1689-1690 — Smallpox, New England and NY, settlers and natives — >820-1,500
— >820->1,500 Blanchard tally based on accounts noted below of settler and native mortality.
Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony:
— 320 Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. Boston, Thursday Sept. 25, 1690, p.1
New England settlers:
— 1,000 Mather, Cotton; quoted in Novick and Morrow. “Defining Public Health.” 2008, 7.[1]
New England and New York settlers:
— >320 Purvis, Thomas L. Colonial America to 1763. NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1999, p. 173.[2]
New England (Mohegan) and New York (Iroquois) natives:[3]
— 500 Cook, Sherburne. The Indian Population of New England in the 17th Century. 1976, 77.
Narrative Information
Cook: “In the Narrative of the Most Remarkable Occurrences in Canada, 1689, 1690…written by M. de Monseignat…(p. 490)…for 1689-1690. He says that some Abnaki, arriving from Acadia, reported on the great smallpox epidemic which had killed 400 Iroquois[4] and 100 ‘Mohegans’[5]: ‘and that in the great Mohegan town where they had been, only sixteen men had been spared by the disease.’” (Cook, Sherburne F. The Indian Population of New England in the 17th Century (University of California Publications in Anthropology Volume 12). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976, p. 77.)
Duffy: “A major epidemic [smallpox] broke out in 1689-90 and soon became widespread in Canada and New England, and as far south as New York. It appeared in Massachusetts in October, 1689, following the arrival from the West Indies of a group of infected Negroes and slowly spread through Boston and the surrounding towns. The first public fast [in Boston] because of smallpox was decreed on March 6, and, as the epidemic increased in intensity during the summer months, the General Court proclaimed another one on July 10. Public Occurrences, America’s first newspaper,[6] declared that he epidemic was more widespread, bu not so fatal, as the previous one of twelve years earlier. The editor estimated the death toll to be about 320 and added that the infection which raged most in June, July, and August, attacked ‘all sorts of people,’ even ‘children in the bellies of Mothers.”[7]
“Salem was among the towns affected by the disease, and the town records of 1690 indicate that the selectmen were active in providing for the provisioning and care of the sick. Deaths from smallpox were reported in Hampton, New Hampshire, and other New England towns.” (Duffy, John. Epidemics in Colonial America. Louisiana State University Press, 1953, p. 48.)
Hopkins: “Boston suffered major epidemics of smallpox in 1636, 1659, 1666, 1677-78, 1689-90[8] and 1697-98….” (Hopkins, Donald R. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1st Edition, 1983, p. 238.)
Lovejoy: “…a smallpox epidemic broke out in February 1690 and lasted into June. It forced the temporary government out of Boston to Charleston to carry on its business.” (Lovejoy, David S. The Glorious Revolution in America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1972, p. 351.)
Mather (in Novick): “Reverend Cotton Mather…provided an account of the smallpox epidemic of 1689-1690 in New England: ‘In about a twelvemonth, one thousand of our neighbors have been carried to their long home.’”[9] (Novick, Lloyd F. and Cynthia B. Morrow. “Defining Public Health: Historical and Contemporary Developments,” Chapter 1, p. 7, in: Novick, Lloyd F., Cynthia B. Morrow and Glen P. Mays. Public Health Administration: Principles for Population-Based Management (Second Edition). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2008.)
Publick Occurrences: “The Small-pox which has been raging in Boston, after a manner very Extraordinary, is now very much abated. It is thought that far more have been sick of it then were visited with it, when it raged so much twelve years ago, nevertheless it has not been so Mortal, The number of them that have dyed in Boston by this last Visitation is about three hundred and twenty, which is not perhaps half so many as fell by the former. The Time of its being most General, was in the Months June, July, and August, then ‘twas that sometimes in some one Congregation on a Lords-day there would be Bills desiring prayers for above an hundred Sick. It seized upon all sorts of people that came in the way of it, it infected even Children in the bellies of Mothers that had themselves undergone the Disease many years ago; for some such were now born full of the Distemper. ‘Tis not easy to relate the Trouble and Sorrow that poor Boston has felt by this Epidemical Contagion. But we hope it will be pretty nigh Extinguished, by that time twelve month when it first began to Spread. It now unhappily spreads in several other places, among which our Garrisons in the East are to be reckoned some of the greatest Sufferers.” (Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. Boston, Thursday Sept. 25th, 1690, 1.)
Purvis: “1689-90. Smallpox. New England and New York (at least 320 deaths).” (“Table 6.7 Outbreaks of Epidemic Disease in Colonial America,” pp. 173-174 in Purvis, Thomas L. Colonial America to 1763. NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1999.)
Steele: “The first extensive epidemic of smallpox among English colonists in North America occurred in 1689 and 1690. The outbreak of 1689 seems to have begun when a ship came into Boston from Barbados carrying Negro slaves who had smallpox. Although the ship was quarantined on arrival in October, the disease escaped into Boston and adjoining towns that winter and increased in intensity the following summer. New York City had been relatively free from epidemical diseases in the seventeenth century although an outbreak of smallpox had occurred in 1679 and 1680. Whether there were separate new infections in New York and in Canada in 1690 or whether the troop movements associated with the Wood Creek expedition disseminated the smallpox, a general epidemic developed that included New England, New York, the Iroquois tribes, Canada, and Acadia. Apparently, the Iroquois were infected by emissaries who came to solicit their participation in the expedition northward by land. This very extensive epidemic reveals the connections between New France and New York through their Indian allies, links that would make this a regular corridor for smallpox in the eighteenth century.” (Steele, Ian K. The English Atlantic, 1675-1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community. Oxford, NY, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 254-255.)
Sources
Cook, Sherburne. F. The Indian Population of New England in the 17th Century (University of California Publications in Anthropology Volume 12). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976. Partially Google digitized. Accessed 2-18-2013 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=aHGjsHiyUZEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Duffy, John. Epidemics in Colonial America. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1953, reprinted 1979.
Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Mohegan people.” 5-14-2019 update. Accessed 5-20-2019 at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mohegan
Hopkins, Donald R. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1st Edition, 1983, p. 238. Partially digitized by Google at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=z2zMKsc1Sn0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Lovejoy, David S. The Glorious Revolution in America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1972, p. 351. Partially Google digitized. Accessed 2-18-2013 at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Da4QrWDnRXUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana; or The Ecclesiastical History of New-England From Its First Planting, in the Year 1620, unto the Year of Our Lord 1698. In Seven Books (Vol. II). Hartford: Silas Andrus & Son, 1893. Digitized by the University of Michigan and accessed 2-23-2018 at: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.afk3754.0002.001;seq=1;view=1up
Novick, Lloyd F. and Cynthia B. Morrow. “Defining Public Health: Historical and Contemporary Developments,” Chapter 1, p. 7, in: Novick, Lloyd F., Cynthia B. Morrow and Glen P. Mays. Public Health Administration: Principles for Population-Based Management (Second Edition). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2008. Partially Google digitized: http://books.google.com/books?id=E9EQoIxqR6wC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. Boston, Thursday Sept. 25th, 1690. Accessed 2-18-2013 at: http://raglinen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/publicoccur2.gif
Purvis, Thomas L. Colonial America to 1763. NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1999. Google preview accessed 1-9-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=BZRJSx3uMYEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Shaw, Steven J. “Colonial Newspaper Advertising: A Step toward Freedom of the Press.” The Business History Review, Vol. 33, No. 3, Autumn, 1959, pp. 409-420. First page accessed 5-20-2019 at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3111955?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Steele, Ian K. The English Atlantic, 1675-1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community. Oxford, NY, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 254-255. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=LFFMBM_0uAwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false )
Wikipedia. “Mohegan people,” 1-20-2013 modification.
Wikipedia. Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. 5-2-2019 edit. Accessed 5-20-2019 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publick_Occurrences_Both_Forreign_and_Domestick
[1] Refers to New England settlers.
[2] The figure 320 undoubtedly comes from the Publick Occurrences report which is about Boston fatalities.
[3] In our opinion even though this report is based on the reports of natives coming back into Canada which might have been exaggerated, it appears to be very credible, and the numbers reported are based only on limited contact. Even if the reported fatalities from limited contact were exaggerated, surely native deaths throughout the New England and New York region were much larger.
[4] Upper New York State (today).
[5] “…Algonquian-speaking tribe living in the eastern upper Thames River valley of south-central Connecticut.” Wikipedia. “Mohegan people,” 1-20-2013 modification. Cites: “Mohegan” history, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.
[6] Only edition published in Boston Sep 25, 1690 by Richard Pierce and edited by Benjamin Harris. On Sep 29, 1690 the British colonial authorities ordered the paper shut down. (Wikipedia. “Public Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick.” 11-8-2012 modification; citing as the reference: Steven J. Shaw. “Colonial Newspaper Advertising: A Step Toward Freedom of the Press.” The Business History Review, Vol. 33, No. 3, Autumn, 1959, pp. 409-42.
[7] Duffy footnote 10: “Isaac Newton Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909 (New York, 1922), IV, 357. Heagerty, Four Centuries of Medical History, I, 67, claims that New England troops developed smallpox while attacking Quebec in 1690 and later carried the disease to New England. See also Packard, History of Medicine, I, 75; Victor Hugo Palsits, ‘New Light on ‘Publick Occurrences,’ America’s First Newspaper,’ in American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, LIX (1950), 80-81.”
[8] Notes that it “was imported from Barbados with infected slaves.”
[9] Cites: Smille, W. Public Health: Its Promise for the Future. NY: Macmillan Co; 1955, p. 22.