I know that several times in my ancestry a married
couple and several others of their family died within
days....my ggggrandparents in GA died within a week
of each other in 1832 and at least one of their adult
children and several grandchildren died with the same
period..descriptions of the illness sound like
typhoid. And my father remembered his father rowing
the whole family across Mobile Bay because the city
of Mobile was quarantined because of Yellow fever,
sometime between 1905 and 1910.
Had always understood that the troops brought the
1918 enfluenza back from the trenches but according
to what we're reading now, it started over here and
spread through our troops to the rest of the world.
One of the days we're going to have an epidemic of
one of the tropical fevers that were well contained
before transportation got so good and before the
jungles were being destroyed so rapidly.
HIV apparently had been around a long time before it
spread out of Africa.
Plague still exists in the Rocky mountains and there
is nearly always at least one case a year here in far
West Texas....and unless the victim is seen quickly
by a doctor who recognizes it, he or she is a real
victim and dies quicky.
Disease has an enormous effect on history. Thank you
for that posting. It's one I'm going to save to
refer to when I notice that more than one person died
at a time.
---Alison Gene Franks wrote:
Sept-Oct, 1997, Newsletter - Genealogical Society
of Santa Cruz County
"Source: Ancestors West, SSBCGS, Vol 20, No l,
Fall 1993, South Bend
(IN)
Area Genealogical Society via Julie Burnett, Sue in
Arizona and Judy
Nordgren
SMCAGS
"In case you ever wondered why a large number of
your ancestors
disappeared during a certain period in history,
this might
help.
Epidemics have always had a great influence on
people - and
thus
influencing, as well, the genealogists trying to
trace them.
Many
cases of people disappearing from records can be
traced to
dying
during an epidemic or moving away from the affected
area. Some
of the major epidemics in the United States are
listed below:
1657 Boston Measles
1687 Boston Measles
1690 New York Yellow Fever
1713 Boston Measles
1729 Boston Measles
1732-3 Worldwide Influenza
1738 South Carolina Smallpox
1739-40 Boston Measles
1747 CT,NY,PA,SC Measles
1759 N. Amer [areas inhabited by white
people] Measles
1761 N. Amer and West Indies Influenza
1772 N. America Measles
1775 N. Amer [especially hard in NE] epidemic Unknown
1775-6 Worldwide [one of the worst
epidemics] Influenza
1783 Dover, DE ["extremely fatal"] Bilious
Disorder
1788 Philadelphia and New York Measles
1793 Vermont [a "putrid" fever] and Influenza
1793 VA [killed 500 in 5 counties in 4
weeks] Influenza
1793 Philadelphia [one of the worst
epidemics] Yellow Fever
1793 Harrisburg, PA [many unexplained deaths] Unknown
1793 Middletown, PA [many mysterious deaths] Unknown
1794 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever
1796-7 Philadelphia, PA Yellow
Fever
1798 Philadelphia, PA [one of the worst] Yellow
Fever
1803 New York Yellow Fever
1820-3 Nationwide [starts-Schuylkill River and
spreads] "Fever"
1831-2 Nationwide [brought by English
emigrants] Asiatic
Cholera
1832 NY City and other major cities Cholera
1837 Philadelphia Typhus
1841 Nationwide [especially severe in the
south] Yellow
Fever
1847 New Orleans Yellow Fever
1847-8 Worldwide Influenza
1848-9 North America Cholera
1850 Nationwide Yellow Fever
1850-1 North America Influenza
1852 Nationwide [New Orleans-8,000 die in
summer] Yellow
Fever
1855 Nationwide [many parts] Yellow Fever
1857-9 Worldwide [one of the greated
epidemics] Influenza
1860-1 Pennsylvania Smallpox
1865-73 Philadelphia, NY, Boston, New
Orleans} {Smallpox
Baltimore, Memphis, Washington DC} {Cholera
[A series of recurring epidemics of:} {Typhus
{Typhoid
{Scarlet Fever
{Yellow Fever
1873-5 N. America and Europe Influenza
1878 New Orleans [last great epidemic] Yellow Fever
1885 Plymouth, PA Typhoid
1886 Jacksonville, FL Yellow Fever
1918 Worldwide[high point yr] more people
were {Influenza
hospitalized in WWI from this epidemic than
wounds. US Army training camps became
death camps, with 80% death rate in some
camps
Finally, these specific instances of cholera were
mentioned:
1833 Columbus, OH
1834 New York City
1849 New York
1851 Coles Co., IL, The Great Plains, and Missouri
This came from a Kansas List.
Regards,
Alison Franks
Archivist, Rawson Family Association
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