Vanishing Ancestors from Epidemics
Submitted by Charles Barnum
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This list of known epidemics makes a helpful reference when researching
individuals who disappear from local records suddenly, with no record of
death. During major epidemics, people were often buried hurriedly and
sometimes in mass graves.

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. America Measles: areas inhabited by white people
1761 N. America and West Indies Influenza
1772 N. America Measles
1775 N. America Unknown epidemic: especially hard in NE
1775-6 Worldwide Influenza: one of the worst epidemics
1783 Dover, DE "Extremely fatal" bilious disorder
1788 Philadelphia and New York Measles
1793 Vermont A "putrid" fever and Influenza
1793 Virginia Influenza: killed 500 in 5 counties in 4 weeks
1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever: over 4,000 deaths
1793 Harrisburg, PA Many unexplained deaths
1793 Middletown, PA Many unexplained deaths
1794 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever
1796-7 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever
1798 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever: one of the worst
1803 New York Yellow Fever
1820-3 Nationwide " Fever" - started Schuylkill River and spread
1822 New York and New Orleans Yellow Fever
1831-2 Nationwide Asiatic Cholera: brought by English emigrants
1832 NY City and other major cities Cholera
1832 New Orleans Asiatic Cholera: over 1,000 deaths
1832 Ayrshire towns of Stevenston, Dalry and Kilbride Cholera
1833 Columbus, OH Cholera
1834 New York City Cholera
1837 Philadelphia Typhus
1841 Nationwide Yellow Fever: especially severe in the south
1847 New Orleans Yellow Fever
1847-8 Worldwide Influenza
1848-9 North America Cholera
1849 New York Cholera
1849-50 New Orleans Cholera: 3,000 deaths
1850 Nationwide Yellow Fever
1850 Alabama, New York Cholera
1850-1 North America Influenza
1851 Coles Co., IL, The Great Plains and Missouri Cholera
1852 Nationwide Yellow Fever
1853 New Orleans Yellow Fever: 8,000 die
1855 Nationwide Yellow Fever
1857-9 Worldwide Influenza: one of the greatest epidemics
1860-1 Pennsylvania Smallpox
1865-73 Philadelphia, NY, Boston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Memphis,
Washington DC Smallpox, a series of recurring epidemics of Cholera,
Typhus, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever, Yellow Fever
1873-5 N. America and Europe Influenza
1878 New Orleans Yellow Fever: last great epidemic
1878 Memphis, TN Yellow Fever
1885 Chicago, IL water-borne disease
1885 Plymouth, PA Typhoid
1886 Jacksonville, FL Yellow Fever
1900 Galveston, TX Cholera
1902 Alaska measles
1905 New Orleans Yellow Fever: last US outbreak
1918 Worldwide[high point yr.] Influenza: more people were hospitalized in
WWI from this epidemic than wounds. US Army training camps became
death camps, with 80% death rate in some camps.

©2006 C. W. Barnum