Secrets of Nashville's Hospital No. 11, the 'Pest House'

The Bostick property, site of Hospital No. 11 in Nashville. (Tennessee State Library and Archives)

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In West Nashville, traffic drones along busy Charlotte Pike, while a mile away, downtown Nashville flashes construction cranes and flexes its prosperity. Bus fumes and the smell of fast-food hamburger meat linger in the air.

In spring 1862, weeks after the United States Army occupied Nashville, the scene looked very different in the more sparsely populated edge of Tennessee’s capital city. Along the pike stood the abandoned, 10-room brick house of Hardin Perkins Bostick, a wealthy attorney and slaveholder who had died of typhoid fever two years earlier. In the adjacent field, patients – including soldiers, citizens, convalescents and contrabands – and caregivers clustered into scores of canvas military tents.

A warning on a fence
in front of Hospital
No. 11.

This lonely outpost served as the U.S. Army’s Smallpox Hospital — Hospital No. 11, as the military called it. Others called it the “Pest House.” A sign on a fence warned: “Keep Out.” Nearby, the Hospital No. 11 cemetery eventually would hold more than 1,500 souls.

Both the long-gone hospital and its cemetery have become objects of my fascination — mainly for what may still lie beneath the soil: bones.

“They never got them all,” an archaeologist recently told me.

Shortly after the war — perhaps just north of the present-day Sonic on Charlotte Pike or steps from Smiley Dental Associates — crews exhumed bodies from the Hospital No. 11 cemetery and transferred them to the newly established national cemetery in Madison, Tennessee, and elsewhere.

Among the dead was Private Hugh Scott of the 84th Indiana. In the summer of 1862, smallpox claimed the 32-year-old, blue-eyed, brown-haired farmer. He left behind a wife named Elizabeth, six children — and a pocketknife valued at 71 cents. [1] His remains eventually found their way back to Indiana.

Valentine White, also of the 84th Indiana, probably ended up in the forgotten cemetery as well. Suffering from smallpox, he leaped to his death from the Pest House in late spring 1863. “Delirious,” an Indiana newspaper wrote of the soldier who rests in an unknown grave. [2] 

Hospital No. 11 tents in a field near the Bostick house. (Tennessee State Library and Archives)

Smallpox didn’t rival typhoid, dysentery and malaria as a mass killer during the Civil War. A crude (by modern standards) vaccine existed, but many never received it. The disease brought terrifying symptoms: fever, headache, body aches and a rash of pus-filled bumps and scabs that often left permanent scars. Soldiers, many unaccustomed to close-quarters military life, often contracted the highly communicable disease.

But it never discriminated against.

“It is distressing to hear that slaves are dying of smallpox,” a Nashville newspaper wrote in 1863, “but it is certainly not more distressing than to see our gallant soldiers led to ravages of disease.” [3]

“Heaven’s particular scourge,” a Richmond newspaper called it. [4] 

Patients often faced strict quarantine. Treatments ranged from herbal remedies to chemical concoctions. In 1864, a Nashville newspaper touted a less-scientific cure: cream of tartar and rhubarb mixed with cold water – “a remedy which cured three thousand cases in England.” [5]

“In cases characterized by delirium great benefits have been obtained by applying a bottle of hot water to the feet,” added the paper. But this cure apparently never caught on — not with the U.S. military, and not with George W. France, the early 30ish doctor who ran Hospital No. 11.

France’s hospital carried a fearsome reputation. Townspeople called it the “Plague House” and assumed no one left alive, yet inside the canvas tents, care and vigilance shaped every day. Newly in charge in April 1864, France patrolled the tents while others dispensed care. He ran a tight operation. Patients noticed. 

“I expected to be crowded into a tent with a motley gathering of all classes," wrote 22nd Michigan quartermaster Thomas Boughton, a smallpox patient at Hospital No. 11, in a letter published in a Nashville newspaper. "I of course knew that the Doctors would prescribe for me. But I imagined a parched tongue with no one to administer my wants. I imagined myself hungry with no one near to answer my call. [6]

“My mind,” he added, “conjured up every idea that could tend to make me miserable.”

But France impressed Boughton, who spent eight days alone in a tent, delirious. An “ever-kind” nurse – a soldier in the 102nd Ohio – cared for him for about a week. 

“I was treated well and every arrangement was made for my comfort by Dr. France, who in my opinion, deserves some mark of approbation for his untiring efforts,” he wrote.

Another newspaper correspondent also challenged the hospital’s negative reputation. “Physicians, stewards, nurses, all, more or less, are included in the category of practicing brutality, ordering coffins hourly, that they may the more readily get rid of the infernal disease,” wrote the unknown correspondent, likely a patient. [7] 

But the hospital was nothing like that, the letter writer insisted, adding France “combines all the essentials of a refined and feeling gentleman, courteous and affable to the lowest, rendering all the aid and assistance to the inmates … He never relinquishes his post to engage in the frivolities of the day or the gaieties of the night, but, like a faithful sentinel, his tramp can be heard at morn, noon and night, alleviating the sufferings of the sufferer.” 

Now back to that cemetery … and those old bones.

I make a slow pass around the neighborhood — first in my SUV, then on foot. Within sight of the pike stands an African American Baptist church. I quiz a parishioner in a hurry about “Jefferson Street” Joe Gilliam, the former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback who made a name for himself here decades ago. But I don’t have the heart to ask him about the Pest House.

And so I’m left to wonder: Who was Valentine White, delirious and disease-ridden, who killed himself here? What would Dr. France think of this place today, virtually in the shadow of modern hospitals?

And, finally, is the archaeologist right? Do remains of soldiers, contrabands and other forgotten souls still rest somewhere in this unremarkable Charlotte Pike neighborhood — and what other secrets endure from Hospital No. 11, the Pest House?

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SOURCES

[1] Hugh Scott pension file document, courtesy descendant Sean Smart
[2] The Indiana State Sentinel, June 1, 1863
[3] Nashville Daily Union, March 19, 1863
[4] The Athens (Tenn.) Post, Dec. 13, 1862
[5] Nashville Journal, March 25, 1864
[6] Nashville Daily Union, May 11, 1864
[7] Nashville Daily Union, April 12, 1864