The 1805 Verona, NY Typhus Fever Outbreak

By Jeff Blanchard, Town Historian, Town of Verona, NY

Two hundred-twenty years ago, in the early nineteenth century, a feverish young woman rode atop her trusty horse in the Mohawk Valley region of Upstate New York. This young lady was returning to her parents’ residence in the Town of Verona, Oneida County. The young lady in question did not make her homeward-bound journey alone, for she had been accompanied by death-quite literally.

The starting point of this historical tale was the summer of 1805. During that hot summer, Verona Town resident Miss Elizabeth Day had been residing with her friends in the Herkimer County community of Litchfield, which was experiencing an outbreak of Typhus Fever.^[1]  Typhus Fever, common in new settlements such as Verona,^[2] was a bacterial disease spread by various insects, including lice that bit their victims. The signs and symptoms most associated with Typhus were a high fever and a rash over large parts of the body, along with other symptoms ranging from nausea and aches to seizures and coma.^[3] This disease was not considered contagious, but could be spread in unsanitary, crowded conditions by insects and was often fatal if left untreated.^[4] Miss Day undoubtedly had encountered this deadly disease during her stay in Litchfield, with consequences that would deeply affect Verona.

By the month of August in 1805, Miss Day wrapped up her stay in Litchfield and set off back home to Verona as scheduled. The start of Miss Day’s homeward journey was foreboding. Miss Day was anxious to return home and began her long journey on horseback despite feeling indisposed.^[5] Miss Day’s journey was made strenuous by the searing August heat, but her difficulty was compounded when she spiked a high fever. Miss Day, bound and determined to make it back to her parents’ home, only allowed herself a brief rest break at a nearby relative’s home. By the time Miss Day made it home, she lay herself down onto her sick bed with the hope of recovering from her illness. Fate proved cruel, for Miss Day never arose, dying on her sickbed that August of 1805.

Elizabeth Day became the first victim in a Typhus Fever epidemic in Verona that would last from August 1805 to well into 1806. The disease had a tremendous impact on the residents of the Town of Verona. Approximately one hundred cases of Typhus occurred in the town, mostly amongst those who were young and unmarried, or those who were young and the head of their family.^[6] The Typhus outbreak was particularly unforgiving and took a tremendous toll on the small population of Verona to the point that the town came close to being wiped out. Explanations for why the disease spread in the way it did varied. Nineteenth-century historian Pomroy Jones believed that “The cutting away of the timber letting in the rays of the sun might possibly have increased the malaria of the wetlands. . .”^[7]Additionally, Jones believed that “... the rapid decay of the log houses as a likely cause, or at least that it contributed to the spread.”^[8] Jones was personally affected by the 1805 Typhus outbreak, for the disease claimed his uncle, Captain Oliver Pomroy. Despite the ferocity of the Typhus outbreak, the Town of Verona lived on.

The Town of Verona’s dance with death from 1805 to 1806 is a stark reminder of the frailty of human beings in the face of disease. Even into the twenty-first century, with all the advancements made in disease prevention and treatment, the residents of Verona have still had to face the realities of disease outbreaks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as those nineteenth-century town settlers moved on from Typhus after 1806, the town residents in the twenty-first century moved on from COVID-19 with the same hearty spirit of their settler ancestors.  

About the author: Jeff Blanchard has been the Historian for the Town of Verona, NY, since June 2025, and has been vigorously pursuing projects related to Verona’s rich history. Jeff earned a Bachelor of Science in History from Liberty University and has an interest in local history, post-World War II military history, and American military history

Sources:

Cleveland Clinic. “Typhus.” Typhus: Fever, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment & Prevention. Last reviewed July 24^th, 2024. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/typhus.

Ernenwein, Raymond P. Verona Town History. Verona, NY: Verona Town Board, 1970.

Jones, Pomroy. Annals and Recollections of Oneida County. Rome, NY: Pomroy Jones, 1851.

Karol-Chik, Shellie. “Diseases and Epidemics of Colonial New England – Handout.” The Mayflower Society, 2022. https://themayflowersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Diseases-and-Epidemics-in-Colonial-New-England-Handout.pdf.

Bibliography

^[1] Pomroy Jones, Annals and Recollections of Oneida County (Rome, NY: Pomroy Jones, 1851), 674.

^[2] Raymond P. Ernenwein, Verona Town History, (Verona, NY: Verona Town Board, 1970), 12.

^[3] “Typhus,” Typhus: Fever, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment and Prevention, Cleveland Clinic, last reviewed July 24, 2024,  https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/typhus.

^[4] Shellie Karol-Chik, “Diseases and Epidemics of Colonial New England – Handout,” The Mayflower Society, 2022, https://themayflowersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Diseases-and-Epidemics-in-Colonial-New-England-Handout.pdf.

^[5] Jones, Annals and Recollections, 674.

^[6] Ibid., 675.

^[7] Ibid, 675.

^[8] Ernenwein, Verona Town History, 12.