Shreveport Martyrs of 1873 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century, Religion, Christianity, Catholic, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9781439673911
Google: aCFDEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2021-10-11T02:44:37+00:00

Ordination record of Father Louis Gergaud. Courtesy of the Archives of the Diocese of Nantes.

Every day must have seemed an Ember Day with fasting and works of mercy. This Ember Saturday, Father Gergaud went to find Father Biler and the sisters healthy enough that he took on other relief duties. He found the deathbeds of two former lay assistants of Father Pierre’s parish and provided them with their Last Rites.273 He also found a number of sick sisters and the nurses attending them. If it was still available, they received a strong dose of cathartic274 and were encouraged to remain calm, simultaneously taking ice and repeating the Ave Marias of the rosary. Father Gergaud’s presence dispelled any fear that they would die without the sacraments. Certainly, they invoked the day’s martyred saints, especially St. Eustace, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers frequently invoked in medieval plagues.

Father Biler seemed to be improving at St. Mary’s downtown, but this was part of the grim deceptive pattern of yellow fever.275 Father Gergaud wanted him carefully moved back to St. Vincent’s, where perhaps he would recover under the dutiful care of the sisters. On Sunday, September 21, Father Biler journeyed by enclosed carriage for a thirty-minute ride back to Fairfield, unaware that his second telegram, the one to Bishop Martin, had been answered. Father Le Vézouët would depart Natchitoches for Shreveport following the next morning’s Mass. Upon Father Biler’s arrival at the convent, the sisters rejoiced to see him again.276

Father Gergaud next turned to care for strangers. High on the list of victims were most certainly the volunteers themselves. He visited Otto Schnurr, the dry goods store clerk, who worked with Father Pierre and the first Howard volunteers in Fever Ward 1. Otto died the next day, having just reached his eighteenth birthday.277

As Father Pierre had the week before, Father Gergaud celebrated Sunday Mass, but there would be no church bells this time. All of the city’s churches agreed to hold the sound of bells in reserve, belonging to a more accommodating time. This was another ominous parallel to fourteenth-century Europe, when towns also silenced local church bells, except for the single toll to announce the burial of the dead. Then, there had been no need of pealing bells, as fear of plague shuttered people in their cottages, isolating them from each other and the sacraments. In the depths of that September, it was clear that the bells in Shreveport would not ring again for some time, until they could ring in celebration at the close of an epidemic.278 How soon could there be a frost?

As young Schnurr was laid to rest, the talk among the relief corps—now largely led by volunteers from New Orleans—was the widely publicized calculation that if the same outbreak, carrying the same mortality rate, were to strike the Crescent City, more than one thousand people would be expected to perish every day. This was a sobering calculation, indeed.279

†

Rain was a familiar constant companion, as unceasing as the grip of death around Father Gergaud.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.