RAINEY, FRANK (1836-1914). Frank Rainey, physician, legislator, and government official, son of Matthew F. Rainey, was born on November 16, 1836, in Greene County, Alabama. During his boyhood his family settled at Palestine, Texas. Rainey attended Franklin Institute and at the outbreak of the Civil War was studying medicine with Dr. I. Meriwether of Houston County. In June 1861 he married Huldah Meriwether and shortly thereafter enlisted as a private in a Palestine company of the Confederate Army. Later he served as assistant surgeon and surgeon for Company H, Fifth Texas Cavalry, under Gen. Thomas Greenqv. At the end of the war Rainey entered Tulane University, where he graduated in medicine in 1869. He returned to Crockett, Texas, to enter the drug business and practice medicine. He represented Houston County in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth legislatures and in 1874 was appointed superintendent of the State Institution for the Blind (later the Texas School for the Blindqv) by Governor Richard Coke. He served until 1895. For about ten years Rainey was manager of the Home for Orphans and Widows of Deceased Masons at Fort Worth. For a time he lived with a nephew in Dallas before returning to Austin, where he died at the home of a daughter, Mrs. Will D. Hart, on February 2, 1914. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lewis E. Daniell, Personnel of the Texas State Government, with Sketches of Representative Men of Texas (Austin: City Printing, 1887; 3d ed., San Antonio: Maverick, 1892). William S. Speer and John H. Brown, eds., Encyclopedia of the New West (Marshall, Texas: United States Biographical Publishing, 1881; rpt., Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1978). Texas State Journal of Medicine, April 1914.
