Dr. H. B. Wear, born in 1829 in Blount County, Tennessee, was a prominent physician in East Fork Township, Arkansas. The sixth of twelve children, he studied medicine in Nashville and Atlanta, beginning his practice in Cherokee County, Alabama, in 1857. He moved to East Fork Township in 1858 and served as a surgeon captain in the Seventeenth Arkansas Infantry during the Civil War. Wear married Nancy Ann Townsend in 1857 and, after her death in 1885, married Minerva Sinclair in 1886. He owned 320 acres of land and was a respected Democrat and Mason in Faulkner County.
Dr. H. B. Wear is a prominent representative of the medical fraternity in East Fork Township. The sixth son of a family of twelve children born to William and Mary Ann (Tipton) Wear, his birth occurred in Blount County, Tenn., in 1829. His parents were natives of Tennessee, his father emigrating in 1835 to Alabama, where he owned a large farm and remained until his death in 1840. His excellent wife survived him until 1869. The family on the paternal side was of Irish and on the mother’s side of Scotch descent. Young Wear was reared to farm life, receiving an education in the schools of Alabama, and having manifested a disposition to study medicine, was given every advantage to do so. He studied first in Cherokee County, Ala., later at the Medical College at Nashville, Tenn., in 1856, and afterward at Atlanta, GA., where he graduated in 1857, beginning the practice of his profession in Cherokee County, Ala., in the same year. He was married in Georgia, January 1, 1857, to Miss Nancy Ann Townsend, a daughter of Robert B. and Rispba (Hiett) Townsend, natives of South Carolina, who emigrated to Arkansas in 1858, settling in what is now East Fork Township, where the mother died in 1871, and the father in 1885. In 1858 Dr. Wear moved to East Fork Township, embarking at once upon an extensive practice all over the country. In 1859 he invested in 160 acres of land, adding to it since and now has 320 acres, with sixty under cultivation. He enlisted in 1861 at Springfield, Ark., for twelve months as surgeon captain in Company B, of Seventeenth Arkansas Infantry, and served as such until his discharge at the close of the war. He then located in Faulkner County, where he has since resided, enjoying a fair prosperity and the esteem of his fellow men. He is a Democrat in politics, a member of the Masonic fraternity, and has served his lodge as Worshipful Master at different times. In 1885 Mrs. Wear died, leaving a family of seven children: Caswell B., Mary Ann, Martha A., Robert King, Sarah Matilda, William Taylor, and Oscar Allen. In 1886 Dr. Wear selected for his second and present wife, Mrs. Minerva Sinclair (nee Ryan), a native of Missouri. The Doctor is the oldest living settler in East Fork Township, and has always taken a great interest in those matters tending to the good of the county. He makes hosts of friends wherever he goes.