Harvey Lindsey was born on July 16, 1825, in Tennessee to Edward and Rachel Lindsey. By 1850, he was working as a physician in Smith County, Texas. He married Martha S. Cowser, and they had at least three children: Hannah, born around 1854; Edward, born around 1857; and James, born around 1858. They lived in Flora, Texas, and by 1860, Lindsey owned $2,000 of real estate and $3,000 of personal property.

 

In December 1861, he received a commission as a 2^nd lieutenant in Company D of the 13^th Texas Infantry. He spent several months on recruitment duty. Although he had only enlisted for one year, Confederate officials extended his term of enlistment. In March 1862, he vowed to his wife that “I shall remain here [in Texas]—for I consider that I owe you and my children a duty as well as the Confederate States. it is true I am as well satisfied with the life of a souldier as I expected to be, but my family is first and then my Country.” He resigned on June 30, 1862.

 

He moved to the Canadian District of the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in the fall of 1869. His wife eventually died, and he married a Cherokee woman named Elizabeth on January 1, 1873. In 1900, the Department of the Interior registered him as a “Cherokee citizen by intermarriage.” He continued working as a physician until his retirement in the early 1900s. A local writer described him as a “man of ability and strict integrity” and noted that “everybody who knew him was his friend.” He died near Texanna, Oklahoma, on August 21, 1912.

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