WYMAN, HARRY HASTINGS, M. D., of Aiken, South Carolina, was born on Melrose plantation in Hampton county, South Carolina, on the 13th of August, 1845. ... Harry Hastings Wyman and his twin brother, Hampden Hay Wyman, enlisting [in the army] when they were not yet sixteen. ... Harry Hastings Wyman in his boyhood was not robust. He had an impediment in his speech, but overcame it by strong determination and exercise of his will power. He attended the schools that were near his early home, and the military and classical academy of Aiken, until in 1861 that institution was closed by the war.
His twin brother, Hampden Hay Wyman, was mortally wounded at the battle of Swift Creek, Virginia. The wounded boy was a true hero. As he lay dying he said: “Tell mother I am not afraid to die — that if I had a hundred lives I would give them for my country.”
For four years Harry Hastings Wyman served in the Confederate army, first as a private, and later as ordnance officer of Company F, Eleventh South Carolina volunteers, Colonel Fred Hay Gantts, in Hagood’s brigade, Hoke’s division of the Army of Northern Virginia. When Hoke’s division was detached from Lee’s army for the defence of Fort Fisher, North Carolina, believing that his brigade would be surrendered with Johnson’s army, he obtained permission to leave, wishing to join General
Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi army if the fighting continued there. He was never captured, never paroled, and never took the oath of allegiance.
The seven years immediately after the war, he spent in working on his father’s farm, reading and studying at the same time.
History and biography have always given him keenest pleasure. The influence, in his boyhood and early manhood, of his mother, was strong for good. From his earliest childhood, greatly by the bent of his mind, and influenced by the professional example
of his father and brothers, he had determined to be a physician. It was not until 1872, however, that he could command the means; to enter the Medical College of South Carolina at Charleston. He was graduated in 1875 with the degree of M. D., receiving “the first honors for class standing and thesis.” He at once began the active practice of his profession in what is now Hampton county, residing there until 1884 when he removed to Aiken, South Carolina, where he is still in active practice. During the thirty years of his professional career, he has been a member of the state board of medical examiners (1891-92) and he has been chairman or physician of the board of health, Aiken, South Carolina, since its organization in 1897. He has been a trustee and director of the Aiken institute since 1886. He has been city physician of Aiken since the organization of the board of health in 1898 ; and he has served as examiner for various life insurance companies. He was a member of the first board of education of Hampton county.
In 1866, Dr. Wyman married Miss Abbie Swift Edwards, daughter of Colonel J. D. Edwards of Walterboro, South Carolina, who lived two years after her marriage.
In 1870 he married Miss Martha Washington Davis of Beaufort, South Carolina, daughter of Mr. Bushrod Washington Davis. Of their four children, two died in infancy, and two (Mrs. H. E. Vincent, Jr., Aiken, South Carolina, and Dr. Harry H. Wyman, Jr., of Aiken), have survived their mother, who died in 1878.
In 1881 Dr. Wyman married Miss Hannah Marion Aldrich, daughter of J. T. Aldrich, Esq., of Barnwell, South Carolina. They have
had four children: James Aldrich Wyman, lawyer; Benjamin F. Wyman, lawyer; Marion Hay Wyman, medical student at South Carolina Medical college, Charleston, South Carolina ; and Lallah Wyman, student at Winthrop college, South Carolina.
In politics Dr. Wyman has always been a Democrat; and during the reconstruction period he was active in the interest of
the white people as against carpetbag government, doing exceptional service in the campaign in 1876 which ended in the election of General Wade Hampton as governor. While he is intense in his patriotic love of his state, he is by no means a politician, but is a devoted lover of home; and he believes that rural life is the best means of training children for a high type of manhood.
By religious conviction he was early identified with the Presbyterian Church, South; and he has been a ruling elder in that church for more than thirty years.
To the young men of South Carolina, Dr. Wyman commends: “Thorough preparation for chosen life-work, promptness, strict attention to details, perseverance and inflexible honesty”; and he advises “the study of the great men of the past, of whom
the South has furnished many great both in defeat and in victory.” “But especially would I commend to all young men that
they diligently serve God? for this is the essential secret of the only true success in life.”
