James Robert Vann (Jimmy)

James Robert Vann

(1871-1937)

He played for Coach John Heisman.

He received his Doctor of Medicine Degree from Alabama Medical College at Mobile in 1899, and became a prominent Henry County (AL) physician.

Alabama Medical College

(around 1900)

source

Alabama Medical College 

(1909)

source

Dr. J. R. Vann became one of Henry County's most beloved and respected physicians.  He accepted anything as payment for his medical services: pigs, chicken, eggs, vegetables, cows, grain, butter and sometimes nothing when he knew a sharecropper could not afford his simple house call fee.  He encountered storms, rain, wind, mud, sand beds, floods, bogs, snow, freezing temperatures and summer heat in making house calls.  -  Larry Smith, Henry County's Official Historian

He even found time to be a representative in the Alabama State Legislature. 

The Ozark Tribune

June 22, 1907

The Abbeville Times

Nov 7, 1907

The Abbeville Herald

November 22, 2001

Obituary

The Abbeville Herald

Dec 23, 1937

whole page, obit on top right

Old City Cemetery

 (aka Old Pioneer Cemetery)

Abbeville, Alabama

Henry County

Find a Grave

The Abbeville Herald

June 14, 1979

Thanks to Jim Vann III (grandson and namesake of Jimmy Vann) for several of these photos.

For more on the history of the Medical College of Alabama, click here.

Click here for articles about his football days playing for Coach John Heisman.

And go here for more on Dr. J.R. Vann's family.