The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our Nation (10 page)

Parsons signed and ended the letter: “I am well, and strong, and hopeful, and I devoutly thank God that I can say that in every letter.”

A few years after moving to Memphis, Charles Parsons had remarried; his wife was the niece of Dean George Harris, and during the epidemic she lived with Mrs. Harris on the Annandale Plantationin Madison, Mississippi. In letters to his wife Margaret, Parsons likens the epidemic to the frontline of a battle, in which the firing never ceases. “I never thought I could be happy if you were absent from me but am thankful you are not with me now.”

Parsons wrote to Maggie every night of the epidemic, though few letters still exist. One such letter would be found over a century later, part of a package of waterlogged paperwork that survived a fire. It was the last letter he ever wrote: “One of your thoughts, my devoted wife, I know will be that I will have the Fever next . . . I am robust and regular in appetite and sleep, and all that good God Who, in His Infinite Mercy, gave us such a Blessing as you. Kiss my little ones for me. Speak courageous and cheering . . . And God will not forget your labour of love.”

The next morning, Charles Parsons awoke feverish. In a warm room, he received a visiting nun from St. Mary’s. He was smiling and in good spirits. The nun offered to fan him or hang mosquito netting, anything to make him more comfortable.

“No, no, I beg you will not; indeed, I could not let you so fatigue yourself.” The nun looked to the attending nurse who simply shrugged. “Let him have it his way; I never saw anyone so unselfish as he is.”

Charles Parsons never descended into the delirium that so often accompanied the disease, and in many cases, was a relief as a patient slipped away unaware of his own suffering or of the family he would leave behind. Parsons continued to talk of his wife Maggie and his “little ones.” He remained coherent until the end. In his final hour, he talked of having done his duty, then said he wanted to be taken away from this place. “Where do you wish to go?” he was asked. He signed himself with the cross and mumbled: “We receive this child into the Congregation of Christ’s flock and do sign him with the sign of the cross.”

On September 6, Reverend Charles Parsons died, and the sisterssaid, even to the end, he refused to allow any nurses or sisters to waste their time tending to him. He was buried the day following his death at Elmwood Cemetery, and as no clergy were present, Mr. John G. Lonsdale Jr., owner of the private cemetery lot, read the burial service.

The
Appeal
’s editor wrote about his death: “He prepared for it as for battle, and as on a battlefield . . . he fell at his post during duty.”

That same day, the
Appeal,
which now only had one editor and one printer left on staff, published another story: “A man on Poplar Street yesterday cowardly deserted his wife and little daughter, both of whom were ill with the fever; if he isn’t dead, somebody ought to kill him.”

When news of Charles Parsons’s death made national news, some thirty priests volunteered to come to Memphis. One was a twenty-six-year-old, idealistic reverend who had just finished services in Hoboken, New Jersey, when he heard of Parsons’s illness. A fragile man who had recently recovered from a nervous breakdown, Louis Schuyler was discouraged from going on what would certainly be a death mission, but he was adamant, even stubborn in his intentions: “God calls me. I am safe in His hands—He will do what is best for me.”

On the train to Memphis, Schuyler received word that Parsons had died. He arrived in Memphis on Sunday, September 8, one day after Charles Parsons was buried, and went directly to St. Mary’s to find Sister Constance and Sister Thecla; the nuns had been without a priest or services for a full week. He was struck with the news that both were down with the fever.

A sister at St. Mary’s found Constance resting on the sofa several days before; she was dictating letters and insisted that she was healthy. She had felt the chill come on that morning, but worked for another five hours settling matters, knowing that when she fell many more would follow in her footsteps from neglect and starvation. Constance kept all correspondence, distributed the money, managed what little provisions they had and gave orders to the nuns and nurses.

“It is only a slight headache,” Constance persisted when Dr. Armstrong arrived. “I have not the fever, it is only a bad headache; it will go off at sunset.” He pulled out his pocket watch to measure her sluggish pulse and stroked his hand against her burning face, then insisted that the nuns give her a cool bath and put her to bed. The sisters made up their finest mattress with fresh linens, but Constance asked for another bed. “It is the only one you have in the house, and if I have the fever, you will have to burn it.”

Within the hour, Sister Thecla returned from the deathbed of a patient. Pale and perspiring, she began to shake. “I am sorry, Sister,” she said calmly, “but I have the fever. Give me a cup of tea, and then I shall go to bed.”

Neither Constance nor Thecla knew of the other’s illness, though they lay in rooms next door to one another. Finally, when they kept asking to see the other, the nurses had to tell them the truth: The fever had struck them both and on the same day.

Sister Constance soon slipped into unconsciousness and remained so for most of her illness, waking at one point only to say, “I shall never get up from my bed.” By then, 200 new cases of the fever appeared each day in Memphis, and the sister attending Constance wrote, “All the world seemed passing away; the earth sinking from under our feet.”

As Dr. Armstrong left St. Mary’s late that evening, one of the sisters ran after him and handed him a note. He thanked her and walked out into the night. The carbolic acid dumped into the Gayoso Bayou had killed the fish, and their odor cloaked the neighborhood, burning his eyes. With the sun deep beneath the horizon, the air felt suffocating and the neighborhood deserted. In the distance, two blocks away, the towers and rooflines of the Victorian mansions of Adams Street could be seen like barbed etchings against the indigo sky. When Armstrong returned to his silent house, he lit the lamp and pulled the envelope from his pocket to find a note wrapped around two fifty-dollar bills: “An expression of the affection and gratitude of the sisters.” Armstrong sat down at his desk to write his wife, promising that should he survive the epidemic he would repay the sisters. “Sister Constance is dying tonight,” he wrote, “and I now think Sister Thecla will get well.”

All night the attending sister could hear the moans and delirium from Constance’s room. She heard her shout out “Hosanna,” and repeat it faintly through the night. At 7:00 the next morning, the toll of the church bell marked the hour. “At that clear sound, which she had always loved, whose call she had never refused to answer,” wrote the sister, “the moaning ceased; and at 10 o’clock a.m. her soul entered the Paradise.” The chapel was candlelit, the windows streaked with rain. Constance was robed in her habit with roses laid across her breast, a shock of beauty against the gloom. Reverend Louis Schuyler had arrived in Memphis just in time to read the services. Afterward, Constance was taken to Elmwood, where her body had to be held in a borrowed vault, as there were too many dead and not enough gravediggers.

Sister Thecla did recover, becoming a convalescent. Unlike any other disease, yellow fever’s hallmark is its cruel tendency to return after a period of brief recovery. When it did, as one doctor warned, it was time to order the coffin. Convalescents were under strict orders to remain in bed and quiet, but nurses and physicians usually hurried back to their duties. The vengeful fever would returnwith the most severe symptoms. Sister Thecla died one week later, after several days of pain and lucidity. An obituary for the two nuns read, “Of them may it be said that they were lovely in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.”

Louis Schuyler returned to St. Mary’s after Constance’s funeral. He had come to Memphis to fill the vacancy left by dead priests, to offer his services to a congregation of dying nuns and fever patients. Schuyler delivered the news to Dean Harris, who was still recovering, that both Parsons and Constance were gone. “My work here is done,” he said, “the whole of Memphis was not worth those two lives.” Schuyler left him sobbing.

Schuyler kept no diary or letters, nor would he have had time to write. Or perhaps the terror was too much for the sensitive twenty-six-year-old to record on paper. Even when encouraged to begin slowly, Schuyler had insisted working directly in the neighborhoods hardest hit by the epidemic. He refused a room at the Peabody Hotel for a cot in the parlor of Dean Harris’s fever-ridden home. Schuyler was in Memphis only four days before the fever struck him. The beds at St. Mary’s were full, and Schuyler was taken to the Court Street Infirmary, which had been recently opened for the feverish nurses and physicians. He was visited by another reverend from St. Mary’s, but Schuyler was already wildly delirious. It may have been due to his delirious shouts and screams that Louis Schuyler was moved from his hospital room into the death alley still alive. Piles of corpses and raw pine coffins lay all around him waiting for the wagons, which could take days to arrive. A nurse followed Schuyler’s litter into the alley and knelt beside him, promising not to leave his side. They sat beneath the buttressed stone and brick of the alley, cold shadows arching across the skyline creating a mosaic of gray light, sun and blue sky. “Please tell me,” asked Schuyler, “whether I am in Memphis or whether I am in my little church in Hoboken?”

On September 11, a cool front brought hope to the city. Rain had fallen the day before, chilling the air and sweeping the bayou clean. Will Armstrong sat at his desk that night at 9:00 writing to his wife, “My heart bounds with joy at the mere hope that this cool night will possibly end our labors . . . No one knows but the weary doctor what a delight that would be. Kiss all the children for me.” He ended his letter: “I alone am standing.”

A few days later, Lula Armstrong received a telegram from Dr. Mitchell informing her that “Dr. Armstrong is very sick but doing well today. Says you must not come here under any circumstances.”

On September 16, Lula received a penny postcard from her husband: “My dear wife: I have passed through the fever stages and have only to get the stomach right. Hope I can do this and see you soon.” But by September 20, she was notified by the nuns at St. Mary’s that her husband had died of yellow fever. His attending nurse said that even when delirious he tried to rise from his bed to see patients. In Elmwood’s leather burial record, the Graveyard Girl recorded his name:
Dr. Wm. J. Armstrong,
wrote ditto marks for yellow fever and the location of his plot in the Fowler Section, Lot #265. His body would be moved years later to another plot where his wife would be buried by his side. Lula Armstrong would also die on September 20—forty-six years later.

The next day three more sisters at St. Mary’s died. The sister who attended Constance at her deathbed soon followed, as did the nurse who attended Charles Parsons. John Lonsdale, who spoke at Parsons’s burial, fell feverish and died. John Walsh, the country undertaker, died along with most of his family; at the time of his death, Walsh had buried over 2,000 of the city’s yellow fever victims.

Dr. John Erskine, the doctor who opposed quarantine of the city, died on September 17 under the care of his brother, Dr. Alexander Erskine. His death crippled the Memphis Board of Health. It would not begin functioning again until mid-October.

Dr. R. H. Tate, the first black physician to practice in Memphis, was assigned to “Hell’s Half Acre” along Lauderdale and Union. He died only three weeks after his arrival.

Three thousand Howard Association nurses, the large majority of them black, served during the epidemic; one-third of those nurses died. Among the 111 Howard doctors, 54 contracted the fever and 33 died.

Charles G. Fisher, head of the Citizen’s Relief Committee, died; of the twenty members of his committee, only three were left at the end of the epidemic.

Dr. W. A. White, rector at Calvary Episcopal Church, recovered from the fever just in time to bury his son. A local legend by the name of Annie Cook turned her house of prostitution, the “Mansion House” on Gayoso Street, into a hospital and nursed the sick until she herself perished of the fever. The sheriff died. Even Jefferson Davis Jr., the only son of the Confederate president, was lost to this plague in Memphis. His was the largest funeral seen during the epidemic: Fifteen people attended.

Churches throughout the city sacrificed ministers, priests and nuns. Hundreds more came from cities in the North. Those at St. Mary’s have become known as the Martyrs of Memphis.

At long last, on October 28, a killing frost fell, silvering the tree limbs and blades of grass, cooling the festering quagmire of Happy Hollow. Red leaves littered the ground and gold ones bronzed the treetops. A message was sent to Memphians scattered all over the country to
come home.
That same week, the
Appeal
published a number of advertisements as businesses downtown reopened. Cotton dominated the ads, but a few others touted “New goods at bottom prices,” “New mattresses” and “Mourning Goods” like black-trimmed stationery and calling cards, dark cloth and black crepe.

Though yellow fever cases would continue to appear in the pages of Elmwood Cemetery’s burial record as late as February 29, the epidemic itself seemed quieted. On November 27, a general citizen’s meeting was called at the Greenlaw Opera House. It would be held on Thanksgiving Day, following the holiday church services, to offer the city’s thanks to those who had stayed behind to serve and die.

Life was returning to Memphis. Cotton bales began collecting in the streets and along sidewalks. The collective din of steam compressors, train whistles and streetcars could be heard once again. Oyster season had opened, and restaurants and hotels posted signs for “fresh oysters,” while Seesel and Son’s grocery on the corner of Jefferson and Second received a large shipment of fish. Apples and potatoes filled crates, and mincemeat was prepared. Geese moved south, their wings white with moonlight during the evening hours. Soft rain had fallen early in the week, and men wore their pants tucked up while ladies dragged their hems through the mud downtown. There was even a fresh dusting of snow the day before Thanksgiving, offering a feeling of renewal for some, and for others, just a reminder of the lime that had spent so many weeks on the ground.