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Tuberculosis Took Neoma McCamish at Age Seventeen

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She was just four months shy of her eighteenth birthday.

In continuing to research the names and dates on the gravestones of those buried in Maddux Cemetery at Tennessee's Harrison Bay State Park, I'm saddened by the number of lives cut short by Tuberculosis. "White plague," it was sometimes called, because its victims were garishly pale. I found it repeated on too many death certificates.

I learned that in Tennessee, TB was the number one cause of death in 1923. The governor signed legislation in 1941 to create the first State Tuberculosis Hospital. By 1943, TB had only dropped to the number three cause of death in the state. A state-run tuberculosis hospital opened in Chattanooga, less than 20 miles south of Harrison Bay State Park, in 1951. And it wasn't until the early 1970s that state officials began to contemplate closing those hospitals.

So I shouldn't be so surprised to find several cases in a cemetery of around 300 burials. I'm afraid I'll find more.

Neoma was a daughter of Mollie Cartwright (1877-1954) and Doc McCamish (1872-1942). Per her death certificate, Neoma battled the feared disease for at least two years. Another tidbit I discovered was that the average hospital stay for a Tuberculosis patient in Tennessee during the first few decades of the twentieth century was three years.


Chattanooga News (Tennessee)
Saturday, 21 April 1934

McCAMISH -- Miss Neoma, 17, died at the residence in Harrison early Saturday morning. Surviving are her parents, Mr. and Mrs. D. L. McCamish; five sisters, Mrs. L. M. Walker, Mrs. J. H. Lowe, Mrs. Leon Standifer and Misses Betty and Jenny McCamish; four brothers, L. M., L. R., Robert and Dave McCamish. Funeral services will be held from the Maddox Church, near Harrison, at 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon, with the Revs. Tony Lewis and W. M. Gladyson officiating. Interment in the Maddox Cemetery. Coulter's in charge.

Neoma McCamish
Aug 16, 1916
April 21, 1934

Maddux Cemetery
Harrison, Hamilton County, Tennessee

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