My Genealogy Hound

THOMAS WESLEY BRENTS, D. D. and M. D. Thomas Brents, Sr., was born in the “Blue-grass State,” and there married Jane McWhorter. They resided in the State until 1800, and then came to Marshall County, Tenn., and spent the remainder of their lives in agricultural pursuits. The father, although not an educated man, was a man of remarkable intellectual powers, superior to many of his associates in that particular. He and wife were not professed Christians, but they inclined to the Methodist Episcopal faith. He was an old-line Democrat and died at the age of sixty-two. The mother lived to be fifty-six years old. Thomas Wesley, our subject, was born in Marshall County, February 10, 1823. His early days were spent on a farm and in seeking an education in the old dirt-floor schoolhouse of early days, where the three “R’s” were supposed to be sufficient for an education. Before attaining his twenty-first birthday he had never seen a grammar, but notwithstanding the many disadvantages under which he labored, he conceived the idea of gaining a better education, and began a course of private study, often burning the midnight oil in furtherance of his plans, he followed pedagoging about four years and became a disciple of AEculapius and attended the Eclectic Medical College, of Memphis, Tenn., the Medical School of Nashville, and finally graduated, in 1855, from the Reform Medical College of Georgia, and was chosen demonstrator of anatomy, and later became professor of anatomy and surgery and held that position until the breaking out of the war. Owing to ill health he gave up his practice and moved to the country and devoted much of his time to the ministry, having started in that calling in 1850. He had acquired a thorough knowledge of Latin and his ministerial labors called for a knowledge of the Greek language, which he immediately began mastering. In 1841 he wedded Angeline Scott, who died in 1857, leaving five small children. Late in the same year he married Mrs. Elizabeth (Taylor) Brown, who bore him four children, two of whom are professional men: T. E., a physician, and John, a lawyer. Dr. Brents moved to Burritt in 1874 to educate his children in Burritt College, where three of them graduated. In 1882 he organized the present Bank of Lewisburg and acted as cashier for three years. In politics he is conservative, not having voted since 1856. For fifty-five years he has been a citizen of Marshall County, and whether as a physician, a professor or a minister of the gospel he has few equals and fewer superiors.