A monument in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia to the fifteen local medical volunteers who perished during the Norfolk and Portsmouth yellow fever epidemic. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
At its best, history opens a window in time that helps illuminate the past and the present. Such is
Encyclopedia Virginia’s new entry on the long-forgotten Norfolk and Portsmouth Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1855, contributed by Addeane Caelleigh, who also wrote the
You aren’t alone if you’ve never heard of this epidemic, which was one of the worst in the history of the United States. But in the decade before the Civil War, a yellow fever outbreak of such ferocity hit Norfolk and Portsmouth in the late summer and early autumn of 1855 that a good part of the population fled the low-lying port cities, the city governments ceased to function, and the local economies collapsed.