The American Plague

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by Molly Caldwell Crosby


  More than 125 years have passed, and still, wreaths of fresh flowers stand in Elmwood, browned and crisped by the September sun, on the tombstones of Charles Parsons, Louis Schuyler and the Martyrs of Memphis. It is a reminder—they have not been forgotten.

  Old roads with names like Toof, Porter and Wellford wind through the grounds of Elmwood, where a soldier from the American Revolution and Civil War generals are buried. Tombstones, new and old, pockmark the grass like a garden of granite and marble. Some are grand, tall, ornate. Stone angels and monuments of all shapes and sizes stand in the geometry of sunlight and shade. Others are smaller, no more than two feet long, where small children have been buried.

  In the middle of the cemetery is a grassy plane, strangely vacant. There are no granite tombs or crumbling concrete, just a sun-washed, treeless patch of green known as “No Man’s Land.” Here, 1,500 unidentified bodies are buried. At one time, their skin burned with yellow fever; now they lie in a cool, dark place where long ago their arms and legs, hands and feet, were intertwined for eternity.

  Dr. William Armstrong is buried along Park Avenue in the ground beside his wife, who died on the same date as her husband, September 20, forty-six years later. Their children lay around them. A few feet away is the monument for Gideon Johnson Pillow, the general under whom Armstrong served as a surgeon during the Civil War.

  Up the grassy incline from Armstrong is a flat pyramid of stone. On the four sides of the pyramid it reads Constance, Thecla, Frances and Ruth. The dates follow one another in quick succession— September 9, September 12, September 17, October 4. The point of the pyramid is the year 1878, and their bodies are buried in the shape of the cross, their tombstone standing at center.

  Across the road from “No Man’s Land,” a tall cross atop a monument reaches heavenward. The cross has been mottled by time, streaked by years of rain. Two names and dates are carved into the stone, but the inscription that reads priests and died of yellow fever has grown shallow with age. Here, Charles Carroll Parsons and Louis Schuyler are buried together. One lived in Memphis for years surrounded by family and parishioners; the other lived in Memphis only ten days.

  On November 1, 2005, the superintendent, Sunny Handback, retired from Elmwood. He had worked there since he was sixteen years old. He had scattered dirt across countless graves, occasionally meeting an old man or woman visiting the cemetery who would tell stories about yellow fever and the year 1878, when wagons full of bodies arrived, and citizens just walked into the cemetery, a corpse thrown over their shoulders and a shovel in their hands, to bury bodies anywhere they could find space. Even in recent years, groundskeepers have dug into a plot only to find the bones of an unmarked yellow fever victim buried there.

  In 1878, another man held the same position as Handback. He worked as the superintendent of Elmwood during the yellow fever epidemic, and he lived on the grounds with his daughter, Grace, the “Graveyard Girl.” In the cemetery’s red leather logbook, the handwritten names begin in August. At first, the cause of death is listed as yellow fever, but by September of 1878, ditto marks are used, page after page. In many cases, a whole family—husband, wife and all of their children—are listed in a long row. It was Grace’s hand that wrote the names, dates and cause of death, and it was Grace who rang the bell each time a body was buried. The bell tolled continuously until Grace too was stricken by yellow fever.

  A burgeoning river city once stood at one of the widest points of the Mississippi River. Andrew Jackson, James Winchester and John Overton named it Memphis after the ancient, wealthy city along the Nile. Memphis, Tennessee, was a city rich in land and promise, where trains linked it to the East and West and paddleboats tied it to the North and South. It was visited by presidents and royalty, and it held the most extravagant Mardi Gras parades ever seen. White marble buildings stood on the bluff above cotton-laden steamers, and a population of white and black, northern and southern, immigrant and native saw their future. It seemed bright and certain. That city no longer exists.

  The heavy German and Irish immigrant populations are gone for the most part, and the city’s character has instead been shaped by the rural influence of freed slaves and farmers. Where mansions once stood along Beale Street, there is now a rough-edged, gospel-laced music known as blues. Barbecue, the food that originated in the fire pits outside slave quarters, is a culinary favorite. Many old buildings surrounding Court Square and downtown are today hollowed out with broken glass or restored as condominiums. The Gayoso Bayou now runs beneath the paved city streets.

  And yet someone from 1878 would be surprised to find that many of the same contrasts remain: There is still racial strife, which reached its peak with the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. There is still a great divide between the wealthy and poor. There are undercurrents of political corruption. There is a strong religious influence, primarily Protestant. Paddleboats still bob at the edge of the Mississippi River, and Cotton Row stands along Front Street. The Pinch District is thriving, and the Peabody Hotel is still in operation. Court Square has been restored. The city is still a major hub with boats, trains and now, planes. And the defining characteristic of the city is still a steadfast, stubborn will to survive—one that started with the devastation of the 1878 yellow fever epidemic.

  Memphis was one town, one place, where yellow fever took its greatest toll, nearly destroying the city and forever changing its future, but there were hundreds more over two centuries that suffered from the American plague. Shades of those epidemics changed populations, commerce, cities, politics, wars and ultimately history. Federal laws were born in its wake. It spawned racism and prejudice, but it also inspired sacrifice and martyrdom. It created a national hero in Walter Reed and a Nobel Prize winner in Max Theiler. It touched the lives of politicians like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. It influenced literature through the likes of Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Stephen Crane and Mark Twain. And it took the lives of countless doctors, nurses, priests, nuns and ordinary civilians—most of their names have been forgotten. The American plague has been forgotten.

  But in Memphis it still lives, quietly, in the bones beneath the branches of elms and in a lissome, lyre-marked mosquito that waits for the virus to find it once again.

  Acknowledgments

  Though I never had the honor of meeting any of the people in this story, I admire them above and beyond what could be expressed in the pages of this book. Whether the martyrs of Memphis or the martyrs of science, their courage, suffering and sacrifice are almost unmatched in today’s world.

  As long as I live in Memphis, I will see the ghosts of this story in the doorways of churches, on the street corners of the Pinch, along Adams and Main and in the gravestones of Elmwood. Likewise, my admiration knows no bounds for the scientists who sacrificed so much in the fight against yellow fever: Jesse Lazear, Walter Reed, James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte, Carlos Finlay, Max Theiler, among others. In an age where heroism can be so hard to come by, the fourteen human volunteers in Walter Reed’s experiments amaze and inspire me.

  In writing about history, a book is only as good as its research.

  For their help, time and support, I thank those in the Memphis and Shelby County History Room at the Memphis Library, particularly Patrica LaPointe. Not only did she help me make some of the connections vital to this story, but she granted me access to so many irreplaceable, original documents. I also want to thank Joan Echtenkamp Klein and Claudia Sueyras with the Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Collection at the University of Virginia’s Claude S. Moore Health Sciences Library. Their Walter Reed Collection is beautifully maintained; I rarely needed their assistance and that is a tribute to such an organized and accessible historical collection.

  Also deserving of recognition are the curators of the Mississippi Valley Collection at the University of Memphis, the Health Sciences Library at the Univers
ity of Tennessee in Memphis, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Library of Congress and the National Library of Medicine, as well as Georgia Fraser at Elmwood Cemetery, Elizabeth Wirls at the St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis, Professor Gary Lindquester in the Rhodes College Department of Biology and Ron Brister at the Memphis Pink Palace Museum.

  One of the most valuable lessons I have learned as a writer is to be a reader of great writing. I have had the privilege to know and learn from some truly great writers: Candice Millard Uhlig, a gifted author and cherished friend; Hampton Sides, who was kind enough to give a first-time author and fellow-Memphian his help and encouragement; and Robert M. Poole, whose talent as an editor is exceeded only by his talent as a writer. A former executive editor at National Geographic, Bob Poole saw enough potential in me as a writer to give me a chance. I thank him for that.

  I would also like to thank Mary Collins, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Zanvyl Kreiger School of Arts and Sciences, who has pushed me, challenged me and taught me. She was involved in the proposal for this book as well as in editing early drafts. I would also like to thank David Everett, my thesis advisor in the Hopkins writing program who first introduced me to the genre of narrative nonfiction.

  So many friends offered their encouragement and support during this project. I would like to thank personally Allison Cates, Claire Davis, Jennifer Fox, Tessa Hambleton, Davida Kales, Lauren Kindler and Margaret McLean. Special thanks to Andy Cates, a long-suffering champion of my writing.

  I am eternally grateful to my parents, Tom and Betsy Caldwell, and my in-laws Glenn and Nancy Ann Crosby, for their unceasing support, time, encouragement and commitment. I am indebted to them for allowing me to have a career in writing as well as a family without giving up one for the other. My parents have taught me to follow my passion and never once questioned where it might take me. I thank them for instilling in me such a valuable lesson—that life is too short to spend it doing anything other than what you love. As Memphians, Nancy Ann and Glenn Crosby took an active interest in this story; as a doctor, Glenn Crosby allowed me to sit in his study and riffle through medical texts; and as my in-laws, they offered their steadfast encouragement.

  I would also like to thank other family members who have been sounding boards and sources of strength. My sister Lindsey has been an ever-present and perpetual believer in me, and I thank her for her unconditional love and support. Scott Crosby, an avid reader of nonfiction, always seemed sure that I would write this book. I thank him for his optimism and belief in me. Likewise, other family members have been stalwart sources of support and encouragement: Glenn Crosby, Liz Crosby, Meg Crosby and Elizabeth Crosby.

  Special thanks to Mark Crosby for his photographic talents. I owe a debt of gratitude to Mark for accompanying me to Cuba in search of forgotten places. The trip would not have been the same without him; the book would not have been the same without him.

  I am greatly indebted to my agent, Ellen Geiger, who was willing to take a chance on an unknown author. More than simply believing in me, she persisted until this story found its rightful place. Without her loyalty and energy, this book would never have happened. I am also grateful to my editor, Natalee Rosenstein, for her confidence in me. She took a leap of faith, and I thank her for it.

  I will be forever grateful to my husband and two daughters for their own sacrifices during this project. They were patient participants in a lengthy, involved and often-chaotic process. My daughter Morgen, a master of self-expression, reminds me daily of the gift of storytelling. I thank her for giving up some of her mother to this book. Keller, who was born midway through this project and learned to be lulled to sleep by the sound of typing, has been a quieter, but no less effective, source of inspiration and encouragement. Finally, my husband, Andrew, has been unfailing in his support of me since the day we met. I am forever indebted to him for believing in me—as a writer, as a wife, as a mother. Thank you.

  Notes

  The introductory quote is from John Edgar Wideman’s Fever, part of his collection first published by Henry Holt and Company in 1989.

  Prologue: A House Boarded Shut

  My account of the Angevine family and their deaths from yellow fever in 1878 is based on two primary sources. One is a letter written by Ray Isbell in 1978 to the Press-Scimitar newspaper. Lena Angevine Warner was the great-great-aunt of Isbell. Isbell recounted family stories of how an old slave investigated the house, breaking open a window, and found the corpses of the Angevine family in their various states of decomposition. The Isbell letter also described how the slave saved Lena, who was a child at the time. Isbell’s letter is part of the Eldon Roark Papers held in the Mississippi Valley Collection at the University of Memphis.

  The second source is a letter written by Lena A. Warner in 1904. She tells of her father being robbed and choked while she was too ill to help. She also describes her experience as a nurse during the Spanish-American War. The Warner letter is held in the Lena Warner file of the Memphis Library, Memphis Historical Collection.

  Biographical information about Lena Angevine Warner was collected from various newspaper sources, including a 1948 obituary from the Associated Press, a 1948 obituary in the Knoxville News Sentinel, a 1953 story in the Memphis Commercial Appeal and a 1994 article by Perre Magness in the Commercial Appeal. Biographical information is also available in Patricia LaPointe’s From Saddlebags to Science, E. Diane Greenhill’s From Diploma to Doctorate: 100 Years of Nursing and Paul Coppock’s Memphis Memoirs.

  There were a number of discrepancies in the facts surrounding Lena Angevine Warner, especially involving her marriage and her role in the Walter Reed discoveries. One source wildly claimed that Lena Warner delivered a Cuban baby, passed her own kidney stones and performed a circumcision, a tonsillectomy and an amputation with a kitchen knife—all in one night. In this book, I adhered to the facts presented by Warner, her family or those who worked with her. When a fact could not be verified by another source, I said as much or left the material out of the book.

  Part I: The American Plague

  To recreate the path yellow fever followed out of Africa and across the Atlantic, I studied the virus’s behavior today. The process by which the mosquitoes lay eggs in the hollows of trees and how the virus was first transmitted from mosquitoes to monkeys to men entering the West African forests for logging was based on research from two main sources: Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio’s book Mosquito and Michael Oldstone’s Viruses, Plagues, and History. In both Africa and South America, yellow fever follows a similar course today.

  Scientists generally agree that yellow fever originated in West Africa in any number of countries—where it still exists today in its purest genetic form. I chose to focus on Nigeria because that country is currently considered the hotbed of yellow fever. Descriptions of Nigeria, its plant life, topography, trade and weather, including the southwest monsoon, are based on a series of country studies published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress and are available on-line or in hard copy.

  I based my description of viruses in general, as well as the specifics of the yellow fever virus, on the book Epidemic!, which was edited by Rob De Salle and published for the American Museum of Natural History. I also relied on virus descriptions from John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza and Gina Kolata’s Flu. Both books do an excellent job of taking a complex subject and presenting it in comprehensible terms. For the specifics of the yellow fever virus, I studied information provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. For descriptions of the way the yellow fever virus reacts to a human cell, I relied on material from the National Institutes of Health. All of the technical information aside, personification of the virus—the idea that the virus itself is evolving, thinking, trying to conquer—is obviously a creative technique of my own making. There is no scientific evidence to suggest such.

  For information about the slave trade—the Middle Passage— I
based my descriptions on Madeleine Burnside and Rosemarie Robotham’s book Spirits of the Passage. Their book not only provides general statistics about the trade but also illustrations and firsthand accounts that include some of the more disturbing details like the fact that Europeans might taste the sweat of slaves as a test for disease or that sharks trailed slave ships waiting for bodies to be thrown overboard.

  The idea that yellow fever altered the history of the United States is not a new idea; after all, the virus’s moniker “the American plague” says it all. Margaret Humphreys, in her book Yellow Fever and the South, writes, “Tuberculosis, smallpox, or typhoid might well kill as many or more every year yet fail to stir the public from apathy . . . Yellow fever was a disease whose presence often created mass panic, a response that brought commercial interactions to a standstill.” To support my argument that it shaped our country’s history, I compiled statistics from a wealth of sources.

  Basic statistics about the number of countries and states stricken with yellow fever, as well as the number of people afflicted, were taken from the Conclusions of the Board of Experts authorized by congress to investigate the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. The report was written in 1879 and is available in the Rare Book Collection of the Library of Congress. The report also estimates the cost of the 1878 epidemic as $200 million, which today would be calculated as over $350 million. The reason why yellow fever has never afflicted Asia despite the right climate and the right mosquito is a mystery. Robert S. Desowitz, a professor of tropical medicine and author of Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria, suggests that it may be due to the fact that the African slave trade never extended to that part of the world.

 

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