My Genealogy Hound

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 1822-28 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.