Navasota Doctors: The very early days: Part Three

The early Texas doctor, this is one of a collection of life-sized portraits I painted for the Star of the Republic Museum at Washington on the Brazos.


Wow, I was writing about our wonderful medical history here in Navasota when several music events kind of blew all that out like a blue Norther in a chicken coup. I think it is too late to gather all the chicks and put them back in… but I do want to pursue this subject, for posterity.

Like I said before, nobody has ever put down the story. Or asked the questions. For a pretty small town Navasota had a bunch of physicians. Why or how come so many? I am fortunate enough to have several great sources to tell you about our pioneer doctors, who they were and some wonderful anecdotes about them… So we will approach them like a doctor would, chronologically. In past segments we have learned about the very first doctors in Texas, about Cabeza de Vaca and La Salle’s murderous surgeon Liotot… Thank goodness some real physicians finally showed up! These three men were our doctors and leaders during the Republic of Texas days.

Benjamin Briggs Goodrich. B. B. Goodrich was perhaps one of the most prominent men in Grimes County for many years. But not because he was a doctor. Goodrich was one of the earliest pioneers to settle here, and became a political leader from the very beginning.

Born in 1799, B. B. Goodrich graduated from medical school in Baltimore and then migrated south, with short stays in Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama where he was soon elected to the State Legislature. He and his younger brother John, known as the “bee hunter,” finally found Texas in 1833, settling in Eureka, later to be combined with Fanthorp and renamed Anderson. John Goodrich was one of the men who made Texas forever famous when he died at the Alamo.

B. B. Goodrich served early Texas as a delegate to the Consultation in 1835, and the Convention at Washington on the Brazos in 1836. He was a signor of the Declaration of Independence. He also helped to write the Republic of Texas Constitution. Later he was instrumental in helping to select the town site of Anderson as the County seat for the new County of Grimes in 1846 when it was separated from Montgomery County.


Dr. Robert Caldwell Neblett. Born in Virginia in 1795, his early training was in carpentry. Robert abandoned this vocation and took up going to school and playing the violin. His father burned the violin and sent him to work. Robert joined the Virginia Militia instead. At age seventeen he volunteered and ended up in the War of 1812, where he rose to the rank of Sergeant Major. After the war he taught school, then in 1818 decided to attend medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. After he graduated, he started practicing in Clarksville, Tennessee. From there he moved to Wayne County, Mississippi where he married Marie Poe in 1825.

He kept moving west. He and his family settled in Louisiana, and there he farmed and practiced medicine and went into merchandising at Neblett’s Bluff, and this town was named after him.

But by 1840, Dr. Neblett arrived in Texas, very near the present town of Navasota. Here he “planted his ebenezer” and continued to use all the talents he had developed to that date. At that time, the other doctors were engrossed in political affairs, and Dr. Neblett served the region between the San Jacinto and Brazos rivers! He helped to organize one of the first schools, the Masonic Collegiate Institute, in Anderson in 1843. He was a charter member of the Orphan’s Friend Lodge.

Medical supplies were scarce and costly, and Neblett carried the only medicine known to exist within hundreds of miles in his saddle bags; calomel and quinine. He had no anesthesia, not even chloroform. Patients often could not be carried, and he made many house calls, travelling the country on horseback. His most frequent foes besides ignorance and superstition were infection and Malaria. One of the more interesting superstitions he ran into was the use of a native root called the Mandenke, or May Apple root. Its root grew into a shape not unlike a man, and it had a fork which looked like legs. Users believed that they should take a part of the root from the corresponding part of their own body which was ailing, and make a tea from it and consume it.

Dr. Neblett was elected into the Texas Legislature in 1855. Neblett helped to bring St. Paul’s Episcopal College to Anderson in 1861. Dr. Neblett was active serving his community until 1970, and died in 1871. The U. S. Government placed a marker on his grave at the Orphan’s Lodge Cemetery recognizing his bravery in the War of 1812.

David Catchings Dickson. D. C. Dickson was another early doctor from Anderson that fell into a leadership role in Texas very quickly. After his first wife died in Mississippi, he married her younger sister and came to Texas in 1841. Dickson was the first doctor to open a practice in Alta Mira, a village west of present day Anderson. He was soon elected as the Justice of the Peace. He helped to found the Orphan’s Friend Masonic Lodge in Anderson. He was elected as a Representative to the State Legislature in 1846, where he served four terms. In 1851, he was elected the Speaker of the House. In 1853 he was elected as Lieutenant Governor. In 1855 he became snared in a political strategy that backfired when he announced his candidacy for the office of Governor, challenging then Governor Pease. Pease replaced him on his ticket and he then was defeated.

D. C. Dickson represented Grimes County in the Texas State Senate during the Civil War. Perhaps his most heroic challenge was while working for the Texas Prison system. After the war, he was appointed as the financial agent of the Huntsville Penitentiary. When the Yellow Fever epidemic broke out in 1867, he stayed at his post and provided essential care to the guards and inmates during this deadly time. His own son died during epidemic, but he was credited with continuing his fight against the disease, which raged in the unhealthy environment inside the walls. He served out his remaining years assisting his brother Lawrence here in Grimes County as Deputy Clerk. He died in 1880.

Most of this was taken from Blair’s History of Grimes County, pub 1930, and The Medicine Man in Texas, 1930.

What it means to be a Texan.

Young John Farrell from Washington on the Brazos, Texas, was just a kid when he served in the Texas Army at San Jacinto. Exhausted and half- crazy from the carnage, he wandered around the next day needing a little "counseling," as we would say today. The Mexican arms had been confiscated and piled almost chest high. Every kind and description of weapon was thrown onto the pile, to be sorted and dealt with later. Some guns were still loaded and there were hundreds of powder horns, mini-balls, swords, short swords, daggers, and other weaponry in an unorganized, dangerous pile.

John spotted an intriguing relic among the rifles. It was an ancient flintlock blunderbuss, like the ones pirates are seen brandishing in the movies. Now young John had never seen a pirate or a movie, but he still had to hold the wacky looking thing… with its stumpy, funnel-like barrel… and cock it, and what the heck, dry- fire it… not noticing the gray sand he was standing in was really an army’s worth of gunpowder. The old flint-on-steel lock slapped and exploded instantly, throwing sparks in e v e r y explosive d i r e c t i o n, and in a split second, the whole magazine spit and whoofed and baLOOOEY. Uniformly blackened, Young John Ferrell was taken into custody, lucky to still be alive.

Brought before General Sam Houston, a strong case for treason, espionage, and unbelievable stupidity could have been made. General Sam, freshly wounded and suffering terribly, looked upon the young man as if he were the cause of his misery. “Are you the young man who blew up the m a g a z i n e?”

“Yes Sir, General, I did it… but it was an accident.” Farrell breathed each word as if it were his last.

“Then sir” Houston concluded very unamused, “I will have you shot tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

Young Farrell was taken away. He spent the worst night of his life, waiting for his execution. He had failed as a soldier, as a son of the Republic, and brought eternal shame upon his family. He was ready to die. General Houston was feeling so bad, his wounds nearly killing him, he could never expect mercy. There was not even a scrap of paper to write down a note to his mother.

The next morning, he was brought before General Houston about thirty minutes before the scheduled end of his Texas citizenship, and the beginning of his Heavenly one. General Houston, having slept and shaken off the effects of the morphine that gave him some badly needed rest, looked at the boy with different eyes. “Well young man, how did you rest last night?” Houston queried, knowing full well the answer.

“N o t m u c h, General” John choked, fighting back Texas-sized tears, wondering how he might go about begging for his life, to a man he idolized so much.

“Did you think that I would’ve had you shot?” The General asked as if it was the most important question of the day.

“I did not know sir.” John was not a big talker, especially when his life was at stake. He might just as easily say the wrong thing. Better to keep it simple.

“Well sir, young men are too scarce to be shot like dogs.” Houston reasoned as if someone else had ordered his execution. “Officer of the Guard, turn the young man loose.”

For once, a Texan was thankful that Sam Houston was not always a man of his word.

But Sam Houston was in many ways sitting in a position just like God. He was the ultimate Judge, and obligated to judge with blindness and fairness. And he was, in a backwater battlefield of a fledgling Republic, the momentary dispenser of Grace.

God does not want any of his children to perish, any more than General Sam wanted any young Texan to be shot like a dog. I love this story, because it is true, and because it is a perfect illustration of God’s Grace. And how people on this earth can learn to give it freely. If General Sam Houston, with all of his worries and concerns and personal discomfort could reverse himself, swallow his pride, then take the time to teach a boy about accountability, AND about forgiveness, then every mother’s son should try to do the same. And so should every arm of government.

That’s what being a Texan is about. The Law. The letter of the law, and more importantly the SPIRIT of it, and the wisdom to use common sense, led by God’s Mercy and Grace, to stand for what is right. And sometimes it’s just not in a book somewhere. Sometimes the book calls for something... as in this case, that would have been abominable. Sam Houston saw the young man as a resource too valuable to throw to the lions of the Law. And actually, every citizen is. Sam Houston would have been the first to make sure the wicked were punished. But he knew the difference between his children and his enemies.

What made Sam Houston so unique in the annals of history, was that he was a true leader, unafraid to stand for what was right, regardless of public opinion or law books, or special interests, or political correctness, and forces that usually win today. He made some mistakes, but Texans always respected him whether they agreed with him or not, because he was a man of conviction.

Our government today seems to mix it up more and more, discarding common sense and unable to, or not caring to discriminate her children from her ememies. Americans have traded trust and wisdom in their leaders for objective, almost clinical fairness. Everything is so PC, we are finally going to "make life fair." That of course is a relative matter and a delusion. It will only bring more contention as everyone tries to get satisfaction, and once again the social warfare will commence. And young goobers like John Farrell will be lost in the crossfire.