Editor's Note: In this article, which is used by permission of the Advertiser Company and which first appeared in the Montgomery Advertiser on December 10, 1950, Maxie Pepperman, old time Advertiser reporter, tells of some of his experiences in the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1897.

The belief was that the germ floated around more at night than in the day. Every night citizens in different sections ofthe city would light huge wooden bonfires in the middle of the streets to run the germs away. I recall passing these bonfires with smoldering wood making clouds of smoke. The gloom of that smoke and the gloom in one's heart made it most depressing.

All mail from New Orleans and Mobile was fumigated. That is, each letter was perforated with many holes and the vapor blown into the envelope to kill the germs. I remember that a man named Stebbins, who was employed at the local post office and who handled mail, died of the yellow fever. After that very few people would touch a letter which came from an infected area even if it had been fumigated.

About that time my mother decided to come home, to leave the younger children with the relatives while she stayed at home with my father.

Adjoining counties quarantined against Montgomery County. At each county line were stationed armed guards to prevent any one from leaving the county. An arrangement was made for my mother to be brought by horse and buggy to the Pintlala Creek bridge on the Selma Highway as that was the boundary line between Montgomery and Lowndes County. My father met her there. Under an escort of armed guards my father was allowed to go to the center of the bridge and my mother, coming from an opposite direction, met him. She came home with him but she could not go back to Lowndes until frost came.
WORK OF MINISTERS
As I recall, every minister in Montgomery except one remained in the city and visited the sick and buried the dead. The most common statement made on meeting some friend on the street, was: "Well, I am surprised to see you, I thought you had fled with the rest of the people." You did not meet many friends, however. But one day I met the Rev. Dr. George B. Eager who was pastor of the First Baptist Church. Walking up to him I very foolishly asked him that stereotyped question and he promptly replied, "Why Maxie, sure I am here and have been here through it all visit- ing the sick and burying the dead. I place sulphur in my shoes and fumigate my clothing and am getting on very well." Never was I so embarrassed. I loved Dr. Eager, he baptized me in the old First Baptist Church which was then where the Goodyear Tire Co. is on Bibb Street. I grew up in that church and was the church clerk for 14 years. I spent many happy hours in Dr. Eager's home and then to pull such a boner. I will never get over it. Now as a prelude as to what is to follow let me digress a bit. There lived here a certain embalmer and assistant funeral director connected with one of the leading funeral parlors here. I knew him as did nearly every one here but he was the most unforgettable character I ever knew. He always wore a thick black suit with long double-breasted coat that reached to his knees and a large black hat with flat brim all around. He really looked like those pictures of undertakers one sees in the "old flicker" movies. He had that sinister smile and such eyes! They were not like the proverbial story of the banker who had the glass eye stare of an undertaker but he had most penetrating eyes. When you saw him coming up the sidewalk and when about 10 feet away he would focus those eyes on you. As he got closer, with fixed a stare, his eyes simply penetrated all through you. When he shook hands, your hand would get clammy. I would resent his asking how I was feeling. He also wore a brown mustache and when he smiled the ends would curl up like Mephisto. Well, to get back to the yellow fever. I had learned stenography and was looking for a job. On a Friday I had an interview with a railroad official who gave me several dictations and offered me a job. I was to report for work the following Monday morning. On Sunday afternoon following my interview, and one day before I was to start to work, my father and I took a buggy ride around the deserted city. Suddenly I saw a terrible sight. We were passing the home of the man for whom I was to start to work the next day and I saw a lone hearse parked in front of his house. Then the front door opened and out walked my friend the undertaker, all dressed in deep black. He eased across the porch and looked in both directions as though to warn any passer by to hasten on. Then he went back to the door and stooped down and took hold of the front end of the casket and dragged it across the porch. He then walked backward down the front steps, holding up the end of the casket till it reached the edge of the porch and then bumped it down step by step to the sidewalk. He finally got in the hearse and, quickly mounting the driver's seat, he drove away to the cemetery. No friends allowed--not even any pallbearers. People were buried almost immediately after they died. And the man in that casket was the man whom I had talked with on Friday and to start to work with the next morning. He had died of the yellow fever. Well, I was everything but paralyzed with fear. I was at first hot and then had chills all over. I just knew I had the yellow fever. I could not sleep that night, neither could I eat. My father decided that I should go away and in a day or two he sent my brother and myself to Nashville, which city, like Atlanta, said the gerrn could not live in their climate and those two cities opened their gates to the refugees.
REFUGEE TRAINS
The L. & N. was still operating refugee trains. Just before a train left the station my brother went up to a front car to see who was aboard. The very minute the train started the guards locked the doors and they remained locked until we reached the Tennessee line, except for fuel and water for the locomotive. My brother and I were separated all the long day run to Tennessee. Well do I recall passing through Birmingham which city was practically founded and built up by Montgomerians. In those days of such intense fear there was no sentiment and the train did not hesitate any more for Birmingham than the crack L. & N. Humming Bird does for Fort Deposit.
ARMED GUARDS
Armed guards were stationed at the depot and if any one attempted to get off he probably would have been shot down. I still felt bad and was sure I had the yellow fever after that terrible picture but my brother suggested that we go downtown in Nashville and mingle with the thousands of refugees on the streets. We met many home folks, for in those days everybody in Montgomery knew each other. I soon forgot about it and the next day felt O.K. and went to church to hear the Rev. J. B. Hawthorne, who formerly was pastor of the old First Baptist Church here and who then had a pastorate in Nashville, preach a sermon in which he welcomed all Alabamians to Tennessee. After I had stayed my prescribed 10 days in Tennessee I dropped down to Birmingham and remained with relatives until frost when I came home and soon got a job as cub reporter for The Advertiser where I worked for several years and resigned to enter the insurance business over 45 years ago. in conclusion let all of us pay tribute to Dr. Walter Reed and his brave soldier volunteers who risked their lives in proving the test that yellow fever was not a floating germ in the air, but could only be transmitted through the sting of a certain breed of mosquito known as the stegomyia and all honor to Gen. William C. Gorgas, an Alabamian, who was then surgeon general of the Army who proved these findings by cleaning up the pest holes in Panama and completely exterminated this breed of mosquitoes and made the building of the Panama Canal possible. I firmly believe that some time, some how, some where a most unthought of discovery will come to light and other scourges of the present day will, like the yellow fever, be banished from the face of the earth.

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