Accessed and courtesy of the LoC PPOC. South east view of Boston sketch from the 1720s, published in the 1730s showing ships heading towards the port of Boston. The city is seen in the background, as well as rolling hills and greenspace.

This map is part of a larger project that aims to find and place the 1721-1722 deaths in Boston that might relate to the smallpox epidemic of the city. This project is trying to follow the epidemiological practice of looking for the deaths-over-time, usually shown as a bell-curve, to recognize true numbers of victims related to epidemic or pandemic deaths during a set of years. We are particularly interested in clusters of deaths.

This map project is in collaboration with the ideas and work completed by Dr. Christophers Parsons at Northeastern University. The initial work was completed with research funds over the summer of 2021. The death data comes from the Annie Haven Thwing collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society (accessed through the New England Historic Genealogical Society) and Boston probate records from the 1720s. The historic map layer is a copy of the 1722 Bonner map of Boston (published in 1723) that has been digitized and made accessible through the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library. This map layer was georeferenced using AllMaps, and the embedded map was made using ArcGIS Online.

Blue points: total deaths | Green points: specific clusters of deaths.