Dr. John Henry Sears

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Dr. John Henry Sears. Now settle in, because this is a man who left his mark on Texas medicine not once, but twice.

Born on October 9, 1826, in Virginia, John Henry Sears came into the world with a long road ahead of him, though nobody putting him in a cradle that day could have guessed just how far that road would run. He got his medical education down in South Carolina, and then, the way a man with purpose tends to do, he kept moving. In 1854, he rolled into Waco and hung out his shingle.

A new practice. A new city. The beginning of something.

Then the Civil War came calling, the way it called on just about everybody, and John Henry Sears answered as a Confederate surgeon. He did his time in that terrible conflict, and when it was over, he came back to Waco. Some men come home from a war and go quiet.

Dr. Sears was not that kind of man. In 1866, he was instrumental in organizing the Waco Medical Association.

Not even a decade after that, in 1869, he helped bring the Texas Medical Association into being. Think about that. The whole state.

A man who had arrived in Waco just fifteen years earlier was now helping to shape the medical backbone of Texas. He and his wife Angie, born Gurley, raised three children together in that same Waco he had chosen back in fifty-four. Dr.

John Henry Sears died on December 4, 1901. He had come from Virginia, trained in South Carolina, and built something in Texas that outlasted him by a good long while. That's the kind of story a road like this one was made to carry.

What the marker says

(October 9, 1826-December 4, 1901) A native of Virginia, John Henry Sears received his medical education in South Carolina. Moving to Waco in 1854, he began his medical practice. After service as a Confederate surgeon during the Civil War, he returned to Waco and became a civic leader. Sears was instrumental in the organization of both the Waco Medical Association (1866) and the Texas Medical Association (1869). Dr. Sears and his wife Angie (Gurley) were the parents of three children.