As you gather dates of vital events for your ancestors, list them in chronological order and check your work against historical events that occurred during their lifetime. Your list will help you to identify obvious relationship errors as well as point you to sources for further research. And who knows … you just might learn something new!
THE CENTURIES
Go to http://www.historydata.com/chronologies/index.html for chronologies covering the 18th century. Also includes few important events in the 17th and early 19th centuries. They mainly deal with military history and personalities, but there are other items of information to give a little background to the period.
11th 1001-1100
12th 1101-1200
13th 1201-1300
14th 1301-1400
15th 1401-1500
16th 1501-1600
17th 1601-1700
18th 1701-1800
19th 1801-1900
20th 1901-2000
21st 2001-2100
WORLDWIDE EPIDEMICS 1657-1918
1657 Boston -- Measles
1687 Boston -- Measles
1690 New York -- Yellow Fever
1713 Boston -- Measles
1729 Boston -- Measles
1732-1733 Worldwide -- Influenza
1738 S. Carolina -- Smallpox
1739-1740 Boston -- Measles
1746 Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania & S. Carolina -- Smallpox
1759 N. America -- Measles
1761 N. America -- Influenza
1772 N. America -- Measles
1775 N. America -- Unknown [Especially North East]
1775-1776 Worldwide -- Influenza
1783 Dover, Delaware -- Bilious Disorder
1788 New York & Philadelphia -- Measles
1793 Vermont -- “Putrid Fever” & Influenza
1793 Virginia -- Influenza [500 deaths in 5 counties in 4 weeks]
1793 Philadelphia -- Yellow Fever
1793 Harrisburg PA -- Many Unexplained Deaths
1793 Middletown PA -- Many Mysterious Deaths
1794 Philadelphia -- Yellow Fever
1796-1797 Philadelphia -- Yellow Fever
1798 Philadelphia -- Yellow Fever [one of the worst]
1803 New York -- Yellow Fever
1820-1823 Nationwide -- “Fever” [Started at Schuylkill River & Spread]
1831-1832 Nationwide -- Asiatic Cholera [Brought in by English immigrants]
1832 New York & Other Major Cities -- Cholera
1833 Columbus, OH -- Cholera
1833-1834 Kentucky -- Cholera
1834 New York City NY -- Cholera
1837 Philadelphia -- Typhus
1841 Nationwide -- Yellow Fever [Especially Severe in the South]
1847 New Orleans -- Yellow Fever
1847-1848 Worldwide -- Influenza
1848-1849 North America -- Cholera
1849 New York -- Cholera
1850 Nationwide -- Yellow Fever
1850-1851 North America Influenza
1851 Coles County IL, The Great Plains & Missouri -- Cholera
1852 Nationwide -- Yellow Fever [8,000 deaths in New Orleans that summer]
1855 Nationwide -- Yellow Fever
1857-1859 Worldwide -- Influenza [One of the largest epidemics]
1860-1861 Pennsylvania -- Smallpox
1861-1865 “Throughout the Civil War, disease as well as violence threatened civilians, who perished from the same illnesses that produced the preponderance of military deaths. The Civil War generated significant movements of peoples that served as deadly disease vectors. Contagions and epidemics that flourished in army camps spread to surrounding populations. Citizens of Danville, VA, for example, were certain that their debilitating “fevers” originated in the prisoner-of-war hospital located there. Philadelphia reported a smallpox epidemic that seemed closely connected to the numbers of soldiers stationed in the city who had succumbed to the disease. In the fall of 1862, nearly 500 cases of yellow fever and malaria appeared in Wilmington, NC, in part, local physicians believed, because the construction of army breastworks had increased the number of stagnant water around the city. No statistics or systematic records document the impact of war-engendered disease on noncombatant populations, but citizens, especially in the South, had few doubts about its effects.” [Ref. This Republic of Suffering … Death and the American War by Drew Gilpin Faust.]
1865-1873 Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Memphis & Washington DC -- A series of recurring epidemics of Smallpox, Cholera, Typhus, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever, Yellow Fever & Influenza
1873-1875 North America & Europe -- Influenza
1878 New Orleans -- Yellow Fever [Last Great Epidemic]
1885 Plymouth, PA -- Typhoid
1886 Jacksonville FL -- Yellow Fever
1918 Worldwide -- Influenza or Spanish Flu [More people were hospitalized in WW1 camps from this epidemic than wounds. US Army training camps became death camps, with 80% death rate in some camps.]
WAR
For a complete list of wars from 1800-present go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1800–1899:
1812-1815 The War of 1812
1835-1836 Texas Revolution
1836-1839 War of the Confederation
1837-1838 Patriot War
1857-1858 Utah War
1861-1865 American Civil War
1866-1868 Red Cloud’s War
1879-1884 War of the Pacific
1914-1918 WWI
1939-1945 WWII
1959-1975 Vietnam War
1960 Bay of Pigs Invasion
1983 U.S. Invasion of Grenada
1989-1990 U.S. Invasion of Panama
1990-1991 Gulf War
1998 U.S. Bombing of Iraq
2003-Pres Iraq War
GREAT DEPRESSION 1929-1941
1929 The stock market crashes.
1930 More than 3.2 million people are unemployed.
1931 Food riots begin to break out in parts of the U.S. Resentment of “foreign” workers increases along with unemployment rolls. New York’s Bank of the United States collapses.
1932 The Reconstruction Finance Corporation is authorized to lend needy states sums from the national Treasury. The money is to target relief and public works projects.
1933 FDR announces a four-day bank holiday to begin on Monday, March 6. During that time, FDR promises Congress will work on coming up with a plan to save the failing banking industry. By March 9, Congress passes the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. By month’s end, three-quarters of the nation’s closed banks are back in business. In April, FDR orders the nation off of the gold standard.
Work programs established in 1933: The Civilian Conservation Corps. Designed as a relief and employment program for young men between 17-27; The Tennessee Valley Authority is created and builds dams, produces and sells fertilizer, reforests the Tennessee Valley area and develops recreational lands; The Civil Works Administration is devised as a wide scale program that can employ up to 4 million people by building bridges, schools, hospitals, airports, parks and playgrounds.
1934 In May a three-day dust storm blows an estimated 350 million tons of soil off the terrain of the West and Southwest and deposits it as far east as New York and Boston. Some East Coast cities are forced to ignite street lamps during the day to see through the blowing dust!
1935 The Works Progress Administration (in 1939 changed to Works Projects Administration) is created to employ more than 8.5 million individuals in 3,000 counties across the nation. Individuals, drawing a salary of only $41.57 a month, improve or create highways, roads, bridges and airports. The WPA also puts thousands of artists (writers, painters, theater directors and sculptors) to work on various projects.
Other work programs established in 1935: The National Youth Administration is set up to address the needs of young men and women and works on two levels: a student work program [which provides students with odd jobs that pain them enough to stay in school] and an out-of-school program [to set young people up with various jobs ranging from house painting to cleaning local parks … eventually came to include vocational training].
1936 The Social Security System Act is signed into law by FDR. Among the most controversial stipulations of the act is that Social Security would be financed through a payroll tax. Called “one of the major turning points of American history”, no longer could “rugged individualism convincingly insist that government, though obliged to provide a climate favorable for the growth of business profits, had no responsibility whatever for the welfare of the human beings who did the work from which the profit was reaped.”
1937 The slow economic recovery made possible by the New Deal programs suffers a setback as unemployment rises. FDRs detractors call it the start of the “Roosevelt Recession”.
1938 FDR asks Congress to authorize 3.75 billion in federal spending to stimulate the sagging economy. While economic indicators respond favorably over the next few months, unemployment remains high and is predicted to stay that way for some time.
1941 Japan bombs Pearl Harbor in December and the United States enters the war in the Pacific and Europe. The war effort jump-starts U.S. industry and effectively ends the Great Depression.
