Alexander Yelverton Peyton Garnett was the son of Muscoe and Maria Willis (Battaile) Garnett, and nephew of the first James Mercer Garnett. He was born on September 19, 1819, at “Prospect Hill, ” the home of his parents on the Rappahannock River, Essex County, Virginia.
Garnett was educated by private tutors and at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with the degree of M. D. in 1841.
Garnett applied for a commission in the medical corps of the navy, was found to be qualified, and was commissioned an assistant surgeon.
In 1851, Garnett resigned from the navy to engage in private practice in Washington. He acquired a highly desirable clientele of patients and became one of the outstanding general practitioners of the city.
In 1865, broken in health and with shattered fortune, he returned to Washington. The fact that he very quickly reestablished his practice and within a short time again became one of the leading general practitioners, notwithstanding that the environment was one of hostility and bitterness engendered by the Civil War, bespeaks the character of the man.
His later years were spent in general practice as a family physician and as a consultant with the younger group of medical practitioners of Washington, who appreciated fully his comprehensive knowledge of disease in general as well as his superior abilities as a diagnostician.
He was in poor health during the summer of 1888 and went to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to recuperate. On the evening of his arrival, the exertion of climbing the stairs to his chamber overtaxed his heart, which was diseased, and he died of heart failure within a few minutes.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Garnett offered his services to the cause of the Confederacy, became one of the prominent medical officers with the Confederate forces, was in charge of two of the military hospitals in Richmond, and was personal physician to President Jefferson Davis. Throughout life, he was intensely interested in civic affairs and actively and aggressively supported all proposals having in view the betterment of social conditions. The esteem in which he was held was evidenced by numerous appointments to membership on boards of directors of charitable institutions and hospitals in the city of Washington, professorships in the local medical schools, and a number of other honors, including election to the presidency of the American Medical Association. Garnett came to be recognized as one of the most ardent, fearless, and resolute supporters of the movement to improve the standards of professional ethics in the medical profession, and throughout one of the most bitterly contested and acrimonious investigations that has ever occurred in the Medical Society of the District of Columbia his convictions and ideals remained unshaken.
In 1848, the naval vessel to which Garnett was attached paid a visit to Rio de Janeiro, at which time he met Mary Wise, eldest daughter of Henry A. Wise, minister to Brazil, subsequently well known as governor of Virginia. Their friendship ripened into affection and culminated in marriage on June 13 of the same year, in Washington, D. C.
21 September 1829 - 15 February 1898
6 December 1850 - 2 February 1872
1 March 1859 - 7 August 1880
31 March 1849 - 10 July 1897
18 August 1855 - 12 March 1886
