Doric Ball Burks: Life of a Confederate Surgeon (1835–1876)
By: William V. Scott
Published: May 5, 2025
Updated: May 7, 2025
Doric Ball Burks, physician and military surgeon, was born in Georgia on September 10, 1835, to Charles Smith Burks and Elizabeth (Armstrong) Burks.
He was born into a large family, and the 1850 census recorded the Burks family in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, where Charles Burks was a farmer. D. B. Burks received his medical degree at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
In 1860 Burks moved to Clarksville, Red River County, Texas, where he operated an office at the “Drug Store of Dr J. B. Harris.” He announced his permanent residence at Dalby Springs in Bowie County in the July 13, 1861, edition of The Standard of Clarksville and his availability in the practices of all branches of medicine to the community and surrounding area.
On June 12, 1861, Burks enlisted at Clarksville for twelve months as a private in Capt. John C. Burks’s (his uncle) 115-man Company E of Texas Volunteers, part of Col. William C. Young’s Regiment of Red River Dixie Boys. The company was mounted on July 27, when Burks supplied his mount (a $130 horse and $25 horse equipment). Burks’s company was mustered out of state service into the Confederate States Army at Camp Reeves in October 1861.
Burks enlisted for service of a year in Company E, Eleventh Texas Cavalry on October 2, 1861, at Camp Reeves, by Maj. George W. Chilton. He was commissioned on April 7, 1862, and enrolled as an acting surgeon (first lieutenant) in Corinth, Mississippi. He was later appointed assistant surgeon to the regiment’s staff when the regiment was reorganized and mustered into Confederate service on May 8. Burks failed to pass and was rejected by the Board of Medical Examiners, Army of Tennessee, on July 7, 1863. On July 17, 1863, Doric Ball Burks of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry was described as a “Medical officer having been rejected by an Army Medical Board will have his name dropped from the Rolls” by the order of the Medical Director’s Office, Army of Tennessee. In January 1864 Assistant Surgeon John Wallace Rainey superseded Burks as the assistant surgeon of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry.
Doric Ball Burks married Sarah Sallie Boothe. The couple had at least two children, William and Joseph. They settled in Pilot Point in Denton County on land that was in his wife’s family. On the 1870 census Burks was listed as a practicing medical doctor at Pilot Point. He was a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a Democrat, and an active Mason.
Doric Ball Burks died on May 16, 1876, in Pilot Point, Texas, and is thought to be buried in a family plot at Pilot Point Community Cemetery. His widow, Sallie, married Elijah Kroger, a Pilot Point farmer, in 1880.
Bibliography:
Clarksville Standard, February 9, 1861; July 13, 1861. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives and Record Service, Washington. “Doric Ball Burks,” Find A Grave Memorial (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/202154023/doric_ball-burks), accessed April 16, 2025. Historical Data Systems, comp., U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861–1865 [database on-line], Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. Buckley B. Paddock, History of Texas: Fort Worth and the Texas Northwest Edition (4 vols., Chicago: Lewis, 1922).
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
William V. Scott, “Burks, Doric Ball,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/burks-doric-ball.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
FBURK
- May 5, 2025
- May 7, 2025
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