A Snippet of History

The summer of 1857 was really a bad time for Benjamin Smith of Poor Valley, Va. He lost his wife Martha to Arisypelas (sic) at the end of July. She was 23. His 3 year old daughter, Mary, died 3 weeks later from Scarlet Fever. Then, his 10 month old daughter, Nancy, died just a week after that from the same thing.

Over at Clinch River, Mrs. James Addington found her 34 year old husband dangling at the end of a rope. His cause of death was listed as "hanging by the neck". His father, William Addington, died 3 months later of Meloncholy (sic).

According to the 1857 death notices of Scott County, Virginia, if you had any of the following "conditions" (i.e. illnesses) you were likely to find yourself in the throes of rigor mortis:

Scarlet Fever (the most prevalent disease, by far)
Typhoid Fever (most often spelled Tyfoid)
Dropsey of the Heart (precursor to heart attacks?)
Croup
Flux
Bloody Flux (As if regular Flux weren't bad enough)
Consumption (Consumed by what? Guilt?)
Pneumonia (They had no use for the silent P. They usually spelled it "Neumonia".)
Parelasis (Paralysis)
Suisidl (Suicide)
Ulcer of the Stomack (sic)
Arisypelas (Erysipelas)
Dispepsa (Dyspepsia)

Apparently, the informants couldn't always spell.

The most common cause of death was, by far, listed as "Unknown".
I have a feeling you could pretty much kill anybody you wanted to in 1857, and give the cause of death as "Unknown".

I was reading through these pages on the Internet because my mother's family was from Scott County. I thought I might get a glimpse of an ancestor or two. Not really sure if I did or not, but what I found was an interesting slice of Americana.

Remember "Roots"? We all wanted to believe that Kunte Kinte was Alex Haley's ancestor, but that was probably closer to fiction, than fact. When slaves died, they were listed by their first names, then identified as "Slave of" whatever family owned them. The informant was listed as Master or Mr. While it was customary to identify the parents of the deceased on death records, when slaves died, the spaces for parents were almost always left blank. That would make researching African-American ancestory difficult, if not impossible.