GOD & TEXAS: Yellow Fever

In the mid-19th Century, when Texas was struggling to recover from the war with Mexico and the Civil War, the fledgling state was not prepared to fight the deadly yellow fever epidemic. The pathogen that caused this plague was not isolated until 1927, though some doctors accurately suspected earlier that it may have been transmitted by the Aedes aegypti female mosquitos. But that was too late to save thousands of victims. In 1867 alone, Galveston lost about 5% of its population of 22,000 to yellow fever.

Early Texans did not know the source of yellow fever, but some researchers discovered that new cases of the fever stopped once there was an area-wide freeze. Having little knowledge of the cause, doctors like Ashbel Smith could only prescribe bleeding and opium as a treatment for those who suffered.

Sadly, many notable Texans died from yellow fever including Confederate General Richard “Dick” Dowling, politician Isaac Van Zandt, and Margaret Moffette Lea Houston, the widow of Sam Houston. Additionally, the doctors who attended the infected often fell victim as well.

When the fever was raging through the area, Kezia Payne and her family moved to Galveston in 1837. Born in 1828 in the Madeira Islands east of Morocco, Kezia’s mother died after giving birth. Her father immigrated with the family to New York, and then to Galveston where he remarried. But in 1839, yellow fever claimed the lives of her father and two of her siblings.

Destitute, Kezia and her step-mother moved to Houston. During this personally tumultuous time, Kezia experienced an unsuccessful marriage to Adolph DePelchin, a financially irresponsible French musician.

Because Kezia had active immunity following exposure to the pathogen, she was able to nurse victims with little fear of contracting the disease. In 1878, the yellow fever epidemic, known as Yellow Jack, plundered Memphis, Tennessee. The Howard Association, a benevolent relief organization, brought Kezia in to help nurse the victims.

While in Memphis, Kezia wrote a series of poignant letters to her surviving sister Sallie in the Madeira Islands. In one letter, Kezia wrote about one disappointing experience: “I asked to be shown where I could go and buy a cup of coffee, no one would let me come about, for fear I might have fever in my clothing.”

Later, Kezia returned to Houston and invited several abandoned children into her home. First called the DePelchin Faith Home in 1892, it has now become the DePelchin Children’s Center, a nonsectarian, community-supported institution for dependent children.

As she nursed Yellow Jack victims in 1878, Kezia’s deep faith in God is revealed in this letter to her sister quoting Psalm 91:6: “I shall be where ‘the pestilence walketh in darkness and destruction at noonday’ that God has told us who trust in Him, not to be afraid. May He keep you and yours. May He keep our beloved state of Texas safe from the plague.”

What a beautiful example of total trust in God.

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