1759 — Measles (“many…in a short space of time; not a house exempt…”), Fairfield, NJ — >10?

—>10? Blanchard estimate based on Harris Journal cited in Wicke and reproduced in Duffy.

Narrative Information

Duffy: “For the second time a ten-year interval separated wide-spread outbreaks of measles. The next visitation can in 1759 and few regions escaped. The disease was both general and fatal in South Carolina, and Elizabeth Drinker of Philadelphia and Alexander Colden of New York noted its presence in their respective cities during the early part of the year. The infection was restricted to children and was relatively mild.[1]

“However, this mildness was not characteristic of the contagion in Fairfield, New Jersey, where Ephraim Harris recalled in his journal,

That fatal and never-to-be forgotten year, 1759, when the Lord sent the destroying angel to pass through this place, and removed many of our friends into eternity in a short space of time; not a house exempt, not a family spared from the calamity. So dreadful was it, that it made every ear tingle, and every heart bleed; in which time I and my family was exercised with that dreadful disorder, the measles. But blessed be God, our lives are spared.[2]

“Measles was only part of the troubles in Fairfield, for smallpox and other diseases were also prevalent at the same time.” (Duffy, pp. 174-175.)

Source

Duffy, John. Epidemics in Colonial America. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1953, reprinted 1979.

Wickes, Stephen, MD. History of Medicine in New Jersey, and of its Medical Men, From the Settlement of the Province to A.D. 1800. Newark, NJ: Martin R. Dennis & Co., 1879. Accessed 4-5-2018 at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433011688805;view=1up;seq=9

[1] Cites, in footnote 21, p. 174: Ramsay, History of South Carolina, II, 89; Elizabeth Drinker’s Diary, February 8, 1759; Alexander Colden to his sister, Katherine, New York, April 25, 1759, in Colden Papers, IX (1937), 173-75.

[2] Cites, in footnote 22, p. 175: Wickes, History of Medicine in New Jersey, 20-21.