Answer: a veterinarian. 

George F. Parry (1838-1886) of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was one of the first veterinarians (and probably the first from Pennsylvania) to receive professional veterinary training in the United States. He graduated from the Boston Veterinary Institute in 1859, served as a veterinary surgeon with the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry during the Civil War, and owned a farm and conducted a private practice in Newtown, Pennsylvania, from shortly after the war until his death at age 48. George married Sarah E. Hough and the couple had two children.

Parry served with the Union Army from mid 1863 to the end of the war in mid 1865. During that time, he both attended to the needs of his regiment's (and others') horses and mules and fought alongside his squadmates. Parry spent most of the war in the southern United States and traveled throughout parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and to a much lesser extent, eastern Illinois, northeastern Mississippi, and northern Florida. He participated in battles at Chickamauga, Georgia (September 1863); Dallas, Georgia (May-June 1864); Selma, Alabama (April 1865); and witnessed much of the Atlanta Campaign (May-September 1864) undertaken by Union General William T. Sherman and others military officials.

The George F. Parry family volumes consists mostly of personal diaries written by George F. Parry dating from the 1860s to the 1880s. Additionally, there is a notebook that he kept while attending the Boston Veterinary Institute and a ledger of his business transactions during the 1870s. There is also a single diary from his daughter Helen dated 1884, a single diary that has been attributed to his son William dated 1898, and a photograph album.