James R. Phares, MD. Sabine Parish, Louisiana

Submitted by Frances Ball Turner
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A History of Louisiana, by Chambers.  Vol. 11, pg. 368



JAMES R. PHARES, M.D.  The community of Negreet in Sabine Parish has had

the services of Dr. James K. Phares as a physician and surgeon for nearly

twenty years.  He has lived in that locality practically all his life,

and his family is an old and honored one in that section.



Doctor Phares was born during a brief residence of his parents near old

Slabtown, now Sugartown, in Vernon Parish, on March 31, 1882, son of

John Wesley and Winnie (Jordan) Phares.  Both were born in Ward One of Sabine

Parish.  The grandfather, J.K. Phares, a native of Ireland, came to the

United States when a boy, and being a man of liberal education taught in rural

schools all over western Louisiana.  He was a Confederate soldier. His wife

was of Scotch parentage, but was born in Ireland and both were members of the

Baptist Church.  John Wesley Phares received a good education, was a

successful farmer and stockman, and for fifteen years held the office of

justice of the peace and was also on the school board.



His home was in Vernon Parish but two years, and he then returned to Sabine

Parish and spent the rest of his life as a farmer and stockman near Negreet,

where he died in 1914, at the age if sixty-four.  He was a deacon in the

Baptist Church at Middle Creek and later at Negreet, and was a past master of

Little Lock Lodge of Masons at Negreet and a member of the Royal Arch Chapter

at Robeline.  He was a democrat.  His wife, Winnie Jordan, died in Ward One of

Sabine Parish in 1896, at the age of thirty-six. She was the mother of six

children.  His second wife was Catherine Thibadeaux, who now lives east of

Florien and is the mother of two sons.  Dr. James K. Phares and Ida, wife of

Obe Hilderbrand, a timber foreman of the Long Leaf Lumber Company at Fisher,

are the only surviving children of the first marriage of their father.  The

others were: Dr. John Dawson Phares, a graduate of the Memphis Hospital

Medical College, who practiced in his old home community until his death at

the age of twenty-eight; Minnie, who was educated at Fort Jessup, taught four

years and died at the age of twenty-two; Olive, who died at the age of

seventeen; and Gertrude, who was fifteen years old when she died.  The two

sons of the second marriage are Wesley and Eugene.



James K. Phares attended rural schools in Sabine Parish, graduated from

the Fort Jesup High School, and teaching for five years supplied him the

means for his professional education.  He attended the Memphis Hospital

Medical College during 1903-04, and the University of the South at Sewanee,

Tennessee, in 1905-06.  He borrowed money to complete his course in medicine

and paid it back from the early proceeds o his practice.  He has taken

post-graduate work at various times in Tulane and Vanderbilt University.  For

four years he practiced at Hornbeck in Vernon Parish, and since then has been

located at Negreet.  He does an extensive practice over a wide territory and

also looks after the management of a farm home at Negreet and other farms in

the parish.  He held the office of parish coroner for three years, from 1913

to 1916.





Doctor Phares married Sallie Gipson, daughter of George D. Gipson, of

Winchester, Tennessee.  They went together while in school.  She received a

musical education at Winchester, Tennessee, and was formerly a teacher of

music.  The four children of their marriage are:  Oscar Ross, born in 1908;

Glenn, born in 1910; Edna, born in 1913; and Joedona, born in 1917.

Doctor Phares is affiliated with the Little Flock Lodge of Masons and the

Royal Arch Chapter at Leesville, the I.O.O.F. at Hornbeck and is a member of

the Baptist Church.



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