. Hanchett was Doctor Hanchett from that day, and the
title was very much the larger part of the man ever after. How he had
lived for forty years or more without it is still a mystery.

When the war was over, Doctor Hanchett stranded upon the northern bank
of the Ohio, in the State of Indiana. As a returning brave he was,