I left my dentist’s office today with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step. This, after having a crown replaced. Was it free, you wonder? Not even close. Was it painless then, you ask? There was pain. But something beautiful happened, as needles and drills entered my mouth: I remembered Sarah Gayle and her dental terrors.
Sarah Gayle pops up in my blog posts now and then. Fortunately for all of us who are drawn to the history of the early nineteenth-century South, Sarah Haynsworth Gayle left a journal.[1] It is a rare gem filled with the insights of the wife of a future Alabama governor—a lonely young woman who had no peer to talk to while her husband John rode the judicial circuits. Her journal became her confidante, though, and lucky us, she talked to her journal for years.
Fox-Genovese and Sarah Gayle
This journal has been venerated since historians became aware of it. Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese of Emory used it heavily in her histories of the U.S. South. And we younger southern historians cut our academic teeth on Fox-Genovese’s work. We borrowed indirectly from Sarah Gayle’s journal by borrowing from Fox-Genovese’s histories. Interestingly, though, even this heavy-weight in the history field rarely saw Sarah’s original journal herself. She, and most after her, worked from transcriptions of it. The original journal, you see, was a total mess.
Sarah’s descendants loaned her journal to the University of Alabama Gorgas Library, which is named after Sarah’s daughter, Amelia Gayle Gorgas. There, the journal remains today. But Sarah’s journals were more honest and open than some of her descendants wanted them to be. A librarian reported that two of Gayle’s relatives visited the library and sat for hours, scribbling over and sometimes tearing out passages they wanted hidden. Given that the journal remained a possession of the Gayle family, the librarian could not halt the destruction. The pages were crumbling and out of order even before the carnage began. In future years, transcripts of varying nature and quality were made of the words that remained and were deposited in a number of university libraries. Because the transcripts were easier to read without the scribbles and more accessible in their various libraries, transcripts, rather than the original, became the source of choice for historians like Fox-Genovese, who could only guess what lay hidden beneath the scribbles.
Wiggins-Truss and the Journal Scribbles
Fox-Genovese did not live to see the deeper wonders of the original journal revealed in 2013. Dr. Sarah Wiggins—a University of Alabama history professor who knew Fox-Genovese in life and became a treasured mentor to me in her last years—decided to give the original manuscript the attention it needed.
We have lost the torn pages forever, but Dr. Wiggins knew the scribbled-over portions would serve history. She and Dr. Ruth Truss of the University of Montevallo poured over the manuscript for years. They compared it to the best of the transcripts, examined correspondence and papers of the family, and filled in the blanks and mysteries Sarah left us. Most importantly, they used colored cellophane and computer-enhancing technologies to decipher every salvageable word beneath the ink scribbles. They also carefully noted each spot with missing pages or torn sections. They created a genohistorical work of great value.
The University of Alabama Press published this annotated edition in 2013 as The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle: A Substitute for Social Intercourse, 1827–1835. It was an instant classic and the best object lesson I have seen to illustrate why you want to get to the original source in cases like this.
I love every page of this journal. It brought the small antebellum Alabama town of Greensboro to life. Sarah thought she was writing for herself and maybe her grown daughters, posthumously, should her life be short. And she expected it to be. So she’s remarkably authentic. Through her eyes, I can see what gave her pain and what gave her joy. From her own pen, I know how she felt about the people enslaved in her home. I know what she thought about religion and preachers and the threat of hell. She spoke honestly her feelings about poor relations, indiscreet neighbors, and “old man”—the term she used for her husband.
And, I know how she felt about teeth. (Finally, you say, she’s getting to the dental terrors.)
Sarah and Teeth
Teeth were the bane of Sarah Gayle’s existence. A beautiful set of teeth was the thing she first noticed in others. Her teeth were a mix of real and false and a great source of embarrassment and fear. They hurt perpetually. She knew that the pain signaled that they must be removed or they would kill her, and it traumatized her. It was not just the painful procedure that filled her with dental terrors. Pulled teeth changed a face, and a woman with wooden teeth doesn’t smile.[2] Still in her 20s as she poured out her dread of the dentist in her journal, Sarah knew her beauty was fading.
My Dental Experience in Perspective
I left the dentist’s office smiling today because I remembered Sarah. As I heard the words, “Open wide,” I thought of her dental terrors and compared them to mine. I became conscious of my air-conditioned comfort on an ergonomic lounge chair. The window beyond my feet gave me a view of a pine forest rising up to a blue sky on this perfect day.
A music track from the 1980s played overhead because it was a Wednesday. (The 70s track on Tuesdays is my favorite.) Dr. Gibson and her team tend to sing along when their favorite songs come on. A muted TV on the wall played a constant looping video of a gentle brook rolling out of a misty mountain. As I looked up at the ceiling from my reclining position, another TV was there, ready to turn on and bring comfort if needed.
While Dr. Gibson injected the pain shot, her assistant patted my shoulder rather forcefully to distract me from the pain. Her trick worked! As the drilling began, a cold draft blew outward, irritating my cold-sensitive teeth. I winced, and they stopped and gave me more painkillers. Dr. Gibson used state-of-the-art gadgets to restore my dental health. The two women carefully held sample crowns up to my teeth to pick the perfect color match. In a week I’ll come back for a replacement of a temporary crown for the one that will look real and last for ages. A quick credit card swipe covers my deductible, and I’m out of there. Honestly, why do we whine?
I smiled today because I could just feel Sarah with me, saying, “You are so lucky.” Thinking of her story, I felt overcome with gratitude for the life I have.
Sarah’s Well-founded Dental Terrors
I came home and went back through her journal, looking at all her mentions of teeth. I read her last journal entry, written on the day a dentist finally pulled her diseased teeth. Here it is, as she wrote it:
“Tuesday July 1835 According to appointment, Dr. Wheaton came up to operate on my teeth. if i could have formed any idea of the horrors of such an operation, nature should have carried thro’ her plans with me—i never could, knowingly have met it. The torment of filing down the tooth is unspeakable. Dr. W[heaton] is certainly a good Dentist, but an impatient man. i have no fear of mortal man, or his flashing eye, & compressed lips would have startled me. i knew there was not a shade of affectation in my shrinking, & clutching his hand and arm with a strength, which he might have known, was given by desperation. i was thankful mr. Gayle was away from home—my little courage always leaves me, when he is near, for i really feel as if his presence could lessen the pain, or do away the necessity of enduring it.”[3]
Sarah apparently never felt well enough to confess to her journal again. Ten days later, just 31 years old, she fully manifested her dental terrors and died of lock-jaw. Her husband had not yet returned, and she left him a goodbye note. The dreaded tooth extraction had done her in.
Sarah’s Legacy
Sarah lives on in the words she left to her descendants, who in turn gave (most of) them to us. I plan to go back through the whole journal to see what else Sarah’s words make me grateful for as a twenty-first-century woman who also has a few false teeth, but who can tell?
Perhaps the “ancestors” are everywhere I go, offering a reason at all times to be grateful. I know this: Sarah Gayle will be with me at every dental appointment for the rest of my life. If her dental terrors robbed her of her smile, I can at least smile on her behalf for a world that has made some things better.
[1] Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle: A Substitute for Social Intercourse, 1827–1835 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2013).
[2] “The History of False Teeth,” Century Dental, accessed August 16, 2023, https://www.gocenturydental.com/blog/implant-dentistry/the-history-of-false-teeth/. Sarah did not tell us the content of her false teeth, but wood seems likeliest at this stage.
[3] Gayle, Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 315.
Wow, dying from lockjaw, how terrible. And so young. Thanks for sharing her story.
And surprisingly, Cheryl, she was not the only one in her household to die of lock-jaw. A teenage enslaved woman died of it, also, though not dental-related. It’s no wonder Sarah lived in perpetual fear of an early end.
Thanks for your comment!
The diary sounds fascinating Donna. I hoped it might have been digitized, but it doesn’t appear so. Your story definitely puts our lives into perspective!