September 5, 2025 • 47 mins
Mary and her family move back to San Antonio, but tragedy follows them there.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good evening. This is am i an.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Today is Thursday, the fourth, my courses, It's ninety two,
so it's kind of warm. So I have the air
conditioner on and I'm sitting in a shade. So we'll
see if that works. Because this is Thursday, which is
time for Jesus history. So we're gonna read the next
chapter of Mary Maverick's memoirs, and this one is chapter fourteen,
(00:25):
and unfortunately it is titled the Angel of Death. That
means this is not gonna be a good chapter for Mary.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
But we're gonna see what happens.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
But after all, the Peninsula was not home to us
in the full sense of that word. Mister Maverick was
constantly returning to San Antonio on business, and on each
visit he was making new investments, knitting his interests and
his sentiments more and more with the life and growth
of San Antonio and the surrounding country. To me, the
(00:56):
four years of our early married life spending San Antonio
seemed like a bright vision, a veritable romance. The memory
of the stirring events of that period and the birth
of my Lewis and Agatha there kept my affections warm
for the dear old place. On the fifteenth day of
October eighteen forty seven, with bag and baggage, we left
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the point and set off for San Antonio. It was
right said to leave a pleasant home and the friends
we had gathered during the three years, and not the
least regret was it to say goodbye to mister Peck,
who had taught our children faithfully for two years and
been a member of our household. But his health was
re established, and he obeyed the urgent request of his
(01:39):
mother to return to her in his native state. He
was quite anxious to go with us to San Antonio,
but he parted with us at the past and returned
to Ohio at Levaca. We stopped at Missus Staunton's until
the nineteenth, where Lizzie and I, with Agatha and George
and his nurse Betsy, took the stage for San Antonio
(02:00):
first stage ride in Texas. Mister Maverick, sam Lewis and
the servants took passage with the wagons and our household goods,
and we did not see them again until November fourth.
We spent the first night in Victoria with Maggie Pearson,
the second in Quero at Cardwells. On the twenty first,
(02:21):
we stopped in Gonzales with Missus Brown. It rained all
night and until nine the next morning. The twenty second,
we went only a short distance and stopped with old
Lady Tremble, which is an interesting way to.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Refer to this lady.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Missus Tremble had lived here for over twenty years. Okay,
so think about that. That is it's eighteen forty seven,
so she had lived there in the eighteen twenties, which
is pretty interesting because I do know we had.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
People.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We didn't have Americans in Texas as early as that.
Let me see where I lost my place. Sus Tremble
had lived here over twenty years and had herself fought
the Indians. Her first husband had been killed, and her
second husband fell in the Alamo. Three months after his death,
(03:11):
she gave birth to twin girls, now eleven years old.
An older daughter's husband had fallen with dawson, and she
had given birth seven weeks after his death to a
girl and had died. The pretty child was five years
old when we were there, and the idol of her
fond grandmother. The twenty third, we reached New Bronsvill's at
(03:32):
the junction of the Comal with the Guadalupe. This was
a pretty place and rapidly filling up. I thought the
Comal the loveliest dream I ever saw. Sunday, October twenty fourth,
at three pm, we arrived in San Antonio and stopped
at Aunt Anne Bradley's at the southeast corner of Commerce
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in at Chrury Streets. Everything covered with dust and the
heat awful. The town seemed much changed since eighteen forty two.
Many strangers had settled here and immigrants were arriving daily.
Not until November the fourth did mister Maverick's party arrive.
The hired wagoners insisted on stopping five days at their
(04:15):
home on the way, and I had time to grow
very uneasy about them. But all were well, and we
moved directly into our old home with a dirt floor
for the seamen had all worn off.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
The fence around.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
The garden was nearly gone, and the garden itself was
in a dilapidated condition, but the figs and the pomegranates
were still standing. The weather grew quite cold, and we
learned that many people were sick with coals and diarrhea,
and almost every day somebody died which made us quite doleful.
I recalled our first residence in San Antonio, and it
(04:49):
seemed that in those days there was scarcely any sickness,
and positively no case of fevers, saved the case of
Colonel Carns, which was yellow fever imported from Houston. Now
all of our children suffered some illness. Late in November,
Lewis was spending a top at the front door, and
George was sitting on the door seal when Lewis's top
(05:10):
bounced up and struck George on the forehead. George went
into spasms, but we packed him in a wet sheet
and blankets and he got well, but he was quite
low for a week or so, and he has ever
retained the scar. December first brother Andrew, surgeon and Captain
Veach's company, spent a few days with us on his
(05:32):
way to the Rio Grande. On Friday, December the twenty fourth,
our sixth child, Willie H.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Was born.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
The joyous bells of Christmas Eve were ringing when he
was born. Eighteen forty eight. April fourth, eighteen forty eight,
mister Maverick left with mister Tyvee, Deputy Surveyor, and a
considerable surveying party to have a pet location on the
Los Morris Creek surveyed our head right certificate on the
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head spring and Fort Clark is on that track. He
also located much land below that survey. April twenty ninth,
mister Clow came to marry Lizzie, although she has not
set the day. The angel of death. Sunday, April the thirtieth,
my dear little Agatha took fever.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Lizzie and I.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
With the girls and Betsy and the baby were out
walking and we were near the mill bridge. When she
first complained. I told Betsy to take the baby and
go home with her, when Agatha said, oh, if my
papa was here, he would carry me. At this time,
Agatha was a large and very beautiful child of seven years.
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She was the idol of her father, and in return
for his devoted affection for her, she idolized him. The
sentiment of love between mister Maverick and the sweet child
was nothing, was something extraordinary, something beautiful and touching to behold.
When I got home, I bathed her intepid water and
cared tenderly for her. But on the following day she
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grew much worse, and I called in the services of
doctor Couples. He gave her an emetic and I had
to look that up. That's something to induce I guess
basically diarrhea. I get it was something you would use
(07:25):
for constipation. Apparently, I'm not sure that was her problem,
but that's what he gave her, and then powders and enemas,
but nothing seemed to reduce the fever or overcome the stupor.
Day by day, doctor Couples encouraged me to hope, but
I lost my appetite and passed many sleepless nights for
a terrible fear took possession of me. My fears whispered
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in my heart, Agatha is dying, and I lost hope.
The poor child with crimson cheek and shining eyes sometimes
raved wildly. Once she screamed out in an agonizing manner,
Oh Sam. She thought she saw Indians about to kill Sam.
When she took her medicine the first in her life,
she would say, Mama, will you tell Papa I was
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good and took my medicine. Once she said Mama, if
I die, but I could not bear it. I stopped
her before she could speak.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Another word.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
How often have I regretted my action and fondly longed
to know what the dear Angel would have told me.
Her father was still out on his surveying expedition on
the Los Morris, and we had no means of communicating
with him. On May eighth. The poor child breathed her
last at two am Tuesday, May eight ninth, eighteen forty eight.
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Even now in eighteen eighty, after thirty two years, I
cannot dwell on that terrible bereavement. The child was the
perfection of sweetness and beauty, and possessed such a glad
and joyous disposition that her very presence was a flood
of sunshine. Twelfth Augusta took the same billi as fever,
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which quite a number of people in the town had
at the time. Doctor Sturgis came and treated her for
two days. When she recovered it in a short while
became quite well again. We now learned from the servants
that our nurse Lavinia and Missus Bradley's nurse, had taken
Agatha and Augusta, and Missus Bradley's girls Pauline and Ada
(09:24):
on August the twenty fifth out walking, and had allowed
them to eat as many green mustang grapes as they would.
I have always attributed Agatha's death and death in Augusta's
deadly sickness to the grapes. Pauline and Ada had similar
attacks about the same time, but not.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
As severe as Augusta's.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Tuesday, May twenty third, at seven thirty, A m Lizzie,
that's an interesting time to be married. Lizzie was married
to mister Clow. Reverend McCullough officiated, and at eight a m.
Took the stage for Siluria. Well, I guess if you
you've got a stage waiting for you, better go ahead
and get married. Even as at seven thirty in the morning, Friday,
May twenty six, mister Maverick returned eleven miles west of town.
(10:10):
He met an acquaintance who told him of Agitha's death.
He went to the grave and threw himself down upon it,
and remained there until it was dark. No one but
God could tell the depth of his anguish. He was
crushed and broken. When he came home. He said he
was striving quote not to murmur at the will of God.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Unquote.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He said, we should humble ourselves in sackcloth and ashes,
and he never removed that sackcloth. In spirit whilst he lived,
was ever after a sad changed man. That night, I
dreamed so distinctly that Agatha ran through our room and
out the door again. The dream seemed so real that
I jumped up and looked for her with a candle
(10:51):
in my hand in spite of reason. And mister Maverick said,
she has wandered off in the dark, and we will
never on earth be able to find her another time.
In his deep anguish, he said, cursed land, cursed money.
I would give all all, only to see her once more.
May twenty ninth, mister Maverick wrote a touching letter to
(11:14):
his father telling him of our loss. One of his
sentences was this, I feel as if every moment she
is being torn out of my heart. My poor little
Willie came near to starving to death when Agatha was sick,
and after her death my milk almost dried up. I
got missus Elliot's cook patience to nurse him two weeks
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and then began feeding him. And to begin feeding him
this had disagreed with him, and all summer he was
very sick and thin and fretful. Once he layeth the
point of death with the dysentery, and the doctor told
Missus Elliot there was no hope. Missus Gorge told me
to make tea of pomegranite root and give a teaspoon
every fifteen minutes until the dysentery was checked. I did,
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and I believe it saved his life. As he grew
better and well, it was wonderful how he liked his
horehound tea and drank goat's milk. April thirteenth, read in
the Pendleton Messenger of July seventh, the following obituary departed
this life Agatha Maverick at San Antonio, Texas, on the
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ninth of May, aged seven years and twenty seven days,
eldest daughter of samuel A and mary A Maverick. Oh,
Almighty and all just God, teach us how it is
that this poor little boon of the breath of life
could not be spared from thy great storehouse to animate
a little dear thing which thou hast made so perfect
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the portion, and that was from the past from after
where it says samuel A and mary A Maverick.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
For the rest of it, it says.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
The portion in quotation marks is an extract from mister
Maverick's letter. Poor little Augusta missed her sister Tita so
much as we grieved without ceasing, so did she. Daily
she gathered flowers and kept them in water until the afternoon,
and then she took them to the grave for Tita, Tita,
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who had ever been her companion and her ideal of goodness.
Augusta was a child of great promise, gentle, patient, thoughtful,
and pious.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Beyond her years.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
She was very fair, with blue eyes and light hair,
and she had a high, broad forehead and a development
of mind beyond her age. She was very fond of
attending Sunday school, and of listening to singing, and of
caring for the baby. And always obedient. She repeated her
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prayers nightly, and was ever talking to God and his angels,
and of our quote our Tita with them, ah pure
and spotless angel thyself. In August, Colonel Hayes was ordered
to open a shorter and better trading route through the
Wiles to Chihuahua, Mexico. Colonel Hayes asked me to persuade
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mister Maverick to go with the expedition. I answered, oh, no,
he is not well enough for such a hard trip.
Then Hayes replied, don't you see, mister Maverick is dying
by inches. Everyone remarks how gray he has grown, Excuse me,
how bent and feeble he looks. And this will be
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the very thing for him. He always thrives on hardships,
and his mind must be distracted now from his grief.
And you know, I fussed in several places, you know,
because mister Maverick is dead and gone at this point,
but you know, and not any of my business, but
I was like, could you not stay home? Well, apparently
it really would be to his advantage. She was better
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off if he was off on some trip and doing
some kind of adventure. So Mary says, I recognized the
truth and force of this reasoning, and that Hayes loved
him dearly, and I set to work to persuade him
to go. My husband was quite reasonable and quickly saw
that the trip had become a necessity for him. On Sunday,
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August the twenty seventh, mister Maverick left with Colonel Hayes,
fifty men and fifteen Delaware Indian guides to run out
the new route to Chihuahua. They had a very severe trip,
especially going They got lost and were nearly starved, and
their horses suffered more severely.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Than the men.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
One man lost his reason and was lost and afterwards
saved by the Indians and recovered. While hopelessly lost, they
met some Indians from Santa Fe who saw them some
bread and some pellow chino chios. We decided that's Mexican
sugar made from sugar cane and made into like a cone.
(15:58):
It's dryding. I mean they cooked the syrup down and
like we make syrup out of it, ribbon cane syrup.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
They make it.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
They would just continue to cook it down until it
was really thick and let it dry, so they made
it into these cones. So they had sugar and bread basically,
and pointed out to them the road to San Carlos
on the Rio Grande, where they arrived a few days later.
Their return trip was much shorter. A good road comparatively,
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was surveyed of about seven hundred miles from Alpaso to
San Antonio. They were greatly troubled on their return by
the Indians hanging about and trying to stampede their horses,
and they had one fight with them. They got back Sunday,
December the tenth, and the three and a half months
of hardship had done wonders for mister Maverick, just as
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Colonel Hayes had thought. He said that mister Maverick had
been the most enduring and least complaining man of the party.
Had encouraged others, walked much to save his horse, had
cheerfully eaten roots, berries, mule meat, and polecats aka skunks,
and had chewed leather and the tops of his boots
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to keep his mouth moist when no water could be found.
Besides coming back in good health, mister Maverick was more
cheerful and hopeful. A ball was given to Hayes and
his company, and another to the officers of the United
States Army stationed here, but we did not go. Christmas
was beautiful, glad day of redemption to the world. Eighteen
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forty nine cholera. New Year's Day was bright and beautiful,
but we heard that cholera had appeared in New Orleans.
We also heard at the same time that some bad
mess pork had caused the death of a hundred soldiers
recently landed at Lavaca and destined for this place. Frightful
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some think it cholera, and here in San Antonio, violent
influenza with sore throat and measles and scarlatina were prevailing. Pallace,
aunt Anne's houseboy, died. He told his mother God came
to me in a dream, and he took me to heaven,
and he asked her to pray with him, and then
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he died. February twenty eighth, Major Chevalier took smallpox at
aunt Anne's and was sent to an isolated room in
the yard and nursed there. Russell Howard, one of the
volunteer nurses, took the disease from him too. March seventh,
Sister Lizzie came, spent five days with me and went
back to mister Cloll in Levoca. March twenty ninth, Missus Elliot,
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Missus Lockwood and I sat up all night with Missus Richardson,
mother of Missus Judge Pascal, and closed her eyes in death.
Heard of the death of George Peacock and four others
of cholera in Lavaca. We talked of going into the
country and camping out before the cholera San Antonio. This
we made up our minds to do, but the weather
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was very bad, wind and rain and continually, and we
waited for better weather alas too long. Monday, the second
of April, cholera appeared in San Antonio.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
For two weeks.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
It was confined to Mexicans in low, damp places, and
doctor couples thought it easily managed and could not become
an epidemic. But suddenly, in gloom, overhead and in our hearts,
it appeared everywhere, in the most violent form and would
not yield to treatment. August twenty second, twenty one died
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of cholera. Death of Augusta. On May twenty third, Old
World of Grief, My darling Augusta claimed of colic in
the evening. It was damp and cold. We gave her
the remedies, which were ready in every house, and she
felt pretty well and went to sleep, a perfect picture
of rosy health and beauty. About midnight, she woke up
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vomiting and purging violently. Doctor Sturgis was down with a cholera.
We called in to other physicians, but all that could
be done gave no relief. God willed to take our darling.
In four hours, her case was pronounced hopeless, and she
looked thin, emaciated. Purple and sunken, but conscious to the
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last and suffering fearfully.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
We humbly gave her.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Up, beseeching God to stay the hand of the pestilence,
for Louis and George were both attacked at daylight.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
At eight a m.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Augusta felt no more pain and tried to get out
of bed. At nine o'clock, one hour afterwards, she breathed
her last. She was six years and twenty five days old.
They buried her the next day by the side of Tita.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I could not go.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Two nights before her attack, Augusta had a lovely dream
which made me tremble when she related it to me
on Saturday morning. She smiling and happy the while over
its loveliness. In her dream, she was clothed in new dress,
all white and shining and flowing down below her feet.
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She got into a carriage and with a large procession
went quote way off to a big church, resounding with
sweet music and filled with people dressed in white. It
was prophecy of her shroud and burial and resurrection God.
I thank THEE that we could yield her up, unsullied
by earth. Her memory of white and shining light just
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before she died. Knowing she had only a few moments
to live. I took her in my arms and held
her in my lap before the fire, and said to her, Gussie,
do you know our father in heaven?
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Oh? Yes, Mama, she answered earnestly.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
She said, I hear them singing, Mama out, put on
my bonnet and let me go to church. I put
the little fresh muslin bonnet on her head. She loved
the bonnet and was content. She looked up, listening intently,
and said, don't you hear them, mama? Gussie, do you
want to see God? Yes, Mama. Do you want to
see Tita? Yes, mama? And those were her last words.
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And then she's got like a verse. Here Thou wert
purity itself, my gentle child. Death had no terrors for thee.
The gates of heaven were open for thee. Whilst yet
in the flesh thou didst behold thy Father's face in heaven.
On the day of Augustus's death, Louis and George both
had cholera. The doctors were prompt and their cases yielded
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to treatment, although George was very low for a while.
I also was threatening and had to go to bed
for by George's side, and take my medicine like the others.
On that day, many children died, two of whom were
friends and playmates of Augusta. Of our servants, Granville, Emmeline,
and Anne had the cholera, and in fact every soul
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of the household except Sam and Betsy, were more or
less affected. Idle would be the task of portraying the
gloom of our household or the terror which seized upon
the community. Fear and dread were in every house an
oppressive weight in the atmosphere. Into every house came the pestilence,
and in most houses was death. And in some families
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one half died. All had symptoms, And the weather continued
close and damp and dismal. Men of strong nerve and
undoubted courage shrank in fear. Many drank hard and died drunk.
Some dropped and died in the streets. One poor fellow
cut his throat when attacked. Never can those who were
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here in that terrible visitation forget its gloom and horror.
The cholera lasted six weeks, and the priests thought that
over six hundred people died. One third of the population
fled to the ranchos and into the country, and they
generally got above this heavy atmosphere and escaped. July tenth,
mister Maverick sent me with the four boys and Betsy
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to Sutherland Springs to rest and recuperate. We stopped first
at doctor Sutherland's, and Missus Frank Pascal with her three
children stopped at Missus Johnson's. Missus Sutherland was very kind
to us, but as all the water there was mineral,
we moved to Missus Johnson's and drank the Challi beat water.
Now I had to it's c h A L y
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b E A t E water, and I had to
look that up to see what that was. And that
is like water with a high concentration of iron, so
it has a real metallic taste. So I don't know
if that helps you get over stuff like this, but
that's what it was. Missus Johnson's little daughter died of
convulsions while we were there. We felt no improvement by
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our visit to the springs. A number of strangers were
there from the low country, some housed in some camping,
and there was much sickness. All the log cabins were
full of the sick. On the seventeenth, Missus Pascal took
the stage for San Antonio, and on the nineteenth I
did the same. Okay, so that's the end of that chapter.
(25:11):
So we're gonna talk about it because there's all kinds
of information in here that.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Prippers can use.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
When you think about, first of all, it's a wonder
that anybody that human species actually survived period, that we
haven't actually killed ourselves by our ignorance at some point
in time, because think about all the things they did
not know. We can go back and revisit the beginning
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of the book where she talks about where they got
their water from, which was the river flow. It's the
San Antonio River that flows through the middle of San Antonio.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
And so if you.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Think about that and you think about the fact that
they didn't know you needed to boil it, they didn't
know you needed to wash your hands, they didn't know
anything about bacteria. They certainly didn't have antibiotics. Uh, there's
so many things that we today take for granted. You
know now, because I live out in the country, I
don't take water for granted because I know what it's
(26:16):
like for it to go out. I don't take a
septic system for granted, because I had to put it in.
But if you live in town, a lot of times
people just assume clean water's gonna come out of the
tap and that when you go to the bathroom it's
gonna flush, and so all that stuff's gonna go away
and it's not gonna stay there. And so what happened
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They didn't realize that as somebody came to town with a disease.
And you remember she said something about the fact that
when they first lived in San Antonio, well that was
before people. There were some people there, but there weren't
a lot of people there were. There weren't as many
immigrants as there were this second time when they go
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to San Antonio. And so if you the more you
have people travel, the more likely you are to have
something spread. COVID would be a good example of that
because it started in China, but it didn't take long
to go all over the earth. Okay, Now, there might
have been a few isolated places on the planet where
nobody was ever around somebody else that had it. That's
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possibility maybe, but for the most of the quote civilized
unquote world, it spread very very quickly. Okay. I actually
got by without getting it. First of all, I generally
used to at least think so anyway, have a tolerably
(27:42):
good immune system. And I didn't actually get COVID until
December of twenty four and niece and I went to
a play. That's the only place that we can think
of that we got it. Now, we also did eat
something on the way. We did a drive through, so
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it's a possibility that, you know, if somebody at that
restaurant had it and they handled our food, we got
it that way. I assumed we got it at the
play because we were you know, cooped up in a
small room with a lot of people for about two hours,
So that's a possibility. But we got it exactly the
same time. So whatever we wherever we got it from,
(28:24):
we both got it from the same place. But by
the nd you know, it had been a thing for
a while and it was not as quite as virulent
as it was to start with, and other than wanting
to sleep for about three days, you know, got over
it and moved on. Only reason I knew I had
COVID is because I couldn't smell. But this is a
(28:45):
good example. Cholera is one of those things we don't
know anybodies ever had cholera. And the reason for that
is we have things in place to keep uh, to
have at least a level of sanitation in a civilized society.
Civilized again being a relative work. But a lot of
people don't realize that they have that opportunity to stay
(29:09):
well and not get we're diseases that people you know,
used to die by drop. Think about how many people
she's talking about. I don't know what the population of
San Antonio was in eighteen forty seven, might have to
look that up and see on my handy dandy Internet,
but six hundred people dying would have been a lot.
And you know, she's lost two children so far. Uh
(29:32):
and that's not a small amount either, so and plus
plus in a tradition to the fact that almost all
of them were sick at one point in time. But again,
they didn't know what hygiene meant. They didn't know that
you washed your you needed to wash your hands all
the time. They prepared food and drank and took a
(29:54):
bath and whatever else they wanted to do with this
water out of the river. They didn't boil it. So
there's lots of different things that they didn't know that
we're supposed to know at this point. But I'm gonna
go out on a limb and assume there's a lot
of people who don't. Plus they didn't have any idea
how to treat it. Nowadays, you would treat it by
(30:17):
making sure this person had plenty of electrolytes, a pedia
light or something. There's actually even a recipe that you
can get online that gives you like an electrolyte, drinks
got sugar and salt and various things in it. I
think it was developed originally for like children in Africa
who would get You know, children are bad about getting
(30:38):
some former diarrhea, so it's easy and it's harder for children.
That's the reason more likely for children to die than adults.
They get extremely dehydrated and they lose all those electrolytes.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
And then they just go downhill from there.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Because you saw some of her kids got better and
some of her kids did not get better. But there's
so much there. It's one of those things that it's
so important for us to remember, and a lot of
preppers talk about, you know, if we're in an emergency situation,
we need to remember that it's important for.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Us to maintain hygiene.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Okay again, I'm I'm in a relatively good situation in
that I have uh at least hopefully, I have the
generator ability to run my well at least uh you know,
even if I ran it once or twice a day
just to you know, fill up water containers. Uh, I
(31:37):
could stretch it out for a while and that would
keep us in water. Uh. And then we do have
a septic system, and it is not an aerobic one,
so thankfully we got it before that became a law,
so we have the ability to uh, you know, use
our septic system, so we can have water fill up our.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Uh uh to and we can do that.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
But these people didn't have indoor plumbing, nor did they
have running water, nor did they have any kind of
water system that had standards, nor did they know they
were supposed to clean or boil or sanitize their water.
So there's lots of things going on here that's contributing
(32:23):
to them having diseases a lot of traffic into San
Antonio as more people move around, people coming into the coast,
moving up inland, so you've got travel moving people from
place to place. The people who left San Antonio while
they had the chance before the cholera got there were
(32:45):
able to get out to an isolated area, and then
they were able to survive it because there was nobody
up where they if they got up above it, not
down below it because it would have been in the
river water at this point, than they were able to survive.
But that kind of gives us an idea of what
(33:06):
it's like to how important it is for us to
deal with sanitation and make sure we have that covered.
I'm also going to talk about one of the things
that is a theme throughout this whole chapter, and that
(33:26):
is their relationship with God because they are Christians. And yes,
they were extremely sad, and they were broken, and they
were heartbroken, and this caused them a whole lot of grief,
especially I mean, it's bad enough to lose one child,
but to lose two is horrific. But what they were
(33:48):
able to do even though it was extremely hard, and
back then, children dying was not an unusual thing. It
was unusual for all of your children to live to
be adults, or it was it was unusual for children
who have both parents until they got to be adults.
(34:10):
Because people died a lot, the life expectancy was not
long in this cholera outbreak as an example of that.
But they had a very strong faith, and the strength
of their faith helped them survive a horrible time. They
were able to continue, and they were able to pour
(34:33):
out their grief to God.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
I mean, it didn't make it go away.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
But first of all, they knew they would see their
children when they died, so they knew where their children went.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
They knew their children went to heaven.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They knew that they will see those children again. So
they had a hope that people who are not Christians
don't have. Now, if you're listening to this and you're
not a Christian, I'm gonna encourage you to read the
Bible and think about becoming one. There is a site
called Bible Gateway. If you type that in, you can
(35:07):
look for that, and then you can there are also
all kinds of references in that to help you know
how to become a Christian. And looking at and see
as a person who's had hard times and lost family,
very close family members, it is one of those things
that I don't know what I would have done without
(35:32):
the strength that God gave me to get through that time.
If I didn't if I had no hope, and because
these people were Christians, they had hope. And that is
very different in many of Well, first of all, it's
very different from people who don't mind me hope at
all because they.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Have no faith.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
But it's also different from people who believe in other
faiths that their faith may not have this same kind
of belief.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know, we believe that a person who is a
Christian and believes in God, we'll go to heaven when
they die, and that we will see them again when
we go to heaven when we die if we're Christian.
So that that's a theme all the way through this chapter.
And the reason it's a theme through the chapter is
because it's a chapter of grief. She's talking the whole
(36:23):
time about how terrible things happened and how they dealt
with those.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
And I said, I had to, you know, back my
truck up and not talk so bad about mister Maverick
being gone all the time, because, as Captain Hay said,
he needed to go on a long trip. That was hard,
because that was what was gonna keep him from dwelling
on his grief.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
And that was absolutely the truth.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
And he was in way better shape when he got back,
even though the trip, the trip itself was extremely arduous
and they almost starved to death, he's vibed better than
if he had stayed at home. And that's a good
point because if there is a if something happens and
we are overcome with grief, which that does happen, depending
(37:11):
on the circumstances, then sometimes the best thing is to
do something that requires your thoughts to go somewhere else,
and then you're able to heal to the best of
your ability. You never get over it is she said.
It was eighteen eighty and she was still she still
couldn't really spend a lot of time thinking about the
(37:32):
death of her daughter Agatha, which I'm sure she felt
the same way about Augustine. That gives you an example of,
you know, how hard this would be. But in her case,
because she was a mother and she had other children,
she had the boys.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
I guess she had.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I guess that's all she had at that point was boys.
She because Agatha and Gusta with the two girls. But
she was busy, you know, she had a baby, Willie
was a baby. She was trying to take care of
all these children, so and run a household, so she
was busy, but mister Maverick was not busy. He didn't
have anything to keep him from dwelling on the death
(38:17):
of his daughter. So honestly it was better for him
to do that. And Captain Hayes realized that and he said,
an him on this trip with us, he needs to go,
and so he did and it was an immense help
to him. So but you also saw how they went
off to the springs, and that didn't really help anybody
because there were sick people at the springs too, and
(38:38):
if they had been able to go somewhere that was isolated,
that's what these people who went off to, as she said,
the ranchos, they got away from where people were. But
when when she and her friends went to the Sutherland Spring,
she said, there were people already there that was sick.
So that didn't really do anybody any good. You'rs going
(38:59):
from a place would seek people to another place with
seek people, but they didn't know.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
How disease was transmitted.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
And so this is how this epidemic of cholera made
things worse. Now, what happened to Agatha was not cholera
because it had not arrived yet I often wonder if
that was maybe spial meningitis, in which I think is
like it presents itself as a fever. I had a
(39:26):
cousin that had that in the sixties and he died.
He was a preschooler at the time. I don't think
he had made it. I don't think he'd started school yet.
And nobody else got it but him. But I mean,
he got it and died very shortly thereafter. So it
was it was bizarre because, as I said, nobody else
got it but him. But we've had other things in
(39:47):
this country that have happened, like epidemics of things. And
I think in the fifties there was an epidemic of
polio before the polio vaccine came along. Now I know
that vaccines are controversial, and probably the COVID vaccine in particular,
because of the fact that it was rushed so quickly.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And I will say, honestly, I.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Had the maderna and I had the Maderna booster, and
then I had a what's the other one?
Speaker 1 (40:19):
It starts with a P.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Whoever they are, it'll come to mind, It'll come to
my Uh, It'll come to me when I'm thinking about
something else. Anyway, the other one that Pfizer, that's who
it was. I will say I had a lot more
side effects from the Pfiser than I did from the
from the Maderna. I didn't really have any side effects
from the Maderna, and I have not had any side
effects this then, far as I know, I'm reasonably healthy.
(40:46):
So but you know, our problem with the vaccines is
we got to the point where everybody was required to
take them, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. It we
should have been allowed people should have been allowed to
make the decision. What I always said is that we
were part of the largest medical experiment known to mankind,
(41:06):
and we were either in the control group or the
experimental group, one of the two.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
But all everybody was in one of those groups.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
You either got the vaccination. You were in the experimental group,
or you were in the you didn't get the vaccination
and you were in the control group. But everybody was
part of that experiment. So honestly, I don't know that
there would At the time I got it was at
the very beginning when it was first released, and you know,
(41:36):
at that point, literally I knew people who had died,
and so you know, getting the opportunity to take it
when it was only supposed to be for more vulnerable
members of the population was not a bad thing, Okay
at the time. Now later, if I had not gotten
it then and then later we got to the point
(41:57):
where you know, we were at that thou shalt get it,
and if you don't cheer the scum of the earth,
and we're gonna you know, punish you or whatever, then
I might not have Okay. There came a point in
time when I said, done with the boosters, We're not
doing this anymore. And I did get it eventually, and
I lived over it, so it was fine. But this
(42:17):
is a good example of these are epidemics that we've
not ever had. H We don't know what it's like
to have a yellow fever epidemic. We don't know what
it's like to have a cholera epidemic. We don't know
what it's like to have a smallpox have epidemic. You know,
there's been here in the less what couple of months,
(42:37):
there was somebody with a plague. Okay, that comes from
fleas and in rodents and whatever. So there, you know,
those are those are the things that people died from
by the droves. As I said, how we have actually
survived as a species is a little bit amazing, if
you want to say, if you want to think about it.
(42:59):
But uh, I haven't talked a lot about medical things
in uh this podcast, but this is an ideal situation
to describe that in. It's very important for us think
about the things that you just have over the counter
that can help with symptoms, Like if you have something
like the blue you have the ability to get like
(43:21):
musin X and that kind of stuff. We have things
that reduce fever like tail and all and uh, you know,
ivy profen and uh, that kind They didn't have any
of that kind of stuff. They didn't have a way
to reduce a fever. That's why they tried to put
them in, you know, wrapping them in wet blankets and uh.
And even when one of her sons, I think it
(43:41):
was George, got hitting the head with the top. You know,
that could have very well been a you know, he
might have had a brain blead from that. He had
deservedly had convulsions, uh and seizures. He got over them,
which you know, thankfully that was a good thing. And
one of the girls, remember had our head injury, and
I want to say the horse kicked her, and so
(44:03):
there's no They had no kind of way to mitigate
those kinds of injuries, and so that's what happened to people.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You might have had a kid who got kicked in the.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Head with by a horse or a cow or whatever,
and they lived, but they weren't really quite right after that.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
That's always a possibility.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
There's lots of things that we don't think of because
we have nine to one one, we have an emergency room,
we have lots of advantages that these people did not have. Uh.
In their case, death came or sickness came, and there
(44:43):
really wasn't They didn't know a whole lot about how
to deal with it. Even the doctors didn't know what
to do with it. Because think about the things that
the medicine quote unquote that the doctor gave Agatha. I'm
thinking the last thing in the world she needed was
something for constipation when she was as sick as she was,
(45:05):
because first of all, I doubt she was eating anything,
and all that did was make her that much more
dehydrated and make her body that much weaker. Okay, which
is probably barely a step above bleeding somebody with a leech,
but not much. So, you know, the medical practice hadn't
come very far at this point and was not very successful.
(45:29):
As I said, it's a miracle humans survived as a species.
Also think about the fact that they did. They didn't
know anything about bacteria or germs or any of that
kind of stuff. So these doctors went from house to
house to person to person with their instruments and didn't
have any idea.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
They needed to clean them.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
There's a whole story about the guy who started like
was the first person to advocate et sanitary conditions in
the operating room, which is kind of a scary thought
that people were being operated on without any kind of
(46:10):
sanitary or sterile environments. And he was really ridiculed and
and I want to say it's the guy who I mean,
he's like, it's his He started the stuff called I
think his name was lister because I think that's where
lister inge comes from. Because he figured out that there
(46:33):
was there was something. I don't know that he knew
that it was quote germs unquote, but he realized there
was something that was making people sick, and there was
something that when people had surgery you know, especially longer
in the day when you know they didn't even the
doctors didn't even change like their apron or whatever they
had on that those people were not living and it
(46:53):
was because they were getting infected by the previous person's
blood and bodily fluid. So anyway, on that happy note,
I'm gonna quit for today, and tomorrow we will, hopefully
we'll talk about a happier subject tomorrow on what that
is yet, but we'll think it's something better than dysentery
(47:13):
and cholera and all these other lovely subjects. Just a
reminder that we don't really have any idea how blessed
we are to live in a society where these things
are almost unheard of. So have a good evening. I'll
talk to you tomorrow.
Good evening. This is am i an.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Today is Thursday, the fourth, my courses, It's ninety two,
so it's kind of warm. So I have the air
conditioner on and I'm sitting in a shade. So we'll
see if that works. Because this is Thursday, which is
time for Jesus history. So we're gonna read the next
chapter of Mary Maverick's memoirs, and this one is chapter fourteen,
(00:25):
and unfortunately it is titled the Angel of Death. That
means this is not gonna be a good chapter for Mary.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
But we're gonna see what happens.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
But after all, the Peninsula was not home to us
in the full sense of that word. Mister Maverick was
constantly returning to San Antonio on business, and on each
visit he was making new investments, knitting his interests and
his sentiments more and more with the life and growth
of San Antonio and the surrounding country. To me, the
(00:56):
four years of our early married life spending San Antonio
seemed like a bright vision, a veritable romance. The memory
of the stirring events of that period and the birth
of my Lewis and Agatha there kept my affections warm
for the dear old place. On the fifteenth day of
October eighteen forty seven, with bag and baggage, we left
(01:18):
the point and set off for San Antonio. It was
right said to leave a pleasant home and the friends
we had gathered during the three years, and not the
least regret was it to say goodbye to mister Peck,
who had taught our children faithfully for two years and
been a member of our household. But his health was
re established, and he obeyed the urgent request of his
(01:39):
mother to return to her in his native state. He
was quite anxious to go with us to San Antonio,
but he parted with us at the past and returned
to Ohio at Levaca. We stopped at Missus Staunton's until
the nineteenth, where Lizzie and I, with Agatha and George
and his nurse Betsy, took the stage for San Antonio
(02:00):
first stage ride in Texas. Mister Maverick, sam Lewis and
the servants took passage with the wagons and our household goods,
and we did not see them again until November fourth.
We spent the first night in Victoria with Maggie Pearson,
the second in Quero at Cardwells. On the twenty first,
(02:21):
we stopped in Gonzales with Missus Brown. It rained all
night and until nine the next morning. The twenty second,
we went only a short distance and stopped with old
Lady Tremble, which is an interesting way to.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Refer to this lady.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Missus Tremble had lived here for over twenty years. Okay,
so think about that. That is it's eighteen forty seven,
so she had lived there in the eighteen twenties, which
is pretty interesting because I do know we had.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
People.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We didn't have Americans in Texas as early as that.
Let me see where I lost my place. Sus Tremble
had lived here over twenty years and had herself fought
the Indians. Her first husband had been killed, and her
second husband fell in the Alamo. Three months after his death,
(03:11):
she gave birth to twin girls, now eleven years old.
An older daughter's husband had fallen with dawson, and she
had given birth seven weeks after his death to a
girl and had died. The pretty child was five years
old when we were there, and the idol of her
fond grandmother. The twenty third, we reached New Bronsvill's at
(03:32):
the junction of the Comal with the Guadalupe. This was
a pretty place and rapidly filling up. I thought the
Comal the loveliest dream I ever saw. Sunday, October twenty fourth,
at three pm, we arrived in San Antonio and stopped
at Aunt Anne Bradley's at the southeast corner of Commerce
(03:54):
in at Chrury Streets. Everything covered with dust and the
heat awful. The town seemed much changed since eighteen forty two.
Many strangers had settled here and immigrants were arriving daily.
Not until November the fourth did mister Maverick's party arrive.
The hired wagoners insisted on stopping five days at their
(04:15):
home on the way, and I had time to grow
very uneasy about them. But all were well, and we
moved directly into our old home with a dirt floor
for the seamen had all worn off.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
The fence around.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
The garden was nearly gone, and the garden itself was
in a dilapidated condition, but the figs and the pomegranates
were still standing. The weather grew quite cold, and we
learned that many people were sick with coals and diarrhea,
and almost every day somebody died which made us quite doleful.
I recalled our first residence in San Antonio, and it
(04:49):
seemed that in those days there was scarcely any sickness,
and positively no case of fevers, saved the case of
Colonel Carns, which was yellow fever imported from Houston. Now
all of our children suffered some illness. Late in November,
Lewis was spending a top at the front door, and
George was sitting on the door seal when Lewis's top
(05:10):
bounced up and struck George on the forehead. George went
into spasms, but we packed him in a wet sheet
and blankets and he got well, but he was quite
low for a week or so, and he has ever
retained the scar. December first brother Andrew, surgeon and Captain
Veach's company, spent a few days with us on his
(05:32):
way to the Rio Grande. On Friday, December the twenty fourth,
our sixth child, Willie H.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Was born.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
The joyous bells of Christmas Eve were ringing when he
was born. Eighteen forty eight. April fourth, eighteen forty eight,
mister Maverick left with mister Tyvee, Deputy Surveyor, and a
considerable surveying party to have a pet location on the
Los Morris Creek surveyed our head right certificate on the
(06:02):
head spring and Fort Clark is on that track. He
also located much land below that survey. April twenty ninth,
mister Clow came to marry Lizzie, although she has not
set the day. The angel of death. Sunday, April the thirtieth,
my dear little Agatha took fever.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Lizzie and I.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
With the girls and Betsy and the baby were out
walking and we were near the mill bridge. When she
first complained. I told Betsy to take the baby and
go home with her, when Agatha said, oh, if my
papa was here, he would carry me. At this time,
Agatha was a large and very beautiful child of seven years.
(06:43):
She was the idol of her father, and in return
for his devoted affection for her, she idolized him. The
sentiment of love between mister Maverick and the sweet child
was nothing, was something extraordinary, something beautiful and touching to behold.
When I got home, I bathed her intepid water and
cared tenderly for her. But on the following day she
(07:05):
grew much worse, and I called in the services of
doctor Couples. He gave her an emetic and I had
to look that up. That's something to induce I guess
basically diarrhea. I get it was something you would use
(07:25):
for constipation. Apparently, I'm not sure that was her problem,
but that's what he gave her, and then powders and enemas,
but nothing seemed to reduce the fever or overcome the stupor.
Day by day, doctor Couples encouraged me to hope, but
I lost my appetite and passed many sleepless nights for
a terrible fear took possession of me. My fears whispered
(07:48):
in my heart, Agatha is dying, and I lost hope.
The poor child with crimson cheek and shining eyes sometimes
raved wildly. Once she screamed out in an agonizing manner,
Oh Sam. She thought she saw Indians about to kill Sam.
When she took her medicine the first in her life,
she would say, Mama, will you tell Papa I was
(08:10):
good and took my medicine. Once she said Mama, if
I die, but I could not bear it. I stopped
her before she could speak.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Another word.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
How often have I regretted my action and fondly longed
to know what the dear Angel would have told me.
Her father was still out on his surveying expedition on
the Los Morris, and we had no means of communicating
with him. On May eighth. The poor child breathed her
last at two am Tuesday, May eight ninth, eighteen forty eight.
(08:43):
Even now in eighteen eighty, after thirty two years, I
cannot dwell on that terrible bereavement. The child was the
perfection of sweetness and beauty, and possessed such a glad
and joyous disposition that her very presence was a flood
of sunshine. Twelfth Augusta took the same billi as fever,
(09:03):
which quite a number of people in the town had
at the time. Doctor Sturgis came and treated her for
two days. When she recovered it in a short while
became quite well again. We now learned from the servants
that our nurse Lavinia and Missus Bradley's nurse, had taken
Agatha and Augusta, and Missus Bradley's girls Pauline and Ada
(09:24):
on August the twenty fifth out walking, and had allowed
them to eat as many green mustang grapes as they would.
I have always attributed Agatha's death and death in Augusta's
deadly sickness to the grapes. Pauline and Ada had similar
attacks about the same time, but not.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
As severe as Augusta's.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Tuesday, May twenty third, at seven thirty, A m Lizzie,
that's an interesting time to be married. Lizzie was married
to mister Clow. Reverend McCullough officiated, and at eight a m.
Took the stage for Siluria. Well, I guess if you
you've got a stage waiting for you, better go ahead
and get married. Even as at seven thirty in the morning, Friday,
May twenty six, mister Maverick returned eleven miles west of town.
(10:10):
He met an acquaintance who told him of Agitha's death.
He went to the grave and threw himself down upon it,
and remained there until it was dark. No one but
God could tell the depth of his anguish. He was
crushed and broken. When he came home. He said he
was striving quote not to murmur at the will of God.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Unquote.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He said, we should humble ourselves in sackcloth and ashes,
and he never removed that sackcloth. In spirit whilst he lived,
was ever after a sad changed man. That night, I
dreamed so distinctly that Agatha ran through our room and
out the door again. The dream seemed so real that
I jumped up and looked for her with a candle
(10:51):
in my hand in spite of reason. And mister Maverick said,
she has wandered off in the dark, and we will
never on earth be able to find her another time.
In his deep anguish, he said, cursed land, cursed money.
I would give all all, only to see her once more.
May twenty ninth, mister Maverick wrote a touching letter to
(11:14):
his father telling him of our loss. One of his
sentences was this, I feel as if every moment she
is being torn out of my heart. My poor little
Willie came near to starving to death when Agatha was sick,
and after her death my milk almost dried up. I
got missus Elliot's cook patience to nurse him two weeks
(11:36):
and then began feeding him. And to begin feeding him
this had disagreed with him, and all summer he was
very sick and thin and fretful. Once he layeth the
point of death with the dysentery, and the doctor told
Missus Elliot there was no hope. Missus Gorge told me
to make tea of pomegranite root and give a teaspoon
every fifteen minutes until the dysentery was checked. I did,
(12:00):
and I believe it saved his life. As he grew
better and well, it was wonderful how he liked his
horehound tea and drank goat's milk. April thirteenth, read in
the Pendleton Messenger of July seventh, the following obituary departed
this life Agatha Maverick at San Antonio, Texas, on the
(12:21):
ninth of May, aged seven years and twenty seven days,
eldest daughter of samuel A and mary A Maverick. Oh,
Almighty and all just God, teach us how it is
that this poor little boon of the breath of life
could not be spared from thy great storehouse to animate
a little dear thing which thou hast made so perfect
(12:45):
the portion, and that was from the past from after
where it says samuel A and mary A Maverick.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
For the rest of it, it says.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
The portion in quotation marks is an extract from mister
Maverick's letter. Poor little Augusta missed her sister Tita so
much as we grieved without ceasing, so did she. Daily
she gathered flowers and kept them in water until the afternoon,
and then she took them to the grave for Tita, Tita,
(13:16):
who had ever been her companion and her ideal of goodness.
Augusta was a child of great promise, gentle, patient, thoughtful,
and pious.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Beyond her years.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
She was very fair, with blue eyes and light hair,
and she had a high, broad forehead and a development
of mind beyond her age. She was very fond of
attending Sunday school, and of listening to singing, and of
caring for the baby. And always obedient. She repeated her
(13:49):
prayers nightly, and was ever talking to God and his angels,
and of our quote our Tita with them, ah pure
and spotless angel thyself. In August, Colonel Hayes was ordered
to open a shorter and better trading route through the
Wiles to Chihuahua, Mexico. Colonel Hayes asked me to persuade
(14:12):
mister Maverick to go with the expedition. I answered, oh, no,
he is not well enough for such a hard trip.
Then Hayes replied, don't you see, mister Maverick is dying
by inches. Everyone remarks how gray he has grown, Excuse me,
how bent and feeble he looks. And this will be
(14:35):
the very thing for him. He always thrives on hardships,
and his mind must be distracted now from his grief.
And you know, I fussed in several places, you know,
because mister Maverick is dead and gone at this point,
but you know, and not any of my business, but
I was like, could you not stay home? Well, apparently
it really would be to his advantage. She was better
(14:56):
off if he was off on some trip and doing
some kind of adventure. So Mary says, I recognized the
truth and force of this reasoning, and that Hayes loved
him dearly, and I set to work to persuade him
to go. My husband was quite reasonable and quickly saw
that the trip had become a necessity for him. On Sunday,
(15:16):
August the twenty seventh, mister Maverick left with Colonel Hayes,
fifty men and fifteen Delaware Indian guides to run out
the new route to Chihuahua. They had a very severe trip,
especially going They got lost and were nearly starved, and
their horses suffered more severely.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Than the men.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
One man lost his reason and was lost and afterwards
saved by the Indians and recovered. While hopelessly lost, they
met some Indians from Santa Fe who saw them some
bread and some pellow chino chios. We decided that's Mexican
sugar made from sugar cane and made into like a cone.
(15:58):
It's dryding. I mean they cooked the syrup down and
like we make syrup out of it, ribbon cane syrup.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
They make it.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
They would just continue to cook it down until it
was really thick and let it dry, so they made
it into these cones. So they had sugar and bread basically,
and pointed out to them the road to San Carlos
on the Rio Grande, where they arrived a few days later.
Their return trip was much shorter. A good road comparatively,
(16:29):
was surveyed of about seven hundred miles from Alpaso to
San Antonio. They were greatly troubled on their return by
the Indians hanging about and trying to stampede their horses,
and they had one fight with them. They got back Sunday,
December the tenth, and the three and a half months
of hardship had done wonders for mister Maverick, just as
(16:50):
Colonel Hayes had thought. He said that mister Maverick had
been the most enduring and least complaining man of the party.
Had encouraged others, walked much to save his horse, had
cheerfully eaten roots, berries, mule meat, and polecats aka skunks,
and had chewed leather and the tops of his boots
(17:10):
to keep his mouth moist when no water could be found.
Besides coming back in good health, mister Maverick was more
cheerful and hopeful. A ball was given to Hayes and
his company, and another to the officers of the United
States Army stationed here, but we did not go. Christmas
was beautiful, glad day of redemption to the world. Eighteen
(17:33):
forty nine cholera. New Year's Day was bright and beautiful,
but we heard that cholera had appeared in New Orleans.
We also heard at the same time that some bad
mess pork had caused the death of a hundred soldiers
recently landed at Lavaca and destined for this place. Frightful
(17:53):
some think it cholera, and here in San Antonio, violent
influenza with sore throat and measles and scarlatina were prevailing. Pallace,
aunt Anne's houseboy, died. He told his mother God came
to me in a dream, and he took me to heaven,
and he asked her to pray with him, and then
(18:14):
he died. February twenty eighth, Major Chevalier took smallpox at
aunt Anne's and was sent to an isolated room in
the yard and nursed there. Russell Howard, one of the
volunteer nurses, took the disease from him too. March seventh,
Sister Lizzie came, spent five days with me and went
back to mister Cloll in Levoca. March twenty ninth, Missus Elliot,
(18:37):
Missus Lockwood and I sat up all night with Missus Richardson,
mother of Missus Judge Pascal, and closed her eyes in death.
Heard of the death of George Peacock and four others
of cholera in Lavaca. We talked of going into the
country and camping out before the cholera San Antonio. This
we made up our minds to do, but the weather
(18:57):
was very bad, wind and rain and continually, and we
waited for better weather alas too long. Monday, the second
of April, cholera appeared in San Antonio.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
For two weeks.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
It was confined to Mexicans in low, damp places, and
doctor couples thought it easily managed and could not become
an epidemic. But suddenly, in gloom, overhead and in our hearts,
it appeared everywhere, in the most violent form and would
not yield to treatment. August twenty second, twenty one died
(19:32):
of cholera. Death of Augusta. On May twenty third, Old
World of Grief, My darling Augusta claimed of colic in
the evening. It was damp and cold. We gave her
the remedies, which were ready in every house, and she
felt pretty well and went to sleep, a perfect picture
of rosy health and beauty. About midnight, she woke up
(19:54):
vomiting and purging violently. Doctor Sturgis was down with a cholera.
We called in to other physicians, but all that could
be done gave no relief. God willed to take our darling.
In four hours, her case was pronounced hopeless, and she
looked thin, emaciated. Purple and sunken, but conscious to the
(20:15):
last and suffering fearfully.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
We humbly gave her.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Up, beseeching God to stay the hand of the pestilence,
for Louis and George were both attacked at daylight.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
At eight a m.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Augusta felt no more pain and tried to get out
of bed. At nine o'clock, one hour afterwards, she breathed
her last. She was six years and twenty five days old.
They buried her the next day by the side of Tita.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I could not go.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Two nights before her attack, Augusta had a lovely dream
which made me tremble when she related it to me
on Saturday morning. She smiling and happy the while over
its loveliness. In her dream, she was clothed in new dress,
all white and shining and flowing down below her feet.
(21:04):
She got into a carriage and with a large procession
went quote way off to a big church, resounding with
sweet music and filled with people dressed in white. It
was prophecy of her shroud and burial and resurrection God.
I thank THEE that we could yield her up, unsullied
by earth. Her memory of white and shining light just
(21:27):
before she died. Knowing she had only a few moments
to live. I took her in my arms and held
her in my lap before the fire, and said to her, Gussie,
do you know our father in heaven?
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Oh? Yes, Mama, she answered earnestly.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
She said, I hear them singing, Mama out, put on
my bonnet and let me go to church. I put
the little fresh muslin bonnet on her head. She loved
the bonnet and was content. She looked up, listening intently,
and said, don't you hear them, mama? Gussie, do you
want to see God? Yes, Mama. Do you want to
see Tita? Yes, mama? And those were her last words.
(22:07):
And then she's got like a verse. Here Thou wert
purity itself, my gentle child. Death had no terrors for thee.
The gates of heaven were open for thee. Whilst yet
in the flesh thou didst behold thy Father's face in heaven.
On the day of Augustus's death, Louis and George both
had cholera. The doctors were prompt and their cases yielded
(22:30):
to treatment, although George was very low for a while.
I also was threatening and had to go to bed
for by George's side, and take my medicine like the others.
On that day, many children died, two of whom were
friends and playmates of Augusta. Of our servants, Granville, Emmeline,
and Anne had the cholera, and in fact every soul
(22:52):
of the household except Sam and Betsy, were more or
less affected. Idle would be the task of portraying the
gloom of our household or the terror which seized upon
the community. Fear and dread were in every house an
oppressive weight in the atmosphere. Into every house came the pestilence,
and in most houses was death. And in some families
(23:16):
one half died. All had symptoms, And the weather continued
close and damp and dismal. Men of strong nerve and
undoubted courage shrank in fear. Many drank hard and died drunk.
Some dropped and died in the streets. One poor fellow
cut his throat when attacked. Never can those who were
(23:38):
here in that terrible visitation forget its gloom and horror.
The cholera lasted six weeks, and the priests thought that
over six hundred people died. One third of the population
fled to the ranchos and into the country, and they
generally got above this heavy atmosphere and escaped. July tenth,
mister Maverick sent me with the four boys and Betsy
(24:02):
to Sutherland Springs to rest and recuperate. We stopped first
at doctor Sutherland's, and Missus Frank Pascal with her three
children stopped at Missus Johnson's. Missus Sutherland was very kind
to us, but as all the water there was mineral,
we moved to Missus Johnson's and drank the Challi beat water.
Now I had to it's c h A L y
(24:23):
b E A t E water, and I had to
look that up to see what that was. And that
is like water with a high concentration of iron, so
it has a real metallic taste. So I don't know
if that helps you get over stuff like this, but
that's what it was. Missus Johnson's little daughter died of
convulsions while we were there. We felt no improvement by
(24:47):
our visit to the springs. A number of strangers were
there from the low country, some housed in some camping,
and there was much sickness. All the log cabins were
full of the sick. On the seventeenth, Missus Pascal took
the stage for San Antonio, and on the nineteenth I
did the same. Okay, so that's the end of that chapter.
(25:11):
So we're gonna talk about it because there's all kinds
of information in here that.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Prippers can use.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
When you think about, first of all, it's a wonder
that anybody that human species actually survived period, that we
haven't actually killed ourselves by our ignorance at some point
in time, because think about all the things they did
not know. We can go back and revisit the beginning
(25:44):
of the book where she talks about where they got
their water from, which was the river flow. It's the
San Antonio River that flows through the middle of San Antonio.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
And so if you.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Think about that and you think about the fact that
they didn't know you needed to boil it, they didn't
know you needed to wash your hands, they didn't know
anything about bacteria. They certainly didn't have antibiotics. Uh, there's
so many things that we today take for granted. You
know now, because I live out in the country, I
don't take water for granted because I know what it's
(26:16):
like for it to go out. I don't take a
septic system for granted, because I had to put it in.
But if you live in town, a lot of times
people just assume clean water's gonna come out of the
tap and that when you go to the bathroom it's
gonna flush, and so all that stuff's gonna go away
and it's not gonna stay there. And so what happened
(26:37):
They didn't realize that as somebody came to town with a disease.
And you remember she said something about the fact that
when they first lived in San Antonio, well that was
before people. There were some people there, but there weren't
a lot of people there were. There weren't as many
immigrants as there were this second time when they go
(26:57):
to San Antonio. And so if you the more you
have people travel, the more likely you are to have
something spread. COVID would be a good example of that
because it started in China, but it didn't take long
to go all over the earth. Okay, Now, there might
have been a few isolated places on the planet where
nobody was ever around somebody else that had it. That's
(27:21):
possibility maybe, but for the most of the quote civilized
unquote world, it spread very very quickly. Okay. I actually
got by without getting it. First of all, I generally
used to at least think so anyway, have a tolerably
(27:42):
good immune system. And I didn't actually get COVID until
December of twenty four and niece and I went to
a play. That's the only place that we can think
of that we got it. Now, we also did eat
something on the way. We did a drive through, so
(28:04):
it's a possibility that, you know, if somebody at that
restaurant had it and they handled our food, we got
it that way. I assumed we got it at the
play because we were you know, cooped up in a
small room with a lot of people for about two hours,
So that's a possibility. But we got it exactly the
same time. So whatever we wherever we got it from,
(28:24):
we both got it from the same place. But by
the nd you know, it had been a thing for
a while and it was not as quite as virulent
as it was to start with, and other than wanting
to sleep for about three days, you know, got over
it and moved on. Only reason I knew I had
COVID is because I couldn't smell. But this is a
(28:45):
good example. Cholera is one of those things we don't
know anybodies ever had cholera. And the reason for that
is we have things in place to keep uh, to
have at least a level of sanitation in a civilized society.
Civilized again being a relative work. But a lot of
people don't realize that they have that opportunity to stay
(29:09):
well and not get we're diseases that people you know,
used to die by drop. Think about how many people
she's talking about. I don't know what the population of
San Antonio was in eighteen forty seven, might have to
look that up and see on my handy dandy Internet,
but six hundred people dying would have been a lot.
And you know, she's lost two children so far. Uh
(29:32):
and that's not a small amount either, so and plus
plus in a tradition to the fact that almost all
of them were sick at one point in time. But again,
they didn't know what hygiene meant. They didn't know that
you washed your you needed to wash your hands all
the time. They prepared food and drank and took a
(29:54):
bath and whatever else they wanted to do with this
water out of the river. They didn't boil it. So
there's lots of different things that they didn't know that
we're supposed to know at this point. But I'm gonna
go out on a limb and assume there's a lot
of people who don't. Plus they didn't have any idea
how to treat it. Nowadays, you would treat it by
(30:17):
making sure this person had plenty of electrolytes, a pedia
light or something. There's actually even a recipe that you
can get online that gives you like an electrolyte, drinks
got sugar and salt and various things in it. I
think it was developed originally for like children in Africa
who would get You know, children are bad about getting
(30:38):
some former diarrhea, so it's easy and it's harder for children.
That's the reason more likely for children to die than adults.
They get extremely dehydrated and they lose all those electrolytes.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
And then they just go downhill from there.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Because you saw some of her kids got better and
some of her kids did not get better. But there's
so much there. It's one of those things that it's
so important for us to remember, and a lot of
preppers talk about, you know, if we're in an emergency situation,
we need to remember that it's important for.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Us to maintain hygiene.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Okay again, I'm I'm in a relatively good situation in
that I have uh at least hopefully, I have the
generator ability to run my well at least uh you know,
even if I ran it once or twice a day
just to you know, fill up water containers. Uh, I
(31:37):
could stretch it out for a while and that would
keep us in water. Uh. And then we do have
a septic system, and it is not an aerobic one,
so thankfully we got it before that became a law,
so we have the ability to uh, you know, use
our septic system, so we can have water fill up our.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Uh uh to and we can do that.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
But these people didn't have indoor plumbing, nor did they
have running water, nor did they have any kind of
water system that had standards, nor did they know they
were supposed to clean or boil or sanitize their water.
So there's lots of things going on here that's contributing
(32:23):
to them having diseases a lot of traffic into San
Antonio as more people move around, people coming into the coast,
moving up inland, so you've got travel moving people from
place to place. The people who left San Antonio while
they had the chance before the cholera got there were
(32:45):
able to get out to an isolated area, and then
they were able to survive it because there was nobody
up where they if they got up above it, not
down below it because it would have been in the
river water at this point, than they were able to survive.
But that kind of gives us an idea of what
(33:06):
it's like to how important it is for us to
deal with sanitation and make sure we have that covered.
I'm also going to talk about one of the things
that is a theme throughout this whole chapter, and that
(33:26):
is their relationship with God because they are Christians. And yes,
they were extremely sad, and they were broken, and they
were heartbroken, and this caused them a whole lot of grief,
especially I mean, it's bad enough to lose one child,
but to lose two is horrific. But what they were
(33:48):
able to do even though it was extremely hard, and
back then, children dying was not an unusual thing. It
was unusual for all of your children to live to
be adults, or it was it was unusual for children
who have both parents until they got to be adults.
(34:10):
Because people died a lot, the life expectancy was not
long in this cholera outbreak as an example of that.
But they had a very strong faith, and the strength
of their faith helped them survive a horrible time. They
were able to continue, and they were able to pour
(34:33):
out their grief to God.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
I mean, it didn't make it go away.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
But first of all, they knew they would see their
children when they died, so they knew where their children went.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
They knew their children went to heaven.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They knew that they will see those children again. So
they had a hope that people who are not Christians
don't have. Now, if you're listening to this and you're
not a Christian, I'm gonna encourage you to read the
Bible and think about becoming one. There is a site
called Bible Gateway. If you type that in, you can
(35:07):
look for that, and then you can there are also
all kinds of references in that to help you know
how to become a Christian. And looking at and see
as a person who's had hard times and lost family,
very close family members, it is one of those things
that I don't know what I would have done without
(35:32):
the strength that God gave me to get through that time.
If I didn't if I had no hope, and because
these people were Christians, they had hope. And that is
very different in many of Well, first of all, it's
very different from people who don't mind me hope at
all because they.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Have no faith.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
But it's also different from people who believe in other
faiths that their faith may not have this same kind
of belief.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
You know, we believe that a person who is a
Christian and believes in God, we'll go to heaven when
they die, and that we will see them again when
we go to heaven when we die if we're Christian.
So that that's a theme all the way through this chapter.
And the reason it's a theme through the chapter is
because it's a chapter of grief. She's talking the whole
(36:23):
time about how terrible things happened and how they dealt
with those.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
And I said, I had to, you know, back my
truck up and not talk so bad about mister Maverick
being gone all the time, because, as Captain Hay said,
he needed to go on a long trip. That was hard,
because that was what was gonna keep him from dwelling
on his grief.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
And that was absolutely the truth.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
And he was in way better shape when he got back,
even though the trip, the trip itself was extremely arduous
and they almost starved to death, he's vibed better than
if he had stayed at home. And that's a good
point because if there is a if something happens and
we are overcome with grief, which that does happen, depending
(37:11):
on the circumstances, then sometimes the best thing is to
do something that requires your thoughts to go somewhere else,
and then you're able to heal to the best of
your ability. You never get over it is she said.
It was eighteen eighty and she was still she still
couldn't really spend a lot of time thinking about the
(37:32):
death of her daughter Agatha, which I'm sure she felt
the same way about Augustine. That gives you an example of,
you know, how hard this would be. But in her case,
because she was a mother and she had other children,
she had the boys.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
I guess she had.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I guess that's all she had at that point was boys.
She because Agatha and Gusta with the two girls. But
she was busy, you know, she had a baby, Willie
was a baby. She was trying to take care of
all these children, so and run a household, so she
was busy, but mister Maverick was not busy. He didn't
have anything to keep him from dwelling on the death
(38:17):
of his daughter. So honestly it was better for him
to do that. And Captain Hayes realized that and he said,
an him on this trip with us, he needs to go,
and so he did and it was an immense help
to him. So but you also saw how they went
off to the springs, and that didn't really help anybody
because there were sick people at the springs too, and
(38:38):
if they had been able to go somewhere that was isolated,
that's what these people who went off to, as she said,
the ranchos, they got away from where people were. But
when when she and her friends went to the Sutherland Spring,
she said, there were people already there that was sick.
So that didn't really do anybody any good. You'rs going
(38:59):
from a place would seek people to another place with
seek people, but they didn't know.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
How disease was transmitted.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
And so this is how this epidemic of cholera made
things worse. Now, what happened to Agatha was not cholera
because it had not arrived yet I often wonder if
that was maybe spial meningitis, in which I think is
like it presents itself as a fever. I had a
(39:26):
cousin that had that in the sixties and he died.
He was a preschooler at the time. I don't think
he had made it. I don't think he'd started school yet.
And nobody else got it but him. But I mean,
he got it and died very shortly thereafter. So it
was it was bizarre because, as I said, nobody else
got it but him. But we've had other things in
(39:47):
this country that have happened, like epidemics of things. And
I think in the fifties there was an epidemic of
polio before the polio vaccine came along. Now I know
that vaccines are controversial, and probably the COVID vaccine in particular,
because of the fact that it was rushed so quickly.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And I will say, honestly, I.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Had the maderna and I had the Maderna booster, and
then I had a what's the other one?
Speaker 1 (40:19):
It starts with a P.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Whoever they are, it'll come to mind, It'll come to
my Uh, It'll come to me when I'm thinking about
something else. Anyway, the other one that Pfizer, that's who
it was. I will say I had a lot more
side effects from the Pfiser than I did from the
from the Maderna. I didn't really have any side effects
from the Maderna, and I have not had any side
effects this then, far as I know, I'm reasonably healthy.
(40:46):
So but you know, our problem with the vaccines is
we got to the point where everybody was required to
take them, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. It we
should have been allowed people should have been allowed to
make the decision. What I always said is that we
were part of the largest medical experiment known to mankind,
(41:06):
and we were either in the control group or the
experimental group, one of the two.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
But all everybody was in one of those groups.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
You either got the vaccination. You were in the experimental group,
or you were in the you didn't get the vaccination
and you were in the control group. But everybody was
part of that experiment. So honestly, I don't know that
there would At the time I got it was at
the very beginning when it was first released, and you know,
(41:36):
at that point, literally I knew people who had died,
and so you know, getting the opportunity to take it
when it was only supposed to be for more vulnerable
members of the population was not a bad thing, Okay
at the time. Now later, if I had not gotten
it then and then later we got to the point
(41:57):
where you know, we were at that thou shalt get it,
and if you don't cheer the scum of the earth,
and we're gonna you know, punish you or whatever, then
I might not have Okay. There came a point in
time when I said, done with the boosters, We're not
doing this anymore. And I did get it eventually, and
I lived over it, so it was fine. But this
(42:17):
is a good example of these are epidemics that we've
not ever had. H We don't know what it's like
to have a yellow fever epidemic. We don't know what
it's like to have a cholera epidemic. We don't know
what it's like to have a smallpox have epidemic. You know,
there's been here in the less what couple of months,
(42:37):
there was somebody with a plague. Okay, that comes from
fleas and in rodents and whatever. So there, you know,
those are those are the things that people died from
by the droves. As I said, how we have actually
survived as a species is a little bit amazing, if
you want to say, if you want to think about it.
(42:59):
But uh, I haven't talked a lot about medical things
in uh this podcast, but this is an ideal situation
to describe that in. It's very important for us think
about the things that you just have over the counter
that can help with symptoms, Like if you have something
like the blue you have the ability to get like
(43:21):
musin X and that kind of stuff. We have things
that reduce fever like tail and all and uh, you know,
ivy profen and uh, that kind They didn't have any
of that kind of stuff. They didn't have a way
to reduce a fever. That's why they tried to put
them in, you know, wrapping them in wet blankets and uh.
And even when one of her sons, I think it
(43:41):
was George, got hitting the head with the top. You know,
that could have very well been a you know, he
might have had a brain blead from that. He had
deservedly had convulsions, uh and seizures. He got over them,
which you know, thankfully that was a good thing. And
one of the girls, remember had our head injury, and
I want to say the horse kicked her, and so
(44:03):
there's no They had no kind of way to mitigate
those kinds of injuries, and so that's what happened to people.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You might have had a kid who got kicked in the.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Head with by a horse or a cow or whatever,
and they lived, but they weren't really quite right after that.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
That's always a possibility.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
There's lots of things that we don't think of because
we have nine to one one, we have an emergency room,
we have lots of advantages that these people did not have. Uh.
In their case, death came or sickness came, and there
(44:43):
really wasn't They didn't know a whole lot about how
to deal with it. Even the doctors didn't know what
to do with it. Because think about the things that
the medicine quote unquote that the doctor gave Agatha. I'm
thinking the last thing in the world she needed was
something for constipation when she was as sick as she was,
(45:05):
because first of all, I doubt she was eating anything,
and all that did was make her that much more
dehydrated and make her body that much weaker. Okay, which
is probably barely a step above bleeding somebody with a leech,
but not much. So, you know, the medical practice hadn't
come very far at this point and was not very successful.
(45:29):
As I said, it's a miracle humans survived as a species.
Also think about the fact that they did. They didn't
know anything about bacteria or germs or any of that
kind of stuff. So these doctors went from house to
house to person to person with their instruments and didn't
have any idea.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
They needed to clean them.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
There's a whole story about the guy who started like
was the first person to advocate et sanitary conditions in
the operating room, which is kind of a scary thought
that people were being operated on without any kind of
(46:10):
sanitary or sterile environments. And he was really ridiculed and
and I want to say it's the guy who I mean,
he's like, it's his He started the stuff called I
think his name was lister because I think that's where
lister inge comes from. Because he figured out that there
(46:33):
was there was something. I don't know that he knew
that it was quote germs unquote, but he realized there
was something that was making people sick, and there was
something that when people had surgery you know, especially longer
in the day when you know they didn't even the
doctors didn't even change like their apron or whatever they
had on that those people were not living and it
(46:53):
was because they were getting infected by the previous person's
blood and bodily fluid. So anyway, on that happy note,
I'm gonna quit for today, and tomorrow we will, hopefully
we'll talk about a happier subject tomorrow on what that
is yet, but we'll think it's something better than dysentery
(47:13):
and cholera and all these other lovely subjects. Just a
reminder that we don't really have any idea how blessed
we are to live in a society where these things
are almost unheard of. So have a good evening. I'll
talk to you tomorrow.
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