Dr. Shannon earned his medical degree from the University of Atlanta, and prior to the War Between the States practiced in Georgia, Holley Springs, MS, and Vicksburg, MS. He moved to Vicksburg in 1855 and continued practicing medicine except during the Civil War.
At the outbreak of the war in 1861, Harvey assisted in the formation of an artillery company in Vicksburg known as Swett's Battery of the Warren Light Artillery. He was the senior first lieutenant, and after Captain Swett was assigned to staff duty, Harvey was promoted to captain and assigned command of the battery. With this unit, he saw action in April 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, at Corinth, Mississippi in May 1862, and in the Kentucky campaign later that year. His battery became part of the fabled Confederate Army of Tennessee and was involved in many struggles. Harvey was severely wounded in the Battle of Missionary in November 1863, by an iron ball from a twenty pound shell, which broke his collar bone passed down into his lung, and exited near his backbone below the shoulder. After several months of recovery, he returned to action and was wounded again in the Battle of Peachtree Creek during the Atlanta Campaign, when his arm was shattered. Harvey was repeatedly commended by his superior officers for his personal gallantry, and for the skill he demonstrated in deploying and fighting his battery. Harvey fought with the rebel Army until the final surrender of the Army of Tennessee led by General Joseph E. Johnston at Greensboro, NC, 26 April 1865.
He was the commanding officer of Swett's Artillery.
Returning to Mississippi following the war, Harvey aided in the struggle against the corrupt "Carpetbag" government in Vicksburg.
After the war he married Lucy Vick Irwin the granddaughter of Rev. Newet Vick, founder of Vicksburg, MS.
Harvey had become known as an authority on the deadly yellow fever pestilence, and in 1883 as a representative of the state board of health, he was successful in preventing the spread of an outbreak of that dreaded disease.
In 1897, during a yellow fever epidemic on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, he served as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Hospital Service in charge of its Detention and Clearing Camp at Fontainebleau, Mississippi.
Dr. Shannon continued to practice until ill health forced his retirement. He then moved his wife, two daughters and two sons, to a country place he called Shannondale, near Ocean Springs, Miss. During school terms he took his family to Nashville, Tennessee in order that his children could attend excellent schools. (In those days Nashville was known as the Athens of the South because of its fine schools).
A portrait of Dr. Shannon painted in 1840 by Thomas Heay of Port Gibson, together with one of his sisters-in-law, Alice Irvin, who died at a very young age, now hang in the Old Courthouse Museum in Vicksburg, together with other Shannon and Vick memorabilia. The portraits were donated by his daughter Alice Shannon Warwick, and presented by his son Irwin Vick Shannon, Sr. of New Orleans, and Anne Warwick Haynes, a granddaughter.
Dr. Shannon died at the home of his daughter, Alice Shannon Warwick in Nashville, TN in 1906.
Julia Meadows 
