DR. A. O. SCARBOROUGH, successfully engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery in Snyder, is a grandson of Irvin Scarborough, who spent the greater part of his life in Louisiana, but died in Coryell county, Texas. In his family were six sons: Mathias, Josiah, James W., Andrew J., George W. and John B., all of whom are now deceased. There were also several daughters. The descendants of the family are somewhat scattered over the country, although a large number are residents of Louisiana and Texas.
Dr. Scarborough is a son of Captain Andrew J. Scarborough, who was a veteran of the Mexican war. He was born in Mississippi, whence he removed to Louisiana, remaining there for a number of years, after which he came to Texas in 1859, settling in Dewitt county. There he carried on business as a stock farmer. Throughout the Civil war he was actively connected with the Confederate service and raised a company in and near Gonzales, of which company he was made captain. He was first on duty in the west in various sections of Arizona and afterward was in active service, participating in many campaigns and in forty-seven different engagements. He was several times wounded although not seriously. His last years were spent in Snyder, where he passed away on Christmas day of 1904, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. His wife bore the maiden name of Miss E. S. Stell, was a native of Georgia and a daughter E. M. Stell, who became a prominent physician of Gonzales, Texas. He was also a Baptist minister and engaged in the practice of medicine and in preaching the gospel. He died in Mount Sylvan, Smith county, Texas, in 1875. His eldest son, Jep Stell, was a prominent lawyer of Gonzales, and at one time represented his district in the state senate. Mrs. E. S. Scarborough died in Smith county, Texas, in 1875, at the age of forty years. She was the mother of seven children, four sons and three daughters, of whom A. O. Scarborough and two daughters are still living, these being Mrs. R. A. Austin, of Lindale, Texas, and Mrs. John A. Evans, of Trenton, this state.
The ancestral history of the Scarborough family is traced back to a still more remote period, the family having at one time been residents of Scarborough Castle in England. Dr. Scarborough of this review was born in Dewitt county, Texas, November 27, 1860, and spent his boyhood days on a farm in Smith county after leaving Gonzales, where he had remained during the period of the Civil war. He received a common school education, and in 1882 came to Snyder with his father, the family being the first settlers of Scurry county, living here before the county was organized. Dr. Scarborough opened a drug store in Snyder, which was the first establishment of this kind in this section of the country, and his father at the same time conducted a hotel. W. H. Snyder, the founder of the town, had formerly kept a little store for the purpose of supplying the buffalo hunters with ammunition and other things needed by them, but he had left this place and gone to Colorado.
Dr. Scarborough attended his first medical lectures at Missouri Medical College in St. Louis in 1884, remaining in that institution until 1886, when he obtained a certificate and entered upon the practice of medicine in Snyder. In 1889 he attended the Kentucky School of Medicine, form which he was graduated in the spring of 1890. In 1898-99 he attended the new York Polyclinic Hospital, of which he is also a graduate. He has been in the active practice of medicine in Snyder since 1886, and is a physician of marked prominence and capability, who has continuously broadened his knowledge by post-graduate collegiate work and also by private reading and investigation. He is the first man that introduced and operated an X-ray machine in western Texas and he has done a large amount of surgical work, making a specialty of practice in that direction. He has a comprehensive and accurate knowledge of anatomy and the component parts of the human body and a delicacy and precision in the mechanical work in this part of the profession that makes him one of the most able surgeons of western Texas. He is frequently called in consultation on important cases to the adjoining counties and his reputation as a skilled physician and surgeon ha spread throughout the west. He is medical examiner for seventeen different life insurance companies. In connection with his professional service he is interested in stock and is the owner of the famous O and U ranch in Garza and Kent counties, comprising about eight thousand acres and stocked with Hereford and Durham high grade cattle. This is one of the finest and best improved ranches in western Texas.
On the 26th of October, 1886, Dr. Scarborough was married to Miss Nannie Goodwin, a daughter of H. A. Goodwin, of Scurry county, and they now have three children: Ione, Hugh J. and Enid. Dr. Scarborough belongs to the Baptist church, with which he has been identified since 1882, and he holds membership relations with the Masonic lodge at Snyder and the Royal Arch chapter at Colorado, Texas. He is an intelligent and entertaining conversationalist and a man of pleasing personality, whose long residence in the west has given him a wide and varied experience. He has a fund of information concerning this part of the country and the reminiscences which he sometimes narrates are interesting to his hearers to a marked degree. He is a great lover of good stock and since becoming connected with the stock-raising business has given to it a large share of his attention, with the result that he is now recognized as a successful representative of this industry as well as of his chosen profession.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 655-656.