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“…his marriage was solemnized…”
The Harris estate materials, including two separate drafts of his grant to his wife (dated 1847, but not, incidentally, delivered to the authorities in Montgomery until 1853), are held at the Montgomery County archives in Montgomery, Alabama.
“Anarcha appeared…”
The Harris estate materials are held at the Montgomery County archives in Montgomery, Alabama.
“…the same Goldthwaite…”
See “…judge George Goldthwaite,” above.
“…E.Y. Fair and his wife…”
Like Nathan Harris (and many well-heeled people in Alabama at the time who kept multiple residences), Fair was a lawyer in Montgomery, but owned property in Autauga County. This article is in a vertical file at the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery, Alabama. I’m grateful to Robert Davis, director of the Genealogy Program at Wallace State University for helping me obtain it.
E.Y. Fair and his wife will go on to play an important role in a later chapter, after Sims has departed for Europe.
“…the court’s chief justice…”
It is unclear why Goldthwaite resigned after thirteen days.
Riley, Benjamin Franklin, 1849-1925. (n.d.). Makers and romance of Alabama history: embracing sketches of the men who have been largely instrumental in shaping the policies and in molding the conditions in rapid growth of Alabama, together with the thrilling and romantic scenes with which our history, p. 93.
“…a single unremarkable term…”
Riley, Benjamin Franklin, 1849-1925. (n.d.). Makers and romance of Alabama history: embracing sketches of the men who have been largely instrumental in shaping the policies and in molding the conditions in rapid growth of Alabama, together with the thrilling and romantic scenes with which our history, pp. 93-94.
“…quiet, secretive whisperings…”
Seale Harris’s biography of Sims—he was a son of one of Sims’s disciples—is mostly hagiographic. Yet he makes this claim, despite the fact that no doctor who witnessed Sims’s initial experiments left any record of it. Harris may be inferring this from the fact that Sims believed that his colleagues abandoned him, but Sims’s characterization was simply that they lost interest, or felt that the experiments were economically irresponsible. In any event, given the fact that on most occasions Harris was inclined to forgive Sims his faults, I have chosen to accept him on this point.
Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 99.
“…in Philadelphia in May 1847.”
See “…American Medical Association…,” above.