James B. Luckie Paper, MSS.2738

Abstract: Short, handwritten biography of this Alabama physician and congressman.Scope and Content Note: This collection contains a four-page, handwritten biography of James Buckner Luckie and details his career as an assistant surgeon during the Civil War, as a physician and surgeon in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, and as a city councilman and the first fire chief in Birmingham.Biographical/Historical Note: James Buckner Luckie was born in Newton COunty, Georgia on July 16, 1833 to William and Eliza Luckie. He was educated at the common schools of Newton County and at Gwinett Institute. He began studying medicine under Dr. John B. Headwick, followed by a course of lectures in Augusta, Georgia in the winter of 1853-54. He graduated from Pennsylvania Medical College in 1855. He returned to Newton County and began his practice there. In 1856 he moved to Pike County, Alabama, where he practiced until the outbreak of war in 1861.He raised a company of infantry from the area and reported to Montgomery. Unfortunately the Confederate government could not equip them and the unit was disbanded. Luckie was appointed assistant surgeon and was ordered to Knoxville for duty. He was raised to the rank of Medical Purveyor and accompanied General Kirby Smith on his invasion of Kentucky. After returning to Knoxville, he was made Chief of the Bureau of Small-Pox and Vaccination for the Army of East Tennessee. When Smith was sent to the Trans-Mississippi department, Luckie was reassigned, at his own request, to field duty, first in the 16th and later in the 43rd Alabama until the close of the War.After the War, Luckie located in Pine Level, Montgomery County, Alabama and resumed his medical practice. However, he soon moved to Montgomery where he practiced until 1872, when he moved to Birmingham. He represented Disctrict 13 in the Alabama State Senate in 1880, and was for many years a Birmingham city councilman.He married (1) Eliza Imogen Fielder of Georgia and (2) in 1866, Susan Oliver Dillard of Montgomery County. He had nine children