“Trouble, When Shared, Makes All People Akin”
Written by W. G. Colmery (former pastor of Bethesda and Edwards Presbyterian Church)
It was in 1897 or 1898 when the town of Edwards, Mississippi, was struck by an epidemic of yellow fever. Dates are unimportant in the telling of this experience in my life which happened when I was about seven or eight years of age.
Historians have recorded the dates for those of future generations, but this is the heretofore unrecorded ordeal of one who for over a half century has sought to forget rather than remember the plight and suffering which befell this small community of approximately 500 people. Like a bolt of lightning, a young and prominent business man of Edwards was stricken with a mysterious fever and died in three days. The three doctors there were baffled but diagnosed the case as Hematuria, a complication sometimes accompanying malaria, and prevalent in those days. The entire town was saddened by the death of so good a citizen and attended in full force the funeral services conducted in the home of the deceased. A week later, men, women and children in all parts of the town began falling ill with the same mysterious symptoms, and in three weeks it was in such epidemic proportions that calls were sent for help to the City of Vicksburg, 18 miles away.
Some who were well and financially able sent their families to the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina to escape the scourge, but soon the health authorities pronounced the disease yellow fever and the town was quarantined. All roads were blocked and carefully guarded night and day by State Militiamen. Trains went through the town at full speed with all doors and windows tightly closed. Mail was thrown from the speeding trains, but no mail was allowed to go out by any source.
The only means of communication with the outside world was through the railroad station telegraph operator. By this means, the outside world kept up, to a slight degree, with our situation. My father, one of the last of the circuit riders, was the pastor of four small Presbyterian churches covering a radius of about 35 miles. His family consisted of his wife and four small children. Friends had offered him the means of transportation to other parts for himself and his family; but he refused, feeling that his place was there with the suffering to render what comfort he could to the sick and bereaved. He officiated at the funerals of the first two victims of the disease and became one of the early cases in town.
In one of the small churches which he served there was a ruling elder, a physician, who some years previously had survived a spell of yellow fever and was thus immune to reinfection. When he learned by telegraph that my father had contracted the fever, he saddled his horse, bade his family farewell and rode 35 miles to aid his friend and to perform an act of love. He was stopped five miles from his destination by the guards and told he could not enter the town. When he had explained his immunity and the purpose of his mission, he was allowed to pass with the understanding he could not leave until the quarantine had been lifted.
When he arrived at our home, both my mother and father were desperately ill and he immediately took over the task of nursing, feeding and administering the medicine prescribed.
A few days later, my two sisters and eighteen-month-old brother went to bed with the fever, leaving me the lone member of the family able to help with the many chores to be done. It was at this young age that I experienced the loneliness and frustration a child can feel and it has guided me all my life in my dealings with young people, who I feel sometimes fail to receive the sympathy they so often need.
A touching story could be written about every family in Edwards during this episode but what happened in our home in the days and weeks following the outbreak is so typical of all that it will be sufficient to describe the tragedy which affected every home and individual.
The African American population were in the majority by about five to one and for some unknown reason seemed immune to yellow fever. We all survived on the land and every family supplied its food by growing vegetables, keeping a cow and chickens, and raising a hog or two and a beef. Hunting and fishing also contributed meat to a large extent. In order to share what we had, we had a gardener, a cook, a milkmaid, a nurse for the children, and a woman who washed the clothes. The meager salaries they were paid consisted of just about half my father earned, but we all ate well, although short on clothes and other articles. Despite the shortages, no people of two races ever lived together in as much harmony, happiness and understanding, as will be borne out in the further relating of the trials we suffered in the yellow fever epidemic.
In my loneliness brought on by the illness of all the family except myself, my only consolation and comfort was supplied by the daily coming of the faithful helpers and the constant presence of the nurse day and night. The doctor had closed himself off in two adjoining rooms with my mother and father, to whom he was giving his full time and attention. The nurse had placed two large beds together in another room and the four children, three of them ill with yellow fever, slept together. The nurse got what sleep she could on a pallet on the floor for ten days or longer without removing her clothes.
After a few days, my father began to show rapid recovery and I was permitted to go in and visit with him for a few minutes at a time but with the distinct understanding that I would not tell him anything about the deaths the town had suffered. It was a confidence hard to keep but which I did implicitly.
My mother, instead of improving, suffered a relapse and had black vomit, which was to everyone a sure sign of certain death within a few hours. Visiting health authorities came daily where there were patients, and a part of their duties was to see that corpses were rushed to burial before bodies were cold in hopes of preventing further spread of the disease. On the morning of my mother’s relapse, they went into her room, took her measurement for a wooden coffin, and informed the doctor that someone would be there soon to remove her body. She was, of course, in a stupor and at death’s door.
When they had gone, the doctor, God bless him, locked all doors and refused entrance to anyone and, in defiance of the authorities, sat at my mother’s bedside for three days and nights, giving hourly nourishment by spoon. She rallied and up to her death at the age of eighty was still giving thanks for the doctor friend who saved her life and restored her to usefulness.
In an effort to stop the epidemic. Health authorities had ordered all children to wear small bags containing asafetida arounds their necks during the day and at night. At dusk, every home was surrounded with buckets and pails in which were placed pine chips covered with tar and sulfur. These were lighted and put up a dense black smoke which covered the entire town like a black cloud.
The purpose, of course, was to purify the air from whence it was thought the germs of yellow fever were breathed and the disease contracted. Several years passed before it was known that, in our ignorance, we were in reality striking at the very source of infection, a mosquito which had no likin for either the odor of asafetida or the dense smoke from the burning pails.
During the height of the epidemic, when every household in the town was a hospital in itself and families were suffering a plight similar to ours, it became my duty to run the errands, help with the sick, and light the fires each evening, all made more sinister by the odor of the asafetida being constantly breathed from the little bag around my neck.
The town had commandeered a single horse drawn wagon, a railroad handcar, and the town hearse for transporting the dead to the graveyard. On many of my trips to town, I saw each of these vehicles loaded with from to four coffins rushing on their way for burial. This went on day and night without any religious rites whatsoever. I saw daily the corpses of neighbors being removed, only to wonder which member of the family it could be. It brought fear to my heart that soon it would be my own loved ones.
Those who survived the early stages were, after two or three weeks, beginning to return to work and be of help in caring for the sick who continued to go down all during the months of July, August, and a part of September. In September, a checkup showed that every white person in the town except myself had suffered with the disease, and that in many homes there had been at least one death. Ours was one which had escaped this sorrow.
One of the earliest killing frosts ever experienced in Edwards came in mid-September. This, in our belief, purified the air and eliminated any danger of our carrying the germ to other parts and, to the delight of everyone, the quarantine was lifted. Orders were given to fumigate all houses and to burn every mattress, every pillow, and even the paper on the walls and the mattings on the floors.
After this cleanup job had been completed, the quarantines were lifted, those who had taken refuge returned and the town settled down to normal living but with many a sad heart over the increased population in the city of the dead just beyond town limits.
Five days after the lifting of the quarantine and the fumigation of the houses, I suffered a chill and went to bed with yellow fever. In fact, it was a relief since I had felt a little peculiar being the only citizen in Edwards who had been passed by and evidently forgotten. Perhaps the surviving mosquito which at last got me had lost some of his sting because, after five days in bed, not very ill, I was up and well again. Proud, however, that I too could claim to have been a victim along with everyone else.
Never shall I forget the gathering of the family as our doctor friend, this ruling elder in the little Presbyterian church of which my father was pastor, prepared to leave and return to his own family 35 miles away. To this day, I can see him in his saddle on his fine bay horse, happily going down the road and home again to his loved ones.
After we had eaten breakfast, with the family and the doctor seated around the table, and with four of the faithful hired help sitting nearby in the kitchen, my father read the Psalm 23 and followed it with a fervent prayer of thanksgiving and gratefulness to a kind Providence for our doctor friend and others who deserved the plaudit, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Tears were flowing freely as the doctor said goodbye and hands were shaken with all as words of gratefulness and thanks were spoken by everyone.
We had been through trouble together and there was a feeling of kin and a full understanding of our relations toward each other.
The lessons learned from this distressing experience have enriched my life and given faith and fortitude to me on many occasions, but most of all, a fuller appreciation of the virtue of kindness, tolerance, and sympathy for those in need and in trouble.
