Escambia County AlArchives Biographies.....Wilkinson, James A. July 30 1842 - living in 1893
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Ann Anderson alabammygrammy@aol.com May 23, 2004, 5:54 am

Author: Brant & Fuller (1893)
   DR. JAMES A. WILKINSON, physician, resident of Flomaton, is a northern man,
born in La Porte county, Ind., July 30, 1842. His father, James A. Wilkinson, a
distinguished physician, graduate of the Philadelphia Medical college and for
many years a successful practitioner in New Orleans, La., Louisville, Ky., and
La Porte, Ind., was born in the year 1797. James A. Wilkinson, Sr., married,
about the year 1833, Miss Nancy Henley, daughter of Jesse Henley, an early
settler of Clark county, Ind., whither he moved a great many years ago, from the
state of North Carolina. Six children were born to James A. and Nancy Wilkinson,
namely: Virginia H.; Indiana M., wife of George Morris, Washington, N. C.;
Jefferson H.; James A., and John W. The parents of these children died at New
Buffalo, Mich., the father in 1867, on his seventieth birthday, and the mother
in the spring of 1865. The grandfather of Dr. James A. Wilkinson was John W.
Wilkinson, an Englishman, who came to America from the city of Liverpool about
the year 1780. He was the son of a prominent exporter of that city, who owned a
number of vessels which carried on an extensive trade with nearly all the
leading seaports of the world. Desiring to see some of the world, Mr. Wilkinson,
when but a mere boy, disregarding his father's wish that he should become a
scholar and then engage in business, bribed one of the latter's seamen to
secrete him on board a vessel bound for America, which country he had long
desired to visit. The father, learning of the son's flight, pursued and overtook
the vessel when but a short distance from the coast, but all his entreaties to
induce the son to return to shore proving fruitless, he presented the determined
youth with 100 pounds sterling, told him to make good use of the money, and,
when tired of rambling, to return home and engage in business. For some time
after landing in New York, the boy worked in a boot and shoe house, later became
traveling salesman, and while on a tour through the south, met and married a
young lady, which so enraged the father that the latter disinherited the
undutiful son, and refused to have any further intercourse with him. John W.
Wilkinson eventually became a very successful man, and prominent and popular
citizen of Fauquier county, Va. Dr. James A. Wilkinson, Jr., the principal of
this biography, received a common school education in his native county, and at
the age of eighteen went to Chicago and obtained an assistant's position in a
drug store. He was induced to leave the parental roof at this early age on
account of the straitened financial circumstances of his father, who, through
the failure of a friend for whom he was acting as bondsman, had lost nearly or
quite all of his property. The doctor continued in the drug business until 1867,
paying particular attention, in the meantime, to the study of pharmacy, in which
he acquired a high degree of proficiency, having been elected a member of the
pharmaceutical society of the city. He spent about one year in Madison, Wis., in
the drug store of Dunning & Sumner, and while in Chicago was successively
employed by H. L. Mottram, E. H. Sargent, Fuller, Finch & Fuller, George C.
Jones and D. R. Dyche & Co. Leaving Chicago in 1871, the doctor went to Cairo,
Ill., and spent four years and a half in the drug house of Barclay Bros.; then,
with the intention of prosecuting his medical studies, he entered the medical
department of the university of Virginia, where he took two courses of lectures,
the first of nine months and the second of seven months, but owing to impaired
health, which rendered further study at the time impossible, was compelled to
withdraw without graduating. In the summer of 1877 he entered the Louisville
Medical college, from which he graduated in February of the following year,
after which he remained in that city several months longer, engaged in hospital
practice. In August, of 1879, he located in Bath county, Ky., where he practiced
nearly two years, thence, in May, 1881, changed his residence to Flomaton, Ala.,
where he now resides. Dr. Wilkinson has risen rapidly in his profession, and has
much more than a local reputation. The doctor and Miss Fanny Whaley became man
and wife in June, 1880. Mrs. Wilkinson is the daughter of S. P. and Mary (Smith)
Whaley, the father a native of New York and for a number of years a leading
commission merchnat of Louisville, Ky. Beside Mrs. Wilkinson, Mr. and Mrs.
Whaley have the following children: Sherman P., Jr., Curtis, Smith, Dixon,,
James B., Laurence and John P., all living and unmarried.



Additional Comments:
from "Memorial Record of Alabama", Vol. I, p. 1008-1011
Published by
Brant & Fuller (1893)
Madison, WI

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