Auburn Postcard: Serum Plant 1918

My brother Richard and I were at mom's house in Huntsville recently and found this postcard in some  family memorabilia. The card, dated by postmark October 26, 1918, was sent by our paternal grandfather, Amos Jasper Wright, Sr., to our grandmother Rosa Mae. He wrote from Auburn, where he had arrived from their home in Gadsden ten days earlier to begin U.S. Army training. He tells her he's alright, that he got the package she sent but there was no mentholated salve. Perhaps he can find some locally, he says. The "Julia" mentioned is his older sister. Amos closes by telling Rosa Mae to write often. Their wedding anniversary is coming up; they married on October 31, 1915. 

My grandmother Rosa Mae, according to one of her journals, "rode the train and visited him a few weeks. Roomed at a Mrs. Whatley's and ate at a Mrs. O'Neal's across the street." The Whatley may have been Mrs. Alma Whatley, one of many Whatleys in Auburn and one who became a prominent businesswoman before her retirement in 1971. Amos was in service 54 days before hurting his back and being discharged on December 9, 1918. Of course, the war had ended by that time. I've written a blog post about his time in Auburn. 

Now, what about the actual card? And that serum plant? 

That facility opened on the campus of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1915. At the time hog cholera was devastating the livestock of farmers, causing millions of dollars worth of losses and interrupting supplies of the important food animal. For several years Charles Allen Cary, who became the first professor of veterinary medicine at Auburn in 1892, had lobbied the state legislature for funds to build a plant to make serum to fight the hog cholera at a price farmers could afford. Finally, $25,000 was appropriated. 

The serum plant building stood on campus into the 1960s. The Harrison School of Pharmacy building is now on the site.

I found the information on Alma Whatley in the "Whatley Road" entry of Sam Hendrix's 2021 book, Auburn: A History in Street Names, pp. 662-664. For more information about Cary, see Hendrix's 2018 book The Cary Legacy: Dr. Charles Allen Cary, Father of Veterinary Medicine at Auburn and in the South. 

My grandfather on the Auburn campus in 1918 with that iconic tower in the background. We still have that jacket he's wearing. He also brought back the pennant below. The note was written by my dad, Amos J. Wright, Jr. 

 

Dr. Cary, center with sleeve rolled up, conducts a hog cholera inoculation demonstration for a group of county agents, probably about the time he succeeded in getting a hog cholera serum plant built at Auburn in 1915.

Source: The Cary Legacy

Pelham Doctors in 1900

I've written a number of posts on this blog related to medical history in Alabama, especially Birmingham; and also many on the history of Pelham, where we live. You can find a list of some of the Magic City medical history items here. A list of Pelham postings is here. Both lists were completed in 2017, so both need updating--maybe someday. This piece examines a bit of Pelham's medical history. 

As I sometimes do on a cold winter evening, I recently dipped into the 1900 volume of the Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama. In addition to administrative materials and papers presented at the annual meeting, this publication included each year a county-by-county listing of the doctors in Alabama. Each listing was divided into those who were members of the medical society and those who were not. Thus the Transactions, which were published from the 1850s into the 1920s are something of a snapshot each year of the state's medical profession. 

Below you can see a page from the 1900 volume that gives doctors for Shelby County. Listed first are the officers of the county society, then the members and finally doctors who had not joined. Each entry often includes medical college and year of graduation as well as the year of certification to practice in Alabama. 

In that listing are three doctors in Pelham in 1900. Here I've included what I found about these men. 

Garland Henry Smith

Smith was born on July 10, 1860, and graduated from the Medical College of Alabama in 1889. Wayne Flynt's University of Alabama Medical Alumni Association 1859-2003 lists him in class of 1890 & being from the community of Kennedy in Lamar County. At the time the medical school was in Mobile, and operated there from 1859 until 1920 when it was moved to Tuscaloosa and then Birmingham in 1945. According to the Transactions he was certified by the Shelby County medical board in 1890. 

He apparently moved around the county. The 1890 and 1896 Transactions put him in Siluria. The 1900 volume puts him in Pelham. The 1902 publication has him living in Ganadarque, which had a post office from 1895 until 1903, the name having been changed from Newala in 1895. Finally, the  American Medical Association's Directory of Deceased Physicians 1804-1929 lists him in Saginaw at the time of his death on September 2, 1905. He seems to have been a member of the medical society during his career in Shelby County. 

In 2015 I did a blog post on the Pelham Cemetery; several physicians who practiced in the town are buried there. That includes Smith; you can see his marker via Find-A-Grave below. The photo there was better than mine! Pearl Denson wife of of Dr. G.H. Smith is also buried in the Pelham Cemetery; a photo of her grave is also in the blog post. She died in 1935. Since her maiden name was Denson, is she related to the next Pelham physician on our 1900 list? 

Dr. Smith is buried in the Pelham Cemetery. 

Source: Find-A-Grave

Eli Forest Denson

Denson was born on February 15, 1853, and graduated from Vanderbilt medical school in 1879. He was certified by the Shelby County board in that same year. He appears in various volumes of the Transactions through 1902, never as a member of the society. Denson does not appear in Shelby County in the 1907 volume, so he may have moved out of Pelham at some point. He died on July 14, 1910, age 57 and is buried in the Pelham Cemetery.  His wife Emma lived until 1937 and is also buried there. 

Dr. Denson is buried in the Pelham Cemetery. 

Source: Find-A-Grave 

Joseph Madison Johnson

Johnson was also a Vanderbilt graduate, finishing in 1883. He was certified by the Shelby County board in that same years. In addition to 1900, I found him in the 1896 Transactions but not in 1902 in Pelham. I did not find him via U.S. Census records, Find-A-Grave or the AMA directory of deceased physicians. He was not a society member in those years. Otherwise, Johnson is a mystery.

A William Rufus King Johnson, 1880 graduate of Atlanta Medical College, and certified by the county board in that year, shows up in Pelham in the 1889 and 1890 Transactions  and is not a society member. He does not appear in the city in the 1896 or 1898 Transactions.

The American Medical Association's Directory of Deceased Physicians 1804-1929 has a listing for him. with some additional and different information. He was born May 12, 1854, in Highland, Alabama. Johnson graduated from the Atlanta Medical College in 1878 and certified in Alabama that same year. He was certified to practice in Texas in 1907, and lived in several places in that state until his death in Mt. Pleasant of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 30, 1928. Was he related to Joseph Madison Johnson? 

Several other doctors are known to have practiced in Pelham in the early 20th century. Pelham was not incorporated at the time, but population figures for the Pelham "precinct" can be found in the Alabama Official and Statistical Register 1919. In 1900 602 people lived there and 1100 in 1910.

I've written a blog post about John Payne, who is also buried in the Pelham Cemetery. Although a physician who grew up in Shelby County, and was certified by that county's board, his practice before his untimely death seems to have been in Birmingham. 

Young & Company's Business and Professional Directory of Alabama 1910-1911 lists an A.W. Horton as a physician in Pelham. Dr Andrew W. Horton died in 1910 at the age of 37 and is buried in the Pelham Cemetery.

The American Medical Directory for 1916 has a doctor listed in Pelham, Braxton Bragg Pugh. He died in Uniontown in Perry County in 1938, so he may not have been in Pelham long. 

The American Medical Directory for the years 1912, 1914, 1918 have no doctors in Pelham. 

Source:

Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, 1900 via the Internet Archive 

Alabama's Poet Laureates

April is National Poetry Month in the U.S., and each year I've tried to post a new item on this blog related to Alabama poets and poetry. I also post a number of such items on my Twitter account @ajwright31. I've written about Sara Henderson Hay, who grew up in Anniston. I've done posts on the Anthology of Alabama Poetry published in 1928 and Alabama Horizons, a collection that appeared in 1999. Well-known author Langston Hughes wrote four poems related to Alabama, and I've written about those. I've also posted about Alabama poetry at other times of the year.

This year I thought I'd write something about the state's poet laureate program. In 1930 the Alabama Writers Conclave [now Cooperative] established the post and named Samuel Mintern Peck to it. The following year the legislature formally recognized the poet laureate position by law. Today the AWC nominates and the governor formally makes the appointment. Since 1983 terms have been limited to four years. This person is the official public face of poetry in Alabama. 

Below are the state's poet laureates with term dates, life dates, and links for more information. The black and white photos were taken from the 2000 anthology of laureate poems noted at the end of the post. I originally wanted to include an image of a book by each person, but decided against that to keep the length reasonable. 

Oh, and two Alabama cities have recently named poet laureates. Birmingham's is Salaam Green and Mobile's is Charlotte Pence. These positions are funded by the Alabama State Council on the Arts. 

1930-1938

Samuel Mintern Peck [1854-1938]

1954-1958

Mary B. Ward [1890-1985]

1959-1974

Bert Henderson [1903-1976]

1975-1982

William Young Elliott [1902-1976]

1983-1987

Carl P. Morton [1920-1994]

1988-1991

Morton D. Prouty, Jr. [1918-1998]

1992-1995

Ralph Hammond [1916-2010]

1995-1999

Helen Blackshear [1911-2003]

1999-2003

Helen Norris [1916-2013]

2004-2012

Sue Brannon Walker [ca. 1940-]

2013-2016

Andrew Glaze [1920-2016]

2018-2022

Jennifer Horne

2022-2026

Ashely M. Jones 

Movies with Alabama Connections: Bright Road

Mary Elizabeth Vroman came to be an "Alabama" author in a rather unusual way. She was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1924 [?], but grew up in Antigua in the British West Indies. I have been unable to locate a specific birthdate or anything about her parents. Why the move is also a mystery. 

By the late 1940s she was enrolled at Alabama State Teachers College [now Alabama State University] in Montgomery and graduated in August 1949. One source notes that Vroman attended Alabama State "like three generations of women educators in her family before her." She then began teaching at a rural elementary school in the state. 

That experience led to her first publication, a short story called "See How They Run" published in the June 1951 issue of the Ladies Home Journal. In the following year she won the Christopher Award for the story. That accolade is given to writers and others associated with films, literature or television productions that promote "the highest values of the human spirit." The award is presented by the Christophers, a Christian organization founded in 1945.

Vroman's story about a teacher who tries to inspire as well as instruct her students from poor families was adapted the following year for the film Bright Road. Like the story, the film is set in Alabama, although filmed at MGM studios in Culver City, California. Released on April 17, 1953, and 74 minutes long, Bright Road stars Dorothy Dandridge as the teacher Jane Richards and Harry Belafonte [in his first film role] as the principal Mr. Williams. Philip Hepburn plays C.T. Young, the student Miss Richards gives special attention. He's doing poorly academically but she sees his potential. All three give excellent performances, especially Hepburn. 

Bright Road is an unusual film that quietly confronts issues of poverty and racism but does not dwell on either. Jane Richards could be any teacher in any school trying to help a student reach his or her potential. All the cast members are black with the exception of Robert Horton, who plays a doctor called to attend one of Richards' sick students. Unfortunately, the film was not a commercial success.

Several biographical sources note that Vroman was an advisor on the film and helped on the screenplay. As a result, she became the first black female member of the Screen Writers Guild. I'm not sure where her participation is documented; the film itself credits only Emmett Lavery for the screenplay. The movie was directed by Gerald Mayer. 

Vroman continued her teaching career for a total of twenty years in Chicago and New York City, and married a dentist in Brooklyn, Dr. Oliver M. Harper. She died after surgery at Brooklyn's Unity Hospital on April 29, 1967. Vroman was 42.

"See How They Run" was not her only published work. Another story, "And Have Not Charity" was also published in the Ladies Home Journal. She also published three books. Harlem Summer [1967] is a young adult novel. Shaped to Its Purpose [1965] is a history of the first fifty years of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Her adult novel is Esther [1953], which follows the title character through menial jobs, rape and pregnancy to finally reach her goal of becoming a nurse. She works in a segregated hospital in the South. 

Some specific Alabama connections also appear in the film itself. Belefonte sings "Suzanne (Every Night When the Sun Goes Down)" which includes the line "Goin' back to Mobile town". Belefonte's character the principal asks Dandridge's after the holiday if she had a good Christmas.  The teacher responds, "Oh, yes, I had a visit with my family down in Mobile". Then, "Where are you planning to spend your vacation?" the principal asks later in the film. "Mobile", she says. Dandridge has a brief musical interlude in the film during a school pageant. She and Belafonte would be reunited in the 1954 film musical Carmen Jones. 

A profile of Vroman appeared after her death in the May 18, 1967 issue of Jet magazine. The piece includes photos of Vroman receiving her Christopher Award and in her Alabama classroom. You can see the original theatrical trailer for the film here. 

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia

Gadsden Postcard: Hotel Reich

Gadsden's Hotel Reich, built by Adolphe "Popo" Reich, opened on February 12, 1930. The ten-story structure had 150 rooms and interiors designed by Marshall Field's of Chicago. David O. Whilldin, a Birmingham architect active from 1902 until 1961, designed the hotel.  

The Reich was meant to be first-class. Chefs were hired from New Orleans. After World War II big bands such as those of Guy Lombardo and Tommy Dorsey played the ballroom. 

Popo's son Robert took over operations eventually, and the hotel was modernized in the 1960's. Sold in 1970, the new owner renamed it the Downtown Motor Hotel. In 1978 the facility was converted to the Daughette Towers subsidized housing for senior citizens.

This postcard, from my own collection, originated with E.C. Kopp, a printing and publishing company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that operated from 1898 until 1956. Another Reich postcard can be seen here. Mike Goodson's article about the hotel's opening day is here. More information is available here. 

Ads in the Auburn Plainsman on February 7, 1945

I was recently sifting through a box of old newspapers that came from my paternal grandparents' house in Gadsden. I've written about them, Amos J. and Rosa Mae Wright, in a previous post and hope to do others in the future. This particular box of treasures contained mostly the front page section of many issues of the Gadsden Times published during World War II. I assume my grandmother saved them; she seemed to be the archivist of that couple. Naturally there is a lot of interesting war news, but the issues also have fascinating material from the Gadsden area and around the state and elsewhere. I imagine there are numerous possible blog posts buried there.....

But I digress. I also came across this random issue of the Auburn Plainsman, the university's student newspaper. My Dad, Amos J. Jr., was enrolled at Alabama Polytechnic Institute at this time, before a couple of years in the Navy just after the war ended. I didn't find too much of interest except some fascinating advertisements, so here we are. 

The Plainsman had begun publication in 1922; you can find past issues here. The issue I found was six pages; the sheet with pages three and four is missing. I'm not sure why this random issue was saved, but perhaps Dad brought it home as a sample to show his mother while he was enrolled at Auburn.

I've made a number of comments below the ads, with help from these sources:

Ralph Draughon, Jr, et al. Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs [2012]

Sam Hendrix, Auburn: A History in Street Names [2021]

The first Tiger Theatre opened in 1925 and closed in the summer 1928 so the next bigger one could be built. The new building had over 700 seats and closed on April 26, 1984. I seem to remember seeing Who'll Stop the Rain? there, the 1978 film with Nick Nolte and Tuesday Weld. The film was based on Robert Stone's 1974 novel Dog Soldiers, which is well worth reading. 

Hat Check Honey was released on March 10, 1944; many films took longer to make their way around in the country in those days. The Very Thought of You came out on October 20, 1944. The Pearl of Death, released on August 1, 1944, was a Sherlock Holmes film so I probably would have gone to see that one. 

The Windmill operated from the 1930s until 1951, when its beer license was revoked for selling to minors and other offenses. In the 1930s and early 1940s it was the only place in the Auburn area to obtain legal alcohol. The place was frequented by veterans in school at Auburn; no co-eds were allowed. The entrance was a faux windmill. The business was really a gas station with a few booths and tables inside. 

I did not find any information on the Varsity. 

Auburn Grille advertised as "an institution within itself." The Greek immigrants John and Lucas Gazes operated the Grille and Roy's Place. The Grille was the first restaurant with air conditioning in Lee County and  was named for the Auburn automobile, manufactured in Auburn, Indiana, from 1900 until 1937. Their father Emmanuel Gazes operated the Auburn Cafe from 1907 until 1921. The family was also involved in various other eating places, including what became the War Eagle Supper Club.

Some of these places such as Roy's and the Windmill operated outside city limits since according to state law at the time alcohol could not be served inside the limits.

War Eagle Theater was part of the Martin chain & the first chain theater in Auburn. This one must have been known as Martin Theater and later renamed.

By 1982 there were 300 Martin Theaters in the southeastern U.S. In that year the chain's owner, Fuqua Industries sold the chain to Carmike Cinemas. In 2016 Carmike was purchased by AMC Theatres. 

This particular Martin opened on August 19, 1948 and closed in 1985. In October 1970 it hosted the first Alabama showing of I Walk the Line, based on the novel An Exile by Madison Jones [1925-2012], long-time faculty member at AU. 

One of the films showing that I especially note and have enjoyed was To Have and Have Not, released in October 1944 and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The movie was based on Ernest Hemingway's 1937 novel. 

"Chief" Shine provided the first rental car service in Auburn.

I did not find anything about this establishment, even in a general Google search.

Dr. Halle Tanner Dillon Passed the Test

I've written before on this blog about Dr. Halle Tanner Dillon, "the first certified, practicing female physician in Alabama". Dr. Dillon was a fascinating individual, the daughter of Benjamin Tanner, a prominent African-American minister in Pennsylvania and the sister of painter Henry O. Tanner. She graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1891, the only black in her class. 

She was recruited by Booker T. Washington to become the physician at Tuskegee Institute, and she agreed. However, first she had to pass Alabama's certification exam, a grueling test that took place over several days and involved prominent white male physicians as examiners. At the time just a few black male doctors had passed the test and were practicing in Alabama. Washington arranged for her to be tutored by one of them, an old friend, Montgomery physician Cornelius Dorsette.  She passed the test. 

You can read more details about her life and career in the blog post I linked to in the first sentence. I've recently come across the two newspaper articles below that I have not seen before and which offer information about Dillon's examination. 

The earliest and second one below is from the Washington Bee on October 3, 1891. That District of Columbia newspaper was primarily read by African-Americans. The article is actually a reprint, with no author give, from the Alabama Exchange. I have been unable to locate any information about that publication; perhaps it was a short-lived African-American paper in the state. 

Booker T. Washington expected Dillon to start work at Tuskegee on September 1, so this article notes she "applied" to the state medical board on August 17. She took the exam in the state health office in Montgomery, "in which she was required to write the answers, without referring to any book of reference". Her answers were scored on ten different topics by ten examiners, all white male physicians. The testing ended August 25. See my previous blog post for more details.

Dillon made a total of 78.81 and a 75 minimum was required, the article states. She will teach anatomy and hygiene at Tuskegee in addition to her clinical duties. "She had a good literary education, having spent six years in college, writes a masculine hand, and it is stated that her examination was very creditable." 

The second article by date [first one shown below], was published in the Capital City Courier in Lincoln, Nebraska. This piece has an attributed author, Lida Rose McCabe, a white journalist best known as the first female reporter to visit the gold fields in Alaska. Her article was filed from Philadelphia on November 5, and appeared in the Courier two days later.

"Alabama has now its first woman physician," McCabe wrote. Some of Dillon's background is included. Before her first marriage she worked as a bookkeeper for the Christian Recorder. Founded in 1852 by the African Episcopal Methodist Church, it is the oldest continuously published African-American newspaper in America. Her father was a minister in that church. "She spent her leisure hours reading medicine", McCabe wrote. She entered medical school after the death of her first husband. "Dr. Dillon was subjected to one of the severest ordeals" in state history--presumably state medical examination history, which had begun in 1877. McCabe notes the reluctance of the state's conservative medical professionals to admit black doctors unless "fully qualified". However, "Mrs. Dillon was courteously received."

McCabe states with no exceptions that Dillon was Alabama's first female physician. The earlier Bee article claims that Dillon was the first female certified by the state medical board, and that another female physician had been certified by the Jefferson County medical board at an earlier date. Under the 1877 law governing medical practice in Alabama, a candidate could take the exam either in Montgomery at the state board or before any county board. This arrangement allowed county medical societies to retain some power.

The white physician named as certified in Jefferson County was Anna M. Longshore [1829-1912]. Like Dillon, she came from a prominent family. Her father Joseph, a physician, helped establish the Woman's Medical College that Dillon would graduate from four decades later. Anna and her cousin Hannah were among the eight women in the first class of 1852. 

Longshore did indeed take the exam in Jefferson County, but the Transactions of the Medical Association for 1892 [p.142] list her as "certificate refused." Thus Longshore may have been the first woman to take a certification exam in Alabama, but she did not pass. See my earlier post on Dillon for more about Longshore's long career as a physician and lecturer on medical topics. Why she came to Alabama to take the exam remains a mystery.

Another question is why Dillon took the exam in Montgomery and not in Macon County where Tuskegee Institute is located. Perhaps Washington and Dorsette wanted her to attempt the test in the state capital, before prominent white physicians, where a successful effort would receive more attention. 

As I noted in my original blog post on Dr. Dillon, she "was not the first female physician in Alabama, but the first to be certified by the state examination process under the law passed in 1877. In the 1850s Louisa Shepard graduated from her father's medical school in Dadeville, the Graefenberg Medical Institute. The school closed in 1861 after graduating some 50 students, including two of Louisa's brothers. She never practiced medicine; she married William Presley and they moved to Texas. Louisa died in 1901."

Source: Capital City Courier [Lincoln, Nebraska] 7 November 1891
via Chronicling America

Source: Washington [D.C.] Bee 3  October 1891

via Chronicling America

Dillon's exam August 17-25, 1891, is available online via the Alabama Department of Archives and History.