WILLIAM TARLETON BRIDGES is a talented young physician who is practicing his profession in Illiopolis with marked success. He is a native of Fayette County, this State, where he was born March 21, 1860. He is a son of J. I. and Sarah J. (Sturgeon) Bridges, natives respectively of Louisville, Ky., and Trafalgar, Ind. They are now living in Illinois whither the father came in 1850, and has since been identified with its farming interests.

Our subject was born and reared on a farm. He first attended the public schools and then pursued a course of study at the Valparaiso Normal School, Indiana. After leaving that institution he began teaching in Fayette County, afterward in Montgomery County, and continuing in that profession four years. He was ambitious to fit himself to be a physician, and at the expiration of that time he began the study of medicine under the tutelage of Dr. W. P. Gordon, of Carlisle, Ill. On the completion of a student's course with that physician he entered the Missouri Medical College at St. Louis, from which he was graduated in the spring of 1888, of his class of eighty-three members, eighty students receiving diplomas.

Thus launched on his professional career the Doctor entered upon the practice of medicine at Walnut Hill, Ill. A short time afterward he went to Aviston and fourteen months later came to Illiopolis. He opened an office here and already has the prospect of an excellent practice, as he is known to be a man well learned in his profession and of broad literary culture who is well fitted by nature for his calling, he being careful, studious and conscientious. He is popular among society people and is highly regarded in religious circles. When but seventeen years of age he joined the Baptist Church and has ever since been a consistent member thereof.