CROSS CO, AR - T. A. BEDFORD - Bio

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SOURCE:  Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern 
Arkansas. Chicago:Goodspeed Publishers, 1890.
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T. A. Bedford, druggist, Wynne, Ark. A very reliable as well as popular
drug store is that of Mr. Bedford, who engaged in the drug business in
Wynne, in February, 1889, and who has every requisite and convenience in
this line. He is a native of Middle Tennessee, where his birth occurred
in 1842, and is the second of four children born to John H. and Lizzie
(Allen) Bedford, natives of Tennessee, where the father was for many
[p.336] years engaged in farming, manufacturing tobacco and
merchandising. In 1849 he and family moved to West Tennessee, nine miles
from Memphis, and there he engaged in the cultivation of cotton,
continuing at this until his death, in 1851. After this his widow moved
with the family to Columbia, Tenn., where she remained for three years
for the purpose of educating her children. They were then sent to
Lebanon to complete their education. The mother died in 1870. T. A.
Bedford attended school until the end of 1860, when he came to Arkansas
and purchased a farm in what is now Cross County, about five miles west
of Wynne, bought about thirty negroes and embarked in the cotton raising
business. After making one crop he went to Tennessee to visit his
mother, and while there enlisted in the Confederate army, Company K,
Fourth Tennessee Cavalry, commanded by Col. Paul Anderson, and was
assigned to duty in Gen. Bragg's army. He was in the battles of
Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Perryville, Dalton and Resaca, and was
captured in May, 1864, while bearing a dispatch from Gen. Hood, would
not take the oath and was sent as a prisoner to Alton, Ill. There he
remained until peace was declared. In 1866 he returned to Arkansas to
look after the property he had left there, and found his slaves, mules
and horses gone and the plantation overgrown with underbrush. He settled
here, however, and returned to agricultural pursuits. In January, 1868,
he married Miss Mary Rebecca Cogbill, a native of Tennessee and a
daughter of George Cogbill, who came to Arkansas, in 1860, settled in
Cross County, and followed farming until his death, in 1867. Mr. Bedford
also tilled the soil until the death of his wife, in 1882, and in the
following year he went to Wittsburg, and was in the drug business at
that place for some time. He was then in the warehouse and shipping
business, which occupation he still continues. To his marriage were born
three children: Thomas A. J. (is at present postal clerk on the Memphis
& Bald Knob Railroad), Mattie R. (is a graduate of Shelbyville, Tenn.,
in the class of 1889), and Mamie (is attending school at Nashville, with
the same teacher under whom the elder sister graduated). In 1886 Mr.
Bedford was appointed postmaster of Wittsburg, and opened the office in
his drug store. He remained at Wittsburg until 1888, when he resigned
the postoffice (having sold the drug store in 1887) and went to Wynne,
where he purchased the drug stock of Bunch & Hamilton. He now has as
fine a drug store as can be found in Eastern Arkansas, and carries a
complete line of pure drugs and chemicals, toilet articles, paints and
oils and the usual druggists' sundries. For compounding and putting up
prescriptions he has the assistance of S. A. Miller, a graduate of the
Pennsylvania School of Pharmacy, at Philadelphia and York (Penn.) School
of Sciences. This assistant has a complete chemical outfit and is thus
prepared to analyze water, mineral ores and chemical compounds. Mr.
Bedford owns a farm one and a half miles east of Wynne.