The Medical Connection of the Watlingtons

 Dr. Alfred Newton Tabler married Joanna White McCorkle in 1837, and moved to Henderson County sometime before 1840. Several McCorkle--a French Hugenot family--came early to W. Tenn. In a sense, the McCorkles and Tablers led Catherine and George Watlington, who arrived before 1830. There is good reason to believe that John Tabler was here a year or more before the Watlingtons arrived. McCorkles were very much present among early settlers, with as many as five or six siblings coming before 1840. At least five Tabler siblings settled in West Tennessee also.   

Dr. John Roberts Watlington (b. 1830, Henderson Co., Tenn.) got into medicine early and by 1855 was practicing medicine. We have little direct evidence other than the oral tradition that John Roberts studied medicine with Dr. Tabler in the 1840's and early 50's. Later both Obediah Watlington and Mack Roberts Watlington were encouraged by Dr. John to study medicine.   

``Mack Rob'' was too much interested in the outdoor life and horses to continue in his studies, but Dr. John helped his son Obediah in his studies and he was licensed to practice in the 1880's. Dr. John's first wife died early and his second marriage, to widow Emily L. Parrish of Henderson, did not work out well. Dr. John continued to practice until his death (sometime after 1898, according to a legal document in Chester Co.) He lived with his son Obe the last years of his life and shared an office in Pinson.

Dr. Obe Watlington   and his wife Laura Steadman lived in the ``John Watlington home'' at the Chester County line, just south of Five Points (Big Springs). He continued to practice until his premature death Nov. 19, 1921. He is remembered to have treated Mrs. Mary E. Hammond in the year 1916. 

Dr. Obe Watlington, like his father, was unfortunate where family was concerned and Laura Steadman had only two daughters and neither of them had living children. Both died relatively young, and Dr. Obe is said to have ``worked himself to death'' as a visiting country doctor. He became dependent on strong drugs and morphine helped cut his life short. Dr. Kelly Smythe at Bemis Cotton Mill knew Dr. Obe well and once confided to Ulrich Mack Watlington that Dr. Obe had discussed his problem with him but at that point there seemed to be no available treatment to help him break his habit. According to Mack Watlington, Dr.\ Smythe described it as a tragic shame because he considered Dr. Obe to be a very fine ``diagnostician'' in a time when diagnosing the illness was not helped much by laboratory tests.

William F. Watlington studied pharmacy and practiced it in the family store in Pinson, 1894-1930.  

In the meantime, Susie F. Watlington, b. 1858 to William Tabler and Elizabeth K. Ozier Watlington, had married in 1878 a young medical student, Andrew J. Alexander, who was working in relation to nearby doctors, perhaps even with Dr. John R. Watlington. He continued his studies for the next two years around Jackson, Tenn. and practiced at Newbern, Tenn., and Mayfield, Ky., before settling down to a practice on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line at Fulton, Ky. They reared a family (b. 1880-1893) of three daughters and two sons, one of whom became a M.D. and was associated with his father in his practice in Fulton. The other son became a school teacher. Dr. Alexander and Susie F. Watlington were buried in a cemetery in Fulton, Ky., and descendents still live in that area.              

Emma Mai Hammond, sister to Jennie and Clara Hammond, was encouraged to become a nurse and was accepted for nurses training in a hospital in Nashville (1916). But when she saw the books they were expected to study, she decided her abilities as a student wouldn't be enough for that so she came home within a week. Clara Hammond Harton's daughter, Mabel, a generation later, became the first nurse of record in the family. About the same time Margaret Macon Watlington, daughter of William F. Watlington of Pinson, Tenn. was doing her professional studies for Nursing at St. Joseph Hospital in Memphis and later secured her B.S. degree in Public Health at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.       

But nursing had been a practical skill within families, and the survival of children in the rustic rural environment was often due to the skill of the mothers and grandmothers. Elizabeth K. Ozier, who married William T. Watlington, Rosa Lee Martin who married J. Frank Watlington in Dyer county, and Jennie S. Hammond who married Ulrich A. Watlington could claim honors for the survival rate of their children.    

These lines are written to pay homage to the country doctors who helped make life possible in the first century of settlement in West Tennessee. In order to have ``medicine men'' the families needed to rear their own, and the survival of our Watlington tribe may owe more than we realize to this continuing line of medical doctors related to the family from 1830 to the 1930's. Dr. J. T. Raines, who established practice in Malesus in 1884, also grew up in nearby Bear Creek Community and married Ida McHaney who had relatives in and around Pinson, Tenn.   

As the medical profession became better organized and required more education there was a period in which there were few relatives in medical professions, but by the 1960's relatives were preparing for dentistry, medical technology, nursing and practicing medicine. The time of the country doctor had changed, but the need for medical skills is ever present and we give thanks for those who have been, those who are, and those who will be there for us.