Diseases took a frightful toll during the early days of St. John Parish.
Consider the family listed below. Within a period of 17 days, my
great-great-grandfather, his wife and six of their children died, most probably
of yellow fever which swept this area during September of 1853.
In addition to those deaths, the deaths of two other children in this family
in a 7-day period in 1828, one at the age of 2 years and four months and
the other aged 10 months, was also probably due to one of the many epidemics
suffered by the early residents throughout this area.