Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Andrew Taylor Still of Lee, Virginia
Before Andrew Taylor Still became the founder of osteopathy, before the American School of Osteopathy opened in Kirksville, Missouri, and before his name became attached to a whole branch of American medicine, his story began in the mountains of Lee County, Virginia.
Still was born on August 6, 1828, in Lee County. The Museum of Osteopathic Medicine at A. T. Still University describes the place as a log cabin in Lee County, while Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the location as near Jonesville. A Virginia historical marker places the birthplace near the Natural Bridge of Lee County, tying Still’s national medical legacy to one of Southwest Virginia’s most distinctive local landscapes.
That birthplace matters. Still’s later career unfolded across Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, and finally Kirksville, but the first setting of his life was Appalachian Virginia. His early world was one of circuit riders, rough roads, scattered schooling, farms, frontier medical practice, and families that moved with church assignments and opportunity. It was a world where religion and healing often met in the same household.
The Son of a Preacher and Doctor
Andrew Taylor Still was the third of nine children born to Abram Still and Martha Moore Still. Abram Still was a Methodist circuit rider, a preacher who traveled from place to place serving scattered congregations. He was also a physician. That combination shaped Andrew’s life from the beginning.
In early Lee County and the wider mountain South, a circuit rider did more than preach on Sunday. He moved through difficult country, knew families across creek valleys and ridge roads, and often became one of the few educated figures available to isolated communities. If he also practiced medicine, as Abram Still did, his work crossed from pulpit to sickbed.
Local Lee County tradition connects Abram Still with the old Jonesville campground and the area near Lee County’s Natural Bridge. Anne W. Lanningham’s account of the campground remembers Abraham Still as both preacher and doctor, living near the Natural Bridge and fathering Andrew Taylor Still in Lee County. This does not carry the weight of a birth record, but it fits the broader documentary tradition preserved by the ATSU Museum, the State Historical Society of Missouri, and the historical marker near Still’s birthplace.
Andrew’s education was irregular, as was common for frontier families. He worked, hunted, farmed, and learned from the practical life around him. Later accounts emphasize that he studied medicine under his father, which was not unusual in the nineteenth century. Many physicians of that era learned through apprenticeship, medical books, and practice before licensing systems became more formal.
From Lee County to the Western Frontier
The Still family did not remain in Lee County. Abram Still’s Methodist assignments carried the family through Tennessee and Missouri. By the late 1830s, the family was in Macon County, Missouri. Andrew grew up in a household that moved with the church and lived near the edge of American expansion.
In 1849, Andrew Taylor Still married Mary M. Vaughn. A few years later, when Abram Still was assigned to the Wakarusa Shawnee Mission in eastern Kansas, Andrew followed with his own family. There he farmed, practiced medicine, and assisted his father in treating the Shawnee.
Kansas in the 1850s was not a quiet frontier. The Kansas Nebraska Act opened the question of slavery in the territory and turned Kansas into a battleground between Free State and pro slavery forces. Still, like his father, opposed slavery. He became active on the Free State side and was elected to the Kansas territorial legislature in 1857.
This period matters because Still’s medical ideas did not form in a calm office or a settled university town. They grew out of a life marked by migration, violence, reform, religious conviction, and the instability of the borderlands.
War, Loss, and a Crisis of Medicine
The Civil War deepened Still’s doubts about the medicine of his time. He served on the Union side, including service as a hospital steward in the 9th Kansas Cavalry and later in Kansas militia units. The war exposed him to suffering on a large scale, but the greater blow came at home.
Still had already lost his first wife, Mary, in 1859 after childbirth complications. In 1864, an epidemic of spinal meningitis killed two of his children and one adopted child. Soon after, a daughter born to his second wife, Mary Elvira Turner, died of pneumonia. These deaths shook him deeply.
Nineteenth century medicine could be harsh. Common treatments included bleeding, purging, blistering, mercury compounds, opium, and other methods that often weakened already sick patients. Still came to believe that many accepted treatments were not only ineffective, but dangerous. His family losses and Civil War experience pushed him toward a search for a different kind of healing.
That search did not begin as a polished system. It was personal, experimental, and controversial. Still studied anatomy intensely. He believed the body’s structure mattered to health and that many illnesses could be approached through the relationship of bones, muscles, nerves, and blood flow. In time, he called this system osteopathy.
The Birth of Osteopathy
Still later dated the formal beginning of osteopathy to 1874. By then, he had moved away from the regular medicine of his day and had begun forming a new philosophy of treatment. He rejected heavy reliance on drugs and argued that the physician should understand the body’s structure and support its own ability to heal.
His claims were radical. Many people dismissed him as eccentric or dangerous. Some religious critics objected to his hands on healing. Family members and professional men questioned his judgment. Still moved through hard years of opposition before finding firmer ground in Kirksville, Missouri.
In Kirksville, he advertised himself as a bone setter and built a practice around manual treatment. Patients came, word spread, and students began asking to learn his methods. What had begun as a personal revolt against nineteenth century medicine became an organized school of thought.
The American School of Osteopathy
In 1892, Andrew Taylor Still opened the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri. It began in a modest two room frame building, but its importance was far larger than its size. It was the first school built around osteopathic medicine.
The American School of Osteopathy admitted both men and women at a time when many medical institutions were far more restrictive. The first graduating class in 1894 included women as well as men, and the school helped spread Still’s ideas beyond Missouri.
Still also put his ideas into print. His Autobiography of Andrew T. Still appeared in 1897, followed by Philosophy of Osteopathy in 1899, The Philosophy and Mechanical Principles of Osteopathy in 1902, and Osteopathy: Research and Practice in 1910. These works are essential primary sources, although they must be read carefully. Still was telling his own story, defending his own system, and shaping the memory of a movement he had founded.
The archives at the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine and Missouri Digital Heritage preserve Still’s papers, writings, letters, book drafts, institutional records, and related collections. The American School of Osteopathy record books preserve the school’s early governance, faculty proceedings, bylaws, and institutional development. Together, these records make Still unusually well documented for a nineteenth century Appalachian born figure whose influence spread far beyond the mountains.
A Note on the Title Doctor
One complicated question in Still’s life is whether he held an M.D. degree. He was widely known as Dr. A. T. Still and practiced as a licensed physician, but modern research points out that his formal medical education is difficult to prove.
ATSU’s own history notes that Still studied medicine under his father and may have had additional formal training in Kansas City, but that no records survive to establish where and when such training occurred. A 2026 study by David B. Fuller examined Missouri physician registration records and found Still registered as a physician in Macon County and Adair County, Missouri. The Adair County record listed him in the Roll of Physicians and Surgeons, but the fields for date of diploma and college or university were blank.
That does not mean Still was not a physician by the standards of his time. It means that his career belonged to an era when apprenticeship, local practice, licensing, and later professional degrees overlapped in ways that can confuse modern readers. The clearer point is that Still deliberately chose a different professional identity for his school. He did not build the American School of Osteopathy as an M.D. granting institution. He chose the D.O. degree and defended osteopathy as its own medical path.
Remembering Still in Lee County
Lee County never disappeared from Still’s memory. His professional life belonged mostly to Missouri and Kansas, but his birthplace remained part of the public story.
In 1939, Virginia commemorated his birthplace with a historical marker in Lee County. Newspaper coverage in the Appalachia Independent described the unveiling and the public remembrance of Still near Natural Bridge. The marker tradition identifies him as a physician and founder of osteopathy, born near the Natural Bridge of Lee County on August 6, 1828. A related Museum of Osteopathic Medicine archival record preserves material tied to the Virginia Conservation Commission marker.
Historical markers are not the same as court records, church registers, or family Bible entries. They are public memory cast in metal. Still, in this case, the marker agrees with the stronger institutional and reference sources that place Andrew Taylor Still’s birth in Lee County. It also shows that Southwest Virginia claimed him as one of its own.
Why Andrew Taylor Still Matters to Appalachian History
Andrew Taylor Still is usually remembered as a Missouri medical founder. That is true, but it is not the whole story. His life began in Lee County, Virginia, in a family shaped by mountain Methodism, frontier healing, migration, and the practical demands of rural life.
The Appalachian part of his story is not decorative. It helps explain the world that produced him. He was born into a region where doctors were scarce, travel was hard, formal education was uneven, and practical knowledge carried real weight. His father’s double role as preacher and doctor placed Andrew in a household where care for the body and care for the soul were both daily concerns.
Still’s later system of osteopathy cannot be reduced to his Lee County childhood. It was shaped by Kansas, the Civil War, personal tragedy, Missouri practice, anatomy study, and late nineteenth century medical debate. Yet the beginning belongs to Lee County. The road from a log cabin near the Natural Bridge of Lee County to the founding of the American School of Osteopathy is one of the more remarkable Appalachian born stories in American medical history.
Today, osteopathic medicine has become part of the modern medical system, with D.O. physicians practicing across the United States. That national story began with a man born in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, the son of a Methodist circuit rider and doctor, who lost faith in the medicine of his age and spent the rest of his life trying to build another way.
Sources & Further Reading
Still, Andrew Taylor. Autobiography of Andrew T. Still, with a History of the Discovery and Development of the Science of Osteopathy. Kirksville, MO: Published by the author, 1897. https://archive.org/details/autobiographyand00stiliala
Still, Andrew Taylor. Autobiography of Andrew T. Still. Revised ed. Kirksville, MO: Published by the author, 1908. https://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/Osteopathy/autobiographystill1908.pdf
Still, Andrew Taylor. Philosophy of Osteopathy. Kirksville, MO: A. T. Still, 1899. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25864/25864-h/25864-h.htm
Still, Andrew Taylor. The Philosophy and Mechanical Principles of Osteopathy. Kansas City, MO: Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Co., 1902. https://www.atsu.edu/museum-of-osteopathic-medicine/historic-journals-osteopathic-books
Still, Andrew Taylor. Osteopathy: Research and Practice. Kirksville, MO: Published by the author, 1910. https://archive.org/details/osteopathyresear00stiliala
Museum of Osteopathic Medicine, A. T. Still University. “A. T. Still Biography.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.atsu.edu/museum-of-osteopathic-medicine/museum-at-still
A. T. Still University. “History of ATSU.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.atsu.edu/about-atsu/history
Museum of Osteopathic Medicine, A. T. Still University. “A. T. Still Papers & American School of Osteopathy.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.atsu.edu/museum-of-osteopathic-medicine/a-t-still-papers-american-school-of-osteopathy-aso
Missouri Digital Heritage. “Andrew Taylor Still Papers.” Missouri State Archives. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/mdh_splash/default.asp?coll=atsu
Missouri Digital Heritage. “American School of Osteopathy Record Book, 1897-1900.” Missouri State Archives. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://mdh.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/atsu/id/1955/
Missouri Digital Heritage. “Charles E. Still Sr. and Jr. Collection.” Missouri State Archives. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/mdh_splash/default.asp?coll=charlesjrsr
Library of Congress. “[Dr. Andrew T. Still, Three-Quarter Length Portrait, Seated, Facing Left].” ca. 1914. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94507647/
Historical Marker Database. “Doctor Still’s Birthplace.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=36026
Lee County Virginia Tourism. “Heritage.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.ilovelee.org/heritage
State Historical Society of Missouri. “A. T. Still.” Historic Missourians. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://historicmissourians.shsmo.org/andrew-taylor-still/
Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Andrew Taylor Still.” Last modified May 21, 2026. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andrew-Taylor-Still
Fuller, David B. “Did A. T. Still, DO, Have an MD Degree?” The DO, March 1, 2026. https://thedo.osteopathic.org/2026/03/did-a-t-still-do-have-an-md-degree/
Fuller, David B. “Did A. T. Still, DO, Have an MD Degree?” PCOM Scholarly Works, 2026. https://digitalcommons.pcom.edu/scholarly_papers/2367/
Gevitz, Norman. The DOs: Osteopathic Medicine in America. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11596/dos
Gevitz, Norman. “A Degree of Difference: The Origins of Osteopathy and the First Use of the ‘DO’ Designation.” Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 114, no. 1 (2014): 30-40. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24384971/
Trowbridge, Carol. Andrew Taylor Still, 1828-1917. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1991. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4449178W/Andrew_Taylor_Still_1828-1917
Still, Charles E., Jr. Frontier Doctor, Medical Pioneer: The Life and Times of A. T. Still and His Family. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1991. https://www.aacom.org/gme/digital-resource-library/digital-resource/frontier-doctor-medical-pioneer-the-life-and-times-of-a.t.-still-and-his-family
Hildreth, Arthur Grant. The Lengthening Shadow of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still. 2nd ed. Macon, MO: Mrs. A. G. Hildreth and Mrs. A. E. Van Vleck, 1942. https://archive.org/details/lengtheningshado0000arth
Booth, Emmons Rutledge. History of Osteopathy and Twentieth-Century Medical Practice. Cincinnati: Press of Jennings and Graham, 1905. https://archive.org/details/historyofosteopa00bootuoft
Lane, M. A. Dr. A. T. Still, Founder of Osteopathy. Chicago: Osteopathic Publishing Co., 1918. https://archive.org/details/dratstillfounder00lane
Hamonet, Claude. “Andrew Taylor Still and the Birth of Osteopathy.” Joint Bone Spine 70, no. 1 (2003): 80-84. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12639626/
Tuscano, Sarah C., Jason Haxton, Antonella Ciardo, Luca Ciullo, and Raphael Zegarra-Parodi. “The Revisions of the First Autobiography of AT Still, the Founder of Osteopathy, as a Step towards Integration in the American Healthcare System: A Comparative and Historiographic Review.” Healthcare 12, no. 2 (2024): 130. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10815194/
American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. “150th Anniversary of Osteopathic Medicine.” Accessed June 11, 2026. https://www.aacom.org/about-us/ome150
American Osteopathic Association. “Throwback: Happy Birthday, A. T. Still, MD, DO! 5 Facts About the Father of the Profession.” August 10, 2024. https://osteopathic.org/2024/08/10/throwback-happy-birthday-a-t-still-md-do-5-facts-about-the-father-of-the-profession/
Author Note: Andrew Taylor Still’s life is often remembered through Missouri and the rise of osteopathic medicine, but his story began in Lee County, Virginia. This article follows the Lee County roots of a man whose mountain birthplace became part of a national medical legacy.