History: Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1873, Caddo Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by: Gaytha Carver Thompson
Date: Jan. 1998



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Source: Shreveport Journal, June 27, 1935, the Centennial Edition
Collection of Mildred Legg Carver
Copy of newspaper clipping found in the papers of Mildred Legg Carver



PIONEER WOMAN TELLS OF YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC 
CADDO PARISH - 1873

Mr. Geo. T. Martin, one of Shreveport's pioneer citizens, has told her story
of the yellow fever epidemic here so interestingly, that the writer feels that
to do other than quote her directly would detract from the vividness of that
terrible plague.

"It was in August of 1873 when the fever began to rage in Shreveport.  Some of
the families moved away temporarily but those of us who could not leave went
through the most horrible time that Shreveport has ever know."

"I was married on Saturday, Sept. 10, 1873.  On the following Monday my
husband was taken sick with the fever and I nursed him until Thursday
following, when I, too, went to bed with chills and fever.  There were at the
time about fifty people dying each day from this disease.  Dr. Dalzell, one of
the finest men our city has ever known, worked night and day among the sick
trying to check the death rate.  What we would have done without him and the
others who helped him, shall never be known.  Businessmen who could not leave
their work died by the score.  A newspaper clipping of one issue of the
Shreveport Times told of the heavy mortality in the business district.  The
business district was bounded by the levee, Crockett, Spring and Milam Streets
on one day, 12 men were listed as having been claimed by the fever.  Their
names were: Nathan Hoss, Willie Elstner, Jr., John Mundy, O.T. Collins, Henry
Prescott, James Hoss, Paph La Cossit (who married my foster sister), Chas. W.
Pomeroy, H.C. Silver, W. W. McCain, T.L. Walker, and a restaurant man.

"Graves were filled as fast as they could be dug.  All during the night horses
could be heard carrying the dead, and the moans and weeping of the bereaved
families swept over the town.  Girls who were well today were dead from the
terrible fever in a week's time.  My husband was in the upper story of the
house where we were living at the time and I was downstairs.  'There were days
when I watched for them to carry up a casket for him, or maybe bring one to
me.  We were so sick, the plans had been made for our burial together.  As
fast as victims died, they were buried without much ceremony to ease the pain
of those left.  When entire families were swept out by the fever, their
clothes and everything in the house was burned.

"I shall never forget the day Whit McKeller died, I could hear him groaning
and crying out in his fever.  Nothing could be done to ease him.  He was in my
Aunt's house at the time, and I ask Auntie often if he was dying.  She told me
that he was not, but I knew from her tone of voice that she did not mean it. 
He died that day after he moaned and called out all day.  It was a fearful
time.

"We lived on Spring Street at the time, and at night I could hear the distant
street car, with its strong horses pulling it, as it went down the street. 
The fever continued well into the latter part of September and I remember how
joyful every surviving Shreveport was at the time to see cooler weather
approach.  My husband and I survived the sickness, but it was many months
before we were strong.  Nothing before or since has ever come to Shreveport to
leave such a trail of grief and suffering.