John and
Catharina Marshall:
The Fever That
Killed Them
Website:
http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/users/m/a/r/Kelly-Marshall/index.html?Welcome=1090578207
Thomas Ashe, Esquire: Travels
in America, Performed in 1806, For the Purpose of Exploring the Rivers
Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio and Mississippi, and Ascertaining the Produce and
Condition of their Banks and Vicinity. [London:
1808].
An Excerpt from
Letter XVI
New Lancaster Town---its
sudden rise and as sudden decline by a contagious sickness---Dutch cupidity and
its consequences [page 149]
Point Pleasant [Virginia], Great Kenhaway
[Kanawha] River
July 1806
The
Big Hockhocking is eight yards wide at its mouth, and yields navigation for
loaded batteux [sic] to the press-place, sixty miles above its mouth [on the
Ohio River]. At the end of this
navigation stands New-Lancaster, a town formed of about one hundred and fifty
well-built houses, and inhabited chiefly by Germans and Dutch from Old
Lancaster in Pennsylvania, and the settlements in its vicinity. New-Lancaster seven years ago was but emerging
from the woods, where the industrious people I have mentioned from the east,
were tempted by the reputation of the lands in its neighborhood to settle in
and around it, and to encourage all their friends to flock to the Ohio State,
and follow the example they had set them, for the advancement of their comfort
and promotion of their prosperity. You
may judge with what eagerness the town and country were settled when you learn
that one hundred and fifty brick, frame and log-houses were erected in less
than seven years, and that land rose from one and two, to five, ten, fifteen,
and even twenty dollars per acre. It has
notwithstanding sustained a sad reverse within these two years. The last summer [1805] alone gave landed and
other property a fail of one hundred and fifty per cent. The violent depreciation is to be attributed
to a general sickness which attacked the settlement and swept off two thirds of
the inhabitants, before its progress was checked by the setting in of the
frost. Very few of the first settlers
now exist! Seven years toil and labour
concluded their reign, and in all probability seven more will extinguish the
generation now rising in their place!
What a gloomy prospect! What a
melancholy reflection! And from whence
arose a change and calamity so unexpected and painful to a liberal mind?
Avarice,
and an inordinate craving after gold, form the well known characteristic of the
Dutch. With them every consideration
dissolves before views of acquirement, or prospects which hold out acquisition
of wealth. The first settlers of New
Lancaster discovering lands to be of the first quality, bought up several
thousand acres at a reduced price, erected a few buildings, and sent emissaries
to their countrymen to tempt them into their speculations, and allow them for
certain advantages a participation of their views. Many came, and by acting in a similar
efficacious manner to sell their purchases and populate the place, a few years
numbered from six to seven thousand inhabitants, composed of artisans,
shop-keepers, mechanics, and farmers.
The head of the navigation being the most populous place on which to
erect a town, it was chosen for that purpose, and its being healthy or
unhealthy made no part of the calculation, or entered into consultations on the
business. Those who settled on farms
chose the vicinity of creeks and springs for their habitations, for if they
chose the high grounds, time would be lost in looking after water, “time is
money,” say the Dutch. Some intermittent
fevers, and a few hundred deaths in the first three or four years began to
spread suspicions, that all was not right; that swampy spots were pernicious to
life, that the money gleaned off them could neither purchase happiness or
maintain health. To build a new town,
new houses and barns, and to clear new lands were changes and expenses too
heavy to be endured; things remained till two successive summers teeming with
disease, consumed the bulk of the inhabitants of the settlement, and compelled
the few remaining ones to abandon their avaricious intentions and learn in
future how to live.
So
entirely was health cast out of all consideration at the time of erecting New
Lancaster, that the settlers were not turned from their intention though a
swamp of great extent, and part of which immediately bounds the west of the
town, lay directly before them and emitted an effluvia so noxious as could
hardly be withstood. Nor did they
reflect that another swamp of a still worse nature, called “the muddy
prairie,” lay contiguous, and cast out
of its bowels an air so mephitic, that persons had to close their mouth and
nose on crossing any part of it. Deer
and other animals chaced [sic] into these swamps by hunters, sink after a few
struggles and never more appear. The
swamps will never be drained. Their
extent and character defy human industry; the depth alone being much greater
than any adjacent streams. The
prevailing disorders they disseminate are, agues, fevers, and violent reachings
[sic]. The latter complaint is nearly
always fatal; and is accompanied by all the symptoms of yellow fever, such as
derangement, convulsions, and a general effusion of blood [pages 152-154].
KEYWORD SEARCH: John Marshall; Catharine Truby; Catharina
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Lancaster, Ohio; Fairfield Township, Ohio; Early Ohio History.
Contact Information
Kelly Marshall
788 Wildwood Drive
Boardman OH 44512-3241