1697-98 — ~Nov 1697 to ~Feb 1698 (3 mo.), “mortal disease” (influenza?), Fairfield, CT– 70

–70  (Out of <1000 pop, 3 months.) Webster. Brief History of Epidemic Diseases. 1799, p. 210.

–70  Duffy, citing Webster (in Duffy’s Influenza section), p. 188.

 

Narrative Information

 

Schenck: “The winter of 1697-8 had been one of unusual length and severity….A distressing fever prevailed, preceded by an influenza, which proved very fatal. Those in health found it difficult to obtain fuel, to care for the sick, and to bury their dead.[1] Fairfield suffered severely from this epidemic….” (p. 297.)

 

Webster: “In a diary kept by Daniel Fairfield, of Braintree, in Massachusetts, an unlettered man of good understanding, I have a particular description of an influenza that prevailed in America in the severe winter of 1697-8. This catarrh[2] began in November and prevailed till February. Its violence was in January, when whole families were sick at once, and whole towns were seized nearly at the same time. It appears to have been an epidemic of the severe kind; and the epidemics which followed it in America were of correspondent severity.

 

“In the same winter a mortal disease raged in the town of Fairfield in Connecticut, which was so general, that well persons could scarcely be found to tend the sick and bury the dead. Seventy persons were buried in three months, altho it may be doubted whether the town then contained 1000 inhabitants.

 

“M.S. letter from Dr. Trumbull.

 

“In the same winter raged a deadly fever in the town of Dover, in New-Hampshire.” (Webster. Brief History of Epidemic Diseases. 1799, p. 210.)

 

Sources

 

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

 

Schenck, Elizabeth Hubbell. The History of Fairfield, Fairfield County, Connecticut, From the Settlement of the Town in 1639 to 1818 (Vol. 1). New York: author, 1889. Google preview accessed 4-7-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=8tULAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Webster, Noah. A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases; with the principal phenomena of the physical world which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts stated (in two volumes). Hartford, CT: Hudson & Goodwin, 1799. Accessed 1-7-2018 at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N27531.0001.001/1:11?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Cites: MS. of Gov. Roger Wolcott, Connecticut Historical Society — Colonial Records of Connecticut, IV, 242.

[2] Excessive discharge or buildup of mucus in the nose or throat, associated with inflammation of the mucous membrane.