My Genealogy Hound

Harrison D. Hammack, M. D., of Van Buren, was born in Smith County, Tenn., in 1837, and is a son of James D. and Martha Louisa (Richardson) Hammack. The father was born in Virginia in 1800, and was of Anglo-Saxon descent. Soon after his marriage, in 1824, he immigrated to Dixon Springs, Smith Co., Tenn. In 1858 he left for Madison County, Mo., and the last few years of his life were spent in Van Buren, Ark., where he died in 1887. His grandfather was with Gen. Jackson in the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. The mother of our subject was born in Virginia in 1806, and died in Madison County, Mo., in 1871. Harrison D. is the fifth of a family of eight children, and during his youth attended Arcadia College, in Missouri. After becoming nineteen he taught four years, and in 1861 went to Union County, Ill., where he taught one term. He next taught in Ramsey, Fayette County, and in 1863 began to study medicine under Dr. Alonzo Clark at that place. In 1867 he began to practice at Prairie du Rocher, Ill. In 1876, ’77 and ’78, he attended Bellevue College, in New York City, and graduated from that institution in 1878. During these years he studied surgery under Prof. Alexander B. Mott, from whom he received a surgeon’s certificate, and in 1878 returned to Illinois and resumed his practice. In 1881 he came to Van Buren, where he is now well known and enjoying a lucrative practice, which is well merited. He has been married three times, his present wife having been Miss Jennie Parale Hurst, and a native of Texas. The Doctor has nine children: William A., Jacob W., Susan L., Aloysius, Rosalie, Olive, Regina, Stephen and Bessie. The Doctor and wife belong to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and to the Independent Order of Good Templars. He is a member of the American Legion of Honor; is independent in politics, and a member of the Southern Illinois Medical Association.