Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

2970 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANSpractice to the City of Tifton, Georgia. Here he has been successful in building up a large and lucrative practice, attracted to him by the display ofmarked abilities. He has continued to be an earnest, close and painstakingstudent, and in 1911 took a post-graduate course ifi the Chicago Post-Graduate Hospital, specializing in diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat.Two years later he went to New York, where he took another post-graduatecourse along the same lines, at the New York Polyclinic, and at the NewYork Post-Graduate School in 1916. Doctor Welch has affiliated himselfwith the various organizations of his profession, including the AmericanMedical Association, the Georgia State Medical Society, the Southern MedicalSociety, and the Tift County Medical Society, of which last-named he isserving as secretary. He is well known also in fraternal circles, belongingto the Masons, Lodge and Chapter, the Benevolent and Protective Order ofElks, the Woodmen of the World, the Columbian Woodmen and the Knightsof Pythias. Politically a democrat, the pressing duties of his professionhave allowed him no time to engage actively in politics, but he has alwaysbeen interested in the election of good men and the passage of beneficialmeasures, and has never been lax in the performance of the duties of goodcitizenship.Doctor Welch was married at Albertville, Alabama; December 15, 1907,to Miss Ola Mae Lee, a member of one of the old and well known familiesof Albertville, and a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Lee, of that city.Doctor and Mrs. Welch are the parents of two children: Mary Jim, whowas born at Albertville, Alabama, in 1910; and Charles B., who was bornat Tifton, Georgia, in 1915.MIRABEAU LAMAK WOOD. Much that is worthy and estimable in humanlife has been the lot of Mirabeau L. Wood, the president of the Bank ofConyers, and a leading merchant and prominent planter of Rockdale County.His early boyhood was cast in the trying times of the Civil war. The earlydeath of the father threw upon him a portion of the heavy responsibilitiesconnected with the care and education of the younger children. The yearsusually devoted to schooling were otherwise spent in his ease, and he startedlife with little more than his native ability as an asset. The usefulness ofhis career is reflected in many ways in Rockdale County, and his successas a business man has been accompanied by many public spirited activities.He was born June 21, 1855, in Lawrenceville, Gwinett County, Georgia,son of Rev. Leslie A. and Martha Ann (Hunter) Wood, the former a nativeof South Carolina and the latter of Georgia. Rev. Leslie A. Wood cameto Georgia in 1840, with his father, John Wood, who was a man of liberaleducation and was a teacher as well as planter. The family located in GwinettCounty. Rev. Leslie A. Wood died at the age of forty-two years. In earlylife he became a skilled mechanic; later he was engaged in farming, andfor several years was an ordained minister of the Missionary Baptist Church.Then the war came on and practically all his communications were thrustaway in those years. He died in October, 1868, and left his widow and sixchildren in very cramped circumstances. Mrs. Wood, his widow, was asplendid example of the noble women of the South who had to endureunaccustomed burdens and responsibilities as the result of the war. Herfather was Samuel Gailey Hunter, a native of Virginia, and a member ofthe prominent Hunter family of that state. Mrs. Wood was reared in a homeof plenty and refinement, her people having been among the slave-holdersof the South. She had always been accustomed to ample sufficiency,and yet after the death of her husband she courageously changed all hermethods of living and determined to rear and educate her younger childrenwithout any outside assistance. She lived to accomplish this ambition andspent her last years in the comforts which her earlier life had enjoyed. She