Biographical Sketch of Dr. Norborn Herbert Jackson, Sr.
July 25, 1842 – March 21, 1925
Norborn Herbert Jackson was born in Greenboro, Hale, Alabama on July 25, 1833, son of John Tucker and Elouise Jackson of Virginia, the 6th of seven or more children (record incomplete), (one record states he was born in Petersburg, Virginia, one in Greenboro, Alabama). His childhood was in Greenboro where he attended school at the Green Springs School. His mother died in 1855 when he was 15 years of age. At the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the Confederate Army and served in the 5th Alabama Infantry, and participated in both Bull Run Battles, until he was discharged with a disability. Soon after he married Elizabeth (maiden name unknown). She bore him five children. Only one reached adulthood (Norborn Jr.). He became a doctor also and practiced in Texas.
At the end of the War Norborn settled his family in Pulaski County, Arkansas to practice pharmacy. Later he decided to go into medicine and enrolled in the new University of Arkansas Medical School. He was one of 10 students in its second class, graduating in 1881 at age 39. He is listed in American Medical Directory in 1906, 1914 and 1916.
Elizabeth died in 1991 at age 43. He then married Nettie Thompson who had one child who lived only eight years. His 3rd wife was Annie H. with whom he had 5 children. Annie died in 1908 at age 39. In his older years he married his fourth wife, Minnie Hockell (1914).
In 1885, four years after he finished his medical education, Dr. Jackson moved to Carden Bottom in Yell County to set up a practice. It was said, “He was just and honorable on all his dealings with his fellows, charitable and benevolent to the needs and failings of humanity.”* Then for a few years he moved his practice to Dardanelle, in Conway County Arkansas across the Arkansas River from his sparsely populated home in Yell County, Arkansas. The school system was better for his children in the larger town. Sometime in the early 1900s he built a large house on the shoulder of Petit Jean Mt. on Casa Road, Conway County, where he could look across at his large land holdings. He could also see his patients houses and made frequent sick calls giving “generously of his professional skills and services as well as his plentiful means to hundreds and hundreds – (of families in a time of)- hardship and privation**
Dr. Jackson lived to the age of 91 years as the well known and respected man of generosity and “a godly record of a long and well spent life”.*** His funeral was held by an Episcopal minister for he had been an Episcopalian since an early age. He is buried in Dardanelle east of his Carden Bottom beloved land. Dr. Jackson had practiced medicine for about 50 years in Yell County and adjacent city, Dardanelle in Conway County.
* Obituary, Dardanelle
** Ibid
*** Ibid
Betty L. Battenfield June 2020