So, on the completion of his studies at the University, he went to St. Louis to attend what was then known, I believe, as the Missouri Medical College, and which was an excellent Medical School. Upon his graduation, in about 1879, he was invited by one of his professors, a prominent gynecologist in St. Louis, to come in his office as his assistant. This was a flattering offer for a young doctor, but after careful consideration, he decided that, for various reasons (mostly concerned with Miss Nettie Goolsby) his future lay in Mississippi. He was fortified in this decision by the fact that, in the meantime, his mother and one sister had died and his other two sisters had married, so that he no longer had to concern himself about their support. So he came back to Oxford. It was the normal procedure in those days for a doctor, upon graduating, to begin his practice as a country doctor, with the view of acquiring a s much experience as possible as a general practitioner in as short a time as possible.
He decided to go into practice at La Fayette Springs, a small country town in La Fayette County, near Oxford. He also made another decision -- to ask Miss Nettie to marry him ( a decision that, I imagine, was not entirely unanticipated by her). She, with a full realization of the hardships that would undoubtedly be hers as the wife of a young country doctor, consented. And so they were married in 1881 and set up home on a small farm at LaFayette Springs (with an office in the yard), where I was born on November 8th, 1882.
My father was a great admirer of L.Q.C. Lamar, (Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar), a distinguished Mississippian, who had served as a Senator, Cabinet Officer, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court,and, somewhat to my future embarrassment, they decided to name me after him, substituting the name Fulton for Lucius -- after Chancellor Fulton, of the University of Mississippi, who had become a great friend of father's while he was at the University.
