Dr. Columbus DaVega's Mark on Charleston!

Dr. Columbus DaVega

Dr. Columbus DaVega, born December 23, 1830, was one of Charleston's very own! He accomplished so many things during his lifetime and his achievements interested me from the start!

For starters, he was a surgeon and practiced medicine throughout his adult life. In 1852, he got his medical degree at the Medical College of the State of South Carolina (which later became MUSC), in Charleston, SC. He became a physician after obtaining his medical degree and went into the Russian War in 1853 as a surgeon.

Soon after he returned to Charleston from the Russian War, he decided to be surgeon-in-chief for a hospital attached to a floating battery. The cool thing about this is that he designed the hospital himself, during the Civil War! The hospital was a one-story wooden structure outfitted with ten beds and medical supplies to treat soldiers wounded aboard the battery. This battery was designed so that the soldiers could attack Fort Sumter from the water. He was a surgeon in the 23rd Infantry during the Civil War until 1868, whenever he resigned.

The hospital attached to the floating battery.

This is the inside of the hospital.

 Another cool thing about Dr. Columbus DaVega is that he invented the improvement of audiphones, which would be known as hearing aids today. These audiphones allowed deaf people to hear through the medium of their teeth, weird right? The vibrations allow the deaf person to "hear". His invention intention was to be able to provide an audiphone of convenient size for the person using it.

The US Patent Office audiphone patent.

This is the audiphone improvement he invented.

A year after he was awarded the US patent for an audiphone, he died on 27 Coming St., Charleston, SC, in 1882. He died of spinal disease & cerebral effusion. It is known that he was married whenever he died, but the whereabouts of his wife remains unknown.

He is buried in the Coming Street Cemetery, which is the oldest Jewish burial ground in the South. The cemetery was difficult to get into, so I assume it is very private for people to go into. Whenever I went to take the pictures, there were people inside doing yard work. The gates are very small too, so I got lucky to be able to even go in to take the pictures.

This is an up-close picture of the grave marker.

This is a picture of the die on socket, stacked.

These pictures above show his grave marker. His grave marker is a stacked die on socket. There is a vine-like plant on the top of his marker. The vine represents the sacraments, God's blood, or God. It reads "In Memory of Dr. C. DaVega/Born December 23, 1830/Died July 14, 1882/Erected by his wife.

Death certificate

27 Coming Street, where he died.

I chose to use Dr. Columbus DaVega for this project because I thought he did some pretty cool things throughout his life. I also wanted to be different than the class and find a cemetery that I thought no one would use. Also, the cemetery was right down the road, anyways. Dr. Columbus DaVega was very successful throughout his lifetime and he made a huge impact on Charleston during the war.

 I did not look into if any of his ancestors were still around the Charleston area or not, there were not any flowers or anything by his grave. Hopefully, he will be remembered for what he did and his accomplishments will live on in the history of Charleston, South Carolina!

Works cited:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33836698/columbus-davega
https://www.ancestry.com
http://www.thecemeteryclub.com/symbols.html
http://www.charlestonmercury.com/index.php/en/history/66-deep-colonial-roots-for-coming-street-cemetery