Writes Mrs. P. W. Corr, of Hampton, Florida, (formerly Miss Lizzie Morton): “Never can I forget the dreary night when Willie Durham, Kitty Durham and Warren Morton left Decatur with Sallie’s body, which was to be buried in the old family cemetery in Clarke county. Mrs. Durham, who was in delicate health, was utterly prostrated and the doctor could not leave her.” So Dr. Charles Durham managed the funeral arrangements, chartering the car, and Sallie was buried from the old church her grandfather Lowe had built on his own plantation in Clarke county, and laid to rest in the Durham cemetery near by.
Sallie was shot on Friday at 7:30 A. M., and died the following Friday at 3:30 A. M. While she had suffered untold agony, she was conscious to the last. Throughout her illness she manifested a thoughtful consideration for the comfort of others. Especially did she show tender solicitude for her step-mother, insisting that she should not fatigue herself. While anxious to live, she said she was not afraid to die. In her closing hours she told her friends that she saw her own mother, her grandfather Durham, and her uncle Henry Durham (who had died in the Confederate service), all of whom she expected to meet in the bright beyond.
General Stephenson was in command of the Federal Post at Atlanta. He was notified of this tragedy, and sent an officer to investigate. This officer refused to take anybody’s word that Sallie had been shot by a United States soldier from the train; but, dressed in full uniform, with spur and sabre rattling upon the bare floor, he advanced to the bed where the dying girl lay, and threw back the covering “to see if she had really been shot.” This intrusion almost threw her into a spasm. This officer and the others at Atlanta promised to do all in their power to bring the guilty party to justice, but nothing ever came of the promise, so far as we know.
As a singular coincidence, as well as an illustration of the lovely character of Sallie, I will relate a brief incident given by the gifted pen already quoted from: “One of the most vivid pictures of the past in my memory is that of Sallie Durham emptying her pail of blackberries into the hands of Federal prisoners on a train that had just stopped for a moment at Decatur, in 1863. We had all been gathering berries at Moss’s Hill, and stopped on our way home for the train to pass.”
Dr. W. W. Durham lived for nearly twenty years after Sallie’s death. During the war he had enlisted as a soldier, but was commissioned by Dr. George S. Blackie, a Medical Director in the Western Division of the Confederate Army, to the position of Inspector of Medicines for the Fifth Depot. This position was given him because of his remarkable botanical knowledge and power of identifying medicines. After the war he was prominent in the reorganization of the Georgia Medical Eclectic College, but refused to take a professorship on account of an almost overwhelming practice. He was a quiet, earnest, thoughtful man; and highly sympathetic and benevolent in his disposition. His widow, Mrs. Georgia A. Durham, and their daughter, Mrs. Jennie Findley, still reside in Decatur.
Dr. W. M. Durham is a successful physician in Atlanta. He holds a professorship in the Georgia Eclectic Medical College, and edits the Georgia Eclectic Medical Journal. Kitty is Mrs. W. P. Smith, of Maxey’s; and John L. Durham is a physician with a large practice, and a large family, living at Woodville, Georgia.
The Durham residence still stands in Decatur, though not upon the same spot. For years a great stain of blood remained upon the floor, as a grim and silent reminder of this most awful tragedy which so closely followed the horrible and cruel war.