Page 43 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

spring, exaggerated reports of sickness again made the rounds. This time it was scarlet
fever. Although there were a couple “imported” cases, according to The Leader, “Every
paper in the state has it that a malignant form of that disease prevails here.”

Later that spring, dozens of cases of smallpox did appear, and Roanokers had to deal with
another wave of negative publicity. A local physician traced the outbreak to a celebration to
mark the lighting of the Crozer Furnace. Afterwards several attendees caught the contagion
and died, as did a servant who washed the clothing of one of the deceased. An enclave of
black residents on Church Avenue came down with smallpox later in the week, and shortly
afterwards towns nearby banned Roanoke residents.

William Campbell, pastor of the town’s First Presbyterian Church, sent his wife Anna and
infant son to her parents home in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, to escape the contagion.
Back in Roanoke, he reported, doctors had quarantined the infected but found other cases
among blacks in Gainsborough. “The negroes,” Campbell reported, “are very much excited
and do not want to go to the hospital. It seems that all who go there die.”

The Richmond State listed upward of thirty cases of smallpox in Roanoke, and according to
The Leader, there were “similar paragraphs in nearly every paper in the State.” “Our
contemporaries,” S. S. Brooke complained, “exhibit a wonderful faculty for hearing anything
that can injure Roanoke.” Brooke’s paper dismissed reports running elsewhere, informing a
statewide audience that the few cases of smallpox in town “were colored.” No whites had
been sick, so there was no reason to be alarmed.

Hoping to quell additional cases, local authorities torched the “shacks” of those infected. No
new cases appeared, and William Campbell wrote Anna, begging her to return. “Roanoke is
healthy now & there are lots of babies,” he declared. From the paragraphs that followed,
however, she learned that her husband had just officiated at an infant’s funeral: “It was the
child of Hess the saloon keeper. Only 6 weeks old and died of whooping cough. It was a
dismal funeral. Only 5 or 6 were present. No lady except for the mother and daughter.”
Clearly shaken by the experience, Campbell admitted that he believed the town had
changed for the worse over the past two years. Roanoke, he complained, “is a hard place –
one may die here and but few people know or care anything about it.”

This was all very different from the neighborliness he had witnessed in Big Lick, and in
Campbell’s mind, a stunning rise in immorality was to blame. Having accompanied the
grieving Hesses to their quarters above the family business, the Reverend got a first-hand
look at the problem: “The saloon Hess keeps is a horribly vile place. No wonder they are so
dismal and forlorn.”

Many locals blamed the periodic outbreaks of smallpox on newly arrived blacks, and some,
like Campbell, bemoaned the emergence of saloons. Others, however, were made anxious
by the arrival of the Roanoke Land & Improvement Company and hundreds of northern
workers. The Roanoke Saturday News, owned and edited by longtime resident Rush U. Derr,
helped foster localism by publishing inflammatory rumors and attacking natives he believed
had become pawns of the Clark company.