I remember walking a well kept rural cemetery in the area around Bloomington IN about 30 years ago, before I was into genealogy. But I've always loved cemeteries. This part of IN has the stone--a very hard limestone, I think, that DC monuments and government buildings are made of, so headstones 150 years old were readable. I was struck by the number of families who had lost multiple children within a few days of each other. Some epidemic, local or otherwise, had swept them off. Typically, the parents survived. Had one of those families been mine, I'd have dug into records. As it was, I just wondered and grieved for those parents. Doris Waggoner Seattle -- "karima" <karima@insightbb.com> wrote: This isn't Illinois "specific", but is quite interesting none the less . . . it is an interesting topic for all mailing lists: " . . . in 1721, Boston doctor Zabdiel Boylston took a gamble with his young son's life and inoculated him against smallpox. Puritan minister Cotton Mather had learned from one of his slaves that in Africa people did not fear the disease that so terrified Europeans. The Africans placed a small amount of smallpox pus into a scratch on children's arms, thus making them immune to the disease. When an epidemic broke out in Boston in 1721, Mather wanted to try this method. He convinced Dr. Boylston, but other physicians and the public thought the idea barbaric, even sinful. However, when those Boylston inoculated survived, the tide of public opinion began to turn. Within a few years, the once-controversial practice would be routine." http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=186 "In case you ever wondered why a large number of your ancestors disappeared during a certain period in history, this might help. Epidemics have always had a great influence on people - and thus influencing, as well, the genealogists trying to trace them. Many cases of people disappearing from records can be traced to dying during an epidemic or moving away from the affected area." http://rootsweb.com/~kyspence/epidemics.htm ~ Karima --- avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 0525-5, 06/25/2005 Tested on: 6/26/2005 4:01:12 PM avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2004 ALWIL Software. http://www.avast.com ==== ILROOTS Mailing List ==== Illinois Regional Archives Depositories (IRAD) records available at: http://www.sos.state.il.us/departments/archives/irad/iradholdings.html ============================== Find your ancestors in the Birth, Marriage and Death Records. New content added every business day. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13964/rd.ashx