Greene-Albemarle-Orange County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Beazley, Dr. Robert Sanford 
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Alice Warner http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00015.html#0003503 March 10, 2009, 3:28 pm

Author: Lyon Gardiner Tyler

Dr. Robert Sanford Beazley, third son of Captain James and Elizabeth (Mills)
Beazley, and uncle of Dr. Wyatt Sanford Beazley, whom in early childhood he
nursed through two severe spells of illness, was born in Greene county,
Virginia, October 14, 1821, and died January 18, 1910. He was a student at the
University of Virginia, and received his diploma in medicine from the Jefferson
Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When but a lad, his father, while
trying to determine which of his two boys, Wyatt S. and Robert S., should be
educated in medicine and which in law, was brought to the decision by an
accident in which a negro boy on the farm had a toe almost severed from the
foot. The boys in question chanced to be present—Wyatt S., the embryo lawyer,
fainting, while Robert S., the born physician, sewed it back and nursed it until
well again. With this beginning, and taking later as his motto,

"While there is life, there is hope," it is no wonder that he held on to his
patients with a grip that seemed to challenge death, making his success in
healing almost phenomenal. After sixty-four years of active practice, done
almost wholly on horseback, he continued frequent visits to the sick until his
death in his eighty-ninth year.

There was an intermission of nine years in the sixty-four, during which, at the
earnest solicitation of the people of Albemarle and Greene counties, he
reluctantly gave up his chosen work to serve as their representative in the
state senate. While there it was said of him as of Henry Clay, "He never said a
word too much, never said a word too little, and always said the right word in
the right place." One of his colleagues said that before voting on any important
matter he desired no better information than that as to how Dr. Beazley would
vote. His life there was not all sunshine, for while seated in a window in the
house of delegates, when the latter was crowded to its utmost capacity, the
galleries fell, killing many, and crushed through the floor beneath. He received
a bad cut on the head by the falling plastering, but being forced to view so
long the heartrending scene below while helpless to aid was by far, he said, the
most trying part of his experience. His unexpired term in the senate was because
of his resignation on account of the long illness and death of his wife. For
this reason he also declined his election to the famous Underwood Constitutional
Convention.

He never lost interest in the affairs and activities of life, but to the end
kept pace with all advancement, especially in his own profession, and until his
last moment was in full possession of his faculties. He lived the simple,
temperate, natural life, and was never ill. Possessed of a remarkable purity,
calmness and equanimity, and having "high erected ideas seated in a heart of
courtesy" he was often referred to as a true type of the "old Virginia gentleman."

Dr. Beazley married Sarah Early, of Albemarle county, Virginia, and they were
the parents of two daughters: Elizabeth Fanny and Sallie Early, and one son,
James E., who married Edwina Graves, of Orange county, Virginia.

Additional Comments:
from bio of Wyatt Sanford Beazley MD, Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, 1915

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/greene/bios/beazley169gbs.txt

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