Henry
Preston Sights, M.D.
From: Memorial Record of Western
Kentucky, Lewis Publishing Company, 1904, pp 728-730
McCracken County, KY
HENRY PRESTON SIGHTS, M. D., of Paducah, is one of the native sons of Kentucky whose careers have reflected honor upon the grand old state where they were born. Although born of one of the old and respected and substantial families of Kentucky, and with an honored ancestry reaching back many generations in the history of our country, he began life relying almost entirely on his own inborn elements of strength to carry him to the goal of his ambitions. From a drug clerk he became interested in medicine, and a little more than a decade ago he was given his degree of Doctor of Medicine, since which time he has been rising rapidly to the front rank of Kentucky physicians. In addition to a private practice of magnitude, he has filled one of the important public positions in his profession, and has in many ways been identified with public affairs in his community. He has a thorough mastery of his profession, gained from broad study before he began practice and from post-graduate courses in one of the foremost schools of the country. Thus fortified with technical preparation he possesses the sympathy and broad mindedness which make the ideal physician, and the work which he has done among his patients has not only been honorable to himself but has partaken of the nature of world-charity, a factor in the alleviation of human suffering and the assisting of a fellow creature to increased happiness in life. Dr. Sights traces his ancestry back to some of the early settlers of America, and has just cause for pride in the worthy part the various generations performed from colonial days to the present. Jacob Sights, in the fifty generation removed, was a native of the colony of Pennsylvania, and bore a gallant part in the Revolutionary war, and the maternal great-grandfather of Dr. Sight was also a patriot soldier, so that members of the present generation are entitled to membership in that great order of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. David Sights, a son of Jacob Sights, was the father of Preston Sights, a paternal grandfather of Dr. Sights. James J. and Annie R. (Sanderfur) Sights, the parents of Dr. Sights, are both natives of Henderson county, Kentucky, where they are still living and where the former has all his life been engaged in agricultural pursuits. Both the Sights and Sanderfur families were early settlers on Henderson county. Dr. Sights was born on a farm in Henderson county, Kentucky, near the village of Niagara, October 28, 1864, and is the second of his father's family of five sons. He was reared on the home farm, receiving his early education in the schools of Niagara and Corydon. He became a drug clerk in Henderson and later a druggist in Corydon, altogether spending about six years in the drug business. This experience in the drug store paved the way for him in the medical profession. He entered the medical department of the University of Louisville, and graduated in 1893, after which he was for two and a half years engaged in practice in Henderson. He was then appointed by Governor Bradley as first assistant physician for the Western Kentucky Hospital for the Insane, at Hopkinsville, a position which he creditably filled for nearly four years, from 1897 to 1900. In October, 1900, he came to Paducah, and in the short time he has resided here he has established a good practice and enjoys the confidence and respect of all who know him. In addition to the course in Louisville, he has taken three post-graduate courses in the New York Polyclinic. Dr. Sights has identified himself with and takes a lively interest in various medical associations, being a member of the American Medical Association, Kentucky State Medical Association, McCracken County Medical Society and the Southwestern Kentucky Medical Society. He has been initiated into the mysteries of Free-masoury [sic], and is a worthy member of that ancient order. In politics he is a Democrat, and his religious views are those of the Christian church. In 1886 Dr. Sights married Miss Virginia Niles, of Cario, Kentucky, and they are the parents of two children, Warren and Ethel. Mrs. Sights was born in Henderson county, Kentucky, and is a daughter of the Rev. A. A. Niles and Mary (Phillips) Niles. Her father is a native of Indiana and is a prominent minister of the Baptist church and her mother was born in Virginia and is related to the well known Swope family of the Old Dominion.
