Orion Dozier
Orion Theophilus Dozier (born August 18, 1848 in Glenalter, Georgia; died February 10, 1925 in Birmingham) was a physician, inventor, and poet.
Orion was the son of Doctor Thomas Henry Dozier and Martha Stearns Davie Dozier. He was raised in Atlanta and educated in the public schools there and in Eufaula. During the Civil War he served in Company A of the 2nd Regiment, Georgia Volunteers. He went on to earn a degree at the Atlanta Medical College and married the former Elizabeth Powers on April 30, 1874. He began practicing medicine that year in Cherokee County, Alabama. He resettled in Portageville, Missouri and Rome, Georgia before making his way to Birmingham in 1890. In 1897 he was joined by his son, Bryan in the practice of Dozier & Dozier. In 1899 they became the first physicians in the South to use an x-ray machine. They also made use of other electrical appliances in the treatment of nervous disorders.
Dozier moved to Birmingham in the early 1870s and practiced medicine here. He was one of the founders of the Regents of the White Shield and led that organization for decades. As an inventor, he patented designs for a harness hame, a railway switch, a nut lock, a syringe bottle, a rapid-fire gun, a portable elevator and fire escape, and a mailing machine. He was also a published poet with several volumes to his name, much of it eulogizing the Confederacy and attacking Catholicism.
Dozier died in 1925 and is buried at Elmwood Cemetery.
Publications
- Dozier, Orion T. (1894) Foibles of Fancy and Rhymes of the Times. Birmingham: Dispatch Printing Co.
- Dozier, Orion T. Poems Patriotic
- Dozier, Orion T. (1905) Galaxy of Southern Heroes and Other Poems. Birmingham: Dispatch Printing Co.
- Dozier, Orion T. (1905) Poems of Orion T. Dozier New York: Reale Publishing Co.
- Dozier, Orion T. (1916) Chips and Whetstones of Verses and Prose. Birmingham: Dispatch Printing Co.
- Dozier, Orion T. (1920) Just A-Thinking. Birmingham: Dispatch Printing Co.
References
- Alderman, Edwin Anderson, Joel Chandler Harris & Charles William Kent, eds (1910) Library of Southern Literature: Biographical Dictionary of Authors. Atlanta, Georgia: Martin & Hoyt Company