Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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James Madison Zachary House in Norton, North Carolina

  • wcu_picturing-2122.jpg
  • This undated photograph shows James Madison Zachary’s house, built in 1885 and located in the Norton community of Jackson County. James Madison Zachary (1842-1898) practiced dentistry after the Civil War in the 1860s and is believed to be the first itinerant dentist in Jackson County. His second daughter, Dr. Daisy Zachary McGuire (1880-1980), who grew up in this home, became the first licensed female dentist in North Carolina when she graduated in 1908 from Southern Dental College in Atlanta. She was the oldest practicing dentist in the nation when she retired in 1977 at the age of 97.