The Yellow Fever Epidemic in Memphis

      Yellow fever is a devastating disease spread by the bite of a mosquito in which the victim experiences flu-like symptoms such as chills, aches, headaches, nausea, and fever. After a short remission, the symptoms would then worsen and could also include coughing up blood and liver damage with jaundice, which inspired the name of the disease. There were six outbursts in yellow fever in Memphis from 1828 - 1879, but none so devastating as the epidemic of 1878. In the span of just over two months, 5,150 people died of yellow fever in Memphis. The first Memphis resident to catch the fever was Kate Bionda, a restaurant owner who caught the sickness from a steamboat worker who had escaped from a quarantined ship and visited her restaurant. She died on August 13th, 1878. Panic spread, and 25,000 people fled the city within a week. By mid-September, there were an average of 200 deaths a day, and Elmwood Cemetery was managing about 50 burials a day. Half of the city’s doctors perished. It was an awful period in Memphis history, and the number of gravestones in Elmwood’s yellow fever section illustrates this stark reality. 

No Man’s Land in particular drives home the devastation Memphis went through. No Man’s Land is a grassy unmarked section of the cemetery that holds four public lots with about 1500 yellow fever victims buried there.

 Heroes of the Fever

  Mattie Stephenson (1855 - 1873)

      Mattie Stephenson was a young lady who came to Memphis in 1878 from Illinois after her fiance left her for another woman. Not long after she arrived, she volunteered to nurse the sick and dying and died herself from the fever within a week. She became a beloved figure in Memphis even in the short amount of time she was there, and when she died, the trustees at Elmwood set aside a lot for her. The public came up with the funds to erect a monument in her honor, and it stands in Elmwood today. The Elmwood book of 1879 said of Mattie, "The name of this poor unknown girl who today sleeps in Elmwood belongs not to Memphis; not to the little village which so recently knew her; it belongs to the world, to the records of heroism to which that of the conqueror of empires seems the merest devotion to duty."

 Dr. William J. Armstrong (1839 - 1878)

     Dr. William J. Armstrong was born in Maury County, Tennessee on the 24th of July, 1839. He attended Stephenson Academy studying medicine until the Civil War, where he served as Sergeant under Gen. Gideon J. Pillow, CSA. While Armstrong was in Memphis with the army in 1863, he met and fell in love with his wife, Louisa Caledonia "Lula" Hanna who he then married that year on her sixteenth birthday. After the Civil War ended, Armstrong moved back to Maury County with his family and worked as a doctor there until 1873 when he moved back to Memphis just in time for a yellow fever outbreak. Dr. Armstrong immediately sent his family back to safety in Maury County and managed to survive the first wave of the fever at which point his family returned to Memphis. However, when the disease came back with a vengeance in 1878 and he sent his family off again, including his newborn child. Armstrong’s letters to his family include moving descriptions of the ravages of the sickness and near the end, hope that the cool nights would bring an end to the epidemic. Armstrong did not live to see the end, however. He died on September 20th, 1878.

 

Annie Cook (1840 - 1878) 

     Annie Cook was one of those unexpected heroes that emerged during the yellow fever epidemic. She was listed in the city directory as a “madam” and her house as a “palatial resort” for “commercial affection”. I’ll let you guess what her profession was. However, when yellow fever hit Memphis, Annie turned her bordello into a hospital, sent away all her girls (though one stayed on to nurse), and turned her attentions to helping the sick. She died from the fever at age thirty-eight. Her obituary in the Daily Appeal read: “Out of sin, the woman in all tenderness and true fullness of her womanhood, merged, transfigured and purified, to become the healer, and at last to come to the Healer of souls with Him to rest forever… the woman who, after a long life of shame, ventured all she had of life and property for the sick.”

Works Cited

"Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records." Find A Grave. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. <http://www.findagrave.com/index.html>.

"First Victim of Memphis Yellow-fever Epidemic Dies." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. <http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-victim-of-memphis-yellow-fever-epidemic-dies>.

Magness, Perre, and Murray Riss. Elmwood 2002: In the Shadows of the Elms. Memphis, TN: Elmwood Cemetery, 2001. Print.

"Yellow Fever - the Plague of Memphis." Yellow Fever - the Plague of Memphis. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. <http://historic-memphis.com/memphis/yellow-fever/yellow-fever.html>.

"Yellow Fever." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Sept. 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.