BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Thomas Jefferson McFarland

Dr. Thomas J. McFarland, member of the State health department, and station quarantine officer at Port Lavaca, Texas, has filled that important office since 1887.  He is a native of Alabama; born in Green County, July 1, 1839.  His father, G. D. McFarland, was a Georgian by birth, but on reaching manhood he went from that State to Alabama and was there married to Miss Mary Poe, mother of Dr. McFarland.  He later removed to Mississippi, where, as a prominent cotton planter, he spent the remainder of his life.  Here he reared his family of children, composed of two sons and three daughters, of which the subject of this sketch his brother and one sister are living.  Dr. McFarland and his brother, who is now a Mississippi planter, were both soldiers in the Confederate army and fought for "Southern rights" until the close of hostilities in 1865.

Dr. McFarland was educated in part at Jonesboro University, Alabama, taking a later course at Fannin University, Mississippi.  After leaving college he read medicine at Jackson, Miss., his preceptor being the distinguished surgeon and physician, Dr. M. S. Craft of that city.  He attended lectures in New Orleans, first at the Medical University, now Tulane University, and later was graduated from the New Orleans School of Medicine.  He was a medical officer in the Confederate army.  After the war he came to Texas, locating in Galveston County, and from 1867 to 1870 he practiced his profession in Galveston, Brazoria, and Fort Bend counties.  From 1870 to 1874 he practiced in Fannin County, but in the latter year he returned to the coast, locating at Indianola and Port Lavaca, where he has since remained.  Soon after going to Indianola he was appointed United States marine hospital surgeon at that port in 1883, continuing in that service as well as doing a general practice until the hurricane of 1886 destroyed that place, after which the marine hospital service was discontinued.  As a soldier in the Confederate army he enlisted in New Orleans in 1862; was assigned to hospital duty in the Army of Tennessee; was made a member of the field operating corps of the army, which existed the latter years of the war, and was called to be on the field of battle and take charge of all heavy surgery requiring prompt and immediate attention.  He remained in that department of service, till the close of the war, and was on all the battlefields growing out of the Tennessee and Georgia campaigns.

He is a member of the Baptist church and a prominent Mason.  He was married in Mississippi in 1864 to Miss Caroline Pauline Jayne, a most highly accomplished lady.  She was educated in the Central Female Institute of Clinton, Miss., where she took lessons six years in music under a German teacher.  Her grandparents were natives of England.  They were descendants of Oliver Cromwell.  When they came to the United States they settled at Long Island, New York, where her father was born.  In his early manhood he moved to Alabama, where he was married; later he moved to Mississippi, where he was engaged in the banking business.  He was a member of the State Legislature in 1837.  He moved to Austin, Texas, in 1840, and in 1842 was killed by the Indians in the suburbs of the city, at which time his oldest son was captured and carried away by the Indians and was never afterward heard from.

Dr. McFarland has reared an interesting family of seven sons and daughters, nearly all of whom have reached the age of maturity and are well established in life.  His oldest son, Marion Minter, whose home is at Port Lavaca, is a commercial traveler; his second son, Thomas Carlyle, is a journalist and editor at Victoria, Texas, and his third son, Van Earl, is a physician located at Eagle Pass, Texas.  He has one daughter living in New Mexico; the other three live at Port Lavaca.

Dr. McFarland, aside from his professional worth, is noted in his community for liberality in the line of public spirit, and commands that social esteem which is usually allotted to a skillful and popular physician.  

Source: Transcription from the book, The Twenty-Seventh Legislature and State Administration of Texas, published in 1901; located on the website, Hathitrust Digital Library (http://www.hathitrust.org), accessed on 9 March 2023.