The voice of David Winfield Booth

VICKSBURG, Miss. (VDN) by Terry and Therese Winsche — The following tells the story of David Winfield Booth.

Dearest reader, I am David Winfield Booth. “My eyes first beheld the light of this world” on July 17, 1840, about eight miles east of the City of Vicksburg at “Oakley”, the home of my parents Stephen Sorsby Booth and Ann Eliza Valentine Booth. My maternal grandmother was Martha Gibson, daughter of the Reverend Tobias Gibson, who is considered the founder of Methodism in the State of Mississippi. I had three siblings, Roswell, Pattie, and Annie. I was educated in country schools until I entered the University of Louisiana, graduating from its medical school in 1861 with plans to start my career in medicine, “when the clouds of war began to gather on the horizon.”

In the early part of May, I along with my brother Roswell joined the “Volunteer Southrons” and travelled to Richmond, Virginia, where our command soon became Company A of the 21st Mississippi Infantry of the Confederate Army. There, I served as an Assistant Surgeon until the surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. I returned home, determined to put the horrors of the war behind me, hoping to pick up the pieces of my life. I started a new position as Physician at the City of Vicksburg Hospital.

On a much happier note, on May 9, 1866, I married my wife Belle Woodruff at her father’s home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Afterwards, we returned to Vicksburg and made our home and started our family, welcoming our sons Stephen in 1868 and Howell in 1869; our daughter Hortense in 1872 and our youngest son David, Jr. in 1875.  Life was busy and rewarding, but clouds were again forming on the horizon for the citizens of Vicksburg, this time in the form of a pestilence that spread quickly and spared no one, young or old, rich or poor.

In 1878, we had heard rumors of the rapid spread of Yellow Fever in the region and the first cases appeared in Vicksburg from the infected crew of the Steamer John Porter out of New Orleans. By the time, the steamer docked at Vicksburg, most of the crew were dead and the rest were gravely ill and carried to our hospital. The situation quickly became critical, and Vicksburg was placed under quarantine. Feeling strongly that the disease would soon reach epidemic proportions, I sent my beloved family to my wife’s family home in Alabama. Only my brother remained and I was finally able to convince him to leave with his wife on August 9th.

Within a week of that final goodbye, the disease was raging furiously and spreading with alarming rapidity through all portions of our doomed city. Load after load of the diseased and dying were sent to our hospital. Friends and acquaintances were falling all around me, and my staff was seriously depleted. Some had succumbed to the disease while others fled in terror after witnessing the horrific effects of the “yellow plague”. Sorrow and anguish filled every heart and death stared into each face of the inhabitants of our beleaguered city.

Despite our best efforts, we watched helplessly as our treatments and efforts failed in our battle against this, “demon of destruction”.  I defiantly continued to fight until I, “felt the insidious poison slowly creeping through my veins”. Exhausted and unable to continue, I petitioned Reverend Mother De Sales Browne of the good Sisters of Mercy to come to the aid of the hospital.

I was given shelter and care by the hands of loving friends, who ministered to me until my last moments and tenderly laid me to rest upon my death on August 27, 1878.

*script written by Terry and Therese Winschel*