Dr. Augustin Clayton Crymes, now a practicing physician in Midway, Bullock County, Ala., was born in Heard County, Ga., in 1834, and is a son of Dr. George W. and Jane S. (Etter) Crymes. The former, of English descent, was born in Greenville district, S. C., in 1809, and the latter in Oglethorpe County, Ga., in 1816. Dr. George W. Crymes passed his youthful days on the home plantation, attending school the meanwhile and preparing for a profession, the result being that he graduated in medicine from the Transylvania university at Lexington, Ky. His first practice was at the place where Atlanta, Ga., now stands, from which point he removed to Heard County, Ga., where he married in 1831. Thence he went to Oak Bowery, Chambers County, Ala., and afterward to Tuskegee, Macon County, Ala., later to Enon, Bullock County, Ala., where he died in 1873, after a very successful professional career. His first wife preceded him to the grave in 1844. He was a Union man and regretted the action of his adopted state in seceding from the sisterhood of states, but after his state withdrew from the Union, he readily followed her. Dr. Crymes was a Freemason and was considered by the brotherhood to be a true one.
Dr. A. C. Crymes is the second-born in a family of four sons and two daughters. Besides the doctor, two of the sons bore arms in maintenance of the rights of the south in the late Civil war. Albert F., the elder brother, was a first lieutenant in the First Alabama infantry, having left Greensboro college, at the beginning of the revolt, to uphold the Confederate cause. He fought the Tennessee campaign and the Atlanta campaign, was captured at Island Ten later, served nine months’ imprisonment at Camp Douglas, Chicago, Ill., and was eventually killed, in 1864, at the battle of Franklin, Tenn. George P., another brother, was a private in the First Alabama regiment, and served with it through all its marches and engagements, was captured at Island Ten, and was confined in Camp Douglas, but he survived the war and died in Barbour county, Ala., in 1878, being at the time a schoolteacher.
Dr. A. C. Crymes received his preparatory lessons in medicine under his father, attended his first course of lectures at the Louisville (Ky.) Medical college in 1854-55, and graduated, in 1856, from the Jefferson Medical college of Philadelphia, Penn. His first practice was for a short time at Indian Creek, now in Bullock County, Ala., whence he went to Batesville, Barbour County. In 1862, he was appointed surgeon of the Thirty-ninth Alabama regiment, Confederate States army, and followed General Bragg through his Kentucky campaign. He also was in the engagements at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge and the Atlanta campaign; was at Franklin and Nashville and in the retreat to Corinth; was with Johnston in North Carolina and in the fight at Kingston and Bentonville and was always ready for duty excepting a few days when he was confined in the hospital. When the sanguinary conflict had ended, he returned to his practice in Batesville, where he resided until 1882, when he settled in Midway, where his services are appreciated in full, as those of a physician of thirty-six years’ constant practice should be. Planting also occupies the doctor’s attention, but his art is to him the more absorbing.
The marriage of the doctor took place in 1867 to Miss Mattie R., daughter of L. R. Wilson, who came from South Carolina to Alabama, about the year 1850, and settled in Barbour County, where he pursued his vocation of planting until his death in 1873. Mrs. Crymes was born in the Palmetto state in 1848. She received a most excellent education at Eufaula, Ala., and has always been an ornament to the society in which she moves. She is the happy mother of five children named as follows: Emma C., now the wife of F. L. Merritt; Augustine Clayton, Jr.; Walter W.; Mattie, and George W., who died in his seventh year.
The doctor is a Freemason, has been a Methodist from childhood, and for several years has been a member of the state and county medical associations.