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In observance of the Federal holiday on Monday, February 16, the Jefferson Building Great Hall and exhibitions will be open from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. to guests with timed-entry passes. Reading rooms will be closed to researchers.

Exhibition Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress

Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress

Yellow Fever Scourge

Hamilton’s letter begins, “My Dearly beloved Child.” Written in slanting black script.
Philip Schuyler to Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, October 11, 1801. Alexander Hamilton Papers, Manuscript Division (057.00.00)
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Hamilton’s letter begins, “My Dearly beloved Child.” Written in slanting black script.
Philip Schuyler to Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, October 11, 1801. Alexander Hamilton Papers, Manuscript Division (057.00.01)
Enlarge
Hamilton’s letter begins, “My Dearly beloved Child.” Written in slanting black script.
Philip Schuyler to Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, October 11, 1801. Alexander Hamilton Papers, Manuscript Division (057.00.02)
Enlarge

Yellow Fever Scourge

Starting in 1793 and continuing through the first decade of the nineteenth century, deadly waves of yellow fever swept through American cities. When the first of these reached Philadelphia in 1793, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton and her husband, treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, both contracted it. They survived, but later, when living just north of New York City, the disease reemerged. Elizabeth’s father, Philip Schuyler wrote her and her husband a series of letters, warning them to keep out of yellow fever’s path as it reached New York. On October 11, 1801, Schuyler wrote his daughter that he knew “from very good authority the yellow fever not only generally pervades the city but is so extremely malignant that hardly any survive who are attacked.”