New Haven County Court Records

Disease in Colonial New England

As we continue to grapple with the medical, social, political, and economic consequences of Covid-19, it may be instructive to consider how disease impacted various peoples and groups in previous eras. During the next few months, we will examine several New Haven County, County Court cases where disease played a major role in lawsuits. Before embarking on this series, we will discuss not only what kind of maladies afflicted European colonists, enslaved and free Africans, and Indigenous peoples in New England, but also the ways they perceived disease, how illness affected household economies, and how government handled epidemics.

Woodcut depicting victims praying to be delivered from the ravages of syphilis, 1496, courtesy of Wellcome Images under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, via Wikimedia Commons.

Colonial Diseases

The European colonists who settled New England and other areas in the Americas both carried and experienced a wide variety of diseases: smallpox, malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, influenza, pleurisy, colds, whooping cough, mumps, measles, typhus, typhoid fever, hookworms, parasites, puerperal fever (associated with childbirth), syphilis (the “French pox”), and other venereal diseases (Tully (NY) Area Historical Society News & Databases, Disease & Death in Early America).

Given the lack of advanced medicine and effective vaccines, many of these diseases were highly debilitating, causing permanent disability or death. While New England had a reputation for being one of the healthier places to live during the colonial period, “between 10% and 30% of New England’s children did not live through their first year; those who weathered childhood diseases could expect to encounter another onslaught in their teens; although few women died in childbirth, the regularity of pregnancy was often a cause of indisposition and worry; and any individual might find that the diseases that they had undergone earlier in life turned chronic in old age” (Ben Mutschler, The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England, pp. 11-12).

The transatlantic slave trade also contributed sicknesses to the panoply of human suffering. Due to the appalling and dehumanizing travel conditions that enslavers inflicted upon the Africans they captured and shipped to Europe, the West Indies, the Chesapeake region, and New England, enslaved individuals were at high risk of contracting amoebic dysentery, which was “the leading cause of death among captives during the Middle Passage, and one of the most feared diseases of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (Anne Farrow, The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory, p. 60). Called “the bloody flux” in those days, amoebic dysentery was an intestinal infection that spread through human fecal bacteria, which contaminated the food and water on overcrowded slave ships. Because the disease had a long incubation period ranging from 15 days to three months, enslaved individuals could arrive to their destination and be sold before illness manifested, leading angry captors to seek redress through the court system (Farrow, The Logbooks, pp. 60, 67).

Another disease that the European colonists associated with African-descended individuals was called “the ‘Negro Yaws,’ a highly contagious pox-like disease that was unknown in New England until the slave trade brought it there” (Cristobal Silva, Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative, p. 168). Transmitted through person-to-person contact, this infection affected the skin, bone, and cartilage, and could even cause deformities. Though it has since been eradicated from New England, it is still found in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific regions (World Health Organization, Yaws in the Western Pacific).

Endemic vs. Epidemic

The above-discussed diseases could be endemic or epidemic during the colonial period, as determined by where and when they occurred. An endemic disease is always present in the environment among a particular group or in a certain area, and affects a portion of the population at any given time (e.g., the common cold). An epidemic is a widespread outbreak of disease that affects a large number of people during the same timeframe (e.g., the “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1918).

Whether a disease is endemic or epidemic largely depends on geographic and environmental factors, as well as human behavioral patterns. For example, during the seventeenth century, smallpox was endemic in London due to the large population, crowded living conditions, and constant travel to and from the city. However, smallpox was epidemic in New England due to the smaller population and towns being spread out across greater distances, with major outbreaks occurring cyclically over the years as herd immunity waxed and waned (Silva, Miraculous Plagues, pp. 109-112).

Interestingly, malaria, which is now considered a tropical/subtropical disease, was endemic in colonial America. While it was most prevalent in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware due to the climate and abundance of mosquitos, it also presented a problem for early New Englanders (Tully (NY) Area Historical Society News & Databases, Disease & Death in Early America). Historians believe that Joshua Hempstead, a farmer and tradesman of New London who lived from 1678-1758, suffered from this ailment, though he called it “ague and fever” in his diary (Allegra Di Bonaventura, For Adam’s Sake: A Family Saga in Colonial New England, pp. 234, 259).

Outside of epidemics like the Boston smallpox outbreak of 1721, it can be difficult to pinpoint which diseases the colonists suffered at any given time, due to their tendency to describe their malaises in vague terms. While New Englanders were quite open about their state of health in letters, diaries, and other records, they “tended to refer to their ailments not as specific diseases but rather as generic fevers, agues, and disorders, or else simply noted that they were unwell, ill, or dangerously sick” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, p. 5).

Disease Narratives

It is common knowledge that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were devastated by smallpox, influenza, measles, and other diseases that Europeans brought from the “Old World”—a distinctly Eurocentric term, as Indigenous peoples were present in the Americas as far back as 37,000 B.P. (before present), and Connecticut since 10,215 B.P. ±90 years (Lucianne Lavin, Connecticut’s Indigenous Peoples, pp. 36, 40). However, patterns of transmission and group susceptibility to various infections changed over the centuries, along with the narratives that European settlers used to rationalize the brutality of colonization and to explain the persistent presence of pestilence in their own communities.

Cristobal Silva proposed a counterpoint to the popular “virgin soil” model coined by Alfred Crosby, positing that it contributes to the fallacy that Anglo-Europeans were inherently more immune from outbreaks than Indigenous-American peoples throughout the generations, which the historical record demonstrates was not the case (Miraculous Plagues, pp. 114-115). Although the first explorers and settlers who came from Spain, Portugal, and England did have greater immunity because of their previous exposure to these diseases in their home countries, their descendants did not automatically inherit this resistance. Because these children and grandchildren had never lived in Europe, “a third-generation settler living in 1662 might have had as much (if not more) in common, immunologically speaking, with a Native American from 1616, than with his or her own grandparents” (Miraculous Plagues, p. 106). In place of the “virgin soil” trope, Silva suggested viewing colonial epidemics through the lens of immunological syntax. This concept “describes the specific immunities and susceptibilities of a population (or region) at a given moment[,]... how (and why) those conditions change over time, and... how communities understand their own role in the behaviors of epidemics” (Miraculous Plagues, p. 14).

The New England Puritans considered epidemics as proof of God’s blessing or wrath, depending on whether they or Indigenous peoples were being afflicted. To illustrate: from 1616 to 1619, the first-generation Anglo-European settlers had the immunological advantage when a series of epidemics spread through the eastern seaboard region of New England. Although they suffered some losses, it was estimated that a colossal 95 percent of the Indigenous populations were killed in these outbreaks (Silva, Miraculous Plagues, p. 17). The Anglo-Europeans considered this terrible human destruction as a sign of God’s blessing of their usurpation of “New World” land and resources, using this self-serving agenda to fuel their colonial justification narratives. Indeed, Puritan Governor John Winthrop exultantly declared, “God hath consumed the natives with a miraculous plague, whereby the greater part of the country is left voide of inhabitants” (Silva, Miraculous Plagues, p. 33).

However, subsequent generations of European colonists experienced several notable epidemics of measles, influenza, smallpox, and other diseases, including in 1648-1649, 1666, 1689-90, 1702, and 1721, to name a few instances (Silva, Miraculous Plagues, p. 107; Tully (NY) Area Historical Society News & Databases, Disease & Death in Early America). As reflected in Michael Wigglesworth’s 1662 poem, “God’s Controversy with New-England,” the Puritans considered these later plagues concrete demonstrations of Providential wrath for failing to live up to their forefathers’ lofty ideals. While germ theory was yet to be discovered, the colonists still “recognized shifting disease patterns, and tried to reconcile them within an orthodox Puritan rhetoric, seeing in their troubles evidence of a cultural shift that they characterized as a sign of declension [moral deterioration]” (Silva, Miraculous Plagues, p. 137).

Yet even the trope of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” didn’t entirely encapsulate colonial narratives surrounding disease. In addition to disease being a tangible manifestation of divine power, the colonists believed that illness could be affected by the state of one’s own mind and personal habits. For example, gout was considered an affliction of the wealthy due to rich diets that the poor did not have access to (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, pp. 187, 216). And as the eighteenth century lengthened, religion became increasingly decoupled from medical practice. In the early days of the New England colonies, it was not uncommon for ministers to also serve as medical practitioners. “But by 1769 preacher-physicians were on the wane, replaced by others in an increasingly competitive medical marketplace, not least by the steady growth of ‘doctors’… [t]rained through apprenticeship and, less commonly, through formal education in Europe” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, p. 25).

Economic Concerns

On a more prosaic, day-to-day level, disease not only led to disruption of the colonial household, it could potentially tip the household’s balance from “competency” (the ability to independently support one’s family) to poverty. While injured and ill men represented the loss of crucial labor, it was even more detrimental to the household when women were rendered unable to complete their domestic work. As the case of John Prinn vs. Mary Allyn demonstrated, “an unwell female worker meant that the routines of the household would begin to unravel... women’s household chores could not brook the interruption. The daily immediacies of female work required a consistently able body” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, pp. 116-117).

In colonial New England, the head of the household was deemed legally and financially responsible for dealing not only with the illnesses of his wife and children, but also those of any enslaved individuals and servants in residence. “As the town of New Haven put it, the sickness of strangers who belonged to no family would be borne by the public, but those of bound servants were the province of the family’s ‘Governor.’ The master was expected to be a just and wise ruler who would preside over his servants in sickness and in health” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, pp. 103-104).

However, no household existed in a vacuum. “[I]nterdependence was the norm in farm society; scarcities in labor and material resources meant that only through relations of exchange could the needs of any farm be met” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, p. 52). In an era where monetary currency was a limited commodity and the law restricted financial culpability to grandparents, parents, and children, people had to rely heavily on the goodwill of their extended families, friends, and neighbors to help nurse the sick and assist with the undone labor within their household. “Such help would not be forgotten; it would be recorded as a social debt to be paid at a later date, a major strand of interdependence in community life” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, p. 65).

Individuals and families without the financial resources to pay for medical care or the social capital to call on helpers found themselves in the position of having to seek aid from the towns in which they were considered legal residents. And when entire communities were decimated by epidemics, no single household could feasibly shoulder the entire cost of illness, making it necessary for the government to step in and provide assistance so that the burdens were more equally distributed (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, pp. 62, 153).

The Significance of Smallpox

Although respiratory diseases presented a much greater risk to health and life when analyzing overall mortality rates, the New England colonists particularly feared smallpox “because of the terrible suffering it inflicted, the high mortality rates, and disfigurement it left behind” (Tully (NY) Area Historical Society News & Databases, Disease & Death in Early America). Incredibly, smallpox was one of the few afflictions the colonists considered communicable. As Ben Mutschler noted, “debate raged during epidemics about whether they were infectious diseases. There was no such debate on smallpox” (The Province of Affliction, p. 121).

In general, colonial New England towns strictly enforced public health measures, demonstrating few qualms about sacrificing individual household interests to the greater social good if they deemed it necessary to contain an epidemic. “In the absence of willing and able caretakers, nurses and watchers would be forced into service or face prison and fines. In the absence of appropriate shelter to isolate the sick, houses would be turned into pesthouses and makeshift hospitals. In the absence of strict adherence to rules, surveillance measures would be put in place. And finally, in the absence of a clear narrative that identified the cause and course of the epidemic, authorities would investigate rumors, require oaths, and conduct examinations to reach an ultimate determination of culpability” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, p. 145).

In such a stringent atmosphere, it is not surprising that controversies surrounding disease ended up in the courts. The next blog post in this series will profile the case of Michael Baldwin vs. John Goodwin, where Baldwin sued Goodwin for bringing smallpox back to Connecticut colony and causing the infection of his minor son.

The Connecticut State Library would like to thank the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for their generous support of this project.