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Dr. Hugh Hampton Young
b.18 Sep 1870 San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas
d.23 Aug 1945 Baltimore, Maryland
Family tree▼ (edit)
m. 3 Nov 1869
(edit)
m. 4 Jun 1901
Facts and Events
Hugh Hampton Young, MD (September 18, 1870 - August 23, 1945) was an American surgeon, urologist, and medical researcher. Hugh H. Young was born in San Antonio, Texas on September 18, 1870. He was the son of Confederate Brigadier General William Hugh Young and Frances (Kemper) Young. Young graduated from the University of Virginia in 1891 after acquiring BA, MA, and MD degrees in just four years. As of 1895 he began teaching at Johns Hopkins Institute and by 1897 he was the head of their urology department, at an age of just 27.[3] He would remain there for most of his life, until 1940. Among Young's contributions to the medical field are several inventions and discoveries, primarily relating to surgery. One such innovation was the "boomerang needle", a type of surgical needle designed for working with deep incisions. He also invented a device known as the Young punch, an instrument used in prostatectomy procedures. He and his associates also discovered the antiseptic merbromin, more popularly known as Mercurochrome, one of its brand names. Young is also credited with performing the first radical perineal prostatectomy, an operation for removal of prostate cancer. In World War I then Major Young was in charge of the venereal health of the Doughboys in France. He fought prostitution near American bases vigorously and with the full cooperation of General Pershing. In addition to his pioneering medical work, Young had a personal interest in the burgeoning field of aviation and chaired a committee for planning what is now Baltimore-Washington International Airport, which at the time was to be named "Friendship Airport". He was also active in community affairs and was known to be a supporter of Albert Cabell Ritchie, a Maryland politician who made a bid for presidency in 1932 but lost the nomination to Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago, where Young was among the delegates. Young wrote an autobiography entitled Hugh Young, a surgeon's autobiography (published by Harcourt, Brace and company in 1940)[1] as well as several urological texts. He died on August 23, 1945 and is buried in Druid Ridge Cemetery, in Baltimore, Maryland. The American Urological Association presents an annual award called the Hugh Hampton Young Award named in his honor. Notable recipients include John K. Lattimer, pioneer of pediatric urology and physician investigator of the JFK assassination, and Larry I. Lipshultz, founder of Society for the Study of Male Reproduction FROM: Young, Hugh H. "Two Texas Patriots," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 15 (Jul 1940): 16-32. HUGH H. YOUNG At the age of eighteen months I was taken by my father, General William Hugh Young, and my mother, Frances Kemper Young, from San Antonio, Texas, where I was born, to Austin by stagecoach. It was winter, and the black, waxy roads were wet with continuous rains. The stagecoach, drawn by six horses, struggled over these terrible roads, and although relayed every few miles with a fresh string of animals, arrived at Austin late in the night. Mother and Father, wet, bedraggled and tired, put up at the hotel, and while they prepared to retire placed me on the big double bed. A large whisky toddy was prepared by Father, enough for himself and Mother, and this he placed on the table beside the bed. Attracted by the amber color of the liquid, I seized it with my baby hands and tossed off the larger part of it, according to the story I have heard recounted many a time. My parents, busy in their preparations to go to bed, did not notice what I had done until almost all of their refreshment had disappeared, and then were horrified at the thought of what might happen. But nothing did happen, except that I became uproariously drunk, refused to go to sleep, continued to keep up a perfect carnival of noise and merriment throughout the night, and prevented my parents from getting any sleep. Strange to say, I didn't get sick, and the next day was none the worse for having imbibed what was thought to be enough for my father and mother. This inoculation against the effect of whisky probably has stood me in good stead many a time. Early in life, I was placed in the tender care of my grandfather, General Hugh Franklin Young. To me he was a heroic character, over six feet tall, straight as an Indian, handsome, and fearless. He had had thrilling experiences fighting white men, red men, and Mexicans, and I usually refused to go to sleep until he told me a story. Grandfather was a huntsman and frequently went out for big game. One of his bedtime stories told how he and a friend went out with their rifles to kill a bear. They came to a large canebrake and separated, agreeing to rejoin on the other side of the brake. After going a short distance, Grandfather saw two beautiful cubs nestling at the foot of a tree and, fascinated by them, he decided to take them home. Pretty soon there was a crashing in the canebrake that announced the rapid approach of the mother bear. Dropping the cubs, he took a steady aim at the onrushing furious mother and fired. She continued to come on, and as Grandfather had had only one bullet in his rifle, his only hope of escape was to run. He was going well until suddenly across his path he saw a huge log barring the way. His only chance was to mount the log and jump across. As he landed on the other side he slipped and fell into the soft mud, and before he could get on his feet the bear was on him and chewing at the back of his neck. In a short time a stream of blood, which ran down over his cheek and accumulated on the ground, convinced him that he was rapidly bleeding to death. He was preparing for another world when a shot rang out, the bear toppled over, and his companion appeared at his side. Quickly dragging Grandfather out of the mud, he wiped the clotted blood from his face and said, "Get up." Grandfather muttered that he was too weak from loss of blood, at which his friend exclaimed, "That's not your blood, it's the bear's." Grandfather had broken the bear's jaw with his shot, and this prevented her from biting him. Grandfather often told me about the buffalo hunts in which he took part. Between Austin and San Antonio he would frequently see from a hilltop great valleys completely black with buffalo. While out hunting one time, he lost his way. After two or three days, the water gave out, and his thirst was so great that he feared for his life. Having frequently killed and butchered a buffalo, he remembered that the animal had a supernumerary stomach which was filled with water and newly cropped grass. Hastily killing an animal, he opened this stomach with his bowie knife. He compressed the hay in the stomach with the buffalo's tail, so the water would rise to the surface, and greedily drank the liquid, which he assured me was pure and palatable. These and many other exciting tales were the bedtime stories of my early youth -- tales that often had the opposite effect desired for the modern bedtime story. They were far from soporific, and frequently after Grandfather left me I lay on the bed trembling with fear, and later awakened from a horrible dream, during which I had been in fearful fights with savages or beasts. Grandfather was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, not far from the Natural Bridge. His great-grandfather, who was born in Ireland, killed an Indian who had murdered his only brother, so that fighting Indians came naturally to him. The name Hugh is traditional, as it appears in practically every generation of our family for nearly two hundred years. There were sixteen children in his grandfather's family and eight in his father's. At the age of sixteen Grandfather decided that there were too many in the family to give him any chance for success in Virginia. So he quietly decamped and made his way through the mountains of Virginia and Tennessee and on into Mississippi, where he led an adventurous life. He soon joined the constabulary engaged in fighting the Mississippi River bandits and pirates who infested Mississippi and Louisiana. One of Grandfather's prominent characteristics was fondness for dress. I never remember seeing him except in a frock coat and a high silk hat. Apparently such were his habits, even in the frontier towns of Mississippi in the eighteen-twenties. I recall well his describing how one night he went to a ball with a beautiful girl. He was careful to have in each hip pocket a pistol beneath the tails of his "clawhammer coat," as he called it. During the dance someone told him that a certain bad man was outside with a pistol, saying that he would get him before the evening was over. Grandfather took the young lady to her mother, explaining that he had something important to attend to, but that he would be back very soon. With a cocked pistol in each hand, he hunted for the bandit, but failed to find him. The dance was then resumed. Grandfather married Frances Hampton Gibson at Clarksburg, Tennessee, in 1836. She was descended from William Hampton, who came to Jamestown in 1620. Wade Hampton was her cousin. From her I get my middle name. Grandfather's roving disposition, however, did not permit him to rest, and he took his bride across the Mississippi to Booneville, Missouri, which only a few years before had been part of the Louisiana Territory that Jefferson got from Napoleon. In this frontier country my father was born. He had a sister eighteen months younger than he. She died in infancy as a result of falling from the shoulders of her Negro nurse. In 1840 the family was again on the move, when Grandfather took his wife and my father, two years old, into the wilds of northern Texas, crossing the dangerous Indian territory to make a new home in Clarksville, near the Red River. Here my grandmother died at the age of twenty-four, leaving the little boy alone, with a roving huntsman for a father. At that time Texas was in the throes of the war for freedom from Mexico. The first ray of hope had come to the Texans in their glorious defeat of Santa Anna at San Jacinto, but the war was not over, and the frontiersmen who had come to Texas had to organize for self-protection against both Indians and Mexicans. Grandfather joined the Texas militia and was soon enrolled with a group of men who formed the celebrated Snively Expedition. In the spring of 1843 the Republic of Texas discovered that the Mexicans had purchased huge stores of merchandise in St. Louis, and had assembled a train of prairie schooners, each with its large team of mules, to transport these supplies by the Santa Fe Trail from Missouri across the present Panhandle of Texas to the old Spanish city of Santa Fe. Colonel Jacob Snively was commissioned by President Sam Houston to assemble a force and intercept the rich wagon train as it crossed from the United States into Texas. He was instructed to remain on Texas soil. As the men had to equip themselves with horses, clothes, and arms, they were offered, as a prize, one-half the spoils. Volunteers were asked to meet on the Red River. Grandfather, one of the hundred and seventy-five adventurous spirits who gathered there, has left an interesting diary. This little command started west through wild country inhabited only by Indians, many of whom were on the warpath. The expedition followed Indian trails until it had passed the western boundaries of the United States along the Red River, then proceeded north in the Panhandle of Texas, and on May 27, 1843, reached the Santa Fe Trail, south and west of the Arkansas River near Fort Leavenworth. Here they waited for news of the precious wagon train. Their scouts brought word of the approach of a body of Mexican troops marching east from Santa Fe across the northern part of Texas to meet the wagon train when it left the United States. The scouts reported that there were about a hundred men in the party, and the Texans, dismounting, engaged them. The entire force of Mexicans was captured with the exception of two. On the ground lay thirty-six dead and wounded, evidence of the wonderful marksmanship of Snively's men. "Grandfather," said I, "did you kill any of those Mexicans?" "I do not know, my boy, that I ever killed anybody, but I do remember that I saw one man stick his head from behind a tree. I fired. Shortly afterwards the Mexicans ran and I found a dead Mexican with a hole in his forehead, but I'm not sure it was I who killed him." The Texans waited some days. Learning from the captives that General Armijo, with a force of over seven hundred Mexicans, was following them, Colonel Snively pushed on to attack them, but found they had turned tail and run. With all fear of a Mexican attack removed, Colonel Snively returned along the Santa Fe Trail, liberated the captives, even furnishing mounts for the wounded. They passed the scene of their engagement a few days before, where the bodies of some twenty-five dead Mexicans lay. Snively then encamped in the forest along the southwest shore of the Arkansas River, and waited for the approach of the Mexican train. In the meantime, seventy-five homesick men had left. Game was scarce, and to keep from starving it was necessary to send hunters across the river into the territory of the United States, where buffalo were plentiful. Game was free to everyone -- white men, Indians, bandits, Mexicans -- according to the law of self-preservation on the prairies. One day two of the huntsmen returned in great haste, crossed the river, and informed Colonel Snively that United States Dragoons, accompanying the caravan, had come upon them and would soon be there. Looking upon them as friends, the Texans did not attempt to leave. The Dragoons soon arrived on the opposite bank. There were two hundred cavalry accompanied by two pieces of artillery. A United States officer came to the river's edge and informed Colonel Snively that he was invited by Captain Philip St. George Cooke, who commanded the Dragoons, to cross the river and visit him. The officer said he was authorized to guarantee safe passage back. Colonel Snively went over with one of his men. According to Grandfather, Colonel Snively was informed by Captain Cooke that the Texans were on United States soil and that he was compelled to disarm them. Snively protested that he felt sure he was west of the 100th meridian boundary line, and as the line between the United States and Texas never had been surveyed, this was at best disputed territory. Captain Cooke was inflexible, and gave the Texans an hour to lay down arms, asserting that if any attempted to escape he would immediately fire. Without giving Colonel Snively a chance to return to his force, Captain Cooke crossed with his command, surrounded the Texans, and disarmed them. Colonel Snively protested the inhumanity of depriving them of their arms in a country infested with thousands of hostile Indians, so Captain Cooke gave back ten of the rifles and offered to allow as many as wished to accompany him back to Missouri. Grandfather and some forty others had been able to conceal their rifles beneath birchbark, which strewed the ground, and gave up captured Spanish escopetas (short rifles) in their stead. Captain Cooke then recrossed the Arkansas, accompanied by some of the Texans. Colonel Snively moved a few miles up a creek. His force was now reduced to about fifty. Twice they fought off attacks by Indians, losing a few men and a good many horses. However, they decided to attempt to intercept the wagon train. Two scouts, sent forward, were killed by Indians; others were sent out and reported that the train had crossed the river into Texas a few days before, and had gone on its way. After they had followed the Santa Fe Trail for several days, discontentment again arose among Snively's men, and they began dropping out of line until only ten were left to continue the pursuit. In Grandfather's diary he remarks: We ten were overwhelmed with disappointment and chagrin. A march of four days would have sufficed to put the wagon train in our power. With reluctance we followed the others. In a short time we were surrounded by five hundred Comanche and Kiowa warriors. We received them with galling fire and emptied a number of saddles, and repulsed the attack. This was our last affair with the Indians. The last four days of our march we had nothing to eat. The Texas Government made an earnest protest at Captain Cooke's action, which Grandfather attributed to Mexican bribes. The United States finally paid $18.50 for each of the guns taken from the Texans, but failed to acknowledge that Captain Cooke had invaded the territory of Texas. Captain Cooke's action stirred up a tempest in Texas, which was taken up by newspapers in the United States. It played an important part in fanning the flames that two years later resulted in war with Mexico. Historians who have written of these times report having conferred with Grandfather and read his diaries. After Texas joined the United States, Grandfather became a colonel in the militia, and served in the Mexican War. He subsequently became a judge ("Chief Justice for Red River County in 1848"), and had much to do with the development of that part of the country. At an early age, Father was sent to McKenzie College, a frontier school with scandalously bad food and cruel teachers. I remember his telling of the fearful times the boys had until eventually they rebelled and threw rotten hams out of the windows. From McKenzie College father went to Nashville, where he lived with his uncle, Dr. John Young, a prominent physician who subsequently took an important part in politics. While in Nashville, father became a great friend of Henry Watterson, who went to the same school and even at an early age showed evidence of a brilliant mind. When he was twenty-one, Father appeared at his uncle's home in Staunton, Virginia, on his way to the University of Virginia. There he met Frances Kemper, who was later to become his wife. This sixteen-year-old niece of David Young's wife was on her way to Charlottesville to attend a girls' school. With the sobering experiences of the West, Father appeared very old to the rollicking miss. He often asserted that it was love at first sight on his part. During the next two years at the university father paid court with little success. Frances Kemper had far too many beaux to take any interest in this serious young man. Her brother, George Kemper, was also a student at the university, as was her cousin, Charles Kemper Young, also a first cousin of Father's. Seeing that he was making no progress with the young lady, during his second year Father decided to build a house, and bring her brother and cousin to live with him. Securing a lease from the university for a small plot of ground off the campus, he built a two-story brick house which he called "The Lone Star." The three of them were valeted by father's body-servant, Lee, one of Grandfather's slaves. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Father remained at the University of Virginia to study military tactics. Two companies of students -- the "Southern Guard" and the "Sons of Liberty" -- formed the Cadet Corps in the military school organized by the university to train officers for the Confederate Army. Father became the captain of one of these companies, and Robert E. Lee, Jr., son of the General, was captain of the other. Intensive training was given these young men for six months, when they left to become officers in the Southern forces. Armed with a commission to raise a regiment, Father said good-bye to his sweetheart and made his way back to Texas, where he found his father serving as brigadier general in charge of recruiting service for northern Texas. Obtaining a horse, Father rode over this sparsely populated region, and picked the men for his regiment. From all accounts, it was a fine, high-spirited, sharpshooting body of men who assembled at Dallas and organized the 9th Texas Infantry. On account of his youth, Father was not elected to the command, but only as captain of a company. The early training of the regiment was acquired at Little Rock, Arkansas, after which they joined the Confederate Army of Tennessee. One of Father's comrades, in writing me, said: I was with your father's regiment when it joined the army of Albert Sidney Johnston at Corinth, Miss. At dress parade there were some 40,000 men. They were as fine looking soldiers as the country ever produced, but among the officers none showed off to better advantage than your father. From there we marched off to the battle of Shiloh, where we fought one of the bloodiest battles of the war. One of our brigades suffered severely and was fleeing from the enemy. Our regiment was ordered to charge a battery which was supported by infantry. This was a desperate charge and was led by your father. Many in our company were killed and wounded but the battery was taken and the enemy repulsed. This was a turning point in the battle, and from then on the enemy were on the run. The 9th Texas Infantry was reported to have taken nine batteries that day. They were specially cited and praised by General Bragg, commanding the Division. After the battle, Colonel Maxey, who commanded the 9th Texas Infantry, was promoted to the command of the brigade and although your father was only a captain he was promoted over majors and lieutenant-colonels and became, at the age of twenty-four, colonel of the 9th Texas Infantry. Father was engaged in nearly all the great battles of the Army of Tennessee in Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Many of his horses were wounded or killed, and the principal occupation of Lee, who accompanied him as orderly, was to keep him in horses and food. In several of these battles Father was severely wounded, but he always returned to his regiment, and at the age of twenty-six he was commissioned brigadier general, the youngest, I am told, in the Confederate Army. At the great battle of Atlanta when it was so heroically defended by the Confederates, my father commanded a brigade that lost heavily in the fierce fighting that has been so romantically described in Gone with the Wind. When General Hood assumed command and decided to evacuate the city and return with his army to Tennessee, to Father's brigade was assigned the difficult task of capturing the fort commanding Allatoona Pass, while the rest of the army escaped into Tennessee. This proved to be my father's last fight. His small army of seven thousand men had driven the Union forces back over mountainous terrain until they made their final stand at the fort towering above Allatoona Pass. The desperate condition of the Union defenders was signaled to General Sherman on Kennesaw Mountain some ten miles away. Back came the signal, "Hold the fort, for I am coming," a message that has been immortalized in the Union war poem of the same name. The battle raged most of the day, and the Confederates with consummate dash carried all before them. Father was following his men closely, and the capture of the fort seemed imminent when a shell fragment struck him down. With a badly splintered leg, Father was put in an ambulance and carried off the field. Lee was close by. Slowly they made their way over mountain roads to reach a line of evacuation, Lee bringing the two horses, one of which he rode. Other wounded were encountered, and at Father's orders Lee dismounted and put these Confederates into the saddles and led the horses. Suddenly from around a hill appeared a troop of Union cavalry. The ambulance had taken the wrong road. As Father had been in command of the Confederate forces, his captors thought him so valuable a prisoner that, although severely wounded, he was carried over many miles of rough roads up to the top of Kennesaw Mountain into the presence of General Sherman, who, in his memoirs, has described their interview. Two years ago, accompanied by Judge Shepard Bryan and Mr. Wilbur G. Kurtz, a Georgia historian, I went from Atlanta to Allatoona Heights. On the way we passed Kennesaw Mountain, headquarters of General Sherman during part of the campaign. The Western & Atlanta Railroad goes through Allatoona Pass in a low mountain range, at the summit of which are the defensive works of the old fort. We were able to go only a short distance in our motorcar. Then we took a mountain road, finishing the ascent by a rocky path. Although small, the fort with its high embankment evidently was a very strong position. In every direction was rough mountain country, rough hills covered with dense scrub timber. Mr. Kurtz, who has made a great study of the military campaigns in this region, said it had hardly changed at all since the Civil War. As I viewed the field of my gallant father's last fight, I was amazed at the splendid courage of the Confederates who were able to drive a strong force across these rugged hills up to the very embrasures of the fort itself. After days of suffering and lack of medical attention, Father finally reached a hospital. By that time the shattered left leg, with splintered bones and a large flesh wound, had become gangrenous. Fortunately, he fell into the hands of an intelligent young surgeon who told him that the only thing that would save his life was to burn out the "proud" flesh with pure nitric acid. Father told how he was strapped to a stretcher and, without anesthesia, nitric acid was poured into the rotting flesh, which crackled until the smoke reached the ceiling. This heroic treatment was effective, the sepsis was routed, before long the slough was thrown off, and his life was saved. When in swimming with Father I often saw the large depression in his leg. But this was not the only mark of battle, as I remember clearly a depression in his chest from a bullet that entered beneath the collarbone and came out through the shoulder blade, penetrating the lung and missing (I know not how) the heart and the great vessels. There were also wounds in thigh, arm, neck, and scalp. When Father was captured, Lee, although long since freed by Lincoln's proclamation, begged to go to prison with him; when this was not allowed, he remained nearby and day by day brought food that he secured by foraging the countryside. One night Father was suddenly entrained for another hospital and Lee was not at hand. Father tried frantically to reach him but, not succeeding, disconsolate, left Lee behind. It was not until several years after the war that master and servant met at Atlanta, where Lee still waited for his return, and gave Father his sword that he had salvaged. This family of slaves, attached only by the bonds of love, stayed with us in San Antonio, supported by my father and employed around our home, until they died off, one by one -- fine examples of those loyal bondsmen who formed such an important part of the households of the South; men and women who took care of the Missus and the children while father and sons went off to fight for what they thought was right. From his old comrades, I got thrilling stories of Father as a fighter. Major Frank Spencer told me how they were lying in a trench, with the "Yankees" several hundred yards in front of them. Sniping was going on incessantly. One of the men in Father's regiment was caught in an effort to escape to the rear. Father appeared on the scene, lectured the man about the enormity of his action, and, feeling certain he was really not a coward but overcome by the emotion of the moment, decided to do something to inspire confidence and bravery in the timid soldier. Ordering some privates to secure the man, he mounted the breastworks with them and placed him astride a branch of a tree immediately in front of the works and in plain sight of the Northern army. Grasping the man's legs, Father stood there while he ordered the others back to the trench. Major Spencer said that for five minutes it looked as if the whole Union Army was biasing away at the man on the tree and Father below, but neither was hit, and soon they scurried back to the trenches. The lesson had been effective. A few minutes later the Confederates were ordered to charge, and as they sprang over the breastworks and crossed the intervening space the one who led them was the man who had been held by Father on the limb of the tree. While my father was heavily engaged in the Army of Tennessee, my mother's two brothers, George and William Kemper, were captains in Stonewall Jackson's regiment, which had been recruited in the Valley of Virginia. They were with him in the celebrated campaigns in the valley, during which Jackson had his headquarters at the home of my mother's father, just outside Port Republic at the headwaters of the Shenandoah River. It was while Jackson and his troops were in the region of Port Republic that three Union armies coming from different directions converged upon Jackson in the hope of defeating and capturing him. Instead, Jackson managed to meet them separately and defeat them. The first engagement was at Port Republic. Jackson's troops were stationed along the river to prevent its crossing by the Union troops. Mother's two brothers were with their companies, which were ranged along the riverbank. Suddenly one of Jackson's staff saw a woman among the soldiers; riding up, he discovered my mother. "What are you doing here, Miss Fannie Kemper?" said he. "My two brothers are over there," said she, "and I guess I have a right to be here too." "You certainly have not," said the young officer. Calling upon two privates to assist, he grabbed the young woman and put her on an artillery caisson. With a soldier on each side to hold her, the horses galloped off and took her to her home half a mile away. During the rest of the war the home of her father and also the ancestral home of her mother, known as Bogota, a few miles away, were frequently raided by the Northern troops after Jackson left the valley and joined Lee in the great campaign around Chancellorsville. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, where Jackson received the wound that ended fatally, my mother's brother George was killed. A year later, at the Battle of the Wilderness, Captain William Kemper also met his death. This left mother only one brother, who was then about fifteen. Chafing at not being allowed to enter the army, Brother Johnny, as she called him, made his escape and followed Jackson's army some distance before he was seen by one of Mother's friends, who recognized his extreme youth and had him sent home. In 1865 Grandfather was joined by my father, who had been released from the prison on Johnson's Island in Lake Erie. He had made his way to Texas, not knowing where his father was, as he had been without news for many months. By making diligent inquiry, he finally discovered that he was in San Antonio, and the two generals -- father and son -- went to live together. Along with Father came numerous other Confederates, many of whom had known Grandfather as Colonel Young after the Mexican War, and as it proved confusing to have two General Youngs living under one roof, Grandfather was forced by common consent to retire to the title of Colonel and Father continued to be known as General Young by his comrades in arms, who formed the principal men of San Antonio. Grandfather's seventy-five slaves had been emancipated, his plantations in northern Texas, with no laborers, had to be sacrificed, and when he arrived in San Antonio it was to start life anew. Enterprising and energetic, he soon amassed considerable means. Father had intended to study law after getting his M. A. at the university, but this plan had been cut short by the war. He determined to study law in the office of one of the best law firms in San Antonio, but his military reputation and rank led to his being treated so deferentially by his instructors that his study of law and admission to the bar came much too easily and he was not as well grounded as he should have been (so he said). One of the enterprises in which Grandfather was engaged was the organization of the first transportation system between San Antonio and Monterrey, Mexico. Great wagon trains of prairie schooners, each drawn by a team of about fourteen mules, traveled across the prairies in groups of one hundred for self-protection. My father's half-brother Newton told me of an exciting time he had when captaining one of these trains. Smoke rising over a hill warned him that Indians had attacked and set fire to wagons preceding him. Uncle Newton threw his wagon train into a circle with the teams inside and the wagons abutting each other. Boxes and bales were thrown beneath the wagons to form a barricade, and a post of command was similarly made in the center. Before long some five hundred Comanches surrounded them, but as a good number of the Indians were killed, they kept at a respectful distance, and finally disappeared without charging the circle of wagons. After some years there was a good deal of money owing, and Father was sent to Mexico to collect it. His diary of the trip is interesting, particularly his description of the officers of Maximilian, who then ruled Mexico. The debts, amounting to $20,000, were paid in gold dust and nuggets. Father had been directed to take this to a United States mint. Realizing the dangers of such a trip with so much money, he wrapped his precious bundle of gold in some soiled linen, put it in an old carpetbag, and started for Denver, Colorado. He treated the bag with indifference, and the rough characters he met did not suspect its value. At Denver he struck the first railroad and started east. Before long the train stopped to take on wood and water. A short distance ahead were thousands of buffalo on one side of the railroad embankment. Taking his rifle, father hurried along the other side until he reached the buffalo and then, rising up on the track, picked out a bull with a fine head and fired. The next thing he remembered was "coming to" in the baggage car of the train, with his face covered with blood. As the train had pulled out from the station, the engineer had seen a human form on the track, stopped, and taken him aboard. Father's first thought was for the bag of gold. He was much relieved when he found it hanging on a peg in the car where he had left it. Examination of the rifle, which had been salvaged by the trainman, showed that it had burst, and pieces of the steel had gashed father's forehead. Continuing on by train, father reached Chicago, where he turned in the gold to the mint and received credit for $20,000. From there he went to Virginia, where, on November 3, 1869, he and mother were married at the home of her father, Dr. George Whitfield Kemper, Madison Hall, an old house built by the brother of President Madison near Port Republic. The trip back to San Antonio was a trying one for the bride. The railroads in the South, still suffering from the effects of the war, were bad. At New Orleans they took a boat for Galveston. The ship was small and the trip rough, but nothing like so terrible as the travel by stagecoach from Galveston to San Antonio, two hundred and fifty miles distant across the soggy prairie. The young couple joined grandfather in a home on Soledad Street and the three lived together until the old man died. There I was born on September 18, 1870. It has always been a matter of regret to me that I had no brothers or sisters. When I was four years old, I clearly remember playing on the bank of the San Antonio River back of our home with my chum, George Dashiell, and Delia, a Negro girl who looked after us. We had started to run up the bank toward the house when I slipped on pebbles and plunged into the river. Delia, terrified, tried to fish me out with a stick; failing, she ran to the house and called Mother, who dashed down, and when she arrived at the river, saw me whirling by in the rapids below the quiet hole into which I had fallen. Mother dived into the swirling tide, succeeded in grasping my clothes, and was carried down herself until stopped by a wooden post, the remains of an old bathhouse lower down the river. To this she clung until we were rescued by neighbors. I am told that I was apparently lifeless, but they held me up by my heels, a gallon of water ran out of my mouth, and I was given artificial respiration and covered with hot blankets. Father was so overjoyed at our rescue that he placed a stained-glass window in St. Mark's Cathedral, depicting Pharaoh's daughter fishing Moses out of the water. Dean Richardson of St. Mark's was our closest friend, a man with a large round head and a flowing beard, and a belly that shook like a bowl of jelly when he told funny stories. Father was his senior warden and superintendent of the Sunday school at St. Mark's for thirty-five years. These men, both soldiers and proud of the old South, were to me the beau ideal of Southern chivalry. Soledad Street, on which we lived, was only a few blocks from Main Plaza, which was surrounded by innumerable saloons, gambling-houses, a variety theater, and other rough joints. Rich Mexicans and cowmen, lured by the white lights, came to San Antonio in great numbers, and also bandits. I remember one night in which a great fusillade of shots was heard soon after supper. Father rushed down to Main Plaza and found that the proprietor of the Variety Theater and gambling house, Jack Harris, and several of his gang had been killed by a noted outlaw, Ben Thompson and his men, who had ridden into the theater on their horses and shot it up. A few months afterwards, when Ben Thompson had the temerity to come again and walk with his gang into the theater, he met with a bloody reply from a group of Harris's friends, who rose from their hiding-place behind the orchestra screen and poured a deadly volley into Thompson's men. San Antonio was then the liveliest of Western towns, the meeting-place of every type of man, drawn there by the fabulous tales of riches to be made from cattle-raising or mining in Mexico. It was bad form to ask anyone where he came from, or why, because many had been run out of their home states. The Civil War had liberated great numbers of soldiers who would not live under the carpetbaggers in the South. Many still refused to swear allegiance to the United States, and entered the army of Maximilian. In the backyard of our home were Negro quarters occupied by those who had been slaves before the war. There was Mammy, now an old woman, who had nursed my father's mother, Father, and me. She was a privileged character and freely expressed her opinion of all of us. Once, when Cousin John Young, a distinguished divine from the East, was at our house, after dinner Mammy was brought in to meet him. "Mammy," said Cousin John, "what kind of a looking baby was the General?" Whereupon Mammy replied, "Law, Marse John, you ought to have seed him. He was so tiny we could have put him in a quart cup and he was as hairy as a 'possum." Mammy's daughter, Mandy, was the cook, and what a wonderful cuisine she provided! One eye was gone and the other very defective, but that didn't prevent her putting together the most delicious things in her marvelous menus. She had a brood of children, Henry, Delia, Molly, and Lou. They were my boon companions, and the envy of my young days on account of their greater agility and facility for games. Mandy was a sister of Lee, Father's orderly during the war. When I was five, I was sent to a kindergarten conducted by a Miss Larner, a delightful woman, who amused us with games, handiwork, and drawing. I feel sure that my fondness for mechanics and love of art had its inception in these early days with Miss Larner. One of my proud possessions is a small desk my grandfather gave me for having stood at the head of the spelling class for a month, but my prowess as a speller did not last. Being of an adventurous type, Father never seriously stuck to law, but soon was engaged in great schemes of irrigation and land development. He had the profoundest admiration for Texas as a state, and western Texas in particular he thought a country of rich promise. The Nueces River Irrigation Company and the Young Valley Ditch were his creations. Into his office were brought minerals from distant localities, and I remember, when I was a small boy, his saying that rich deposits of oil, asphalt, and so on were present in some of his properties that would, some day, be worth millions. This neighborhood is now one of the great oil fields of the West. By the time I was six, Father had acquired some thousand acres of land within the limits of the City of San Antonio and numerous ranch properties farther out. About this time there appeared a persuasive cousin from the East, John Lyle, who bought the San Antonio Express, the only newspaper in that portion of the West, and proceeded to squander money. He was soon bankrupt. Appealing to Father for assistance, he got generous aid and, before long, all of Father's property was mortgaged in an attempt to save the San Antonio Express. After a year or two Father found himself the possessor of the paper. In his efforts to rehabilitate it he lost many more thousands and in so doing mortgaged all his lands at 12 per cent interest. His faith in the future was so unbounded that rather than sell property that he thought would be extremely valuable some day, he continued to pay this crushing interest yearly. Although he made a great deal of money and was a big factor in the development of that part of Texas, these heavy debts eventually ended in his complete undoing, but not until he had sent me through the University of Virginia, the medical school, and the hospital. Then, for the first time, I learned of his troubles and the sacrifices he had made to educate me. FROM: Time Magazine, 3 Sep 1945: Another of Johns Hopkins' great medical men died last week.* Dr. Hugh Hampton Young, dead at 74 of a heart attack, went to the Medical School as a graduate student in 1895 and stayed to become a professor and the world's No. 1 urologist. Of his specialty he once said: "A generation ago a free discussion of my medical work might have been unacceptable. My work has been largely with afflictions about which there is still much ignorance; they are some of the deadliest diseases." Urologist Young was born in San Antonio, son of a Confederate general so unreconstructed that he refused to let his son go to West Point and wear a Yankee uniform." After a brief go at journalism, the would-be soldier studied medicine at the University of Virginia, then went back home to practice. One day some elder surgeons came to watch the novice do an operation. Not having much idea how to proceed, Dr. Young said to one of the visitors: "In your august presence, Dr. Cupples, I could not think of doing this operation." The flattered surgeon promptly took over. But young Dr. Young collected the $40 fee, used it for carfare to Baltimore. At Johns Hopkins, keen, blue-eyed Dr. Young soon developed the virtuosity he had lacked in San Antonio. He devised many new operations, many new instruments to perform them with. Mortality in operations for removal of the prostate gland was 20% when he began. His record in 3,000 operations: 3%. He was famed for: 1) his part in developing Mercurochrome as a bloodstream disinfectant (now superseded by sulfa drugs and penicillin); 2) a radical operation for cancer of the prostate; 3) a method of removing the prostate through the urinary outlet; 4) operations which made many a pseudohermaphrodite nearly normal sexually; 5) the Young punch, an instrument to cut through bladder obstructions. It was the Young punch which brought Dr. Young one of his greatest friends and benefactors. In 1912 "Diamond Jim" Brady went to him in desperate condition from urinary stoppage. Relieved, Diamond Jim lived five more years, during which he gave $200,000 to found Johns Hopkins' Brady Urological Institute, plus $15,000 a year toward its maintenance. He left it $300,000 more when he died.
Baltimore, Maryland, 1900 census:[3]
Baltimore, Maryland, 1910 census:[4]
Baltimore, Maryland, 1920 census:[5]
Baltimore, Maryland, 1930 census:[6]
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