El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-04-06
SON OF JET
FERSON DAVIS
Died Of YeIIowJack At Men,
phis In 1873.
INCIDENTSOF THEPLAGUE
Which Almost DepOpuIated That City
And Which Made No Distinction
On Account OF Age, Sex Or Prev
iOus Condition, But Was Equally
Fatal To the Rich AS To the Poor,

A recent issue of the New Orleans
Picayune contains the following para
graph concerning the family of the late
Jefferson Davis:
Mrs. jefferson Davis and her daugh-
ter, Mrs. Hayes, are now comforta oily
located at the Old Davis homestead up
at Beauvoir, Miss, whittier the party
went last Saturday.
Mr.. J. A. Hayes. who recently ar
rived from Colorado Springs, Colo,
with his wife and daughter, returned
to the ST. Charles last night after &C
companying his wife and mother to the
old Mississippi homestead. He says
they will remain in the country for
about one month. The estate will be
finally settled up on this trip, but Mr.
Hayes told the Picayune reporter last
night that nothing definite had yet
been arranged in the matter. Miss
Varins Davis Hayes, the dsugh-
ter OF Mr.. Hayes. returned to the city
with him.
This item was handed in to the HER
AID office by a man who formerly re-
sided at Memphis. He said:
''But few people know that Jefferson
Davis, the president OF the Southern
Confederacy, once had son, but he
died. His SON was named Jefferson
Davis, 1p-&nd lived to be about twenty
one years of age. He died at Memphis,
Tennessee, of yellow fever and is now
buried in Elmwood cemetery where so
many thousands of those who persisted
6cOurge, now sleep.
81 was a resident of Memphis at the
time it was visited by the plague which
killed young jefferson Davis.3 At that
time I was not more than ten years OF
age and resided in the eastern suburbs,
elgh. miles distant from the Mississippi
river. The neigh borhood where L lived
was considered far enough from the
city to be proof against contagion and
but few of the residents thereon were
panic striker or saw fit to flee away to
the mountains and plains OF higher al
titudes at the approach of the yellow
death; in fact most of the residents of
the suburban village took refugees
from the city into their homes.
"Next to my fathers house there re-
sided q man who owned plantation In
Mississippi. AS soon as the fever broke
out he leased his house to the Hayes
family and removed to Mississippi.
Young Davis was then visiting or llv-
ed with them to the country. Soon
after his arrival he met my younger
brother and myself and thereafter we
three became fast friends. He was q
broad shouldered, jovial young fellow.
possessed of loud hearty laugh. One
of his faults however, was his aptitude
for sprip ging coarse jokes. The two
houses were somewhat isolated from
the neighbors. standing side by side,
with large groves of magnificent oaks
in front, with the long walks fringed
by cedars. roses and butter cups. Jay
birds futtered and screamed in the
trees and horses greZed beneath them.
The front gates, with their big old
white ports, opened on the
right of way of the Memphis and
Charleston railway and each day
during that long hot terrible summer
of '7S, when the city was reeking with |
filth and slime and alive with fever |
germs, when hundreds were dying |
every day and being carted off at mid
night to the cemeteries, when every |
train that passed in front of the gates |
was crowded to suffocation with people |
who were endeavoring to reach the
OF east Tennessee and /
escape. jeff Davis, my brother and L