The 1849 Cholera Outbreak in Jefferson City

by Gary Elliott

Overview

In 1849, a steamship named after President James Monroe headed from St. Louis to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The passengers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Philadelphia. At St. Louis, they were joined with a group of California gold diggers from Jeffersonville, Indiana. But their trip was interrupted when cholera broke out on board. Local fourteen-year-old James McHenry discovered the steamship after in landed at Jefferson City and observed the dead and dying victims along the riverbank. Author Gary Elliott details the history of the outbreak in the city and its far-reaching effects.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467148054
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	01/25/2021
Series:	Disaster
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	1,162,256
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

A resident of Jefferson City, Missouri, Gary Elliott is a land surveyor by profession. He enjoys playing the piano, camping and hiking, as well as researching his (or anyone's) family history. He has authored The History of the Jefferson City and Cole County Councils of the Boy Scouts of America, 1910-1929 (Morris Publishing, 2010) and They Came and They Went: A Brief Account of Hannibal Missouri's Early Jewish Community and the B'nai Sholem Cemetery (Along with Those Interred There) (Art Bookbindery Inc., 2017). He loves the challenge of separating the fact from the fiction. In this story, Gary has expanded his interest in history to try to unravel another historical event. He feels that "there is always a story to be told, and one does not have to be a professional writer to tell it."

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

1 The Philadelphia Company of Latter-Day Saints 11

2 The Jeffersonville Forty-niners 21

3 The Steamship James Monroe 26

4 The Missouri River Journey and Death by the Cholera 28

5 Departure, Death and Adventure at Jefferson City 36

6 The Cholera 69

7 What Next? 79

8 Survivors 82

9 Deaths 91

10 Personal Accounts 98

11 Aftermath 105

Appendix 1 Survivors 109

Appendix 2 Known Deaths 113

Notes 117

Bibliography 127

Surname Index 137

About the Author 141