Francis Bartow Fite, M.D., was born in Georgia and attended Pine Log Academy and Johnstone Academy before joining his brothers at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in the Cherokee Nation. There he managed a drug store and was awarded a teaching certificate from Cherokee Normal Institute. He graduated from Southern Medical College, now the medical department of Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886 and returned to Tahlequah where he practiced medicine with his brother, Dr. R. L. Fite, until 1888. He then went to New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital as the first assistant of Dr. John Wyeth until 1889. On November 1, 1889, Fite returned to Muskogee, Oklahoma to begin his general medicine practice. He established St. Mary’s Sanitarium early in his career and retired from active practice in 1933. Dr. Fite was one of the founders of the Indian Territory Medical Association in 1890 and was the mayor of Muskogee from 1905 to 1906 and again from 1919 to 1920.