Dr. N. C. Steele

      N. C. Steele, M. D., is a successful physician of Chattanooga, and the fourth child of a family of seven children born to J. N. and Mary A. Steele, natives respectively of South Carolina and Alabama. At the age of seven his father left his native State and came to Alabama, where at the age of twenty-nine he married Miss Steele, a native of that State, though not a relative. Three of their four boys are ministers of the gospel. Our subject was born September 20, 1849, near Athens, Limestone Co., Ala., and at the age of five was taken to Mississippi. Living near Corinth, that State, one of the great military stations of the war, and in the vicinity of the famous battles of Corinth and Shiloh, his father's fortune was almost totally swept away. This and the impaired condition of his health seriously interfered with his studies, but at the age of twenty-one he began the study of medicine under Dr. J. M. Taylor, of Corinth, one of the most prominent physicians of Mississippi. After studying there a year he took one course of lectures in the medical department of the University of Louisville, Ky., and a second course in the medical department of the University of Nashville, from which latter institution he graduated with honor, in February, 1873, having taken the prize for the best thesis on “The Action of Quinine,” and divided the prize for standing the best examination on the principles and practice of surgery, After practicing in Mississippi for thirteen years he went to Europe in 1886, to make a special study of the diseases of the eye, ear and nose, to which he had for several years been devoting much attention. In that year he was a highly endorsed and strong applicant for the chair of eye and ear in the medical department of the University of Nashville and Vanderbilt University, made vacant by the death of Prof. V. S. Lindsley. On returning from Europe, wishing a large city in which to practice his specialties, he removed to Chattanooga in the latter part of 1886. In 1875 Miss Frances E. Jones, of Mississippi, became his wife. To them have been born three children, two of whom are living: Mary T. and Willard H. Both he and wife are members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, he being a ruling elder in that church. The Doctor is an honorary member of the Mississippi State Medical Society, a member of the Tri-State Medical Association of Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and of the Chattanooga Medical Society. In 1884 he graduated from the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.     He is a Mason, a good citizen, a total abstainer from all intoxicating liquors, and a Prohibitionist.
Goodspeed's "History of East Tennessee" 1887