1715 — Smallpox, NY and NJ colonies, esp. Burlington and Perth Amboy, NJ — >10

— >10  Blanchard based on sources below noting prevalence in Burlington and Perth Amboy

Narrative Information

Duffy: “The return of the disease [smallpox chapter] after a long absence usually meant a severe attack, and the outbreak that struck the middle and southern colonies in 1715 was no exception. Starting in New York and New Jersey, smallpox ran its course through all the English colonies during the next seven years. One Ellis, a schoolmaster at Burlington, New Jersey, made the first mention of it when he wrote to the S.P.G.[1] in 1715 that his school had been ‘very much dis-order’d, by reason of that Contagious Distemper, the Small pox with wch. God hath been pleased to Visit us all this last Sumer in and about our inhabitants and is now very brief among us here in Town.’ In September, an S.P.G. missionary wrote from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, that he had just recovered from a severe attack….”[2] (Epidemics in Colonial America. 1953, 1979, p. 76.)

Gerlach: “In eighteenth century New Jersey alone, untold lives were claimed by at least four major  [smallpox] epidemics, including a seven-year outbreak which began at Burlington in 1715.[3] Medical statistics for the colonial period are notorious for their unreliability. Yet by any measurement, smallpox looms as a deadly disease. The precious few extant sources indicate a smallpox mortality rate ranging anywhere from fifteen to fifty percent.” (Gerlach. “Smallpox Inoculation in Colonial New Jersey: A Contemporary Account.” Journal of the Rutgers University Library, p. 22.)

Sources

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

Gerlach. “Smallpox Inoculation in Colonial New Jersey: A Contemporary Account.” Journal of the Rutgers University Library, Vol. 31, No 1, 1967, pp. 21-28. Accessed 3-28-2018 at: https://jrul.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/jrul/article/view/1479

[1] Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

[2] Cites, in footnote 12, Rowland Ellis to Secretary, New Jersey, c. 1715, in S.P.G. MSS., A12, fp. 165; Edward Vaughan to Secretary, Perth Amboy, N.J., September 2, 1715, ibid., A11, fp. 124.

[3] Cites, in footnote 5, David L. Cowen, Medicine and Health in New Jersey: A History (Princeton, 1964), p. 2.