One of the representative professional men and highly esteemed citizens of Lewis County, Tennessee, is Dr. James Franklin Whitwell, who has been a medical practitioner in that county for thirty years and has also become well known there through considerable county official service. The family to which Dr. Whitwell belongs is one of the old connections of Tennessee, as it was established here considerably more than a century ago, and he is of the third generation native to the soil of this state. Different of its members have held prominent places in the public life of this section and the father of Dr. Whitwell gave up his life at the battle of Franklin as a loyal defender of his state and the Confederacy during the Civil War. The family originated in America with Robert Whitwell, the great-grandfather of Dr. Whitwell, who emigrated from England and located in Tennessee, settling in Hickman County, where he reared a large family. Rev. Pleasant Whitwell, one of his sons, was born in Hickman County in 1803, but after he reached man’s estate he removed to Perry County, this state, where afterward remained his home and where in an industrial way he followed farming. Entering the ministry of the Primitive Baptist Church, he attained considerable note in this connection and in his day was one of the strongest believers and exhorters of that faith in this country. He was a Democrat in political belief and served as clerk of the Perry County court eight years. A son of his, Thomas Whitwell, was judge of Perry County sixteen years. Rev. Pleasant Whitwell married Margaret Anderson, who bore him five children, one of whom was Elijah H. Whitwell, the father of Dr. Whitwell. Elijah H. Whitwell was born in Perry County, Tennessee, in 1832 and grew to manhood there, receiving a public school education. He followed farming until the opening of the Civil War, when he enlisted in Holmes’ Company, formed at Linden, Perry County, and assigned to the Forty-eighth Tennessee regiment, with which he served until he gave up his life on the bloody battlefield of Franklin on November 30, 1864. In 1851 he was married to Angeline Randall, who was born in Perry County January 10, 1834, and died April 13, 1913. To this union were born five children, of whom Dr. Whitwell was second in birth and is the eldest of four that reached maturity and are yet living. The mother was married later to Joseph Dabbs, a farmer of Perry County.
James Franklin Whitwell was born near Linden, Perry County, Tennessee, May 9, 1854, and was but a lad of eight years when the father’s sacrifice to the cause of the Southland deprived him of the provident care of that parent. He grew up in the vicinity of his birth and attended the public schools of the locality, later becoming a teacher. After being engaged in that manner in Perry and Lewis counties for some years he began to prepare for the profession he had determined should be his permanent line of endeavor and to that purpose began the study of medicine under Dr. T. S. Evans in the medical department of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, concluding his training in the medical department of the University of Tennessee. Beginning the active practice of medicine at Riverside, Tennessee, in 1882, he continued there until 1896, when he came to his present location at Hohenwald, where he is now well established in practice. Politically he is a staunch Democrat and served as registrar of Lewis County twelve years, or from 1898 to 1910; was secretary of the executive committee of the county for several years and has also served as its health officer for a number of years. He is much interested in truck gardening and horticulture and keeps in touch with and applies the most advanced ideas in regard to each of these lines of cultivation.
In 1873 Dr. Whitwell was united in marriage to Miss Sophia Grinder, daughter of John Grinder, a former citizen of Lewis County, Tennessee. To Dr. and Mrs. Whitwell were born two daughters: Nora, who became the wife of C. M. Paxton and died in 1909, at the age of thirty-three, and Cora, whose husband is Andrew Raspbury, an interested principal in the mercantile firm of Rasbury & Warren at Hohenwald. Dr. and Mrs. Whitwell are both members of the Christian Church and the former is an elder of that denomination.
