LEONIDAS A. SUGGS, M. D., engaged in the practice of medicine and surgery in Fort Worth, is a native of Titus county, Texas, and a son of W. G. and Mary (Hall) Suggs. His father was born in North Carolina and emigrated to Texas in 1842, and thus becoming one of the early settlers he experienced the hardships, privations and dangers of pioneer life in the reclamation of this state for the purposes of civilization. He was a farmer, interested in agricultural pursuits in Titus county for many years, and he died in the year 1901. He is still survived by his widow, who is a native of Tennessee.
Dr. Suggs was reared in the usual manner of farm lads and in the public schools mastered the common branches of learning. Determining upon a professional career as a life work he prepared for the study of medicine and matriculated in the Vanderbilt Medical College, from which he was graduated in the class of 1892 on completing the regular course. He first practiced at Benbrook, in Tarrant county, but later removed to Fort Worth, where he has been an active representative of the medical fraternity since 1899. His professional attainments and skill are such that he was elected to the chair of histology in the medical department of Fort Worth University, which position he regularly fills outside of giving occasional lectures on physiology and other subjects. He has been accorded a large and growing practice as a general physician and has an office in connection with Dr. F. D. Thompson in the Fort Worth National Bank Building. He is physician of a number of fraternal and insurance companies and in all his professional service he has maintained close conformity to a high standard of ethics of the medical fraternity.
Dr. Suggs was married in New Jersey to Miss Harriet Shumaker, a sister of Dr. George Shumaker, an active and prominent physician of Philadelphia, and they have two children, Mary E. and Katharine. It is well that Dr. Suggs has a deep and earnest interest in his profession because it leaves him little leisure time. He is a member of the Tarrant County, the Texas State and the American Medical Associations, and thus keeps in touch with the onward march of the profession as investigation, research and experience are broadening the knowledge of the medical fraternity and promoting the efficiency of its representatives. Anything that tends to bring to man the key to that complex mystery which we call life awakens the interest and attention of Dr. Suggs, and he has a broad, comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the principles of the medical and surgical science.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, p. 106.