Watson Powhatan Jordan: Confederate Surgeon and Pioneer Physician (1828–1904)

Watson Powhatan Jordan, contract surgeon for United States Army and the state of Texas, Confederate Army officer, and physician, was the son of Merit Jordan, a veteran of the War of 1812 and naval store keeper, and Paulina (Voinard) Jordan. He was born on May 1, 1828, in Portsmouth, Virginia. After not receiving an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, Jordan studied and graduated from the Virginia Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy before taking up the study of medicine with two local physicians, R.W. Sylvester and John P. Young. He attended medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania and was in the class of 1848 at Jefferson Medical College, then transferred to the medical school of Columbian University (commonly called the National Medical College) at Washington, D. C., to take two additional courses, before receiving his M.D. degree from that institution on April 6, 1850. Jordan practiced in the capital for six years before moving to Texas in 1856.

In 1854 Jordan was appointed by President Franklin Pierce as surgeon of the Mexican-United States Boundary Commission. The commission traveled by rail to Memphis before continuing overland to San Antonio. During the academic year of 1855–56, he served as chair of surgery and prosector of anatomy where he prepared dissection specimens for demonstration at Georgetown College (now Georgetown University). By this point, Jordan had built a reputation as an anatomist and had even contributed to multiple medical publications, which included his report in the Virginia Medical Journal, published in 1857, that claimed he discovered a muscle found in those of African descent. He also invented an “improved reverse current urethral syringe” for his own practice but was never developed for general use.

In Texas, Jordan contracted and served as acting assistant surgeon, a civilian surgeon at Fort Inge from October through December 1856, when he was replaced by Acting Assistant Surgeon Solomon C. Warren. Jordan moved to San Antonio, where he practiced medicine with doctors Ferdinand von Herff and George Cupples, and became a founder and the first secretary of the San Antonio Board of Health. Other founders were Benjamin Van der Mark Teel serving as president, M. G. Cotton, and Jose Mario Penalosa. The board of health was first tasked with procurement of a building to house the city’s smallpox patients who were unable to care for themselves. Jordan served as surgeon on John Salmon “Rip” Ford's expedition against the Comanches in 1858 and in Capt. William G. Tobin's company of Texas Mounted Volunteers from October 18, 1859, through November 3, 1859, in the Cortina War. Later, in 1860, he refuted claims of ranger violence and theft when the company was in Rio Grande City while there to pursue Juan Cortina. Jordan continued to serve as surgeon under Tobin’s command from December 30, 1859, through February 10, 1860, while in January and February 1860, he also served as a private in Capt. Peter Tumlinson's company and on April 26 applied to Sam Houston for a commission either as surgeon or as captain to raise his own company of Texas Rangers for twelve months’ service on the frontier. Houston did not appoint him, however.

When Texas seceded from the United States, Jordan was practicing medicine in San Antonio, and, with his military experience, the surgeon raised a company of cavalry in Bexar County. He was elected captain on February 27, 1861, and within the week some of his command were headed west to the frontier forts of Fort Clark and Fort Davis under the command of Lt. Samuel Williams McAllister. The company was mustered into Confederate service at Camp Manassas, near San Antonio, on October 4, 1861, by Lt. Joseph Draper Sayers. Officially designated as Company A, Seventh Texas Mounted Volunteers under Col. William Steele, Jordan's men were assigned to the brigade with which Gen. Henry H. Sibley invaded New Mexico in 1862. Jordan was promoted to regimental major on February 21, 1862, "in consideration of gallant and meritorious service in the battlefield of Valverde," and Lt. Alfred Sturgis Thurmond succeeded him in command of the company. At Val Verde, Jordon commanded the First Battalion of the Seventh and was detailed to guard the transportation and successfully held their position on the left flank, even with Jordan’s casualty of a horse. At the battle of Glorieta Pass, Jordan commanded the Seventh Mounted Volunteers. He was left as a physician at the Santa Fe hospital when Sibley evacuated New Mexico and was captured and taken prisoner at that location on April 20 by order of Federal colonel Benjamin Stone Roberts. He was paroled at Fort Union on April 30, transferred to Camp Douglas, and exchanged at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on September 22, 1862.

After returning to San Antonio in November, Jordan was ordered to take command of troops remaining at Crockett, Texas. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in December and transferred back to his regiment and took command of Fort Rusk. He served in the Teche campaign in southern Louisiana and resigned his field commission on May 15, 1863, which was finally accepted on July 2, 1863. On an inspection tour of Gen. Sterling Price, Jordan was transferred to the Medical Corps after going before the Army Medical Board and ordered to Galveston where he was soon transferred to serve as an assistant surgeon in charge of the post hospital at Sabine Pass, Texas, from 1864 until the end of the war. In September 1864 he married Jessie Alberta Edwards, daughter of Jesse and Margaret Edwards, and the half-sister of Kate Dorman, known as the Confederate heroine of Sabine Pass. Jordan was mustered out of the service on May 26, 1865.

In 1866 Jordan and his wife moved to Mexico where his sister, Otelia Jordan de Degollado, lived with her husband, Mariano Degollado, then a member of Emperor Maximilian’s court. Jordan was offered a position in the Imperial Army, which he declined. He briefly returned to Texas to witness the epidemic of yellow fever devastate Indianola in 1867. In 1868 he, his wife, and his mother moved to Santo Tomás, Guatemala, where his brother-in-law had moved in 1867 in exile after the fall of Maximillian. In letters to Southern newspapers, Jordan wrote that he and Degollado had established lucrative plantations there and encouraged others to move to what he called a “near Paradise.” Between 1869 and 1870 Jordan entered and served in the Army of Guatemala but soon left the country on account of their revolution. By 1871 he and his family had moved to British Honduras where Jordan was appointed and served as surgeon of the Northern District of British Honduras from 1871 to 1876.

Between 1868 and 1873, while living outside the United States, Powhatan and Alberta had three children: Charles, Otelia, and Harry Phillip. Genealogy records indicate that a daughter died in infancy prior to 1868. At some point Alberta died in British Honduras, and in the fall of 1876 Powhatan, his children, and his mother moved back to the United States and arrived in New Orleans in September 1876. That December he helped establish the West Texas Medical Association in San Antonio, Texas. The association was organized “for the purpose of cultivating the Science of medicine, of elevating the status of the members of the Medical Profession, and of promoting professional and social intercourse among them.”

In 1880 Jordan and his family lived in Double Bayou in Chambers County, Texas; however, he soon moved to New Orleans and served a one-year appointment (1882) on the Board of Medical Examiners for United States pensions. There, he briefly served as quarantine officer and a physician and was considered an expert on yellow fever and smallpox. Powhatan married Mary Ada Hoskins, daughter of George and Mary A. Hoskins, on October 3, 1881, in New Orleans, then moved his family and practice to Beaumont in 1883, where his son, Charles, died on November 5, 1891.

Powhatan Jordan died in Beaumont on May 29, 1904. His funeral services were conducted at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, and he was interred at the Magnolia Cemetery in Beaumont. He was a member of the Texas State Medical Association, West Texas Medical Association, New Orleans Medical Society, Orleans Pharmaceutical Society, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Albert Sidney Johnston Camp of the United Confederate Veterans. His sister, Otelia, was a founder and served as the first president of a United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter in Mexico, the first chapter established outside of the United States. His son, Harry Phillip Jordan, later served in the Texas National Guard and the Texas House of Representatives.