Six on NY: The Cholera Pandemic of 1832 in New York State; New York, 1905. "Metropolitan Opera House, 39th Street and Broadway."; Pierre Toussaint: Enslaved Haitian, NY Hairdresser – and Saint?; New-York Historical Society | Curriculum Library; Elnat
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New York was among the most thoroughly scourged among the states.
A person may get cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. Although cholera can be acquired from under-cooked marine life, in an epidemic, the source of the contamination is usually the feces of an infected person. The disease can spread rapidly in areas with inadequate treatment of sewage and drinking water and New York City, Buffalo, and Utica were all hit particularly hard due to the bacterium‘s water borne mobility.
Virtually every city along the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers, Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Champlain, and the Erie Canal suffered despite the imposition of quarantines and frantic local efforts to “purify” and eliminate public health nuisances. In June 1832 cholera appeared in Quebec and Montreal and then in Prescott, Kingston, and York in Canada.
Thriving towns along the Erie Canal suffered as well as small villages and even isolated farms. The appearance of cholera was the signal for the general exodus of inhabitants of larger communities, who, in their headlong flight, spread the disease throughout the surrounding countryside. The disease was terrifying. Like the current coronavirus pandemic, it had to be faced alone, often without friend, minister, or physician."
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Upon her death Marie Berard emancipated Pierre, who was then in his 40s. Toussaint then purchased the freedom of his sister and his soon to be wife, Juliette, who was also Haitian (shown in the second portrait).
He bought a house in Manhattan in 1811, married Juliette and adopted his sister’s daughter, Euphemia, after her death (the third portrait). Unfortunately, she died at 14, probably of tuberculosis and Pierre and his wife were devastated by the loss.
Toussaint was an ardent Catholic, at a time when anti-Catholicism was rampant. He opened his home as a Catholic orphanage for African-American children and helped educate them and find them work. When a cholera epidemic struck the city, he attended the sufferers, rather than flee the city, as many did. As a devout Catholic, he helped finance the construction of the first St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mott Street."
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Elnathan Sears: Thirteen Months in Hell
Late in the month of January in 1840, Elnathan Sears returned home to the town of Mamakating, then part of Ulster County, NY, after an exhausting trip to Washington, D.C. There he had presented an impassioned argument to Congress in hopes of procuring the military pension he had earned as an officer in the Revolutionary War.
A few days later, on February 2, he was dead.
Sears was born in White Plains, and according to a memorial written after his death, he enlisted in the Continental Army in 1776 “under Captain James Milliken in Colonel Paulding’s regiment.” He had not yet reached his 20th birthday.
Sears fought at the Battle of Long Island, and at White Plains, and was part of the taking of Fort Montgomery. He was seriously wounded during that encounter, however, and was taken prisoner by the British.
“A ball penetrated his right leg and a bayonet his right side,” it is written in his memorial. “while his shoes were filled with blood, he was prostrated by a blow from the butt of a gun and trampled underfoot.”
As a prisoner of war, Sears spent time in a hospital recuperating from his wounds, and was then relegated to the infamous British prison ship Jersey, where, in the words of James Eldridge Quinlan, writing in his History of Sullivan County (1873), “with other patriots he endured what must forever disgrace British arms.”
Thousands of American soldiers spent time on the prison ship HMS Jersey, and about a dozen of them died every day, most from disease, although some from torture, or from being shot while trying to escape. Many more were said to have been driven mad by what they were forced to endure. The horrid conditions aboard the ship justified the nickname American soldiers gave it: “Hell.”
“Here he saw American patriots, rendered insane by the tortures of hunger, thirst and cold, scrape the verdigris from the foul copper kettles which were used to cook their food, with which they cut short their anguish,” Quinlan writes. “His sufferings, however, did not extinguish his ardor for liberty. No sooner was he liberated, then he hastened to peril his life again in battle.”
In all, Sears spent the better part of 13 months as a prisoner of war, including a short stint in a sugar house on Pearl Street. According to his memorial, “while in prison he suffered everything but death from cold and hunger. His feet were so badly frozen that the ends of his toes dropped off, and he was unable to walk for three months after he was exchanged.”
Following his release, Sears enlisted again, and served on the northern frontier for the duration of the war. Here he earned a commission as a Lieutenant, and distinguished himself as a man of “bravery, fidelity, and intelligence.” Unfortunately, the record of his commission was somehow destroyed through the negligence of his superiors, and that is what ultimately led to his death."
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The Parla Foster House: A Brief History
"At the corner of Rts. 22 and 23 sits an imposing brick house built circa 1783-1790 by a man named Parla Foster.