My Genealogy Hound

W. E. Sanders, M. D., of Oxford, Ark., was born in the “Palmetto State” in 1846, and is one of six living members of a family of seven children born to the marriage of Dr. W. R. and F. H. (Simons) Sanders, the former of whom removed to Georgia in 1851. He was a graduate of the Charleston (S. C.) Medical College in 1838, and was an extensive and successful physician. He was married in 1839, and died in 1853, being a member of the Old School Presbyterian Church, and a member of the A. F. & A. M. In his political views he was a Democrat. His wife died in 1869, at the age of fifty-two years. Dr. W. E. Sanders attended the graded school of Newman, Ga., up to the breaking out of the late war, and at the early age of fourteen years and eleven months, he joined Company E, Twentieth Alabama Infantry, and was an active participant in forty-six hotly contested engagements, among which were Baker’s Creek, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Raymond, Dalton, Vicksburg, and was in all the battles from Dalton to Atlanta, Ga. At the battle of Franklin he was wounded by a bayonet, while he and his comrades were trying to take possession of the Federals’ ditch. Thirty days afterward he took part in the battle of Nashville, although he had not fully recovered from his wound. He surrendered at Greensboro, N. C. He served as a private, and on five different occasions, when the color bearer was shot, Dr. Sanders carried the colors of his regiment out of the engagements, and was offered the position of color bearer by his colonel, but declined, saying he would rather carry a gun. After his return home he began the study of medicine, and for some time before entering college he was engaged in practicing, and was well fitted to perform the duties of a physician from the fact that his father and all his brothers were practicing physicians. At the age of twenty years he entered the Medical University at New Orleans, but at the end of one term entered the Medical College of Philadelphia, graduating therefrom in 1868, and immediately began practicing in Clinton, Ala. At the end of five years he moved to Fayette County, Texas, and three years later settled in Independence County, Ark. In 1878 he came to his present location, and the same year opened a mercantile establishment in Union, Fulton County, Ark., but removed his goods to this county in 1884, and formed a partnership with J. E. Ford. This partnership was dissolved in 1888, and the Doctor has since been connected with E. S. Pearson, the style of the firm being Sanders & Pearson. They are doing a prosperous business, and fully deserve the patronage which they are receiving, for they are honest and upright in all their dealings, and are accommodating and agreeable gentlemen. The Doctor was married, in 1876, to Mrs. Addie Hodges, of Independence County, but a native of Tennessee, and to them have been born four children: Mary A., William C., Edward C. and Kittie. Dr. and Mrs. Sanders are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and he is a member of the I. O. O. F., and is a Democrat politically. He is now examining physician for the Pension Bureau, and a thoroughly reliable, successful physician.