Dr. Bachman and the yellow fever epidemic
When Dr. Jonathan Waverly Bachman died on Sept. 28, 1924, the Chattanooga newspapers carried the story on their front pages and reported “Chattanooga grieved as never before.” According to an editorial written just four years later, Bachman’s ministry, which began in October 1873, had been a “beacon light to the community.”
A 50-year ministry is certainly exemplary, but how had Bachman become so endeared to the Chattanooga community and to his congregation at First Presbyterian Church? The numbers alone are staggering. In a 1928 Chattanooga Times article, Bachman is identified as having officiated at 1,600 marriages and 2,000 funerals, baptized 884 infants and 390 adults, conducted 2,500 prayer meetings and preached more than 3,000 sermons.
Bachman came to Chattanooga after having served for eight years as a pastor and president of a girls’ college in Rogersville, Tennessee.
Perhaps nothing more quickly cemented the city’s affection for him than his actions during the yellow fever epidemic.
In 1878, Chattanooga had rebounded from the Civil War, a financial panic, a series of floods and several waves of illness. While stories of the yellow fever outbreaks in other regions of the South were carried in Chattanooga newspapers, Bachman noted that few in Chattanooga seemed concerned that the epidemic would reach the city because of its higher elevation and its much heralded “mountain air.” Chattanooga newspapers carried stories inviting “refugees” from areas affected by the fever to come to the “Gateway to the South,” and many did.
The summer of 1878 was hot and humid. A friend recalled Bachman saying that he was “apprehensive from the first, as during the war he [a Confederate chaplain] was in the siege of Vicksburg, and had heard tales of the horrors of the disease and he felt the shadow before it fell.” While illness began to spread across Chattanooga, noted as “pernicious” and “malignant,” it was 10 days before the term “yellow fever” was used by physicians.
Upon the announcement that Chattanooga was now in the grip of a yellow fever epidemic, Bachman urged his congregants to meet each morning for prayer. He always began the session with an excerpt from the 91st Psalm: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terrors by night; nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction walketh at noonday.” He chose to remain in Chattanooga, caring for the members of his congregation while sending his wife and five children to stay with his brother, the Rev. John Lynn Bachman, and family in Sweetwater. He would later admit that the parting was difficult since he and his wife had only weeks earlier buried their daughter, Carrie.
Bachman never hesitated to “go to his sick patients of every race and color,” often choosing to “nurse them himself.” His journals noted that he was “careful to keep himself between the sick person and the open door” and, when sitting with those who died, he would “return home to bathe carefully and fumigate his clothing.”
In an Oct. 9, 1878, letter to his wife, Eva, Bachman shared, “Dearest Wife: This has been another of our bad days. As I wrote you, most of our volunteer corps of physicians are down, and today they have fallen on the right and the left, mostly negroes, and no one to look after them. Today I have heard them plead for a doctor, but none can be had. Some doctors will arrive from Atlanta tonight and will go to work at once. We look for better times tomorrow. May God bless and keep you all. Your own, Jonnie” … “P.S. I see that Mrs. J.B. Weaver died of yellow fever. It is pleasant to believe the separation was short between her and her husband.”
The following day, his letter to his wife reaffirmed his commitment to stay. “I have never felt that I would fall. I gave myself to God specially … And I have done so every day since and I feel safe here, because it is the path of duty, and I feel that I am doing God’s Will. If it be His Will to take me now, I know that he will care for you and the children … but I believe God has happy days for us yet, even here on earth.”
And the epidemic was just beginning …