It seems lots of people died of illnesses in Iowa, and not from just smallpox alone. Some could have frozen to death of course. In my research I found several places where ancestors just dissapeared between census, or two or more family members died in the same week or month, so I started paying more attention to diseases that killed yours and mine. A new section of my county website deals with this subject. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iadesmoi/Illness/illnesses.htm I hope this may help someone. donkelly

I have been typing obituaries, most from the 1930's in the Appanoose area , and the last one I did was of a woman who died from typhoid. She was the third one who had died from drinking from the same well on the home farm. I have several obits where a bull gored a farmer to death, a baby that died when he pulled a table cloth and a hot meal fell on him, a baby that fell into a bucket filled with milk. The ones of the young children are so sorrowful. My mothers brother died in the early 1920's when he was two. She said that he had swallowed a kernel of corn and it went down a wrong "pipe". I have often wondered if that was true. His obit said "he suffered much in the two weeks of his illness for it was constant". I have typed many obits that also tell of the illness of men coming home from the Civil War or WW I. Many had been gassed while overseas and they never recovered. Kay in Wisconsin > It seems lots of people died of illnesses in Iowa, and not from just > smallpox alone. Some could have frozen to death of course. > In my research I found several places where ancestors just dissapeared > between census, or two or more family members died in the same week or > month, so I started paying more attention to diseases that killed yours > and > mine. > A new section of my county website deals with this subject. > http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iadesmoi/Illness/illnesses.htm > > I hope this may help someone. > > donkelly > >