Dominicans in the American Plague: Catholic Ministry During the Yellow Fever Epidemics in Memphis, Tennessee, 1873–1879

Abstract

Yellow fever visited Memphis, Tennessee, in three unforeseen epidemics during the 1870s, bringing human and civic destruction. One of the epidemics’ untold stories is the Catholic priests and religious who remained to tend to the sick and dying—a heroism that cost forty-five members their lives. Dominican men and women found themselves in the maelstrom, serving a parish, two female academies, and an orphanage in the epidemics’ epicenter. Rather than flee the city, as so many others did, they remained and adapted to the realities of widespread death and suffering, turning academies into hospitals, protecting and even moving orphans under their care, and helping St. Peter’s Church become the focus of sacramental and physical care for the stricken. One Dominican pastor survived all three epidemics—and kept a diary of the event as it unfolded, accompanied throughout by an intrepid African-American maintenance man. The story of Catholic religious, and Dominicans in particular, in the yellow fever years has been largely untold or, still worse, ignored. Recognition of their work and sacrifices offers a more complete understanding of the “American plague.”