1804 — Yellow Fever Epidemic, Brooklyn, NY & Charleston, SC — 198

–198  Blanchard tally based upon State break-outs below.

 

Brooklyn, NY                        (  40)

—     40  Putnam.  The World’s Progress: A Dictionary of Dates.  1851, p. 605.

–Some. “At the Wallabout.” Townsend. An Account of the Yellow… 1823, p. 369.

 

Charleston, SC          (148)

–148  NYT. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871.

–148  Sternberg 1908, p. 719.

–148  Ramsay. “Medical History From 1670-1808,” Ramsay’s History of SC, 1858, p. 47.

–148  U.S. Marine-Hospital. Service.  Annual Report…FY 1895. 1896, p. 432.[1]

 

New Orleans, LA      (>10)

— >10  New Orleans. Blanchard guestimate from Carrigan. The Saffron Scourge. 1961, p. 40-45.

 

Narrative Information

 

Charleston, South Carolina

 

Ramsay: “For forty-four years after 1748, there was no epidemic attack of this disease [yellow fever], though there were occasionally in different summers a few sporadic cases of it. In the year 1792 a new era of the yellow fever commenced. It raged in Charlestown in that year, and in 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1804, and 1807. The number of deaths from it in these, its worst years, were…In 1799, 239; in 1800, 184; in 1802, 96; in 1804, 148; in 1807, 162.”

 

New Orleans, Louisiana

 

Carrigan: “Although the records of yellow fever’s visits in the early 1800’s are rather sketchy and sometimes contradictory, during the first two decades of the century New Orleans experienced at least five major outbreaks of the disease: 1804, 1809, 1811, 1817, and 1819….

 

“In August of 1804, less than eight months after the American acquisition of Louisiana, yellow fever again appeared in New Orleans, and finding a bountiful supply of unacclimated individuals, subjected the city to a three-month period of death and desolation. In his official letters Governor William C. C. Claiborne outlined the course of the epidemic and thus may be credited with providing the most comprehensive account of the pestilence of 1804. By August 10 the fever had appeared, but the city was not yet considered ‘generally unhealthy.’ On August 25 Claiborne’s secretary, who fell victim to the scourge a few weeks alter, wrote that the disease had carried off a number of ‘Americans, Strangers to the climate.’[2] The fever continued to increase its ravages during late August and September, and in his letters the Governor commented repeatedly on the malignant disease called yellow fever which was ‘particularly fatal’ to Americans and other strangers. Having suffered a violent attack of the scourge early in the epidemic, Claiborne remarked, ‘…I am represented as the only American who had yet recovered.’[3] Apparently the disease did not confine itself solely to strangers, for in mid-September the physicians of New Orleans began to observe cases of the prevailing fever among the ‘old Inhabitants.’[4] ….

 

“The epidemic of 1804 was indeed a source of heavy affliction for the American governor of the territory. Not only did Claiborne suffer a debilitating attack of yellow fever himself, but in late September he lost both his wife and his young daughter to the dreadful malady.[5] Although no mortality records are available for this period, the extent of the fatalities must have been exceedingly great. Claiborne believed that ‘more than a third of the Americans who emigrated thither in the course of the last 12 months have perished, and nearly every Person from Europe who arrived in the City during the Summer Months.’[6] ….

 

During the last days of October the malady still raged in New Orleans, but by November 4 the Governor reported to President Jefferson his belief that ‘the Fever had entirely Abated in this City, and Industry & Commerce seem to have revived.’[7] [pp. 40-45]

 

Sources

 

Carrigan, Jo Ann. The Saffron Scourge: A History of Yellow Fever in Louisiana, 1796-1905 (Doctoral Dissertation). Louisiana State University, LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses, 1961. Accessed 3-11-2018 at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1665&context=gradschool_disstheses

 

New York Times. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0C13F938541A7493CAA81782D85F458784F9

 

Putnam, G. P. (Ed.). The World’s Progress: A Dictionary of Dates. NY: G. P. Putnam, 1851.  Digitized by Google: http://books.google.com/books?id=qz9HAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Ramsay, David (M.D.). Ramsay’s History of South Carolina, From its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808. Published by W. J. Duffie, Newberry, SC, printed in Charleston by Walker, Evans & Co., 1858. Digitized by archive.org and accessed 9-11-2016 at: https://archive.org/stream/ramsayshistorys00ramsgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

 

Sternberg, George M. (US Public Health Service, US Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever,” pp. 39-72 in A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences (Vol. 8), Albert Henry Buck, (Ed.). NY: William Wood & Co., 1894. Google digitized: http://books.google.com/books?id=Jr00AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Townsend, Peter S., M.D. An Account of the Yellow Fever as it Prevailed in The City of New-York, in the Summer and Autumn of 1822. NY: O. Halsted, 1823. Google digital preview at: http://books.google.com/books?id=pfsOAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Marine-Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington, DC:  GPO, 1896.  Digitized by Google and accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

[1] Cites Simons. Transactions, S.C. Med. Assn., 1851, p. 37. (Toner.)

[2] In footnote 23, Carrigan cites: William C. C. Claiborne to James Wilkinson, August 10, 1804, Dunbar Rowland (ed.), Official Letter Books of William C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816 (6 vols., Jackson, MI, 1917), II, 306; Joseph Briggs to James Madison, August 25, 1804, 306-307; Claiborne to Madison, September 17, 1804.

[3] In footnote 24, cites: Claiborne to Thomas Jefferson, August 29, 30, 1804, Clarence E. Carter (ed.), The Territory of Orleans, 1803-1812 (Vol. IX of The Territorial Papers of The United States, Washington, 1940), 279-80, 286; Claiborne to Albert Gallantin, August 31, 1804, Rowland (ed.), Claiborne Letter Books, II, 314; Claiborne to Madison, September 8, 1804, 328.

[4] In footnote 25, Carrigan cites: Claiborne to Jefferson, Sep 13, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 294.

[5] In footnote 28, Carrigan cites: Claiborne to Jefferson, Sep 27, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 299.

[6] Carrigan footnote 29 cites: Claiborne to Jefferson, October 5, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 309.

[7] Carrigan footnote 32 cites: Claiborne to Madison, October 16, 1804, William C. C. Claiborne Letterbook, 1804-05 (Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge); Sterrett to Nathaniel Evans, October 29, 1804, Nathaniel Evans Family Papers; Claiborne to Jefferson, November 4, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 319.