< Jan wrote: Does anyone know of any epidemics, large or small, that might
have affected Cass County in either 1880 or 1883?>
Jan
My educated guess would be smallpox. I'm an RN who works in Infection
Control, so I have studied the history of epidemiology. There were major outbreaks
of smallpox and cholera in the 1860's and 1870's in the Midwest, but there
were always small outbreaks at other times. I have seen a large number of
tombstones grouped together at a cemetery in rural Illinois that include "died of
smallpox" on the inscription. The dead were mostly children, and it was in the
1880's if I'm remembering correctly. Cholera was prevalent in cities that got
their water from polluted lakes and rivers. It was common until the early
1900's. I have an infant in my ancestry who died of cholera in 1892 in Chicago.
TB was always around, but not considered "epidemic" at any given time because
it was so prevalent in the population. My grandfather's first wife died of
TB in 1906 in Logansport. Anna Marie Byrne FitzGibbon was only 26 years old
when she died. My grandfather also had an 18 year old sister die of TB in
Chicago in 1892.
Of course, there were always measles, diphtheria, and whooping cough killing
off small children, prior to the discovery and widespread use of vaccines. It
was so common to find only half of the children in a family surviving to
adulthood.
Kathleen Richmond
Oak Forest IL
near Chicago