Biography of H C Dunavant, Mississippi Co, AR

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Submitted by: Michael Brown
        Date: Sep 1998
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Bibliography: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas.
Chicago:  Goodspeed Publishers, 1890.

Dr. H. C. Dunavant. The professional minds of physicians may
be divided into two separate and distinct classes, aptly designated the
perceptive and the memorative. To one class belong those whose
medicinal knowledge and perception depends upon memory; to the other,
those who rely chiefly upon their conscious resources and mingle them
with their own judgment. To those acquainted with Dr. Dunavant it is
unnecessary to mention to which class he belongs. He was born in
Tennessee in 1844, and was next to the youngest in a family of fourteen
children born to Leonard and Mary Beaufort (Reid) Dunavant. The parents
were natives of Virginia and Tennessee, respectively. The father left
his native State at the age of sixteen and went to Tennessee, where he
was engaged in contracting and building for many years. He held the
position of major in the War of 1812, and during the battle of New
Orleans, when one of the soldiers was sick, Maj. Dunavant took his gun
and used it with telling effect during the remainder of the engagement.
He was also in a number of Indian fights. Later he went to West
Tennessee, where he engaged in agricultural pursuits, and this
occupation continued until his death, which occurred in 1869. The
mother had died previous to this, in 1856. The maternal grandfather
came to Tennessee, and was the first school-teacher in Nashville, where
he made his home during life. Young Dunavant attended the common
schools of Tennessee until sixteen years of age, and when the war broke
out entered the Confederate army, enlisting in Company E, First
Confederate Cavalry. He participated in the battles of Paris (Tenn.),
Guotown (Miss.), Perryville (Ky.), Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and was
with the army on the retreat through Georgia. He was with Gen. Wheeler
in his celebrated campaigns, and also with Gen. Forrest at Gainesville,
Ala., at the time of the surrender. After the close of the conflict he
attended school two years, then earned some money, and entered that
well-known and far-famed institution, the University of Nashville, and
graduated from the medical department in 1873, thoroughly prepared to
enter actively upon the discharge of his professional duties. He
practiced one year with his brother in-law, Dr. Mitchell, and January
25, 1874, selected Mississippi County, Ark., as the scene of his future
labor. He located at Osceola, and there he has since remained. The
Doctor travels all over the county, and claims that the sanitary
condition of this section has improved very much since his residence
here. His career as a physician has long been well and favorably known
to the many who have tested his healing ability, and abundant proof of
his practice at this time is seen in the extended territory over which
he goes to alleviate the suffering of the sick. The Doctor was married
in 1874 to Mrs. Hattie Lanier, nee Binford, a native of Kentucky. She
died in 1878 [p.492] of yellow fever, having borne two children, Harry
Binfort, who died just before his mother, aged three years, and Julia.
Dr. Dunavant was married the second time, in December, 1879, to Mrs.
Bettie Wheeler, nee Pulliam, a native of Tennessee, and the daughter of
Elijah Pulliam, one of the oldest settlers in the State of Tennessee,
and who died a short time since at the age of eighty-five years. To the
second union were born two children, Harry Pulliam and Buford Nelson.
The Doctor is a member of the American Public Health Association, also
a member of the Medico-Legal Society of New York, and a member of the
Tri-State Medical Society, composed of the States of Tennessee.
Mississippi and Arkansas. He is quite active politically, but is not an
office-seeker. Aside from his professional duties he is actively
engaged in agricultural pursuits, and in this, as in all other
enterprises, makes a complete success. Mrs. Dunavant is a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.