Andrew L. Waqoner, M. D. Since locating at Hobart in 1908, the year following statehood, Doctor Wagoner has gained a prestige as one of the leading physicians

and surgeons of Kiowa County. He enjoys an excellent practice among the best families of the county and largely in the line of his profession has performed considerable public service and is a citizen whose presence in the community is greatly appreciated.

The Wagoner family to which he belongs located in Virginia during Colonial times, and subsequently crossed the mountains and were numbered among the early settlers of Kentucky. Doctor Wagoner was born at Scottsville in Allen County, Kentucky, April 2, 1868. His father, W. P. Wagoner, was born in the same place in 1827 and died there after a long-and active career as a farmer and stock raiser in 1905. He was a veteran of the war between the states, and spent four years with a Kentucky regiment in the Confederate army. He was under the command of General Beauregard at the Battle of Shiloh and fought in a number of other historic engagements of the war, being twice wounded. He was a democrat in politics, and always was an interested member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and served as a steward in his home society. W. P. Wagoner married Harriet Foster, who was born near Scottsville, Kentucky, in 1832, and is still living in that community, now a venerable woman of eighty-three. Their children were: Molly, who died unmarried at the age of thirty-seven; Doctor Andrew L.; Leslie, who is a farmer at Alexander, Kentucky; Roy, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church now stationed at Campbellsville, Kentucky; and T. W. Wagoner, who manages the old homestead farm and lives with his mother.

Doctor Wagoner had to surmount difficulties in his youth in order to realize his ambition for professional life. The first twenty-one years of his life were spent on his father’s farm and he had much of the experience and hard labor that goes with country life. In the meantime he had attended the public schools of Allen County, and in 1887 began teaching school, a vocation he followed four years. In 1891, largely with the earnings he had gained by his own labors, he entered the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, and remained until graduating M. D. with the class of 1894. Ten years later, in 1904, he took further work in the New York Post Graduate School of New York City.

His practice began in 1894 at Pondsville, Tennessee, where he remained two years, and from 1896 to 1908 was in practice at Scottsville, his native village. Doctor Wagoner came to Hobart in 1908, and his offices are now in the First National Bank Building of that city. For three years he served on the Hobart School Board, and for the past four years has been county physician of Kiowa County. He stands high in professional circles and is a member of the County and State Medical societies and the American Medical Association and is on the board of censors for Kiowa County. In polities Doctor Wagoner is a democrat, is serving as a steward in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Hobart, and is affiliated with Hobart Lodge No. 198, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, with Hobart Camp No. 84, Woodmen of the World, and with the Fraternal Aid at Hobart.

In the fall of 1894, soon after beginning practice of medicine, Doctor Wagoner was married at Scottsville, Kentucky, to Miss Lillian A. Read, a daughter of Emory H. Read, who is now a retired farmer at Scottsville. They have one daughter, Lula Mae, who was graduated as valedictorian of her class from the Hobart High School in 1915.