Assassination Trivia

[Dave Taylor]

(06-11-2013 07:25 PM)Houmes Wrote:  

(06-05-2013 08:25 PM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  Dr. Smith is one of the few graves actually on Fort Jefferson. After Dr. Smith died of Yellow Fever in 1867, Dr. Mudd took over as garrison doctor until a new one came from the mainland.

According to his FindaGrave page, Dr. Smith's three year old son died of Yellow Fever on the very same day as he did, and his name is also on this marker.

Now that the final resting place of Henry and Clara Rathbone has been settled, are we sure that Dr. Joseph Sim Smith and his son are really buried at Fort Jefferson? The stone on the parade grounds appears more as a memorial than a gravestone and why would they place a grave in the middle of an area used for marching and military drills? The records for Fort Jefferson are notoriously scant, and early military burials inside the fort were at first assigned to the north corner. When the Yellow Fever epidemic was at a peak, accounts note that the soldiers couldn't get the dead out of the fort fast enough, with rudimentary burials on Hospital Key provided. Some of the men were even plied with whiskey as an inducement to help. Sam Arnold, by one account, noted that occasionally coffins were brought in and placed at the bedside of victims even before they were dead. Dr. Smith's wife barely survived an infection, and ended up living in Brooklyn, New York. As an officer (Brevet Major) more resources might have been available and Dr. Smith and son may have been shipped home. I found Dr. Whitehurst's grave when I was in Key West, but no Joseph or Harry Smith.

You make a good point, Blaine. It doesn't really make a lot of sense that Dr. Smith's body would be placed right in the middle of the Fort when everyone thought it was contagious. More than likely this is just a memorial to him.

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