Troup County, Georgia Biographies  JOHN B. FEARS, M. D. For nearly twenty-eight years Dr. John B. Fears has been engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery at Garrison, Texas, having been the first physician to "hang out his shingle" in the new town in 1886. During this long period he has won an acknowledged place in the confidence of the people as well as in the ranks of his profession, and his devotion to the best ethics of his honored calling has been no less marked than his high ideals of citizenship. Dr. Fears is a native of Troup county, Georgia, and was born November 17, 1844. He was reared in Coweta county, that state, received his early education at Newnan, and accompanied his parents by water to Shreveport from Mobile and to Mobile from Montgomery county, Alabama. He then came by the Morgan line of boats to New Orleans and by private conveyance to Nacogdoehes county, reaching here in the fall of 1859 and engaging in farming some two and one-half miles from where the town of Garrison now stands. There his father died in 1885, at the age of seventy-seven years. He was Oliver Porter Fears, a man of much learning and extensive information, who in 1851 and 1882 had been a merchant at Atlanta, Georgia. In 1853 he moved to Newnan and there carried on a mercantile business until coming to Texas, in 1859, following which he continued to devote himself to his farm during the remainder of his life. He was postmaster of Wonders postoffice under the Confederacy and was a stalwart secessionist. He continued postmaster there after the war and until the establishment of Garrison, the successor of Wonders. Mr. Fears was a stanch member of the Missionary Baptist church, belonged to the Masonic Chapter, and was a talented writer of articles for the newspapers or for various special occasions, being as well posted as any man of this section of the country on matters of general information. James Fears, the grandfather of Dr. Fears, was born in Virginia and was one of four brothers who left the Old Dominion for other localities. One of these went to the state of Missouri and three to Georgia, and the grandfather settled in Morgan county, near Madison, in the latter state. Although his trade was that of a millwright, he was engaged in farming during the greater part of his life, and was so engaged at the.time of his death in 1857, at the age of about eighty-two years. His forefathers were of the Irish blood and early became residents of Colonial Virginia. James Fears was married first in Georgia, and to this union there were born children as follows: Oliver Porter; Mary, who married Mr. Mathis and died in Morgan county, Georgia; Margaret, who married Mr. Davis and died in Georgia; and John, who died on his father's old farm. Mr. Fears was a second time married but they had no children. Dr. Fears' mother was Sarah Ann Long, a daughter of Col. Henry Long, of Troup county, Georgia. Colonel Long was a farmer on a large scale and large slaveholder and gave his influence to the Confederacy, in the army of which he had four sons. He married Susan Battle Forsyth and reared William; Sarah Ann; James; John; Jesse; Lafayette; Martha, the wife of J. I. Callaway, of LaGrange, Georgia; Mariette, who married William Pullen, of the same place; and Camilla Mildred, who married James Cameron and resides near Jacksonville, Texas. Oliver P. and Sarah Ann Fears were the parents of the following children: Dr. William P., a physician of Appleby, Texas, who was captain of Company A, Seventeenth Regiment, Texas Consolidated Infantry, during the Civil war, was a graduate of the University of Louisiana, and married Emma Gilbert, by whom he had six children; John B., of this review; Susan Long, who married B. L. Jopling, of Garrison, Texas; Mary Emma, who married James Wilson, of Dallas; Eebecca, who is the widow of Dr. T. M. Atta- way, and resides at Ardmore, Oklahoma; and Watson, who died in 1885 as a farmer, married Laura Jopling and had one child. John B. Fears received his early education in the public schools of Newnan, Georgia, but in 1862 left his studies to enlist as a soldier in Company A, Seventeenth Regiment, Texas Consolidated Infantry, Col. William Ryan, Taylor's old regiment. He served in the Trans- Mississippi Department and his baptism of fire was received at Harrisburg, on the Ouachita river, following which he participated in the Manfield campaign, which comprised the engagements, bitterly contested, at Pleasant Hill and Yellow Bayou. After that campaign the command went to Houston and Richmond and was discharged at the latter place in June, 1865. Although Mr. Fears was in a number of bloody battles, he escaped wounds or capture, and returned to the pursuits of peace with an excellent military record.. He immediately took up fanning, as he was in sore financial straits and had to resort to real industry. During the day he would work in the field, and at night would pursue his medical studies, in this way securing the means and the preparation necessary to enter Tulane University, New Orleans. Becoming a student of that institution in 1873, he was graduated with the class of 1875, and at that time began practice in his home community. In the winter of 1879- 80 he was a student in the Jefferson Medical Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and after finishing his work resumed practice. Dr. Fears came to Garrison in 1886 as the first physician here, and the confidence he reposed in the future of the thriving little city has been fully vindicated. At this time he has an excellent practice among the city's most representative people, and is widely and favorably known in the profession, because of his strict adherence to its unwritten ethics. Dr. Fears was married at Henderson, Texas, January 30, 1883, to Miss Lula W. Beall, daughter of Maj. Thaddeus F. Beall, who lived at Lafayette, Alabama. His wife was Carrie E. Boyd, and they had the following children: Lulu W.; Lillie, who became the wife of G. M. Scott; Walter, a resident of Lafayette, Alabama; Lucius, who died in that state; Kate, who also passed away there; Clester, who died unmarried; Frank, a resident of Tacoma, Washington; and Mrs. Laura Eva Kelly, of Garrison, Texas. Dr. and Mrs. Fears have had children as follows: William Henry, a railroad man with the Atchi- son, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad; John W., connected with the Temple Lumber Company, of Pineland, Texas; James Lewin, in the Agricultural and Mechanical College, Stillwater, Oklahoma; Thaddeus A., who is a student in the public schools; and Carrie Lucile, also in the public school. [A History of Texas and Texans By Francis White Johnson, Ernest William Winkler, 1914, Submitted to Genealogy Trails by K. Torp]   Return to Troup County Biographies Return to Troup County Main Page ©2008 Genealogy Trails