Dr. Alexander H. Dunavant, a prominent physician of Lauderdale County, Tenn.,
located near Double Bridges, was born in Franklin, Tenn., August 20, 1821, and
was the oldest of twelve sons and two daughters, born to Leonard and Sarah B.
(Reid) Dunavant, and is of English and French extraction. His father was born
in Amelia County, Va., January 8, 1792, came to Tennessee in 1810, and settled
in Franklin, Tenn., where he remained until 1822, when he moved to Little
Harpeth, between Franklin and Nashville, giving his attention to farming,
interspersed with house-joining, which was his trade. In 1833 he moved to that
part of Dyer County that is now Lauderdale, settling two and a half miles
southeast of Key Corner, and a year later moved to three miles farther south,
where he died September 10, 1869. The mother was born in Williamson County May
23, 1803, and died at the homestead in Lauderdale County, October 26, 1856.
Dr. Dunavant was raised on a farm, and after completing his education read
medicine under Dr. G. H. Hooper, and attended lectures in the medical
department of the university at Nashville, taking his first course in the
winter of 1853-54 and graduating in 1854-55. He was married by Dr. J. B.
McFerrin in Nashville, March 20, 1854, to Miss Maria G. Dobson, a daughter of
J. E. Dobson, a cabinet workman. Eight children wee born to this union, five
of them now living; Sarah B. M., Grundy Bell, Fannie, Alexander Ried and
Minnie. Mrs. Dunavant was born in Murfreesboro September 5, 1833. Dr. Dunavant
is a Democrat, casting his first presidential vote for Henry Clay in 1844. He
was in the Mexican war, and is exceedingly popular both as a man and a
physician.

Goodspeed’s Biographies of Lauderdale Co., TN