The future outlook was most discouraging. My father was determined that his sisters and he should receive the best education possible, and it was already his ambition to become a doctor. He saw little prospect of realizing these these objectives while living on a small and none too good farm in Daviston, Alabama. Several of his uncles lived in Mississippi, where they were reasonably prosperous farmers and they urged my grandmother to move to Mississippi and to settle down near them. After much serious consideration it was finally decided to do so. With only such items of clothing, cooking utensils and furniture as could be carried with them, the family made the move in an ox-drawn wagon driven by my father, then perhaps seventeen years old. After an arduous trip, the difficulties of which you can hardly appreciate in these days of automobiles and good roads, the family finally arrived at their destination, and my father bought, on time, a farm near Oxford, Miss., where the University of Mississippi was located. For the next fifteen years father, whose previous education had been limited to that in a small country school in Alabama, by incessant labor and firm determination, was able to make enough from the farm and from teaching a small country school himself during the winters, to give his sisters a good education as determined by the standards of that time.
He became acquainted, during this time, with Dr. Isom, one of the most prominent physicians in the state, who encouraged him to study medicine. Father spent several years as a student at the University, preparing himself to attend a Medical College, at the same time carrying on the farm and reading medicine in Dr. Isom's office. While a student at the University he became acquainted with another student, Adair Skipwith, with whom he formed what became a lifelong friendship, and of which I shall have more to say later.