We were invited to present a Chautaqua-style lecture in which I role-played my ancestor talking about his memories of living thirty years in the Columbus area.  His reason for leaving was a desire to remove his children from what he saw as the bad influences of an over-civilized river town and bring them to a more wholesome setting.

The irony is that Gid had arrived on the Tombigbee River of Mississippi in 1818, when that area was a frontier.  In fact, when the Mississippi legislature learned that the Plymouth Bluff territory was in their state rather than Alabama, they named my ancestor “Chief Justice” of the Quorum charged with organizing the new county.  He also surveyed the lots in what became the town of Columbus, now about the size of Sherman and home to two colleges.

In this era before the Trail of Tears, the Choctaws and Chickasaws both held title to huge chunks of territory nearby, and Gid became an Indian trader popular with both tribes.  However, he suffered a heatstroke in 1827 that left him unable to work.  Partly in reaction to the poor medical treatment he received from Old School doctors, Gid took up botanical medicine, learning a great deal from one eminent Choctaw physician.

Eventually Gid’s success drew so many patients to his clinic in the small town of Wall’s Tanyard that in 1841 he moved back to Columbus. In seven years he had amassed a fortune that permitted him to retire and move to Texas.The chief subject of our lecture was some of his medical practice and the heated controversy of that time between the Botanical and Old School systems of medicine.  He was often attacked (without being named) in letters to local newspapers from competing physicians.

Parents of today’s teenagers would understand why Gid moved his family to Texas. 

In his words, “My children were beginning to marry off and they seemed to think of nothing but frolicking.  They spent from three to five thousand dollars a year and acted as though the source from which the money came was inexhaustible.  I determined to carry them to a country where the surroundings and conditions would be more promising.”

Apparently the move to Long Point, near Brenham in Washington County, worked.  Gid devoted himself to becoming a recognized scientist and let his sons practice medicine.  One of the Lincecum boys married a local girl, and their son George became my great-grandfather. 

My grandpa George was the only one of his generation to followGid’s example of sending specimens of Texas plants and animals to the Smithsonian Institution, and now I’m keeping up the family tradition of writing about history and science.

Jerry Lincecum is a retired English professor who now teaches classes for older adults who want to write their life stories.  He welcomes your reminiscences on any subject: jlincecum@me.com