1698 – Epidemic.

The governor wrote that

“We have had the small pox amongst us nine or ten months which hath been very infectious and mortal. We have lost by the distemper 200 or 300 persons.”

Mrs. Affra Coming wrote to her sister that the epidemic

“killed 200 or 300 persons … unburied, lying upon the ground for the vultures to devour.”

Picking up the Dead.