The son of Dr. John Tinsley Harrison and Sarah Simmons Groce, Dr. William Groce Harrison was born on 29 April 1879 in Talladega County, Alabama. Harrison received his undergraduate education at Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) and earned a medical degree from a one year course at the University of Maryland. He then matriculated in the first class of the new Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1893. There, he worked with Dr. William Osler and returned each summer to work with Osler until 1905. In 1895, Harrison returned to Alabama and established his practice in Talladega County. While attending a class reunion in Auburn, he met Louisa Marcia Bondurant whose father was a professor of agriculture at API and a Virginia plantation owner. Louisa Bondurant and Harrison were married on 16 August 1896 in Auburn. They had five children including Tinsley Randolph Harrison, first full-time chairman of the Department of Medicine of the four-year Medical College of Alabama. Harrison later moved his practice to Birmingham where he continued to see patients well into the 20th century. He died in Birmingham in 1955.
From the description of Memoirs of Dr. William Groce Harrison 1881-1955. (Mervyn H. Sterne Library - UAB). WorldCat record id: 31226898
