Thomas Fearn (1789–1863), physician, planter, and public official, was a native of Pittsylvania County. He was educated in Danville, attended Washington Academy (later Washington and Lee University), 1806–07, and then studied medicine in Philadelphia. In 1810 Fearn relocated to Huntsville, Alabama. He began a medical practice and served under Andrew Jackson in 1813 and 1814 during the Creek War as a field surgeon and as a surgeon’s mate in charge of a hospital in Huntsville. Between 1818 and 1820 Fearn pursued medical studies in Europe. He stopped at Monticello during the latter year while on his return to Huntsville, where he resumed his medical practice and served between 1823 and 1829 on the state medical board. Fearn represented Madison County in the lower house of the Alabama legislature, 1822–23 and 1828–30, and he supported the presidential campaign of William H. Crawford in 1824. In 1830 he was a vice president of a Madison County auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. Fearn served as a trustee of two local schools and, from 1821 to 1831, of the University of Alabama. He was a director of the Planters’ and Merchants’ Bank of Huntsville and the leading promoter of a canal on nearby Indian Creek. As of 1860 Fearn owned real estate valued at $46,000 and personal property totaling $128,000, including approximately fifty-three slaves. He initially opposed seccession, but in 1861 he briefly represented Alabama in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. Fearn died in or near Huntsville (Thomas McAdory Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography [1921], 1:320, 323, 2:774, 926, 3:567–8; Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress [1975], 85–6; Washington and Lee University Catalogue description begins Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 1749–1888, 1888 description ends , 60; order by Andrew Jackson, 1 Feb. 1814, Jackson to Fearn, 8 Mar. 1814, Fearn to Jackson, 15 Mar. 1814, 8 Aug. 1815 [DLC: Jackson Papers]; Jackson, Papers description begins Sam B. Smith, Harold D. Moser, Daniel Feller, and others, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson, 1980– , 10 vols. description ends , 5:249–50; Edward Chambers Betts, Early History of Huntsville, Alabama, 1804 to 1870 [1909; rev. ed. 1916]; Thomas Waverly Palmer, comp., A Register of the Officers and Students of the University of Alabama, 1831–1901 [1901], 18; African Repository, and Colonial Journal 6 [1830]: 179; DNA: RG 29, CS, Ala., Huntsville, 1830, 1850, 1850 slave schedules, 1860, 1860 slave schedules, Madison Co., 1840, 1860 slave schedules; gravestone inscription in Maple Hill Cemetery, Huntsville).

The local publications sent by Mitchill may have included A Catalogue of Plants, growing spontaneously within thirty miles of the City of New-York (Albany, 1819; Poor, Jefferson’s Library description begins Nathaniel P. Poor, Catalogue. President Jefferson’s Library, 1829 description ends , 6 [no. 282]), which was dedicated to Mitchill, and Samuel Akerly, An Essay on the Geology of the Hudson River, and the adjacent regions: illustrated by A Geological Section of the Country … addressed to Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill (New York, 1820; Poor, Jefferson’s Library description begins Nathaniel P. Poor, Catalogue. President Jefferson’s Library, 1829 description ends , 6 [no. 284]; TJ’s copy in DLC: Rare Book and Special Collections).