The Doctor
Some might find it creepy, but my family and friends have grown accustomed to my dragging them to cemeteries. Occasionally, I visit a loved one, but it hardly matters whether I’m acquainted with a permanent resident: For me, a graveyard offers an opportunity to shop for a story.
I started almost a decade ago with my middle Tennessee kinfolk, “grave-stomping” on occasional visits to see what my ancestors saw when they looked up from their plows. Then I moved closer to home, writing about founders and felons alike in Dallas’s Oakland Cemetery — my effort to stir some interest in its historic value to the city.
Finding a subject is easy; everybody has a story. Of course, some stories are better than others. On occasion, I choose a random name on a marker, and my research yields nothing more than a quiet biography. I’ve also discovered stories deserving an hour or two on “Dateline.”
Not knowing what I might find is part of the fun. I also enjoy that my subjects’ stories always offer a beginning and an end. And, when I finish a piece, that subject never utters a word of complaint.
I put my practice of random selection into play during a recent visit with my brother in Georgetown, Kentucky. I asked to see the city cemetery. Someone I had written about — someone connected to an important Dallas family whose remains lie in Oakland — was buried there, and visiting his family plot was a good excuse to browse the aisles.
I found the man I had been looking for and took a few photos. Where next? I made a 180-degree turn and was gobsmacked by this impressive marker:
There are many lovely, old-fashioned markers in the Georgetown cemetery, but this large Art Nouveau stone struck me as being a perfect fit for someone who died in 1909. And, upon closer look, I saw that Clarence Beauchamp Fish was a young doctor. See the “M.D.” after his name?
How ironic that a man dedicated to saving lives had died at age 30. What killed him? I wondered. Who had he left behind? What else was there to know about Dr. Fish?
My shopping trip was over. The hunt was on.
Back home in my study, I consulted ancestry.com and readily found a death certificate. Clarence Fish died in Asheville, North Carolina of pulmonary tuberculosis, from which he suffered two years. The document further notes that the deceased was born in Turkey Foot, Kentucky, he was single, and his father had been a physician.
Speaking of whom, Dr. Theodore Fish also died young, at age 38. I never found his death certificate, but I did see his tombstone on Findagrave.com, a fairly reliable source of information for those of us who write about the dead. I say “fairly” because anyone can contribute to the site, and not everyone who does so is meticulous about facts.
At any rate, Dr. Fish’s wife, Irene Beauchamp, was left to raise their four children: Ina, the oldest, was 11 when her father died; Clarence was 10, Maud 9, and Thomas, 5. In 1900, a year after Dr. Fish’s death, the census shows the widow had two male students boarding in her Lexington home.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Fish family was lacking in means. In 1905, Ina graduated from what the local newspaper called a “celebrated training school” for nurses in Philadelphia. Clarence was working as a railway mail clerk. And sister Maud came into some money, a boon that shockingly led Clarence to shoot a man.
When Maud’s “sweetheart,” a 22 year-old-grocer named Clifton Perkins, came to the Fish family’s front door one March afternoon, Clarence shot a bullet through the curtained glass and struck Clifton in the left temple. Although there was a lot of blood, the young man was not seriously injured.
Clarence’s mother later suggested the incident stemmed from “an old grudge,” but the Lexington Herald reported that Clarence was angry that Maud refused to invest money she had inherited from their grandmother the way her big brother thought she should. Clarence expressed that disapproval by shooting Perkins.
Authorities arrested Fish; his mother paid $500 in bail; a court date was set. But, the Herald reported, “neither the accused nor the prosecuting witness were present,” suggesting a private arrangement had settled the matter. No further stories about the incident appeared in the local newspaper.
By 1907, Clarence was occupied with something more worthwhile: He was working toward his bachelor of science degree at the University of Kentucky. Another trip to Google resulted in my finding his photograph in the school’s yearbook, The Kentuckian.
With two years left to live — and as his death certificate indicates, already suffering from consumption — Clarence traveled east. He apparently entered medical school at Johns Hopkins, a detail that appears in his obituary.
Clarence indeed may have entered Johns Hopkins, but it wasn’t possible that he was there long enough to complete medical school. At the time, Johns Hopkins was the country’s model for medical education, requiring their students to have a college degree and commit to a four-year curriculum made up of nine-month terms.
It likely was a profound disappointment for Clarence and his family, but his failing health had to have been a more pressing concern. In April 1908, he made his way to Asheville.
Why Asheville? I traveled to Google and discovered that by the 1890’s, Asheville was recognized as a health resort, noted for a climate thought to be salubrious for those with lung conditions. The result? The area enjoyed a sanitarium building boom in the early 1900’s. Clarence almost certainly moved to North Carolina in the spring of 1908 hoping to heal his ravaged lungs.
His sister lured him away from North Carolina that summer. Scheduled to marry June 3, Ina postponed her wedding and persuaded her brother to go west with her to Colorado “for the benefit of his health.” She rescheduled her wedding for August 7, 1908 and, the Lexington Leader reported, “he attended the wedding and gave his sister in marriage.”
The newlyweds made their home in Denver, and Clarence remained in Colorado until March 1909 when, according to The Asheville Citizen, he decided North Carolina offered a healthier environment. He had nine months to live.
Clarence Beauchamp Fish died December 28, 1909. With him when he died were his mother and brother, the *Rev. Thomas Graves Fish, a First Christian Church minister.
His body was shipped home to Georgetown. Death certificates were issued in both Lexington and Asheville; newspapers in both cities published announcements of his death.
I’ve deliberately called my subject here “Clarence” rather than “Dr. Fish.” I didn’t start out to refute the legitimacy of his tombstone title, but the more information I gathered, the more skeptical I was that the man lying beneath the beautiful marker in Georgetown Cemetery was an actual practicing physician.
There is an “M.D.” on that tombstone; given that, his Findagrave.com link refers to him as “Dr. Clarence Beauchamp Fish.” The death certificate issued in North Carolina lists him as “C.B. Fish,” but the one issued in Kentucky refers to him as “Dr. Clarence B. Fish.” He is simply “Clarence Fish” in Colorado and Lexington stories about his sister’s wedding. One Asheville newspaper calls him “Mr. Clarence B. Fish” in his death notice; in the other, he is not only “Dr. Clarence Beauchamp Fish,” but he also is “a graduate of Johns Hopkins university.”
It’s likely ambiguity that explains most of these discrepancies, but that “M.D.” on the tombstone probably can be attributed to maternal love and pride. It seems likely Clarence’s mother wanted to acknowledge her son’s effort to reach his goal, certain he would have honored his father’s memory by becoming a doctor, if only he hadn’t run out of time.
NOTES: Clarence’s Fish’s younger brother is the only member of the family with any connection to the Dallas area. In March 1909, months before his brother died, the Rev. Thomas Graves Fish came to Texas to participate in the State Sunday School Convention, an opportunity for visiting ministers to take the pulpit and address the assigned topic: “The Most Effective Department of the Church in Soul-Winning and Training for Service.” The Rev. Fish spoke at the Glenwood M.E. Church in Alvarado, according to a mention in the Dallas Morning News.
