CHAPTER XXX.
THE TRAGIC DEATH OF SALLIE DURHAM.
The closing days of the war—A sketch of the Durham family—The death of Sallie.
On the 9th of April, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee had surrendered his army of twenty-five thousand men to Grant with his four-fold forces. One after another of the Confederate Generals had been forced to yield to superior numbers, and by the last of May the war was over.
“The North had at the beginning of the strife a population of twenty-two millions; the South had ten millions, four millions of whom were slaves. The North had enlisted during the war two million six hundred thousand troops—the South a little more than six hundred thousand. Now the North had a million men to send home—the South but one hundred and fifty thousand.”
Jefferson Davis had been captured, and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe. Our worn and ragged soldiers had returned to a devastated country. Our entire people were to begin life over again in the midst of poverty, uncertainty, and under the watchful eye of the conqueror. The war was over, but military rule was not.
It was in these transition days, between the fall of “the Lost Cause” and the more stirring events of “Reconstruction,” that there occurred in our little village a most appalling tragedy. To understand it fully, my readers should know something of the young lady’s family. Let us pause here and take a backward glance.
About a hundred years ago Lindsey Durham, a Georgia boy of English descent, graduated from a Philadelphia Medical College and located in Clarke county, in his native State. Drugs were expensive, as they could not be obtained nearer than Savannah, Charleston or New York. Being surrounded by frontiersmen and Indians, he could but notice the efficacy of the native barks and roots used by them as medicines. He was thus led to adopt to a large extent the theories of the Botanic School. He began to cultivate his own medicinal plants, and to prosecute with much zeal his botanical studies and researches. He even went to Europe and procured seeds and plants of medicinal value, until finally his garden of medicinal herbs and plants contained thirteen acres. So great was his fame that patients began to come to him from adjoining States, and he had to build cottages on his plantation in order to entertain them. His marvellous success brought to him ample compensation. He became a millionaire, and lived in all the old-time splendor. Once, by a loan of money, he rescued the Athens bank from utter failure.
Dr. Lindsey Durham left several sons, all of whom were physicians. The eldest of these, and the most eminent, was Dr. William W. Durham, who was born on his father’s plantation in Clarke county, in 1823. After a collegiate course at Mercer University, he graduated from the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, taking high honors, spending five years in the hospital there, and perfecting himself in surgery. This talented gentleman married Miss Sarah Lowe, of Clarke county, and, four years after her death, he married Mrs. Georgia A. Allen, whose maiden name was Wood, and who was a native of Franklin, Georgia.