Bios.Tulsa,OK BUTLER, Gavin H. (M.D.)
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Posted by Linda on Sat, 06 Mar 1999
Surname: BUTLER, BOWMAN, THRASHER
GAVIN H. BUTLER, M.D.
Vol. 3, p. 963-964 
Many different states of the Union have contributed to the personnel of the medical profession in Oklahoma, and a prominent and honored physician and surgeon of this vital young commonwealth who claims Tennessee as the place of his nativity is Doctor BUTLER, who now gives special attention to the surgical branch of his profession and who has been engaged in successful practice in the City of Tulsa since 1905, his office being at 305 Bliss Building and his residence at 1201 Carson Street. 
Doctor Butler was born in the Village of Adamsville, McNairy County, Tennessee, on the 15th of November, 1871, and was the eighth in order of birth in a family of nine children, of whom five are living. He is a son of Dr. Gavin H. and Melissa (THRASHER) Butler, the former a native of North Carolina and the latter of Alabama. Dr. Gavin H. Butler, Sr., was for more than fifty years engaged in the active practice of his profession in Tennessee and was not only one of the able and honored physicians and surgeons of that state but was also prominent and influential in public affairs. He was a child at the time of his parents' removal from North Carolina to Florence, Alabama, in which latter state he received an excellent academic education, and in preparation for his chosen profession he entered the medical department of what is now known as Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee, from which institution he was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. 
From that time forward until virtually the close of his long and useful life he was engaged in the practice of his profession at Adamsville, that state,-- a representative of the old-time country practitioner upon whom devolved heavy responsibilities and arduous labors, his zeal and faithfulness in the pursuit of his humane calling having never faltered and his services having been given effectively and unselfishly, with the result that the entire community looked upon him as "guide, philosopher and friend." He was actively identified with the McNairy County Medical Society, the Tennessee State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, and his hold upon the confidence and esteem of his confreres is indicated by the fact that he served many years as president of the McNairy County Medical Society. 
Though of fine old southern stock and reared under the gracious old southern regime, the Doctor was opposed to secession at the time of the Civil war, gave support to the Union cause, and became an influential representative of the republican party in his state. After the close of the war he had the distinction of being the first republican elected in the Tennessee Legislature, in which he served one term, declining nomination for a second. He died at the venerable age of eighty-one years, his wife having been seventy-eight years of age when she was summoned to the life eternal. 
He whose name initiates this review is indebted to the public schools of Tennessee for his early education, which was supplemented by higher academic study in Charleston College. In 1892 he was graduated in the medical department of the University of Louisville, Kentucky, and after receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine he engaged in the practice of his profession at Benton, Missouri, where he remained until 1905, when he came to Oklahoma Territory and established his residence in the City of Tulsa. Here he has built up a most substantial practice, in which he specializes in surgery, and he is known as a man of high professional attainments, with an admirable record for worthy achievement in his exacting vocation, of the unwritten ethical ode of which he is a punctilious observer. The Doctor is a prominent and appreciative member of the Tulsa County Medical Society, of which he served as president in 1907-8, and is identified also with the Oklahoma State Medical Association and the American Medical Association. In politics he accords unswerving allegiance to the republican party, and he is one of the liberal and broad-minded citizens who have aided in the development and upbuilding of the flourishing City of Tulsa. 
On the 11th of August, 1906, was solemnized the marriage of Doctor Butler to Miss Lillian BOWMAN, who was born in the State of Indiana; they have no children. 
Transcribed by Linda, February 9, 1999