The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [121]
The Board of Health’s declaration of a yellow fever epidemic on August 23 was taken from the board’s minutes.
A City of Corpses
Descriptions of the city during the epidemic came from a number of sources: Keating’s firsthand account of the epidemic in his book; Reverend D. A. Quinn’s book Heroes and Heroines of Memphis or Reminiscences of the Yellow Fever Epidemics; and Dr. J. P. Dromgoogle’s Yellow Fever Heroes, Honors, and Horrors of 1878. All three books are part of the Yellow Fever Collection at the Memphis Library. I also consulted the George C. Harris papers at the Memphis Library, Charles G. Fisher papers at the University of Memphis and the accounts of the nuns at St. Mary’s. A number of the descriptions came from the accounts of the epidemic in the Appeal and the Avalanche.
I found the quote from Rutherford B. Hayes’s personal letter calling the Memphis epidemic “greatly exaggerated” in the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center on-line collection of the president’s letters and diaries. The dates when the mayor of Memphis and other officials wired the president were found in local papers.
Nearly all information pertaining to Sister Constance and the nuns at St. Mary’s was taken from a series of notes and letters found among Constance’s personal items after her death—they were collected and printed, though not published, as The Sisters of St. Mary at Memphis: With the Acts and Sufferings of the Priests and Others Who Were There with Them during the Yellow Fever Season of 1878. St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis houses that book.
Descriptions of St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral and information about it were based on visits there and an interview with Elizabeth Wirls. I also read the bound, printed history of St. Mary’s, available at the church. While St. Mary’s still has the original altar belonging to the nuns, the stole worn by Charles Parsons and the stained-glass rose window—that is almost all that remains of the original cathedral, which burned down several years after the epidemic. During a stay in Kansas City, however, I visited the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, which was built in the likeness of the Memphis church. It even has stained-glass windows commemorating the Martyrs of Memphis. It was there that I was able to get a sense of the dark-wood interior and Victorian, gothic architecture of the Memphis cathedral as it was when the nuns served there.
Some details, like the yellow cardboard hanging from doors, “bring out your dead” and the burning of infected clothing appeared in a 1932 Press-Scimitar clipping held in the Yellow Fever Collection at the Memphis Library.
I based my descriptions of Victorian mourning on the books Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life and Elmwood: In the Shadows of the Elms.
“A stranger in Memphis might have believed he was in hell” appeared in an article, “City Still Bears Scars of Epidemic Century Ago,” in the Commercial Appeal, June 18, 1978. The article was found in the Yellow Fever Collection. Also from that article came the statistic about one railroad ticket agent who sold $35,000 worth of train tickets in three days.
Descriptions of Elmwood Cemetery during the epidemic came from Elmwood, History of the Cemetery, written in 1874, and available at the Elmwood offices. I also visited the cemetery to read through its ledger book for 1878.
I found a reference to letters with holes punched through and fumigated with a studded paddle in a 1938 Commercial Appeal clipping in the Yellow Fever Collection of the Memphis Library.
The Destroying Angel
All information about Armstrong came from his original letters held in the William Armstrong papers in the Yellow Fever Collection and from an article in the West Tennessee Historical Papers, 1950. Additional information about him was found in the papers belonging to Constance and the nuns at St. Mary’s, as well as the William Armstrong file held at Elmwood Cemetery.
To recreate scenes involving Constance, Parsons and Armstrong, I relied on their personal letters, already