Disclaimer: Pulaski County, Illinois, has never been large (the 1880 census cited fewer than 8,000 people). Mound City (the town where this disaster takes place and where many of my ancestors lived) accounted for roughly 2,000 citizens, so while this post is not specific to any of my family, it is still relevant to an understanding of their community.
In my genealogical infancy (before I had the means to purchase subscriptions), my research consisted almost entirely of volunteer-run sites like Family Search and Genealogy Trails. On the Pulaski County Genealogy Trails website, I found the deaths of two Pearson children listed in a transcribed Birth and Death Book. At first, I believed them to be children of my great great grandparents, but that didn't jive with the birth dates of their other children. They belong to another (to my knowledge, unrelated) Pearson family.
I continued scrolling to see if there was anything else of interest. George (13 months) and Mabel (4 months) Pearson had died from, respectively, dysentery and malaria in 1889. In 1885, though, the Birth and Death Book told the partial tale of a community wracked by a smallpox outbreak. Although smallpox vaccines had been developed in the late 1700s, not all people chose to get them, and some people simply didn't have access to them. Starting in the 1850s, some parts of the United States required mandatory smallpox inoculations, but rural southern Illinois certainly wasn't one of those places...
There is no mention of the outbreak in any available area newspapers from 1885 (most from neighboring Alexander County), so I can't be certain when/how it started. Here is what I have been able to piece together from various articles concerning the disease and the limited information available in the Birth and Death Book. The outbreak appears to have started in Mound City in mid-March. The first death listing smallpox as the cause was A. Craig, a black 16-year old who died on March 16th. There is no indication as to whether the victim was male or female, but the entry indicates the deceased was buried 'outside the levee.' Every other victim of this smallpox outbreak was also buried outside the levee. This is likely referencing the area around Mound City National Cemetery. Primarily a burial ground for Civil War soldiers, it is roughly 10-acres and protected by a levee.
Between March 16th and May 3rd, 39 people succumbed to smallpox. (The number is almost certainly higher, as statewide registrations for deaths didn't start until 1916.) They ranged in age from 7 months to 70 years. 38 of them were black. The only exception was Laura Peaslee, a single white woman of 31 years. But death knows no color. She was buried 'outside the levee' as well. While none of the 39 were related to me, I still had questions. Why did the disease seem to be contained within the black community? Why were its victims buried outside the levee? I didn't know much about smallpox or how it was handled, so I did a bit of research. I've included my sources at the bottom of this post (as any good English teacher would).
"Why did the disease seem to be contained within the black community?" requires a compound answer. First, it is likely partially due to the way in which smallpox was transmitted. While Mound City was hardly a wealthy area, it is probable the black population was less well-off than the rest (the United States was barely two decades post-Civil War, after all), and smallpox was known as a poor person's disease. Transmission primarily occurred through prolonged periods of face-to-face contact but could also occur through contact with fluid from the open sores (such as might be found on dirty clothes or used bed linens). Going back to the records, there is an unfortunate repetition of last names; 4 Bolens (ages 5-21), 3 Dismukes (ages 4-17), 3 Gants (ages 16 months - 30 years), and several other pairs of surnames were listed. Even assuming household occupants knew to distance themselves from the afflicted, there was just no easy way to do it. A second contributing factor was probably segregation. The interaction between the black and white communities would have been minimal and probably ceased entirely with the first news of the outbreak.
Why were the victims of the disease buried 'outside the levee'? The simple answer would be that there was a general ignorance concerning the transmission of smallpox. The longer explanation requires an acknowledgement of the existence of ‘pest houses’ and 'smallpox cemeteries.’ Pest houses were a sort of communal quarantine for those with the disease. Once the outbreak had run its course, the pest houses were usually burned to eliminate the possibility of any further transmissions. Of smallpox cemeteries, a New York Times article from 2000 suggests, "every town of colonial antiquity has one." A quick Google search suggested this was not an exaggeration. These unofficial, makeshift cemeteries are often found just outside the boundaries of actual cemeteries. People knew transmission occurred when the victims were alive and feared it continued after death. For the same reason that pest houses were burned, those who died from smallpox were buried away from the rest of the living...and also the rest of the dead. 'Outside the levee' must have been Mound City's version of the smallpox cemetery.
Outbreaks like the one described above occurred everywhere in the United States. Thousands of people are buried in 'smallpox cemeteries,' and due to their very nature, knowledge of their existence is limited. If I ever get back down to Pulaski County, I will make it a point to check out the area surrounding Mound City National Cemetery.
References:
"Death Records," Genealogy Trails, genealogytrails.com/ill/pulaski/deathrecords1883-1899.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.
"History of the Smallpox Vaccine," World Health Organization, www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/history-of-smallpox-vaccination. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.
Monagan, David. "Isolated Reminders of Old Epidemics," The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 9 Apr. 2000, www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/nyregion/isolated-reminders-of-old-epidemics.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.
"Smallpox," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 12 Jul. 2017, www.cdc.gov/smallpox. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.
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