My Genealogy Hound

T. A. Bedford, druggist, Wynne, Ark. Avery reliable as well as popular drug store is that of Mr. Bedford, who engaged in the drug business in Wynne, in February, 1889, and who has every requisite and convenience in this line. He is a native of Middle Tennessee, where his birth occurred in 1842, and is the second of four children born to John H. and Lizzie (Allen) Bedford, natives of Tennessee, where the father was for many years engaged in farming, manufacturing tobacco and merchandising. In 1849 he and family moved to West Tennessee, nine miles from Memphis, and there he engaged in the cultivation of cotton, continuing at this until his death, in 1851. After this his widow moved with the family to Columbia, Tenn., where she remained for three years for the purpose of educating her children. They were then sent to Lebanon to complete their education. The mother died in 1870. T. A. Bedford attended school until the end of 1860, when he came to Arkansas and purchased a farm in what is now Cross County, about five miles west of Wynne, bought about thirty negroes and embarked in the cotton raising business. After making one crop he went to Tennessee to visit his mother, and while there enlisted in the Confederate army, Company K, Fourth Tennessee Cavalry, commanded by Col. Paul Anderson, and was assigned to duty in Gen. Bragg’s army. He was in the battles of Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Perryville, Dalton and Resaca, and was captured in May, 1864, while bearing a dispatch from Gen. Hood, would not take the oath and was sent as a prisoner to Alton, Ill. There he remained until peace was declared. In 1866 he returned to Arkansas to look after the property he had left there, and found his slaves, mules and horses gone and the plantation overgrown with underbrush. He settled here, however, and returned to agricultural pursuits. In January, 1868, he married Miss Mary Rebecca Cogbill, a native of Tennessee and a daughter of George Cogbill, who came to Arkansas, in 1860, settled in Cross County, and followed farming until his death, in 1867. Mr. Bedford also tilled the soil until the death of his wife, in 1882, and in the following year he went to Wittsburg, and was in the drug business at that place for some time. He was then in the warehouse and shipping business, which occupation he still continues. To his marriage were born three children: Thomas A. J. (is at present postal clerk on the Memphis & Bald Knob Railroad), Mattie R. (is a graduate of Shelbyville, Tenn., in the class of 1889), and Mamie (is attending school at Nashville, with the same teacher under whom the elder sister graduated). In 1886 Mr. Bedford was appointed postmaster of Wittsburg, and opened the office in his drug store. He remained at Wittsburg until 1888, when he resigned the post-office (having sold the drug store in 1887) and went to Wynne, where he purchased the drug stock of Bunch & Hamilton. He now has as fine a drug store as can be found in Eastern Arkansas, and carries a complete line of pure drugs and chemicals, toilet articles, paints and oils and the usual druggists’ sundries. For compounding and putting up prescriptions he has the assistance of S. A. Miller, a graduate of the Pennsylvania School of Pharmacy, at Philadelphia and York (Penn.) School of Sciences. This assistant has a complete chemical outfit and is thus prepared to analyze water, mineral ores and chemical compounds. Mr. Bedford owns a farm one and a half miles east of Wynne.