1949 – March 12 – date of last person to die of smallpox in the U.S., Elsa, TX — 1

Narrative Information

Associated Press/Los Angeles Times: “ELSA, Texas — Billie Raney was 21 when she stood on the sidewalk with her three grown sisters, watching morticians drag their mother out of the family home, still wrapped in the sheets in which she had succumbed to smallpox. Lillian Barber, then 43, was the only person to die in the last smallpox outbreak in the United States, which infected eight known victims in the Rio Grande Valley in 1949.

“Her father, Virgil Barber, who died in 1978, had always said smallpox came to the family from a bus ride he took to visit his hospitalized wife in February 1949. There was a sick man on the bus, he would say. “Health officials were never quite sure. They concluded that the hospital was where Lillian Barber, who needed a hysterectomy, contracted the disease. It could have come from her visiting husband or an infected oil-field worker who was admitted about the same time.

“The first doctor to come to Virgil Barber’s bed in February 1949 suspected he had typhus fever. Days later, when Barber was out of his head with fever and his wife lay ill, one of the boys summoned a second doctor. ‘He stopped at the door,’ remembered Charles Barber, 69, at the time the oldest of the four boys still living at home. ‘He sniffed and said, ‘There’s smallpox in here.’ ’

“The doctor had been through a smallpox epidemic in Michigan. Though likely immune from his experience up north, he notified the county health department and returned to the Barber home wearing a raincoat for protection.

“Nine days later, the doctor who made the initial visit also fell ill. Besides Virgil and Lillian Barber and son Bobby, the doctor, the oil-field worker, a county commissioner and two others are known to have contracted the disease.

“Lillian Barber died March 12.

“Quarantined, the boys were left alone in the home for eight weeks, finding food at the edge of their property each morning. They would go out in the backyard and boil clothing and sheets clean. The older sisters, who had since moved from the house, arranged for a telephone line for the boys.

“….Within a few days after the public was notified of the outbreak, local health officials ran through 50,000 pints of vaccine.”

Find a Grave: “Georgia Lillian Ransom passed away due to smallpox on March 12, 1949, at her residence, in Elsa, Texas. Georgia was born on May 30, 1905, in Eupora, Mississippi, her parents were Walter Ruben Ransom and Lula Frances McDaniels.

“She married Virgil Young Barber on September 3, 1922, in Independence County, Arkansas. Georgia was survived by her husband and all eight children.

“She was buried the next day on March 13, 1949, at Hillcrest Memorial Park, in Edinburg, Texas.”

Sources

Associated Press. “Last U.S. Smallpox Outbreak Left Mental Scars on Witnesses.” Los Angeles Times. 12-26-2001. Accessed 3-16-2023 at: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-dec-26-mn-18048-story.html

Find a Grave. “Georgia Lillian Ransom Barber.” Posted 5-16-2017. Accessed 3-16-2023 at: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/179413862/georgia-lillian-barber