Lincoln-Williamson County TN Archives Biographies.....Bonner, William 1808 - 
************************************************

Copyright.  All rights reserved.

http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/tn/tnfiles.htm

************************************************



File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Kay Pacheco KPacheco@fnbnet.net September 26, 2005, 7:52 pm

Author: Goodspeed

p.878-879.

BONNER, McNAIRY, OVERTON, ABERNATHY, ROBERTSON



Dr. William BONNER, dec'd., a native of Granville Co., N. C., was born

October 7, 1798, and came to Tennessee with his father December, 1808.  For

two or three years the family lived in Williamson County, near Nolensville,

and then came to Lincoln County, where William BONNER and his brother Moses

continued to reside until their death.  The whole of the southern portion

of Middle Tennessee was then but sparsely settled, and William BONNER,

seeing that physicians, even in urgent cases, could be had only by sending

fifty or one hundred miles, young as he was, without prompting from others,

determined to study medicine.  In 1821 he went to Nashville and began the

study of medicine under Drs. McNAIRY and OVERTON.  He never ceased to speak

of their kindness and of Mrs. McNAIRY as one of the noblest of women.  In

the winter of 1822-23 he attended a course of lectures at Lexington, Ky.

In the spring of 1823 he began the practice of medicine in Lincoln County,

and soon had a large and lucrative business, making money enough to pay his

unpaid bills in Nashville and bear the expenses of a course of lectures in

Philadelphia.  He received his diploma in the spring of 1827.  In extreme

and desperate cases he informed his patients and resorted to desperate

remedies, often with success.  He took a tumor from the neck of a Mrs.

ABERNATHY, when his brother and other learned and experienced physicians

and surgeons declared she would die under the operation.  She consented to

the operation and afterward lived many years.  Dr. BONNER returned to

Lincoln County and continued the practice of medicine for thirty years. He

married Lucy Rosseau ROBERTSON on the 4th of July, 1827.  He always seemed

indifferent to notoriety, and operated more than twenty times for lithotomy

and never lost a case.  He collected over $100,000 from his practice and

never sued for a medical bill.  In connection with his practice he engaged

in farming, and at the commencement of the late war he owned 8,000 acres of

land and three or four hundred slaves.  He was a man of wonderful energy

and great physical and mental power.  So strong, active and energetic was

he for fifty years of his life, and so prosperous, that he never fully

realized that any except those who were sick needed help.  The result of

the war and freedom to his slaves did not embitter him, but he constituted

himself a guardian for every negro that lived with him.  He died at Fayette

September 20, 1879, at the age of eighty years, eleven months and thirteen

days.  He was a Democrat in politics, and never too tired to gain a vote

for his candidate if he could, but in the sick room he eschewed politics

and religion.



Additional Comments:
From Goodspeed's "History of Tennessee"

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/tn/lincoln/bios/bonner36nbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/tnfiles/

File size: 3.4 Kb