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(1832 - 1883)
Home State: Georgia
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 20th Georgia Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
Son of an English Army surgeon, he was educated in London, England, then studied dentistry in New York in 1857. On 18 June 1861, then a dentist practicing in Louisville, GA, he mustered as 4th Corporal, Company C, 20th Georgia Infantry. He was appointed Sergeant Major of the regiment on 1 September 1861 and commissioned Junior 2nd Lieutenant, Company C, on 8 March 1862. He was promoted to First Lieutenant on 30 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was wounded in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He resigned due to disability from his wound on 3 March 1863.
After the War
He was a prominent dentist in Atlanta. In July 1872 he took on the young Doc (John Henry) Holliday (1851-1887), who had graduated from dental school in March.
I hereby inform my patients that I leave to attend the session of the Southern Dental Association in Richmond, Virginia, this evening and will be absent until about the middle of August, during which time Dr. Jno. H. Holliday will fill my place in my office.Holliday was diagnosed with tuberculosis and left Atlanta later that year. Ford was active in the Georgia State Dental Society (President 1874) and national organizations. He "suffered for five years" and died of phthisis pulmonalis - tuberculosis - in 1883; the same thing that eventually killed Doc Holliday.
Arthur C Ford DDS
Office: 26 Whitehall Street
References & notes
Service from the Roster.1 His memorial is on Findagrave. The Doc Holliday story and other details about Ford from Karen Holliday Tanner's Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait (1998), including that quoted notice in the Atlanta Constitution of 26 July 1872.
He married English-born Emily Hawks (1833-1906) and they had at least 5 children together.
More on the Web
See a nice post-war painted portrait of Ford from Robert Wayne Elliott's collection hosted online (scroll to the bottom) by John Banks. Death and other details from a bio sketch found on the back of that painting. Some of Ford's papers are at the Atlanta History Center [finding aid].
Birth
10/11/1832; Cape of Good Hope, SOUTH AFRICA
Death
12/20/1883; Palatka, FL; burial in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, GA
1 Henderson, Lilian, compiler, Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia, 1861-1865, 6 vols., Hapeville (GA): Longino & Porter, 1959-1964, Vol. 2, pg. 785 [AotW citation 21889]
