This Yellow Fever page allows you to easily access Benjamin Rush’s almost-daily letters to his wife, Julia, who was safely away from the city with their children. From the calendar, you can see the actual handwritten letter he sent on each marked day (courtesy of Duke University Library Special Collections). From the “Letters of Benjamin Rush” link you can see every one of these letters fully transcribed and annotated by historian Lyman Butterfield from Vol 2 of “Letters of Benjamin Rush” courtesy of Princeton University Press. (For a recent history of the Yellow Fever epidemic: Yellow Fever Stalks the Founders by Stephen Fried in American Heritage.)
Click on Calendar For Rush’s Actual Handwritten Letters
Click on Book for Transcriptions & Annotations
On September 11, 1793, Jones and Allen put up an ad to assist physicians like Rush to fight against the epidemic:
"As it is a time of great distress in this city, many people of the Black colour, under a greatful rememberance of the favour received from the white inhabitants, have agreed to assist them as far as in their power for the nursing of the sick and burial of the dead."
Absalom Jones (1746-1818), co-founder of the Free African Society (Episcopal Archives)
Richard Allen (1760-1831), co-founder of the Free African Society (Documenting the American South)
