Two mass graves of 19th century yellow fever victims discovered 1000 miles apart

[Sampiro]

An odd coincidence.

Last week: the remains of 57 Irish Yellow Fever victims from 1832 were unearthed in Malvern Pennsylvania. Today, where I live- Montgomery AL- another mass grave of 19th century Yellow Fever victims is unearthed. (Ironically the one in Montgomery is across the street from the Police Department headquarters- no wonder they weren’t ever found.)
It’s wonderful that if there just has to be a mass grave found in Alabama that it doesn’t involve the Civil War or the Civil Rights Era either one for a change.

Coincidence… or a posthumous Crighton novel waiting to be unleashed? The yellow fever germs from Pennsylvania graves are airborn and drift til they merge with the ones from here and become super yellow fever, killing the Green Hornet at once…

[Sampiro]

Interesting development in the Montgomery site:

Eight of the skeletal remains appear to be from the 1800s, but three are believed to be from 1977 or later.
…
Eight skulls were found at the bottom of a slope between the city’s property on North Ripley Street and the historic Oakwood Cemetery. Preliminary analysis indicates that the owners of those bones could have fallen victim to a yellow fever outbreak in the 1870s, according to Briddell.

But there were three skulls found at the top of that hill that were buried after 1977, according to information relayed from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences to city officials. A state scientist found a type of plastic with the remains that was not brought to America until 1977.

If true this will be embarassing in a sort of *Reno 911 *way since the site is literally across the street from the city’s police HQ.

[Mississippienne]

My great-great-great-grandfather died in the 1853 Yellow Fever epidemic that killed about 9,000 people in New Orleans. Thanks to all the mosquitoes, Yellow Fever ran rampant across the South.