When you approach the Capitol via the grand steps that lead up from Dexter Avenue, you find the larger-than-life statue of CSA President Jefferson Davis on your left, and standing across from Davis, on your right, is this bronze of Dr. John Allan Wyeth. . . 1845 – 1922. Wyeth was born in Marshall County, Alabama, and as a teenager fought in the Civil War as a member of the renowned Morgan’s Confederate Raiders. After the war he earned a medical degree in New York and from there won acclaim as the “Master Surgeon” of New York. In 1882, suffering frustration at the paucity of anatomical knowledge available to doctors, he founded the nation’s first postgraduate school of medicine. Wyeth went on to be a prolific writer, and today is remembered as a Soldier, Surgeon, Educator, Author and Poet.

Dr Wyeth married Florence Nightingale Sims, who was daughter of the Dr James Marion Sims whose statue also stands in front of our Capitol, 50-feet South of this one . The couple met in New York, Doctor Sims having moved there from Montgomery in 1853.

-Charles Humphries