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.