Daniel Warren Brickell MD (1824-1881) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree

Dr Daniel Warren Brickell MD

Born 9 Oct 1824 in Columbia, Richland County, South Carolina

Ancestors

Son of William Augustus Brickell and Susan Margaret (Faust) Brickell

Brother of James Noaille Brickell, Elizabeth Charlotte Medora (Brickell) Hamer and William Edwin Brickell MD

Husband of Susan Lewis (Conner) Brickell — married 5 Mar 1850 in Berkeley Plantation, Adams County, Mississippi, United States

Husband of Anastasie Catherine (Welham) Brickell — married 25 Jun 1858 in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana

Descendants

Father of Mary Conner Brickell, Anna Frances Conner (Brickell) Pierce, Susan Margaret (Brickell) Simpson, Elizabeth Medora (Brickell) Martin, Reine Rebella (Brickell) Hebert and Welham Peter Brickell

Died 11 Dec 1881 at age 57 in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana

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Profile last modified 23 Jan 2020 | Created 17 Oct 2018

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Biography

Daniel Brickell MD lived in Louisiana.

Opening of 'Dr Sevier' by George Washington Cable - published in 1883^[1]

The main road to wealth in New Orleans has long been Carondelet street. There you see the most alert faces; noses—it seems to one—with more and sharper edge, and eyes smaller and brighter and with less distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together promiscuously—the cunning and the simple, the headlong and the wary—at the four clanging strokes of the Stock Exchange gong. There rises the tall façade of the Cotton Exchange. .... In 1856 this street was just assuming its present character. The cotton merchants were making it their favorite place of commercial domicile. The open thoroughfare served in lieu of the present exchanges; men made fortunes standing on the curb-stone, and during bank hours the sidewalks were perpetually crowded with cotton factors, buyers, brokers, weighers, reweighers, classers, pickers, pressers, and samplers, and the air was laden with cotton quotations and prognostications.

Number 3½, second floor, front, was the office of Dr. Sevier. This office was convenient to everything. Immediately under its windows lay the sidewalks where congregated the men who, of all in New Orleans, could best afford to pay for being sick, and least desired to die. Canal street, the city’s leading artery, was just below, at the near left-hand corner. Beyond it lay the older town, not yet impoverished in those days,—the French quarter. A single square and a half off at the right, and in plain view from the front windows, shone the dazzling white walls of the St. Charles Hotel, where the nabobs of the river plantations came and dwelt with their fair-handed wives in seasons of peculiar anticipation, when it is well to be near the highest medical skill. In the opposite direction a three minutes’ quick drive around the upper corner and down Common street carried the Doctor to his ward in the great Charity Hospital, and to the school of medicine, where he filled the chair set apart to the holy ailments of maternity. Thus, as it were, he laid his left hand on the rich and his right on the poor; and he was not left-handed.

Not that his usual attitude was one of benediction. He stood straight up in his austere pure-mindedness, tall, slender, pale, sharp of voice, keen of glance, stern in judgment, aggressive in debate, and fixedly untender everywhere, except—but always except—in the sick chamber. His inner heart was all of flesh; but his demands for the rectitude of mankind pointed out like the muzzles of cannon through the embrasures of his virtues.

Early Life

Daniel Warren Brickell was born 9 October 1824 at three quarters past 6 o'clock in the evening, in Columbia, South Carolina. He was the second son of William Augustus and Susan Faust Brickell. William was a successful young lawyer of 29, Susan the daughter of a newspaper editor. We named him in compliment to his grandfather, Mr. Daniel Faust, and my old friend, Col. Samuel Warren.

In December 1828, when Daniel was just four, his mother, Susan, died, a few months after the birth of her fourth child. William never remarried and the children were raised by their father alone and by the considerable number of slaves in the household. It must've been an odd upbringing.

In 1830^[2], the family is listed as living in Lexington, then a town 6 miles west of Columbia. In the household are William and his four white children together with five black slaves under the age of ten, three between ten and 24 and two black women slaves between 24 and 36. No names of anyone, except William, are recorded.

The family moved to Franklin, Tennessee, in 1833 where William practised law. After four years there, they migrated to the fertile farmlands of the Mississippi Delta.

In 1840^[3], the family had moved to Madison, Mississippi, ten miles north of the State capital, Jackson. William had become a planter as well as still being involved in the law. Two of the sons were still at home with him, presumably Daniel and Edwin as we know that James was already at Mt Zion Academy in Winnsboro, South Carolina. Elizabeth is also not listed, presumably she is at another educational establishment. Also on the plantation is one other adult white male, presumably an overseer, and 60 slaves of which 41 are involved in agriculture. Twelve of the slaves are children under the age of ten. There are no male slaves over the age of 36 and only five women over this age, hinting at terrible mortality rates.

Education

Daniel's education, like that of his siblings was organised by his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Brickell and like his brothers he attended Mr. Hudson's Mt Zion Academy in Winnsboro. In 1844, Daniel travelled to New Haven, Connecticut, to complete preparatory studies necessary for matriculation at Yale University, following in his brother's footsteps. Instead of entering Yale in 1845 as planned, however, Daniel became a student of Dr. William Gerhard of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, receiving the MD degree in 1847. His dissertation was in Obstetrics, which became the focus for the remainder of his medical career.

After graduating, however, he entered upon a course of special study, with the view of applying for admission to the U. S. Navy, and in the winter of 1847 he appeared before the examining board of naval surgeons, and out of forty applicants he passed second on the list. His object in seeking the naval service was mainly to gratify his desire for foreign travel. But as there was then only one vacancy in the foreign service, he was assigned to home duty at the Naval Station at Pensacola, Florida. This proved so distasteful to him that he soon resigned his commission as assistant surgeon in the navy, and moved to New Orleans, where, later in 1848, he commenced practicing medicine at the age of 24.

Antebellum

On 5 March 1850, he married Susan Conner at her family home, Berkeley Plantation, just south of Natchez, Mississippi. Neither of them show up in the 1850 Federal Census taken just a couple of months after their marriage. Perhaps they went abroad for their honeymoon and Daniel finally got to see Europe.

For the next few years he appears to have managed the Eureka Plantation, above Natchez as well as continuing to practice medicine. Their first child, Mary, was born the year after their marriage and their second, Fannie, the year after that. Tragically, Mary died in 1853, aged just two. Perhaps this disaster made them move back to the city, because by 1855 they are back in New Orleans.

In 1856 Daniel, together with his fellow doctors: Fenner, Choppin, Beard, A. & F. Penniston, J. M. Picton and Howard Smith, organized the New Orleans School Of Medicine, which opened with a class of 76 students. Daniel was the Professor of Obstetrics. By 1860 the class aggregated 270, with the promise of larger numbers thereafter, but the war arrived and the college shut. At the same time he was an attending physician at the Charity Hospital; clinical teacher of the diseases of women and children, associate editor of the New Orleans Medical News and Hospital Gazette, and editor in chief of the Southern Journal of Medicine. In short, he was becoming famous as a physician and an educator.

The Charity Hospital in the 19th Century.

Before this, in 1857, Daniel and Susan's third child was born, another daughter, named Susan after her mother. Despite Daniel's expertise, is wife dies in the childbirth. He is left a widower with two infant daughters.

On 25 June 1858^[4], Daniel remarried, to Anastasie Welham, in St. Michael's Church, St. James Parish, Louisiana. She was born nearby on the Welham Plantation.

By 1859, Daniel and his brother James were already heavily involved in politics on behalf of the Democratic Party^[5]. This will continue for the rest of their lives. Daniel becomes President of the Party in the Third Congressional District, covering New Orleans^[6].

In 1860^[7], the new family is listed together with Daniel's father and his brother, James, both of whom were working as lawyers. The address is not recorded in the census but we know from city directories of the time that they lived at 129 Carondelet. In the accompanying slave schedules Daniel is not listed. His father however has seven slaves listed, presumably these were the family servants; they range in age from a woman aged 40 to a boy aged 2. The following month, Daniel and Anastasie's first child together is born, Elizabeth Medora.

The Civil War

The Civil War erupted in April 1861; New Orleans was of primary importance as it is both the largest and most prosperous city in the Confederacy. President Lincoln referred to the Mississippi River as the "backbone of the Rebellion" and New Orleans was at the mouth. However the Confederacy assumed the city was safe due to the fortresses downstream. Much of the material in the city was sent north to defend the upper reaches of the river. So it was a shock when, in February 1862, Farragut's Union Fleet appeared at the mouth of the river and prepared to assault.

Frantic activity followed to defend the city, focused on reinforcing the forts and completing two ironclads undergoing construction in the city. A Committee of Public Safety was formed from about 50 leading citizens of New Orleans to manage the improvements to the defenses. Daniel was prominent amongst these and gave detailed evidence about his activities a year later at an enquiry^[8]. His activities centered on attempting to increase rifle production and to speed the launching of the CSS Mississippi ironclad. All efforts were in vain, Farragut forced his way past the forts, compelled New Orleans to surrender and the ironclad was burnt.

The Union fleet forces the surrender of New Orleans

Anastasie was in the late stages of her second pregnancy but rather than remain in New Orleans under Union occupation, Daniel went to become a surgeon with the Confederate army. Anastasie remained in the city and their daughter was born in May of 1862. She was named Reine Rebella after her maternal grandmother and after Louisiana's cause. Daniel spent the remainder of the conflict away from New Orleans.

Reconstruction

After the close of the war in May 1865 Daniel returned to New Orleans to begin to rebuild his life. Later in 1865, the medical college was re-opened, and at the death of Dr. Fenner the following year, Dr. Brickell was chosen as the Dean of the school he had helped to found and support^[9].

Daniel and Anastasie were reunited at the end of the war and finally a son, Welham, was born 13 September 1867 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was his father's (and Anastasie's) only son.

Also concurrent with the end of the war came the death of Daniel's brother-in-law, Charles Hamer of Yazoo City, Mississippi. Daniel's sister had died just before the war, and with Charles' death Daniel inherited their four surviving daughters: Addie, Medora, Susan and Clara. They all came to live with him in New Orleans with him and his responsibility eventually extended to their adoption.

Typical Carondelet houses in the 1870s

In 1870^[10], Daniel's sprawling household was at 185 Carondelet Street, New Orleans. With him and Anastasie were his two daughters from his first marriage, Fannie & Susan, and his two daughters and son with Anastasie: Elizabeth, Rebella and Welham. Bringing the children to nine were the four orphaned Hamer girls. Also living there are his father,William Brickell and his brother, James Brickell (both these last two are still lawyers). There are also five servants, a cook and a carriage driver in the household. It was also his office for seeing patients. It must have been organised mayhem. His father died later that year.

Dr Brickell in the 1870s

Politics in Louisiana generally and New Orleans particularly in the dozen years after the end of the war were ruthless and corrupt. The newly enfranchised former slaves and the formerly dominant whites used the Republican and Democratic parties as their vehicles. This struggle was not made easier by the fact that the population of post-war Louisiana was split 50/50 between the groups. The Whites had former wealth and property on their side while the Blacks had the army and federal government on theirs. Terms like scalawag (a white person who supported Reconstruction) and carpetbagger (a civil servant or businessman from the North) abounded. The State remained controlled by the military government and then the Republicans until 1877. The chosen weapon used by them against the white property owning class was taxation. Whereas before the war the state had functioned large on duties on sugar and cotton, after the war taxes were levied at a steadily increasing rate on property value. With the economy in ruins, being assessed on one's notional value rather than one's income inevitably led to resentment. Daniel was in the forefront of resistance against these ever rising taxes. The New Orleans Republican is full of attacks on the doctor^[11], while the New Orleans Daily Democrat and the New Orleans Bulletin describe him glowingly^[12].

In 1873, perhaps to get away from all these troubles, Daniel accepted the Chair of Obstetrics at the Bellevue Hospital College in New York, but returned to New Orleans after just one winter in the north. He felt New Orleans had a greater need of him and a greater call on him.

In the Fall of 1877 his brother, James, died of pleurisy, and in the summer of 1878, Anastasie died after a short illness and he was once again left alone^[13].

In 1880^[14], the formerly huge household at 185 Carondelet was somewhat reduced. Many of the older children had married or moved out. Elizabeth, Rebella and Welham together with Clara Hamer were still there as was his mother-in-law, the indomitable Reine Welham. There were also five servants looking after them.

Death

He passed away 11 December 1881, aged 57. The numerous obituaries in newspapers and journals are the basis of this biography. He was buried beside his wife in Metairie Cemetery^[15], New Orleans.

Dr Sevier

The famous Louisiana author, George Washington Cable published his new novel, 'Dr Sevier' just eighteen months after Daniel's death. Everyone who read it understood immediately who it was based upon. From the description of his looks, to the location of his office and his chosen medical specialism, it was obviously based on Dr Brickell. And the tale of a morally upright and severe (the name was probably not an accident) physician with a heart of gold who is gradually softened by the injustices he witnesses is probably not far from the truth of the man.