Did your ancestors lose many family members all about the same time?  There may have been an epidemic in the area.

Epidemics in the United States

1657 Boston Measles
1687 Boston Measles
1690 New York Yellow Fever
1713 Boston Measles
1729 Boston Measles
1732-3 Worldwide Influenza
1738 South Carolina Smallpox
1739-40 Boston Measles
1747 CT,NY,PA,SC Measles
1759 N. Amer [areas inhabited by white people] Measles
1761 N. Amer and West Indies Influenza
1772 N. America Measles
1775 N. Amer [especially hard in NE] epidemic Unknown
1775-6 Worldwide [one of the worst epidemics] Influenza
1783 Dover, DE [extremely fatal] Bilious Disorder
1788 Philadelphia and New York Measles
1793 Vermont [a "putrid" fever] and Influenza
1793 VA [killed 500 in 5 counties in 4 weeks] Influenza
1793 Philadelphia [one of the worst epidemics] Yellow Fever
1793 Harrisburg, PA [many unexplained deaths] Unknown
1793 Middletown, PA [many mysterious deaths] Unknown
1794 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever
1796-7 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever
1798 Philadelphia, PA [one of the worst] Yellow Fever
1803 New York Yellow Fever
1820-3 Nationwide [starts-Schuylkill River and spreads] "Fever"
1831-2 Nationwide [brought by English emigrants] Asiatic Cholera
1832 NY City and other major cities Cholera
1837 Philadelphia Typhus
1841 Nationwide [especially severe in the south] Yellow Fever
1847 New Orleans Yellow Fever
1847-8 Worldwide Influenza
1848-9 North America Cholera
1850 Nationwide Yellow Fever
1850-1 North America Influenza
1852 Nationwide [New Orleans-8,000 die in summer] Yellow Fever
1855 Nationwide [many parts] Yellow Fever
1857-9 Worldwide [one of the greated epidemics] Influenza
1860-1 Pennsylvania Smallpox
1865-73 Philadelphia, NY, Boston, New Orleans Smallpox
Baltimore, Memphis, Washington DC Cholera
A series of recurring epidemics of Typhus Typhoid Scarlet Fever Yellow Fever
1873-5 N. America and Europe Influenza
1878 New Orleans [last great epidemic] Yellow Fever
1885 Plymouth, PA Typhoid
1886 Jacksonville, FL Yellow Fever
1918 Worldwide[high point yr] Influenza
more people were hospitalized in WWI from this
epidemic than wounds. US Army training camps
became death camps, with 80% death rate in some camps

Specific instances of cholera

1833 Columbus, OH
1834 New York City
1849 New York
1851 Coles Co., IL, The Great Plains, and Missouri

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