The following information was from an article in the Champion dated 1983.  Maurice Ellington, a native of Shelbyville, submitted the following article. Born in 1901, he is the son of William Hinkle Ellington and the grandson of W.D. Ellington, pioneer of Shelby County. Ellington is now a resident of Long Beach, California, having retired from the real estate and newspaper business.

In the decade prior to the entry of USA in World War I, 60 percent of the population still lived on farms and in villages. The few hospitals were in the cities. Most people were born, lived and died in their homes. The old-time country doctor who had served them for generations, continued to mix prescriptions and make house calls.

There were no governmental agencies to pay the medical expenses of the sick but thanks to the kindly old Doc I knew, many patients received free treatments. The doctors weren’t all old, but in my childhood and teenage years I regarded anyone over 30 as aged.

They lacked the skills, the wonder drugs, and life-saving facilities of modern physicians. But they were good salesmen and practical psychologists, and wise enough to get the respect and trust of the patient and his family.

In a rural community the doctor usually knew everyone, so I was never just a file number in the doctor’s office. When Old Doc stuck a thermometer under my tongue, took out his large gold watch and began to check my pulse bet, I was sure that whatever ailed me would soon go away.

In 1912 four doctors resided in Shelbyville, the East Texas hamlet where I was born. Dr. Walter Horn who presided at my birth left when I was a baby. But I have clear and graphic memories of Dr. W.C. “Will” Windham and his brother Dr. Henry “Jack” Windham, Dr. J.C. Foster (his children were schoolmates of mine) and Dr. J.R. Caldwell, the oldest of the doctors living in Shelbyville.

Windham Brothers, MD

Drs. Will and Jack Windham started their careers in Shelbyville. They were natives of Shelby County. Burk, another brother, also became a doctor, but started in Tyler, where he lived until his death.

Like many doctors then Dr. Will and Jack were active in church and community affairs. Dr. Will, the older, often spoke from the pulpit of the church. I was only a teenager but I liked to hear him speak. I thought he preached a good sermon.

Some of the grownups said he should have been a preacher instead of a doctor. The Windhams’ office and drugstore burned a few years after they began to practice and Dr. Will moved to Center where in later years he made optometry his specialty.

Dr. Jack Windham was severely crippled in one leg by polio, when a child. Despite his handicap he served the rural areas for more than 40 years.

Once, when a young doctor, he strapped his medical kit to the horn of the saddle and swam alongside his horse across a flooded creek. Despite the inconvenience, he arrived, cold and wet at a sharecropper’s house in time to help a mother give birth to her baby.

During his long career, Dr. Jack delivered approximately 1,000 babies, and most were born in homes. After the 1920s, he was the only doctor in Shelbyville. He married Eula Crawford, his childhood sweetheart who was an active worker in the church. Both Dr. Will and Dr. Jack lived to their mid-eighties.

Dr. J.C. Foster

He was the father of four children, Norma Mae, Lamar, Joe and Tom. Dr. Foster and his family moved to Joaquin. Tom and I were friends and I visited him there. After my family moved to Shreveport Tom paid me a visit.

As he neared 60, Dr. Foster’s health failed. Surgeons performed a colostomy. After the operation he gave up house calls and conducted his practice from his home.

Dr. J.R. Caldwell

Dr. J.R. Caldwell, the oldest of the physicians in Shelbyville, came to the village in the Gay Nineties (1890s). He was Grandpa and Grandma Ellington’s family doctor. (Note: Dr. J.R. Caldwell, who has been attending Barnes Medical College, St. Louis, returned home Saturday. He brought his diploma with him and is now ready to tender his services to the sick and afflicted.  March 1894 – The Champion) I remember him as gruff but kindly character similar to Doc Adams of TV’s “Gunsmoke”.

I won’t forget my first meeting with him. I was 7 and he was about 60. I was visiting Grandma Ellington when I found and emptied the powder from a shotgun shell into a tin can. I then struck a match and lit it. The resulting flash blistered my face and singed off my eyebrows.