Biography of E D Rhea, Mississippi Co, AR

*********************************************************************
USGENWEB NOTICE:
In keeping with our policy of providing free Information on the
Internet,  data  may be used by  non-commercial entities, as long as
this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages
may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by
other persons or organizations.
Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes
other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file
contributor.

Submitted by: Michael Brown
        Date: Sep 1998
*********************************************************************

Bibliography: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas.
Chicago:  Goodspeed Publishers, 1890.

E. D. Rhea, M. D., a physician and surgeon of more than
ordinary ability, was born in the State of Tennessee in 1835, and like
the majority of the farmers' boys of his day acquired only a common
school education. At an early age, however, he evinced an eagerness
for study and a desire for professional life, and acquired the taste
for seientifie learning, medicine having a particular fascination for
him. When twenty-five years of age he went to Missouri, having
previously studied medicine, and was engaged in practicing his
profession there until 1862, when he enlisted as a surgeon in the
Fourth Missouri Regiment, Confederate cavalry, and served in the
Trans-Mississippi Department, in Marmaduke's division, until the close
of the war, after which he came to Arkansas and located in Fulton
County, near Salem, remaining there in the active practice of his
profession until 1876. During 1874-75 he ropresented Fulton County in
the first Democratic legislature convened after the Reconstruction
Act, and was an active member of that body during the stormy times of
the Brooks-Baxter war. Since 1876 he has practiced his profession in
Mississippi County, and has acquired no inferior reputation as a
physician and surgeon. When the village of Blythesville was laid ont
he purchased property and built one of the first houses in that place,
and has since been quite extensively engaged in fruit raising (in
connection with his practice), in which he has had remarkable success.
Since 1881 he has owned an eighty-acre farm near Blythesville, thirty
of which he has opened, and on which he has built a house and made
other improvements. In 1879 he was married to Miss Sarah Walker, a
daughter of John Walker, one of the early pioneers of the county, but
in March, 1885, was called upon to mourn her untimely death. She left
two children, Maggie, and Lizzie, the latter dying at the age of nine
months, six months after the mother. Miss Fannie Blackwell, of
Lauderdale County, Tenn., became his wife September 17, 1886. The
Doctor was the youngest of a family of twelve children [p.549] born to
Joseph M. and Kittie (Myers) Rhea, who were born in Tennessee and
Maryland, respectively. The father was a school teacher for many
years, and also followed the occupation of farming. They both died in
1860, he in August and she in February.