Like many early Texas physicians, Dr. John Wesley Carhart (1834-1914) was something of a Renaissance man. An ordained Methodist minister, he pastored in New England and Wisconsin, published two books of poetry, Sunny Hours (1859) and Poets and Poetry of the Hebrews (1865), and patented an oscillating valve for steam engines. In the 1870s, he invented a buggy powered by a two-cylinder steam engine and called it "The Spark." (Fifty years later, in an interview with reporters in San Antonio, where he spent the last seven years of his life, Carhart recalled the "formidable stream of fire and smoke ascending" from the auto's vertical smokestack, but denied reports that his vehicle had scared horses to death.)
In 1883, after resigning the ministry and graduating from the Chicago College of Physicians, the doctor headed for Texas. He settled first in Lampasas, where he practiced medicine, published the Lampasas Teacher, and wrote articles for Medical Age and Texas Sanitarian that boosted the town as a health resort.
Though Dr. Carhart became known as a leading skin and nerve specialist and a spokesman for better sanitation, his literary endeavors sometimes conflicted with traditional 19th-Century values. In 1895, while living in La Grange, he was arrested for "sending obscene literature through the mails": At the end of his novel, "Norma Trist", an "alienist" (psychiatrist) is brought in to "cure" the main character of her love for another woman. The authorities eventually dropped the charges. Dr. Carhart's last book, "Under Palmetto and Pine" (1899), presented sensitive portraits of African Americans in Texas struggling against discrimination and poverty."

.........Gene Fowler, Austin, writing in the August, 1999 issue of Texas Highways Magazine...............

Al Carhart is John Wesley Carhart's 2nd cousin, 3 times removed.