Dr. Jacob W. Bird arrived in Sandy Spring in 1909 on horseback at age 23, taking up the practice of Dr. Roger Brooke. He began his rounds in a horse and buggy, soon acquiring the first of 35 automobiles he would wear out during five decades of practice. The community desperately needed a hospital, and in 1918 he launched the drive to found Montgomery General--first rural hospital in the nation and at once the community's pride. It opened in 1920 when still unfinished to help victims of an epidemic that killed Bird's wife and two of his doctors.

Bird acquired Brooke's home on today's Dr. Bird Road, and there between house calls he treated an endless stream of patients; most Sandy Springers could proudly claim to have been brought into this world and kept in it by his cures and kindliness. In the fiftieth year of his practice, recognized across America as one of its greatest country doctors, at age 73 he and his second wife were killed in Alabama by a drunk driver. His memory lives on, in the hospital he founded, on shaded Dr. Bird Road, and among the many he helped.