Today I am remembering a warm sunny morning early last spring, when my friend Mary Katherine and I went looking for the children’s graves down by Oyster Creek. She told me that there were nine of them. Nine children all from one family. Nine who died of diphtheria during the Civil War, when Death’s hunger seemed to have no end.
Epidemics
A Place Called Oyster Creek
Many years ago, there used to be a little settlement called Oyster Creek down on the north side of the Newport River, not far from my family’s homeplace. My grandmother’s neighbor Beatrice Mason— we called her “Miss Beadie”—told me about it long ago.
David Cecelski 