William F. Harris, M. D.
William F. Harris, M. D., a prominent physician and surgeon of Washita County, whose skill in the healing art has won for him a high standing with the medical fraternity of the county and an enviable reputation among its people in general, has been engaged in practice at Sentinel since 1907. His entire professional career has been passed in Oklahoma, where he has been given the opportunity to rise in his chosen calling, and where he has invested his means with a view to passing his future years.
Doctor Harris was born in Murray County, Georgia, January 23, 1878, and is a son of William G. and Eugenia A. (Carter) Harris, and a member of a family whose founder came to America from England during Colonial days. The name was well known among the pioneers of Missouri, was later taken into Tennessee and finally into Georgia, where, in Murray County, Georgia, William C. Harris settled during the ’50s. He was then a young man, having been born in 1830, and was engaged in farming when the Civil war came on. Having Southern sympathies, he enlisted in the Thirty-sixth Georgia Volunteer Infantry, in the Confederate service, and fought with the rank of captain throughout that struggle, establishing an excellent record for faithful and valiant service. When his military career was finished Captain Harris returned to the vocation of stock raising and farming in Murray County, in which he continued to be engaged until his death in March, 1901. He was a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and a deacon and elder therein, and was a member of the Masonic fraternity. Captain Harris was married in Murray County, Georgia, to Miss Eugenia A. Carter, who was born in the Cracker state, in 1841, and died in Murray County, in 1910, and they became the parents of nine children, namely: Lucy, who died in Murray County in 1889 as the wife of the late Charles H. Humphreys, a school teacher; Nannie, who died in Murray County in 1906, as the wife of the late Dr. Leonard C. Furr, for many years a practicing physician of that county; Charles, who died in infancy; John H., who is unmarried and resides on the old home farm in Murray County, Georgia; Georgia, who is the wife of George McCamy, a farmer and stockman of Texas; Carrie, who is unmarried and resides on the old Georgia homestead farm: Corrie, who died at the age of eleven years; William F.; and Tom, who is married and has not left the homestead.
William F. Harris obtained his preliminary schooling in the public institutions of his native county, and was graduated from the high school there in 1892. At that time he accepted a position in a drug store at Clarkesville, Georgia, and while there became interested in medicine and familiarized himself with the rudiments of that calling. In 1897 he entered the Southern Medical College, Atlanta, Georgia, where he was graduated from the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, class of 1900, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and at once entered upon the practice of his calling at Wood (now called Port), Oklahoma. Doctor Harris continued to be engaged in practice there from May, 1900, until December 1, 1907, when he came to Sentinel and here has since carried on a general medical and surgical practice which covers all branches of the calling and is confined to no particular specialty. He has well appointed offices in the Hughes Building, where he has a large medical library as well as equipment and instruments for the performing of the most delicate operations. He belongs to the Washita County Medical Society, the Oklahoma Medical Society and the American Medical Association, and is a student who recognizes no end to the road of science and who forges ahead energetically and conscientiously. Eight years have brought about a constant rise in his fortunes, and he has won the confidence of the community by his skill as a diagnostician and his successful treatment of complicated and apparently hopeless disorders. He has been successful in a material way, and beside his own residence at Sentinel, is the owner of a farm of 160 acres, located eight miles northwest of this place, at Port, Oklahoma, where he has a renter engaged in diversified farming. Doctor Harris is a democrat. His fraternal connections are with Sentinel Lodge No. 152, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Consistory No. 1, Valley of Guthrie, of the thirty-second degree, and Central Lodge of Oklahoma, Knights of Pythias.
Doctor Harris was married February 14, 1903, at Wood (now Port), Oklahoma, to Miss Alice Trotter, daughter of Joseph Trotter, who is now a farmer in the vicinity of Sentinel. To Doctor and Mrs. Harris three children have been born: Carter, born January 1, 1904, and now attending public school; William F., who died in infancy; and Sam, born April 2, 1911.