Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/19

Rh Page, of Danvers, Mass., soon followed; and later, my two clerks, Joseph C. and Nathaniel P Low, of Tewksbury, Mass., brothers, and the only sons of their sorrowing parents, were removed by death. One was attacked with the fever; the other sped to his side with affectionate ministrations, took the disease, and died within twenty-four hours of his brother. Samuel G. Champney, of Grafton, Mass., a private of the 25th Mass. Reg't, and a man of most estimable character, who had been more than a year my transportation clerk, having the fever upon him, but believing himself better, went north, only to expire in the harbor of New York, and find a grave on Staten Island. The plague also robbed us of one of our beloved teachers, Miss Elizabeth M. Tuttle, of Boston, commissioned by the N. E. Freedmen's Aid Society, but supported by Jas. M. Barnard, Esq., of Boston. She was a person of lovely character and fine accomplishments. With fearless and untiring zeal, she devoted herself to the care of another, who recovered under her tender nursing, while she fell a sacrifice to her devotion. Fortunately for the colored people, my own health was perfect during the whole period in which the town was under embargo; my office help being reduced to two clerks. On the 26th of October, my turn came to struggle with the pestilence, but an assistant returned that very day who was able to carry the business along. Probably not less than 2,500 deaths occurred from yellow fever and kindred malarial maladies, of which full 1,500 were of white persons. As many as one in four of the white population of New Berne went under the sod in the short space of six weeks. The town, deserted, forsaken, shut out from intercourse with the world, unprovided with things essential to the comfort of the sick or the sustenance of the well, all business suspended, except the undertaker's, shutters closed, and troops forbidden to enter, left the colored people in a condition peculiarly helpless. But the duties and routine of my office were not for one day omitted. Brig. Gen. Harland was at this trying time in command, and faithfully did he maintain the order and welfare of the city. He summoned the colored troops to do guard duty in town, and attend to the burial of the dead. They shrank not from the 2