My Genealogy Hound

James H. Southall, M. D. The name of this gentleman is one of the most influential in Little Rock, and he is highly esteemed and liked in private life, as well as in his professional capacity. His birth occurred in Smithfield, Isle of Wight County, Va., in 1841, but his youth and early manhood was spent in Norfolk, Va., where he acquired a good education in academies of that city, and others in the States of Virginia and North Carolina. He received his medical instruction under the able auspices of Dr. Robert Tunstall, of Norfolk, Va. In 1859 and 1860 he attended medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1860 and 1861 he attended medical lectures at the University of Louisiana, graduating in the latter school March 1, 1861. He almost immediately, thereafter, entered the Confederate service as assistant surgeon of the Fifty-fifth Virginia Infantry, and was promoted to surgeon of the above command in 1862, in which capacity he served until the final surrender. He returned to Norfolk, and practiced there until December, 1865, when he came west to Memphis, Tenn., and shortly after located in Crittenden County, Ark., coming from there to Little Rock in 1872. He assisted in organizing the Medical Department of the Arkansas Industrial University in 1879, and until the season of 1886, he occupied the chair of physiology, since which time he has filled the chair of theory and practice. Dr. Southall is foremost in his profession, and a man whose personal appearance will at once indicate his intelligence in whatever society he may appear. He is very popular outside of his profession, and in his studies he does not lightly skim the surface, but dives to the bottom of all subjects, no matter how profound. He was married in Memphis, Tenn., to Miss Gertrude Murphy, a native of that city, and daughter of Maj. J. J. Murphy, and his wife, Mrs. Mary (Mitchell) Murphy, old and respected citizens of that city, their union taking place in 1869. They have two children: Alice and Edith. The Doctor is a son of Turner and Alice A. (Wright) Southall, the former a native of Smithfield, Isle of Wight County, Va. He was a physician and surgeon, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. He practiced in his native county all his life, and died there when about forty-five years of age. The grandfather, by name James Barrett Southall, was a Virginian by birth, and the first of the name to settle in the Isle of Wight County, Va. There he married a Miss Whitfield, the grandmother, on the paternal side, of the subject of this biographical sketch. The parents of James Barrett Southall were Daisey Southall and Edith (Vandervall) Southall; the former of whom was born in the North of England, and was the first of the name settling in Virginia in the early Colonial times. They were residents at that time of what is known as the Peninsula of Virginia (which it is needless to say, was then, as now, of historic fame; in or about that collegiate center of subsequent years, the borough or town of Williamsburg). On his mother’s side, Mrs. Alice Ann (Wright) Southall, (who was born in the City of Norfolk, some eighty-two years ago, the place of residence of her parents), we find that he is a descendant of Col. Stephen A. Wright, of Revolutionary fame, and his wife, Mrs. Abbey (O’Connor) Wright. Mrs. Alice Ann (Wright) Southall was the mother of seven children by her husband, Dr. Turner H. Southall, all of whom, with the exception of two, died in infancy.