St Landry County Louisiana Archives Biographies.....Ferguson, Benjamin November 20, 1879 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Mike Miller http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00004.html#0000912 July 23, 2013, 4:26 pm Source: A History of Louisiana, v.3, p. 6 Author: Henry E. Chambers BENJAMIN TALBOT FERGUSON, M. D. In the twenty years since he left medical college Doctor Ferguson’s professional work has largely been industrial practice, handling the medical and surgical cases of lumber companies and other industries in different localities of Louisiana. He now has mill practice for the Delta Logging Company and also a general private practice at Old Floyd, the former parish seat of Carroll Parish before the division into East and West Carroll. Doctor Ferguson graduated in 1904 from Memphis Hospital College of Medicine, and has steadily kept in touch with the advancing progress of his profession, taking post-graduate courses in the New Orleans Polyclinic. He has a fine professional library and is well grounded in a general education. He was born at Cash, in Scott County, Mississippi, November 20, 1879, son of William M. and Sarah Edna (Talbot) Ferguson, his father a native of Walnut Grove, Mississippi, and his mother of Tuskegee, Alabama. The mother died in 1893, at the age of forty-five. William M. Ferguson, who died in October, 1922, aged eighty, was a Confederate soldier, and all his life improved his early school opportunities by extensive reading. He was a farmer and stock raiser, and in 1880 moved to Louisiana, when his son, Doctor Ferguson, was one year old. He lived in Summerfield, Claiborne Parish, until the death of his wife, after which he lived with his daughter, Nancy Warren, wife of J. A. Thompson. He was a Methodist and held his membership in the Masonic Order of Hico, Louisiana. He was the father of three sons and two daughters: Doctor R. C. Ferguson, of Arcadia; Marion Gray, a dentist at Arkadelphia, Arkansas; Benjamin T.; Elizabeth Kavanaugh, wife of W. L. Johnson, of Tulier, Texas; and the daughter mentioned above. Benjamin Talbot Ferguson attended school at Summerfield, and when not in school was busied with the tasks of the home farm until he reached the age of twenty-one. The day he celebrated his twenty-first birthday, he picked three hundred pounds of cotton. After picking three bales of cotton he left his work to enter medical college, first attending the medical department of Nashville University and finishing in the Memphis Hospital Medical College. As an undergraduate he did some mill practice at Wyatt in Jackson Parish, and after graduating was located at Simsboro in Lincoln Parish from April until December. About that time he married Miss Sarah Annie Harper, daughter of Doctor T. W. Harper, of Ruston. She was educated in the Henderson-Brown College at Arkadeiphia, Arkansas, and taught for one year before her marriage. They had a daughter, Dubois Warren, and a son, Ben Webster. After his marriage Doctor Ferguson joined his father-in-law, Doctor Harper, in practice at Hico, where he remained six years. He then located at Standard, handling the mill practice of the Louisiana Central Lumber Company until the burning of the plant in 1914. Following that he was associated with his brother in practice at Arcadia and in 1922 came to Floyd. He is a member of the Parish and State Medical Societies, and was health officer of Bienville Parish for a time. During the war he was a member of the Exemption Board and joined the Volunteer Medical Corps, being prepared for overseas service when the armistice was signed. He is a Royal Arch Mason at Arcadia and a steward in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Additional Comments: Benjamin Talbot Ferguson, MD File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/stlandry/bios/ferguson179gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/lafiles/ File size: 4.1 Kb