Pox

by Michael Willrich

  17 “Mingo,” MWH, Nov. 26, 1897, 1. “Furnaces,” ibid., 4. Untitled editorial, MWR, Feb. 24, 1898, 4. See also “Encouraging,” MWH, Dec. 3, 1897, 4. On school enrollments, see “Report of Public School for November,” ibid., Dec. 3, 1897, 1. USCB 1900, Vol. I—Population, Part I (Washington, 1901), 618. U.S. Census Bureau, Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Bell County, Kentucky, Middlesboro, Enumeration Districts 18 and 19. For a warmer portrait of race relations in Middlesboro, see Matheny, Magic City, 127–32.

  18 U.S. Census Bureau, Negroes in the United States (Washington, 1904), 11, 13, 60. Herbert R. Northrup, “The Coal Mines,” in Blacks in Appalachia, ed. William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 159–71. On rural industry in the South, see Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 127–66. On post–Civil War railroad development in Appalachia, see Robert L. Frey, “Railroads,” in Encyclopedia of Appalachia, ed. Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 715–17.

  19 G. M. Magruder, “Work of the Service in Suppressing Smallpox in Alabama,” PHR, 13 (Mar. 18, 1898), 246. “A Big Scare,” MWR, Nov. 18, 1897, 1. “Unwarranted,” MWH, Nov. 19, 1897, 4.

  20 “A Big Scare,” MWR, Nov. 18, 1897, 1.

  21 L. L. Robertson, “Bell County Board of Health,” in KBOH 1900–01, 24–25. “Laws, Rules and Regulations,” in KBOH 1898–99, 177–78. “A Big Scare,” MWR, Nov. 18, 1897, 1. “Unwarranted,” MWH, Nov. 19, 1897, 4.

  22 “Laws, Rules and Regulations,” in KBOH 1898–99, 173–80, 186. Nelson County Court v. Town of Bardstown, Superior Court of Kentucky (1885) in ibid., 173–76, esp. 176.

  23 On the state board’s vaccination estimates, see “The State Board of Health Urges All Kentucky Cities and Towns to Take Prompt Action,” LMH, Feb. 8, 1899, 4. For the Middlesboro estimate, see Matheny, Magic City, 226.

  24 “Unwarranted,” MWH, Nov. 19, 1897, 4. Untitled editorial, MWR, Nov. 18, 1897, 4. See also “Smallpox,” LMH, Nov. 17, 1897, 1.

  25 “Quarantine Raised,” MWH, Dec. 10, 1897, 4.

  26 See “Quarantine Jottings,” MWR, Feb. 17, 1898, 2.

  27 “Aunt Mariah ______,” MWR, Feb. 24, 1898, 2. Due to the poor quality of the microfilm, the last part of the headline is illegible.

  28 “Chicken-Pox,” MWR, Nov. 26, 1897, 5. “Quarantine Raised,” ibid., Dec. 10, 1897, 4. “Smallpox,” ibid., Feb. 3, 1898, 3. KBOH 1898–99, 21.

  29 Tazewell Progress quoted in untitled editorial, MWR, Feb. 10, 1898, 4. “Smallpox,” ibid., Feb. 3, 1898, 3. See Matheny, Magic City, 228.

  30 See “Laws, Rules and Regulations,” in KBOH 1898–99, 171–86.

  31 Judge Charles Kerr, ed., History of Kentucky (New York: American Historical Society, 1922), vol. 4: 450. John E. Kleber, ed., The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 592. The best sources on J. N. McCormack’s ideas and work are the reports of the state board.

  32 KBOH 1898–99, 28.

  33 J. N. McCormack viewed the quarantine power as “an indispensable weapon” against “counties and towns whose authorities failed or refused to adopt proper precautions against the disease.” KBOH 1900–01, 11. For an example of such a quarantine order (issued against Greenup County in December 1900), see ibid., 12. See also “Small-Pox Up-to-Date,” MWR, Feb. 17, 1898, 2.

  34 “Small-Pox Victim Dies,” LMH, Feb. 13, 1898, 8. “Small-Pox Up-to-Date,” MWR, Feb. 17, 1898, 2. “Spreading,” LMH, Feb. 15, 1898, 8. On the Ball brothers, see Matheny, Magic City, 141–54.

  35 “Smallpox in Middlesboro,” WP, Feb. 16, 1898, 9. “Small-Pox Up-to-Date,” MWR, Feb. 17, 1898, 2. “Uncle Sam Fumigating,” ibid., Feb. 24, 1898, 1. The advertisements appeared in ibid., Feb. 17, 1898, 1.

  36 “Small-Pox: Situation More Grave,” MWR, Mar. 3, 1898, 6. “Laws, Rules and Regulations,” 177.

  37 A. T. McCormack’s brief report on the smallpox epidemic at Middlesboro appears in KBOH 1898–99, 47–48.

  38 A. T. McCormack’s report.

  39 Short, untitled reports of postvaccination illnesses appear in the MWR, Dec. 9, 1897, 3; Feb. 24, 1898, 1; Mar. 10, 1898, 1–2.

  40 Untitled editorial, MWR, Mar. 3, 1898, 4. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 ( 1896).

  41 A. T. McCormack’s report, 47. “Small-Pox: Situation More Grave,” MWR, Mar. 3, 1898, 6.

  42 A. T. McCormack’s report, 47–48. C. P. Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,” PHR, 13 (Mar. 25, 1898), 273–74.

  43 KBOH 1898–99, 48. Untitled Editorial, MWR, Mar. 10, 1898, 4.

  44 Much of the correspondence arising from this episode is reprinted in KBOH 1898–99, 47–61. Fifty-fifth U.S. Congress, Congressional Directory ( Washington, 1897), 52. For an excellent history of federal disaster relief, see Michele Landis Dauber, “The Sympathetic State,” Law and History Review, 23 (2005): 387–442.

  45 KBOH 1898–99, 48–49. The emphasis in Colson’s quotation is mine.

  46 Walter Wyman to C. P. Wertenbaker, Mar 10, 1898, CPWL, vol. 1.

  47 I have formed my impressions of Wertenbaker by reading his personal papers and letter books (collected at the Library of the University of Virginia) and his published dispatches and reports. For an overview of his career, see “Death, Here, of Noted Surgeon,” Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA), July 13, 1916, 1.

  48 Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough,” 273.

  49 Ibid., 274. “Death of Dr. A. T. McCormack” (U.S. Children’s Bureau), The Child, 8 (1943), 47.

  50 Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough,” 273–74. “Investigating,” LMH, Mar. 15, 1898, 3. “Spreading,” ibid., Mar. 15, 1898, 8. “The Smallpox Situation at Middlesboro,” Grand Forks Herald (North Dakota), Mar. 15, 1898, 8. See also C. P. Wertenbaker, “One Case of Smallpox in Wilmington, N.C.,” PHR, 13 (Jan. 14, 1898), 25; C. P. Wertenbaker, “Investigation of Smallpox at Charlotte, N.C.,” PHR, 13 (Feb. 18, 1898), 140–41.1.

  51 Untitled editorial, MWR, Mar. 10, 1898, 4. “Smallpox Situation at Middlesboro.” “Starving in a Pesthouse,” NYT, Mar. 15, 1898, 3. “Seventy Cases of Smallpox,” AC, Mar. 16, 1898, 5. Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough,” 274.

  52 “Uncle Sam to the Rescue,” MWR, Mar. 17, 1898, 3. KBOH, 1898–9, 49.

  53 A. T. McCormack’s report, 47.

  54 Ibid., 49–50.

  55 Ibid., 50.

  56 Ibid.

  57 Ibid.

  58 Ibid., 51.

  59 Ibid.

  60 “Uncle Sam in Charge of the Small-Pox Cases at Middlesboro,” LMH, Mar. 20, 1898, 5.

  61 For a useful short history of public health in Jefferson County, see “History,” Jefferson County Department of Health Web site, http://www.jcdh.org/default.asp?ID=10, accessed January 25, 2007. In one of his several irate letters to Walter Wyman regarding the Service takeover at Middlesboro, Secretary J. N. McCormack of the Kentucky Board of Health said, “We hesitated to give you absolute control because of the ineffectual methods adopted by your Service in Alabama, which had permitted the present epidemic in Tennessee and Kentucky.” If this complaint was genuine, McCormack was acting on erroneous information. The arrival of the miner Scott in Middlesboro preceded the Service’s takeover at Birmingham by at least two months. Secretary McCormack to WW, Apr. 9, 1898, published in KBOH 1898–99, 59.

  62 “Three New Cases of Smallpox,” AC, Jul. 29, 1897, 3. G. M. Magruder, “Smallpox in Birmingham, Ala.,” PHR, 13 (Jan. 14, 1898), 22–25.

  63 G. M. Magruder, “Work of the Service in Suppressing Smallpox in Alabama,” PHR, 13 (Mar. 18, 1898), 246–51. See also “Three New Cases of Smallpox,” AC, Jul. 29, 1897, 3; “Smallpox Scare in Birmingham,” ibid., Aug. 7, 1897, 2; “Prevent Smallpox Spread,” ibid., Aug. 8, 1897, 2; “Why Smallpox Is Not Checked,” ibid., Aug. 9, 1897, 2; “Wyman Sends Surgeons South,” ibid., Jan. 7, 1898, 1; “Pest Prevails in Alabama,” ibid., Jan. 14, 1898, 2.


  64 Magruder, “Work of the Service,” esp. 246–47, 250.

  65 Ibid., 247–48.

  66 Ibid.

  67 Ibid., 248–50.

  68 Ibid., 250. The white cases equaled 57.5 percent of the total reported cases. The U.S. Census of 1900 found that 45.2 percent of the population of Alabama was black. Negroes in the United States, 20.

  69 C. P. Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” PHR, 13 (Apr. 1, 1898), 300–303. “Locals,” MWR, Mar. 24, 1898, 1.

  70 Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” 301. “A Decided Improvement,” MWR, Mar. 24, 1898, 4.

  71 Hill Hastings, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.—(Concluded.),” PHR, 13 (Apr. 22, 1898), 379–81, esp. 379. Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” 300. “Decided Improvement.”

  72 Wertenbaker, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.,—(Continued.),” 301–2. Hastings, “Smallpox at Middlesborough,” 380.

  73 Hastings, “Smallpox at Middlesborough, Ky.—(Concluded.),” 379–81.

  74 KBOH 1898–99, 23–24.

  75 Ibid., 23–24, 34–35.

  76 Bell County v. Blair, filed May 11, 1899, in KBOH 1898–99, 179–80.

  77 Matheny, Magic City, 229. KBOH 1900–01, 18.

  78 Surgeon General Walter Wyman, “Principles Governing the Extension of Aid to Local Authorities in the Matter of Smallpox,” in USSGPHMHS 1898, 630. The cash figure is from an untitled item in the MWR, Apr. 14, 1898, 6.

  79 Wyman, “Principles,” 630.

  THREE: WHEREVER WERTENBAKER WENT

  1 Photographs of Wertenbaker in the uniforms of the Warrenton Rifles and the Marine-Hospital Service, as well as various medals for his service in the Virginia Volunteers (state militia), survive in PCPW. C. P. Wertenbaker note, “In the event of my death . . . ,” Dec. 27, 1915, ibid. See U.S. Marine-Hospital Service, Regulations Concerning Uniforms (Washington, 1891).

  2 Wertenbaker describes his smallpox inspection suit in “Plan of Organization for the Suppression of Smallpox,” draft, CPWL, vol. 6.

  3 On the geographical mobility of southern laborers, particularly in the rural nonagricultural sector, see Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present (New York, 1992), 127–66.

  4 James A. Tobey, Public Health Law, 1. On the Service, see Laurence F. Schmeckebier, The Public Health Service: Its History, Activities, and Organization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1923); Robert Straus, Medical Care for Seamen: The Origin of Public Medical Services in the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798–1950 (Washington: Whittet E. Shepperson, 1951). See also John Duffy, The Sanitarians, 157–74, 239–55; Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace” (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

  5 In addition to running its 22 hospitals and 107 relief stations for the nation’s merchant marine, manning immigrant inspection stations, and advising southern communities as they fought smallpox, the Service was occupied with an outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco. [Walter Wyman], “Resume of the Operations of the U.S. Marine-Hospital Service,” PHR, 14 (Dec. 22, 1899), 2275–83.

  6 “Death, Here, of Noted Surgeon.” “Genealogical Material Re the Wertenbaker and Related Families,” PCPW. Historical Data Systems, comp., American Civil War Soldiers (Provo, UT: Generations Network, 1999).

  7 U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States (1870): Schedule 1—Population: Fredericksville Parish, Albemarle County, Virginia. U.S. Census Bureau, Tenth Census of the United States (1880): Schedule 1—Population: Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Virginia, Enumeration District 14. “Family Record of Charles Poindexter Wertenbaker,” PCPW. See Gerald N. Grob, The Deadly Truth, 116–19, 142, 192–94.

  8 “Death, Here, of Noted Surgeon.”

  9 Williams, United States Public Health Service, 508–9. C. P. Wertenbaker, “University of Virginia Alumni in the U.S. Public Health Service and Marine-Hospital Service,” University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin, [no date], 197, CPWL, vol. 2. Among those alums Wertenbaker mentioned by name was George M. Magruder, who headed the smallpox control effort at Birmingham.

  10 See generally Williams, United States Public Health Service.

  11 Margaret Humphreys, Yellow Fever and the South (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992).

  12 USSGPHMHS 1902, 30. Wertenbaker, “University of Virginia Alumni,” 196–97. Williams, United States Public Health Service, 492.

  13 Williams, United States Public Health Service, 500.

  14 “John William Branham,” eulogy pamphlet dated Aug. 23, 1893; CPWL, vol. 1. See also “John Frederick Groenvelt,” eulogy pamphlet dated Jul. 7, 1891, in ibid., vol. 1. “Dead in the Line of Duty,” WP, Aug. 21, 1893, 1. See also “Death of Acting Asst. Surg. Stuart Eldridge”: “He was a man of fine personal appearance, a cultured physician, and genial gentleman, and the U.S. Marine-Hospital Service has lost an able officer from an important post”; PHR, 16 (Nov. 22, 1901 ), 2709.

  15 C. P. Wertenbaker to J. D. Church, New York Life Insurance Co., Aug. 3, 1898, in CPWL, vol. 6.

  16 Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall. 36 (1873). Tobey, Public Health Law. See Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 191–248.

  17 Florence Kelley, Notes of Sixty Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley, ed. Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1986), 88. See Chicago Department of Health, General and Chronological Summary of Vital Statistics (Chicago, 1919), 1446; “Dr. Burson’s Resignation Accepted,” CT, Mar. 1, 1894, 8; R. M. Woodward, “The Cholera Quarantine Conducted by the U.S. Marine-Hospital Service in 1893,” paper read before the Cleveland Medical Society, Nov. 23, 1894, reprint from Western Reserve Medical Journal, January 1895. See also Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 265–68.

  18 C. P. Wertenbaker, “Arrival of Steamship Earnwell at Delaware Breakwater Quarantine with Three Cases of Smallpox,” PHR, 9 (Sept. 4, 1896), 826. See Sir Graham S. Wilson, The Hazards of Immunization (London: Athlone Press, 1967).

  19 U.S. Census Bureau, Negroes in the United States (Washington, 1904), 276. Works Progress Administration, Federal Writers’ Project, North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State, 249. See also, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 105–14; Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State, 520–22.

  20 “The Marine Hospital,” Wilmington Messenger, Jan. 30, 1898, 9. Photos of the Wilmington home and one photo of Alice and Alicia Wertenbaker out for a ride in the station wagon survive in WFP. See “Girardeau—Wertenbaker,” Boston Daily Advertiser, May 2, 1895, 8; “Wertenbaker Rites Slated for Today,” WP, Jan. 24, 1955, 20; Society Section, ibid., Sept. 9, 1917, E9.

  21 C. P. Wertenbaker to Frank Gilmer, May 22, 1899, CPWL, vol. 6. C. P. Wertenbaker, “Plan of Organization for Suppression of Smallpox in Communities Not Provided with an Organized Board of Health,” PHR, 14 (Oct. 22, 1899): 1765–80.

  22 C. P. Wertenbaker, “One Case of Smallpox in Wilmington, N.C.,” PHR, 13 (Jan. 14, 1898), 25. “Smallpox in Wilmington,” Fayetteville Observer, Jan. 13, 1898, no page.

  23 “Smallpox in the City,” WM, Jan. 13, 1898, 1. “A Riot Threatened,” ibid., Jan. 14, 1898, 4. “Map: Residential Patterns by Race, 1897,” in 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, Final Report, May 31, 2006, http://www.history.ncdcr.gov/1898-wrrc/report/maps/residential-patterns-by-race_1897.pdf, accessed October 5, 2009.

  24 “A Riot Threatened,” WM, Jan.
14, 1898, 4. “The Smallpox Scare,” ibid., Jan. 15, 1898, 4.

  25 “Smallpox in Wilmington.” “Burned the House Down,” CO, Jan. 15, 1898, 1. “Another Case of Smallpox in Wilmington,” BS, Jan. 17, 1898, 7. “Wilmington and the Smallpox,” Fayetteville Observer , Jan. 17, 1898, no page. “Compulsory Vaccination,” RNO, Jan. 18, 1898, no page. “General News of Interest,” Fayetteville Observer, Feb. 8, 1898, no page.

  26 “Smallpox in the City.” “Compulsory Vaccination,” WM, Jan. 25, 1898, 1. “Smallpox Petered Out,” ibid., Feb. 1, 1898, 1. “Do You Want to Be Vaccinated?” ibid., Feb. 1, 1898.

  27 “Afraid of Vaccination,” WM, Jan. 27, 4.

  28 “Compulsory Vaccination,” WM, Jan. 27, 1901, 1. “The Vaccinators Still at Work,” ibid., Jan. 29, 1898, 4.

  29 NCBOH 1897–98, 28. “Items of State News,” CO, Jan. 28, 1898, 4.

  30 J. W. Babcock to Senator B. R. Tillman, Apr. 20, 1898, in CPWL, vol. 1. C. P. Wertenbaker, “Investigation of Smallpox at Charlotte, N.C.,” PHR, 13 (Feb. 18, 1898), 140–41.

  31 Wertenbaker, “Plan of Organization,” 1779.

  32 Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1 (U.S., 1824). State v. W. E. Hay, 126 N.C. 999, 1001. Tobey, Public Health Law. See Michael Les Benedict, “Contagion and the Constitution: Quarantine Agitation from 1859–1866,” JHMAS, 25 (1970), 177–93; and Novak, People’s Welfare, 191–233. KBOH 1898–99, 82–84.

  33 C. P. Wertenbaker, “The Smallpox Outbreak in Bristol, Va.-Tenn.,” PHR, 14 (Nov. 3, 1899), 1890. See, e.g., C. P. Wertenbaker, “Report on a Case of Smallpox at Reidsville, N.C.,” PHR, 13 (Jul. 15, 1898), 714–15; C. P. Wertenbaker, “Smallpox in Georgia,” PHR, 14 (Nov. 3, 1899), 1891–92.

  34 KBOH 1898–99, 43. NCBOH 1903–04, 15. See, e.g., “Case of Smallpox at Camak,” AC, Mar. 26, 1901, 2; “Wright Crazed by Smallpox,” ibid., Apr. 4, 1901, 2.

  35 NCBOH 1897–98, 31, 32. “Will Consider Smallpox,” AC, Mar. 15, 1900, 4; “Lawmakers Show an Ugly Temper,” ibid., May 15, 1901, 3. J. F. Hunter, “Law for Compulsory Vaccination in Mississippi,” PHR, 15 (Mar. 2, 1900), 467. See John G. Richardson, “Variation in Date of Enactment of Compulsory School Attendance Laws: An Empirical Inquiry,” Sociology of Education, 53 (1980), 157.