George Troup Maxwell was born on August 6, 1827 in Bryan County, Georgia. His father, John Jackson Maxwell, was a planter who served a number of terms in the state Senate; his mother was a daughter of Col. John Baker, an officer in the Revolutionary War.
After obtaining his preliminary education at Chatham Academy, Savannah, he entered the medical department of the University of the City of New York, from which he obtained the degree of M. D. in 1848.
He settled in Tallahassee, Fla. , for practice and remained there until 1857, when he was appointed surgeon to the Marine Hospital at Key West. In 1860 he was appointed professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children in Oglethorpe Medical College, and moved to Savannah. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted as a private in the 1st Florida Cavalry. He was later commissioned major of cavalry, and colonel in 1862. In that grade he commanded a brigade of Florida troops in the Army of the Tennessee under General Bragg, until he was captured at the battle of Missionary Ridge. His capture prevented his acceptance of a commission as brigadier-general which was on the way to him. He was a prisoner until March 1865, when he returned to Tallahassee. Shortly thereafter, as a representative of Leon County, he took an active part in the proceedings of the convention held under the proclamation of President Johnson for the purpose of rewriting the constitution and reorganizing the state government of Florida. The next winter he was elected a member of the state legislature. In 1866 he moved to Jacksonville, where he practised his profession until 1871. In that year he went to New Castle, Del. , where he conducted a daily paper in addition to the practice of medicine. From Delaware he moved to Atlanta where he practised for a brief time, after which he accepted a professorship at the State Agricultural College, Lake City, Fla. In 1888 an outbreak of yellow fever took him to Jacksonville, where he remained during the epidemic and afterward until his death, which resulted from a stroke of apoplexy. Maxwell was always a prolific contributor to medical periodicals. While in Delaware he wrote "An Exposition on the Liability of the Negro Race to Yellow Fever, " "A Demonstration of the Non-digestive Powers of the Large Intestine" and "The Laryngoscope, an American Invention. " The last-named paper, published in the Medical Record, New York, January 1, 1873, described an instrument which Maxwell had perfected in 1869. Though the credit for the first laryngoscope goes to Manuel Garcia, the Spanish music teacher, Maxwell's instrument showed originality, and he is credited with being the first American physician to see the vocal cords of a living subject. After his return to Jacksonville he published pamphlets on Malarial Hæmoglobinuria (1892), Municipal Hygiene (1894), and a paper on "Hygiene in Florida". The Florida Medical Association, of which he had been president, adopted resolutions upon his death which not only reviewed his career but made note of his exceptional social qualities and conversational powers.
Maxwell was married twice. He married Augusta Jones of Tallahassee shortly after his graduation in medicine. She died of yellow fever while he was serving at the Marine Hospital in Key West. Maxwell married Elizabeth C Smith Butler.
10 June 1784 - 13 January 1855
27 March 1787 - 3 January 1871
29 December 1820 - 12 November 1912
6 August 1827 - 2 September 1897
3 February 1811 - 1866
1822 - 9 November 1892
9 April 1828 - 26 February 1911
27 December 1807 - 31 January 1880
1809 - 29 July 1855
4 March 1840 - 24 May 1903
16 Jan 1843 - 21 Jun 1891
1829 - 1857
4 April 1856 - 5 December 1925
1853 - 12 September 1857
