Dr. Charles Clayton Abernathy, Jr.

CHARLES CLAYTON ABERNATHY, M.D. - A successful practitioner, was born near Pulaski, October 9, 1827. His early youth was passed on the farm and in attending the county schools. Later he attended the Wurtemberg Academy at Pulaski. He subsequently spent three years at Cumberland University at Lebanon. In 1848 he began the study of medicine under Dr. R. G. P. White, and in the spring of 1851 he graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, located in Decatur County, west Tennessee. In the same year, he married Martha J. Stockard, of Maury County, and has two children by this union: Mary G. and Lizzie. After remaining five years in Decatur County, he moved to Pulaski, and here continued the practice until 1862, when he went on duty as a commissioned surgeon in the Army of Tennessee at the hospital at Chattanooga. In December 1862, at his request, he was transferred to the Eighteenth Tennessee Infantry, Col. J. B. Palmer's regiment, General John C. Brown's brigade, and served as the surgeon of this regiment until after the Battle of Chickamauga, when he was transferred to the Third Tennessee Regiment, and continued to occupy that position until the close of the war. At the time of the surrender he was a prisoner of war at Fort Delaware, but was released July 19, 1865. In the fall of the same year he resumed the practice of medicine, and is still actively engaged in his profession. He is one of the leading physicians of this part of Tennessee. Mrs. Abernathy died in 1878, and the doctor was married again, in 1880, to Mrs. Josephine C. McNairy, of Giles County. Mrs. McNairy was a Miss Wilkinson. Our subject is a Democrat, a Mason, and he and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. He is a son of, Charles C. and Susannah (Harris) Abernathy, and of Scotch-Irish descent. His father was born in Virginia in 1790, and his mother in Davidson Co., Tennessee, in 1800. The Abernathy came to Tennessee in 1800, and settled in Davidson County, where the family resided until 1812. The grandfather died in 1835, and the father in 1876. The latter was clerk of the circuit court for twenty-four years. The mother of our subject died in 1845.