APPENDIX. 479 



of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, in the archives of the Historical 

 Society of our State, and carefully treasured by it as among its more 

 precious possessions, exhibits a large amount of duties faithfully per- 

 formed for every class, including the poorest and most ignorant. And 

 they were all as faithfully recorded. 



In parishes having a circuit so wide as had those of the United 

 Churches in Dr. Blackwell's day, and with parishioners so numerous, 

 the discharge of such external duties as make part of every clergyman's 

 office, imposed upon both their ministers constant labor and many 

 duties requiring the best qualities of a pastor's character. All these, in 

 Dr. Blackwell's case, were called into special requisition during those 

 visitations of contagious pestilence which desolated Pliiladelphia on 

 more than one occasion during his ministry, and one of which came 

 near, by his fidelity to his parochial duties, to involve his own life. 

 Dreadful as have been the visitations of the Yellow Fever of late times in 

 the southern parts of the United States, they do not appear to have been 

 more dreadful than those visitations of it under which Philadelphia 

 came in 1793 and 1797. The visitation of 1793 was perhaps the most 

 alarming. A letter before us from an eminent physician of Philadelphia 

 to a friend thus speaks of it : 



Though every one is not confined, yet from the general diffusion of the contagion 

 through every street in the city, nobody is perfectly well. One complains of giddi- 

 ness; one of headache; another of chills; others of pains in the back, or stomach; and 

 all have more or less quickness of pulse and redness or yellowness in the eyes. No 

 words can describe the distress which pervades all ranks of people, from the combined 

 operations of fear, grief, poverty, despair and death. . . . Never can 1 forget the awful 

 sight of mothers wringing their hands, fathers dumb for awhile with fear and appre- 

 hension, and children weeping aloud before me; all calling upon me to hasten to the 

 relief of their sick relations. This is but a faint picture of the distress of our city. It 

 is computed that one hundred persons, on an average, have been buried every day 

 for the last eight or ten days. The sick suffer, not only from the want of physicians, 

 bleeders, nurses and friends, but from want of the common necessaries of life. Five 

 physicians, four students of medicine, and three bleeders have died of the disorder. 

 But the mortality falls chiefly on the poor, who, by vvorkmg in the sun, excite the con- 

 tagion into activity. Whole families of these have been swept away by it. . . . The former 

 sources of charity in money are dried up or carried into the country. There is little 

 credit now given for anything. Every service to the sick is purchased at a most ex- 

 orbitant rate. The price of bleeding is seven shillings and sixpence, and nurses' wages 

 are three dollars and three dollars and a half per day. Families who lived by the 

 daily labor of journeymen or day laborers suffer greatly from the death of persons by 

 whom alone their daily wants were supplied. My heart has been rent a thousand 

 times, in witnessing distress from that cause as well as from sickness. I have, in vain, 

 endeavored to relieve it. The resources of a prince would not have relieved one-half 

 of it. . . . Some of the wealthy are at last affected. Mr. Van Berkle, Mr. Powel, 

 Mrs. Blodget and Mrs. Clymer are at present confined by it. Mr. Van Berkle is in 

 danger. Continue, my dear friend, to pray for our distressed and desolated city. 



