If you ever wondered why a large number of your ancestors seemed to disappear during a certain period in history, it may have been due to an epidemic.

Epidemics have always had a great influence on people and therefore the genealogists trying to trace them. Many cases of people disappearing from records can be attributed to people dying during an epidemic or moving away from the affected area.

Some of the major epidemics in the United States are listed below

• 1657 - Boston: Measles
• 1687 - Boston: Measles
• 1690 - New York: Yellow Fever
• 1713 - Boston: Measles
• 1729 - Boston: Measles
• 1732-33 - Worldwide: Influenza
• 1738 - South Carolina: Smallpox
• 1739-40 - Boston: Measles
• 1747 - Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania & South Carolina: Measles
• 1759 - North America (areas inhabited by white people): Measles
• 1761-61 - North America & West Indies: Influenza
• 1772 - North America: Measles
• 1775 - North America (especially hard in New England): Epidemic (unknown)
• 1775-76 - Worldwide: Influenza
• 1781-82 - Worldwide: Influenza (one of worst flu epidemics)
• 1788 - Philadelphia & New York: Measles
• 1793 - Vermont: Influenza and a "putrid fever"
• 1793 - Virginia: Influenza (kills 500 people in 5 counties in 4 weeks)
• 1793 - Philadelphia: Yellow fever (one of worst)
• 1783 - Delaware (Dover): "extremely fatal" bilious disorder
• 1793 - Pennsylvania (Harrisburg & Middletown): many unexplained deaths
• 1794 - Philadelphia: Yellow fever
• 1796-97 - Philadelphia: Yellow Fever
• 1798 - Philadelphia: Yellow Fever (one of worst)
• 1803 - New York: Yellow Fever
• 1820-23 - Nationwide: "fever" (starts on Schuylkill River, PA & spreads
• 1831-32 - Nationwide: Asiatic Cholera (brought by English emigrants)
• 1832 - New York & other major cities: Cholera
• 1837 - Philadelphia: Typhus
• 1841 - Nationwide: Yellow Fever (especially severe in South)
• 1847 - New Orleans: Yellow Fever
• 1847-48 - Worldwide: Influenza
• 1848-49 - North America: Cholera
• 1850 - Nationwide: Yellow Fever
• 1850-51 - North America: Influenza
• 1852 - Nationwide: Yellow Fever (New Orleans: 8,000 die in summer)
• 1855 - Nationwide (many parts): Yellow Fever
• 1857-59 - Worldwide: Influenza (one of disease's greatest epidemics)
• 1860-61 - Pennsylvania: Smallpox
• 1865-73 - Philadelphia, New York, Boston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Memphis, & Washington D.C.: a series of recurring epidemics of Smallpox, Cholera, Typhus, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever & Yellow Fever
• 1873-75 - North America & Europe: Influenza
• 1878 - New Orleans: Yellow Fever (last great epidemic of disease)
• 1885 - Plymouth, PA: Typhoid
• 1886 - Jacksonville, Fl: Yellow Fever
• 1918 - Worldwide: Influenza (high point year) More people hospitalized in World War I more died from Influenza than wounds. US Army training camps became death camps --with 80 percent death rate in some camps

• 1833 - Columbus, Ohio
• 1834 - New York City
• 1849 - New York
• 1851 - Coles Co., Illinois
• 1851 - The Great Plains
• 1851 - >Missouri

• 1813 - "spotted fever" which we know as cerebral spinal meningitis--6,000 died.
• 1813 to ? - tuberculosis also called "consumption" was on the rise.
• 1842-43 - erysipelas [strep infection of skin and mucous membranes