1711-12 — Winter, Diseases (smallpox/pestilential fevers/pleurisies/flux), Charleston SC >10

— >10  Blanchard minimum figure based on Duffy narrative below noting a very fatal season.[1]

Narrative Information

Duffy: “Charleston, South Carolina, suffered greatly from sickness during the winter of 1711-12. Commissary Giddier Johnston, the S.P.G. representative in South Carolina, wrote on November 16, 1711 that ‘Never was there a more sickly or fatall season than this for the small Pox, Pestilential feavers, Pleurisies,[2] and flux’s[3] have destroyed great numbers here of all sorts, both Whites Blacks and Indians, and these distempers still rage to an uncommon degree’; but he did not state which disease took the greatest toll. The following March the Boston News-Letter reported many deaths from ‘Small-Pox & Pestilential Feavers’ at Charleston, adding that the epidemic was about over.”[4] (Duffy, Chapter II, “Smallpox”. Epidemics in Colonial America. 1953 and 1979, p. 75.)

Source

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

[1] Since we have searched elsewhere in vain for a number or estimate, we create our own, in order to recognize this event and to contribute to our compilation of large-loss-of-life events. From Duffy’s account it appears to us that between Whites, Blacks and Natives, at least dozens died.

[2] Generally meant what we would now refer to as a respiratory infection.

[3] Generally meant what we would now refer to as dysentery.

[4] Cites, in footnote 11” L.B. Wright and Marion Tinling (eds.), The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712 (Richmond, 1941, 361, 366, 370; Commissary Gideon Johnston to Secretary, South Carolina, November 16, 1711, in S.P.G. MSS., A7, fpp. 383-84; Boston News-Letter, No. 412, February 25-March 3, 1712.