Dr. Charles Weldon Rodgers (1856-1929)
My Maternal Great Grandfather
Charles Weldon Rodgers, the handsome son of William Chenault Rodgers, a merchant, and Martha Ann Wingo, was born in Kentucky on September 16, 1856. He had an older brother Edmund Rutter who was born in 1848 and another brother named William Chenault, Jr (“Will”) who was born in 1854. In 1860 when Charley was only four years old his father, who allegedly had a history of depression, drowned at the age of forty in what may or may not have been an accidental death. Three years later his mother remarried a man named Jefferson Alexander who had been married two times before and had fathered seven children. Jefferson was a farmer and wealthy by the standards of the day. Soon after the marriage in 1864, Charley’s half sister Kate was born.
[Photo: Dr. Charley]
When Charley’s stepfather died in 1873, his mother was left to care for both her children and her stepchildren. His mother married for the third time to JN Hunt. According to family legend, his mother (known later in life as Grandma Hunt), claimed her first two husbands were rich but her third husband spent all her money. After she was widowed from her third marriage, she spent time living with each son, but her disposition was so bad that neither of her daughters-in-law could tolerate her for any length of time.
In 1877 Charley bought a water powered grist mill known as the Little Creek Mill with his brother Will for a total of $355. Later in life he transferred his half back to Will so he could have full ownership.
[Photo: Charley’s mother: Martha Ann Wingo Rodgers, Alexander, Hunt]
In 1880 Charley graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville Tennessee with a medical degree. He moved in with his brother Edmund in Como Tennessee and set up his medical practice there.
Standards for admission to medical school at that time in US history were sorely lacking and the curriculum very limited. It was not until fifteen years after Charley graduated that Vanderbilt upgraded their admissions standards to require a high school diploma. They added lab work in the sciences to the curriculum and the medical degree program was lengthened to three years of six months each. In those days, doctors learned their trade by harrowing years of on the job training. It must have taken true grit for Charley to take on the heavy responsibility of being the sole practitioner for his community.
[Photo: Vanderbilt University in 1880]
He was the only doctor in the area and would visit his patients in a horse drawn buggy. He charged $1.50 for a house call within 5 to 6 miles and $2 for distances over six miles. He had to be patient in collecting fees because most of his patients were farmers who had to wait for their crop to come in. His niece (his brother Will’s daughter, Flossie) was a pharmacist and would often go on calls as his assistant and would sometimes dispense medication to poor families who could not afford a doctor.
He actively purchased real estate and loved to farm and much of the earnings from his medical practice was poured into it.
[Photo: Doctor’s Buggy circa 1880s]
In 1886 Charley married Anna Leticia Hearne and together they had eight children. Despite the fact that both he and his wife had college educations, he did not assist his children in their education beyond high school. Two of his sons had aspirations to become doctors and against all odds both of his two daughters scrapped together the funds to attend college as well. At that time in America very few young men went to college and even fewer women did so. So this is really quite remarkable.
Less than a year after his son Hearne died, Charley died of pneumonia at the age of 73 in 1929, His obituary said that he was “one of the most widely known men in the county because of his long service to the community as a physician and a citizen, and because of the exemplary life he had led. The article went on to say:
“Dr. Rodger’s death will leave a vacancy that can never be filled. Men and women living in the vicinity of Como, themselves brought into the world with the friendly doctor in attendance and now with children and maybe grandchildren of their own, have known no other physician than Dr. Rodgers. They depended on him in hours of sickness and trial, and they called him friend.”
Charley was buried alongside with the four children that had preceded him in death. His wife, Anna, would live another 23 years before she was laid to rest beside him.
[Photo: Dr. Charles Weldon Rodgers gravestone in Maplewood Cemetery in Paris, Tennessee ]
