Dr. William M. A. Maxey, the son of William T. Maxey was born in Tennessee and was six years of age when the family moved to Illinois in 1818. He was reared amid the stirring scenes of the pioneer period, and when a young man bought timber from which he split rails at fifty cents per hundred to pay for his tuition for a few months at a subscription school, in which the three fundamentals of "readin', writin', and ‘rithmetic" constituted the course of study. Despite this limited intellectual discipline, however, he subsequently became not only one of the best informed men of the community but in due time read medicine and for more than forty years was one of the most successful physicians in Jefferson County.

Medical men being few in those days caused a wide demand for his services, and it is said that his patients were scattered over three counties. In waiting on them he rode many hundred miles and was not infrequently absent from home three while making his professional calls. He also devoted considerable attention to agriculture, and his farm was one of the best improved and most productive in the county.

For many years Captain S.T. Maxey, his son, had his possession the old pair of saddle bags in which his father carried medicines to treat all diseases common to humanity in the early times, the leather being still strong and the contents of the bags the same as when he discontinued his practice, after his long and arduous service.

Dr. Maxey was not a physician, but was a local minister. He died in Iowa in 1890, at the age of 78.

Dr. Wm M.A. Maxey was the grandfather of Olen Maxey and Mrs. Fred Upcraft of this city.

SOURCE: History Of Jefferson County, Illinois
Continental Historic Bureau - 1962

Submitted By: Misty Flannigan
Dec 1997