Of the long run of volumes of the Minutes of the Board of Health at the Municipal Archives of The City of New York, only the first volume, containing the Minutes of the Committee on Health, has considerable genealogical data.
In 1798 the prevailing fever epidemic had so overwhelmed the City that on September 10 of that year, the Board of Health appointed a special emergency Committee on Health to "take such measures for the relief of the sick and indigent . . . to employ persons under it in the execution of the business . . . to direct physicians to attend to the indigent sick . . . and to make necessary arrrangements with Health Commissioners with respect to the admission of persons at Bellevue ....".
As a result, the Committee's Minutes include the reports of the doctors and nurses who attended the sick; the petitions of relatives and neighbors for aid in the form of nursing, supplies, straw for a clean sickbed; petitions of the poor for orders to obtain food and supplies from the emergency supply stores set up in various sections of the city; and the donations of food and supplies received from neighboring upstate counties as well as from other neighboring areas of New Jersey and Long Island.
The name and address of each person, whether the sick, petitioner or donor, are included in the Minutes, enabling the researcher to add a bit of flesh to the history of some of the residents and perhaps even piece together a family or two from the entries. This source may contain the only extant record of many inhabitants of old New York City during this brief period.>
At the end of the Minutes for 1798 is an alphabetical list of the persons who died in the City of the fever during the last three months of that year. The list includes the decedent's address, birthplace if outside of New York, and often age and occupation. Entries throughout the Minutes, however, indicate that a great many of the sick inhabitants did survive.
This special Committee was in force only for the duration of the emergency. The remaining Minutes of the Board of Health concern matters of the Board itself and are almost of no genealogical value.
All of the Minutes have been microfilmed, and the Minutes of the Committee on Health are found on the first reel at the Archives.
(Ed. Some additional sources for names of fever victims in New York City are listed by Rosalie Fellows Bailey in her Guide to Genealogical and Biographical Sources for New York City (Manhattan) 1783-1898, 1954, pp. 10-11, 68, 89 [NYG&B call no. N.Y.C. G 8]. A 1795 list was published in the Record, vol. 81.)
by B-Ann Moorhouse, CG, FGBS
Originally published in The NYG&B Newsletter, Spring 1993
Vetted for accuracy July 2011
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