Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867

An eyewitness account survives from inside the stricken town. On October 9, 1867, Livingston Lindsay, a La Grange lawyer appointed to the Texas Supreme Court that September, wrote to Governor E. M. Pease that the town had seen 170 deaths in a little over four weeks, out of no more than 1,600 people, and that more than half had fled. Dr. M. Evans and his daughter had died the night before. Three new cases had appeared in Lindsay's own household, and he wrote of exhaustion from tending the sick. Still, he judged the malady had nearly spent its force.

What the plaque says

Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867 From the time of the first European settlers in Texas, Yellow Fever was a serious concern. Transmitted through mosquitoes, epidemics in the summer months were prevalent in coastal cities all over North America in the nineteenth century. At the time, the cause was unknown with no effective treatment. Symptoms rapidly progressed from fever and pains in the extremities to vomiting to jaundice to death. The mortality rate varied during outbreaks from thirty to eighty percent of those infected. Between 1839 and 1867, at least nine yellow fever epidemics in Galveston resulted in a large number of deaths. When yellow fever struck La Grange in August 1867, many citizens left town hoping to avoid the disease. Within a few weeks, as homes with "Yellow Jack" were quarantined and businesses closed, La Grange appeared deserted. In some cases, entire families were lost as caregivers fell ill after tending the sick. Indiscriminate to age, race or class, the disease struck the wealthy and prominent as well as the poor. Several doctors, the District Judge, the Sheriff, and both the district and county clerks were among its casualties. While yellow fever affected many communities, its toll on La Grange was catastrophic with fatalities estimated at more than 200, fifteen to twenty percent of the total population. Evidence of the epidemic may be seen in the Old La Grange City Cemetery where a large number of gravestones show deaths from August through October 1867. However, the outbreak was so overwhelming that many victims lie unidentified in mass graves in the northeastern corner of the cemetery. These victims remind us of the once- devastating disease and its effect on early citizens. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 1.6 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 8.6 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 13 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 14 mi
  A red brick Gothic Revival church of 1906 in a German farm settlement, where two San Antonio painters spent 1912 faking marble columns and stone vaults on wood.

More markers nearby

• James Seaton Lester — steps away
• Old City Cemetery — steps away
• Fayette County, C.S.A — steps away
• Fayette County — steps away