Robert Marion Markham, M. D., of Scammon, was born in Marion county, Illinois, Oct. 19, 1862. He is a son of Wesley Washington and Anna (Manier) Markham. His father was born and reared in Kentucky, from which state he went, when a young man, to Illinois, where he read medicine under a practicing physician, and subsequently practiced medicine in Illinois and Missouri, and in 1871, came to Kansas, locating at Pleasant View, Cherokee county. Thereafter he was located at various places, and finally at Iola, Kan., where he died in 1907, at the age of seventy-five, after practicing medicine for thirty-five years. The mother of Dr. Robert M. Markham was born in Tennessee. She bore her husband four children: Ella, the wife of R. S. Gilfillan, of Bandara; Robert Marion; Rev. Charles Curtis, a Baptist minister; and Effie, the wife of A. J. Davis, of Weir.

Dr. Markham was eight years of age when his parents came to Kansas. Since that age he has lived in the state, in the public schools of which he was educated, closing his literary education by one term in the noral college at Fort Scott. He has been self-supporting since fifteen years of age, when he became a clothing salesman at Fort Scott. He remained a clothing salesman for the greater part of the time until he was twenty-eight years of age, or until he entered the University Medical College of Kansas City, Mo., where he attended medical lectures and also clerked in a furnishing store, in order to defray the expenses his medical education. In 1889 he began practicing medicine at Scammon, earning means wherewith to return to medical college, and graduate in medicine. He received the degree of M. D. in 1892, and returned to Scammon, where he has successfully practiced medicine and operated a drug store. He is a member of the Cherokee county and the Kansas state medical societies, and the American Medical Association. He is also a Thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, a member the Mystic Shrine, Mirza temple, of Pittsburg, Kan., and is also a Knight of Pythias. In politics he is a Republican, and served three consecutive terms as mayor of Scammon. He is a director of the Scammon State Bank, of which he was an organizer. In 1897 Dr. Markham married Miss Jennie P. Mackie, and they have one child, David Wesley.