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Below is a family biography included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi County, Arkansas published by Goodspeed Publishing Company in 1889.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

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Dr. H. C. Dunavant. The professional minds of physicians may be divided into two separate and distinct classes, aptly designated the perceptive and the memorative. To one class belong those whose medicinal knowledge and perception depends upon memory; to the other, those who rely chiefly upon their conscious resources and mingle them with their own judgment. To those acquainted with Dr. Dunavant it is unnecessary to mention to which class he belongs. He was born in Tennessee in 1844, and was next to the youngest in a family of fourteen children born to Leonard and Mary Beaufort (Reid) Dunavant. The parents were natives of Virginia and Tennessee, respectively. The father left his native State at the age of sixteen and went to Tennessee, where he was engaged in contracting and building for many years. He held the position of major in the War of 1812, and during the battle of New Orleans, when one of the soldiers was sick, Maj. Dunavant took his gun and used it with telling effect during the remainder of the engagement. He was also in a number of Indian fights. Later he went to West Tennessee, where he engaged in agricultural pursuits, and this occupation continued until his death, which occurred in 1869. The mother had died previous to this, in 1856. The maternal grandfather came to Tennessee, and was the first school-teacher in Nashville, where he made his home during life. Young Dunavant attended the common schools of Tennessee until sixteen years of age, and when the war broke out entered the Confederate army, enlisting in Company E, First Confederate Cavalry. He participated in the battles of Paris (Tenn.), Guntown (Miss.), Perryville (Ky.), Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and was with the army on the retreat through Georgia. He was with Gen. Wheeler in his celebrated campaigns, and also with Gen. Forrest at Gainesville, Ala., at the time of the surrender. After the close of the conflict he attended school two years, then earned some money, and entered that well-known and far-famed institution, the University of Nashville, and graduated from the medical department in 1873, thoroughly prepared to enter actively upon the discharge of his professional duties. He practiced one year with his brother in-law, Dr. Mitchell, and January 25, 1874, selected Mississippi County, Ark., as the scene of his future labor. He located at Osceola, and there he has since remained. The Doctor travels all over the county, and claims that the sanitary condition of this section has improved very much since his residence here. His career as a physician has long been well and favorably known to the many who have tested his healing ability, and abundant proof of his practice at this time is seen in the extended territory over which he goes to alleviate the suffering of the sick. The Doctor was married in 1874 to Mrs. Hattie Lanier, nee Binford, a native of Kentucky. She died in 1878 of yellow fever, having borne two children, Harry Binfort, who died just before his mother, aged three years, and Julia. Dr. Dunavant was married the second time, in December, 1879, to Mrs. Bettie Wheeler, nee Pulliam, a native of Tennessee, and the daughter of Elijah Pulliam, one of the oldest settlers in the State of Tennessee, and who died a short time since at the age of eighty-five years. To the second union were born two children, Harry Pulliam and Buford Nelson. The Doctor is a member of the American Public Health Association, also a member of the Medico-Legal Society of New York, and a member of the Tri-State Medical Society, composed of the States of Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. He is quite active politically, but is not an office-seeker. Aside from his professional duties he is actively engaged in agricultural pursuits, and in this, as in all other enterprises, makes a complete success. Mrs. Dunavant is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

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This family biography is one of 162 biographies included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi County, Arkansas published in 1889.  View the complete description here: Mississippi County, Arkansas History, Genealogy, and Maps

View additional Mississippi County, Arkansas family biographies here: Mississippi County, Arkansas Biographies

View a map of 1889 Mississippi County, Arkansas here: Mississippi County, Arkansas Map

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